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“Don’t worry, Nance. I’ll never let anyone make you marry someone like that. You’re a Mafia princess and you deserve only the best. I would burn down the world before I let anyone undeserving touch you.”
Nancia gave a wobbly smile to her twin. “Thanks, Nate.”
“But you see now, don’t you, why I have to be a Made Man if I’m to protect you from the Venetis?”
“But Gabriel and Rafael can protect me—you don’t need to do it too, Nate,” pleaded Nancia.
“I’ll never leave your protection to anyone else, Nance. You mean too much to me. I’d never be able to live with myself if anything happened to you. I wouldn’t wantto livewithout you by my side.”
Finally accepting the inevitability that Nate would become a Made Man and that there was nothing she could do to change this, Nancia sighed in defeat.
Nate held out his arms, and she huddled in his embrace, letting herself be comforted by her twin.
***
The following day, Rafael took me by the hand and led me upstairs to our bedroom. “I have something for you.”
As soon as he opened the door, I saw a pile of large ivory boxes, each tied with a beautiful lilac ribbon.
I looked toward Rafael, confusion washing over me.
“You better not have changed your mind about your favorite color.”
“It’s still lilac,” I breathed.
“Good. You’ll want to keep all those ribbons then—if you can’t find a use for them, I can think of a few things I could do with them,” he growled, making my core tighten as I realized he might want to tie me up with them.
“Um, do you want me to open them?”
He nodded, so I untied the first box and pulled out a pretty cocktail dress in lilac. “Oh, it’s gorgeous,” I said, a smile lifting the corners of my mouth. After admiring the dress, I moved on to the next box and found a pencil skirt, again in a beautiful shade of lilac. “I love it,” I giggled.
As I moved through the boxes, I opened each to find various items of clothing, all in various shades of lilac: capri pants, shorts, sweaters, blouses, skirts, dresses and lingerie. “My mother’s not going to be happy,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling in delight at the pretty clothes.
“I don’t care about your mother. All I want is for you to be happy.”
“You didn’t have to buy me so many items of clothing in an attempt to make me happy, you know.”
“I would have bought more if they’d had anything else, but this was all they had in lilac. Although I told them in no uncertain terms now that they better order in some more lilac items.”
I laughed. “These will keep me going for a while.”
“I want to see you happy,” he said, suddenly serious. “If it means you wearing this color each and every day, I don’t care—you look beautiful to me whatever you wear, and you look especially beautiful in lilac.”
I let him take me into his arms and I pulled his head down so that I could kiss him.
Later, having tried on all the new clothes. I then hung them up.
When I wore lilac, I no longer felt plain…or maybe I felt prettier because of the way Rafael looked at me now.
I stood back and admired the satisfying new block of color in my closet. I found it soothing somehow—it was my happy color, my happy place.
***
A couple of weeks later, I was feeling lousy after vomiting yet again. I had even given up my daily run with Rafael for now. Since the day I’d found out I was pregnant, I’d been sick every morning without fail and then sometimes again later in the day.
“Oh God,” I said. “No one told me it would be like this. I knew there might be some morning sickness, but not every single day.”
“You’re looking pretty worn out, Jess.” Rafael looked at me with concern.
