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“Your Papa. He was a good twenty years younger than me when we met,” she blushes.
I try to do the math. “But. That would make you…,” I say, but she cuts me short with a smiling reply.
“Makes me old enough to know better!” she declares, and squeezing Papa’s arm, she tells us all some more of what happened, for Jasmine’s benefit as well as mine.
“Maria Portello fled on her own. She saw a way out, and like you, Rocco, she took it.”
I smile at Jasmine, both of us having our first little secret together.
“…She also took a good chunk of the Portello fortune with her,” Mama adds, giving both of us knowing looks.
“But her rescuer wasn’t from any family we’d know. He’s some district attorney somewhere, and although it hasn’t reached the networks yet, Maria Portello is gonna sing like a songbird. Rolling over on her entire family,” she says with a shrug.
“After the way they treated her, I don’t blame her,” My father says thoughtfully, and I feel a million emotions, things I could and probably should say, bubbling to the surface.
But I ask myself, do I really care anymore?
I wanted out of the mobster life, and my Papa practically spelled it out to everyone. I’m no good at it anyway.
He’s found his love and peace with my Mama again, and so Jasmine and I get to ride off into the sunset.
Right?
Well. Not exactly.
“And what makes you thinkyoushould be Rocco's choice?” my Mama asks Jasmine coldly.
I don’t like giving her a look, but Jasmine appears to have expected this question somehow.
“Uhhh, Mama?” I explain quickly. “IknewJasmine wasn’t Maria Portello, okay? I followed her home, and when I couldn’t find her, I came straight home when I heard someone was snatched from in front of her building. Only because I had a gut feeling they’d grabbed the wrong girl.”
My mom lifts a brow, a curious expression on her face.
“The girl I know I’m in love with now. The girl who’s a woman now and the woman I want to make my wife,” I tell her.
Tell my Papa and tell Jasmine too.
A kind of so-there statement, but it’s also a proposal of sorts.
As I said, I’ve never been good with words. But hearing Jasmine squeal and having her leap into my lap tells me at least one of the three is happy to hear it.
“I mean it, Jasmine. I love you. And if the past couple of days have shown me anything…if the past few minutes have, it tells me that if you love someone, then don’t waste another minute telling them. And if you haven’t already, put a ring on that finger and hold them close forever.”
Jasmine’s eyes are wide, and her mouth round in an ‘O’ as I tell her before she asks me, “Is that some kind of a proposal, Mr. Martinelli?”
And feeling my body springing to life against her soft curves at the thought of her saying yes.
“Will you marry me, Jasmine? Just say yes. Tell my family and me that you’ll be the next Mrs. Martinelli?
“You know I will,” she gushes, and when it’s clear that both Mama and Papa couldn’t agree more, they join us in a group hug as I hear her say the only word from her lips that matters today.
“Yes. Yes. Yes!”
EPILOGUE
THREE MONTHS LATER
Jasmine
