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"What?" I laughed at his confession.
"It's not funny. I thought I was going to lose you before I had the chance to get you back to myself," he whined.
"Okay! That I understand. What don’t I know is how you've been with that guy for what? Five years? And you couldn't tell that he was gay."
"No he's not," his eyes warned me to stop.
"Why, he is. Told me himself," I snorted in my fit of laughter.
"I'll call him," he threatened.
"What? Go ahead."
After the next thirty minutes of heated phone conversation in pure Italian, which I was sure he just found out the truth, he hung up the phone and turned to me.
"He'll be here before you wake up tomorrow," he scowled.
I howled in triumph and gave him a bear hug.
Three days later, I had my confidant. Ricardo – who was overjoyed to be back – and Mrs. Ricci helped whenever they could to watch over Artemis before Casey came for her home schooling. Alessandro decided with unchallengeable finality that the outside world was too dangerous for her with the affiliation to him being too direct.
Carlos was becoming a tad more frequent in visiting and I suspected it had something to do with Ricardo’s reappearance. But after ceaselessly taunting the both of them, I settled to observe in the sidelines how their relationship played along. With Carlos' fire and Ricardo's ice, it was going to be steamy.
****************************
"Hey, dad. It's me, your son. I'm so sorry I haven't seen you in a while..." he laughed. "I guessed I learned the hard way that revenge is never the way to go."
He took a deep breath, and I rubbed his back.
"I learned a lot of things, dad. Tons. Almost forgot your love rule. I'm thankful it didn't forget me." He sounded nothing like the Alessandro I knew. I had this image of him as a strong, dominant alpha, but as he sat down beside his father's gravestone, I saw the timid insecurities that he hid from the world. I saw them in his eyes. How scared he was, how unsure of his next step, but he kept pushing and pressing to become a man that I was sure even his father would envy.
"My baby's fine now, papa. She had a long surgery and entered into a coma, but she's a fighter...just like Artemis," he referred to his sister.
"I never knew you and Sienna's father stayed so close together. We'd not need to take separate trips to come see you. Isn't that great?"
That was something I literally noticed just today as well.
At the end of each statement he made, my heart broke, because at each pause, where there was supposed to be an answer, there was nothing. If he could find peace in talking without expecting answers, he'd be happier here.
I heard him momentarily begin to sniff.
"I'm going to run the Aurora well, papa. No one would question our strength ever again. With my girls with me, I'm ready to take over the world for them if they desire it. That's what you taught me, papa. To always be there for my family whenever they need me."
"To voglio bene, papà."That meant, "I love you, papà."He put the open cask of whiskey upside down and let it drain inside the earth while he continued mumbling other farewells in his language.
Standing up, he took my hand and waved goodbye to all three gravestones. His dad's, his sister's, and my dad’s. Once we were out of the cemetery, he helped me clean my tears in the car.
"Smile for me tigre," he asked, and I gave him a quick toothy one.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked him as his mouth lingered loosely over mine.
"Let's play a game, yeah? The car would drive on for as long as possible while we made out. The moment we pull away the car will have to stop and wherever it does, we make it a date. Deal?"
"This will possibly end in an orgasm, but yeah. Deal," I chuckled as he mashed his lips into mine.
The End
