But looking at him here at my bedside, I know what we are to each other. Whatever this is between us—love, something darker, something bigger—I can’t just walk away.
“This is a lot,” I whisper.
“It is,” he agrees.
I inhale slowly, then exhale. “I love you, Nik. I meant it when I told you that. But we still have a lot to learn about each other before I agree to marry you. So… how about this? How about we just date for a while? Like normal people. I’ll come watch you play hockey, and we’ll go to dinner, take walks… whatever people do when they date.”
Nik’s lips twist in amusement. “I’ve never dated.”
“Of course you haven’t,” I say, sighing. “Can you figure it out?”
His grin widens. “For you, yes.”
36
NIK
It has beena year since the night I realized I loved Leanna Campisi.
A year since the night I thought I might lose her.
A year I have spent earning her trust and love, earning the right to be her husband.
It’s been a year of managing a somewhat hostile merger of two significant mafia families.
And in the meantime, I was playing hockey for a team owned by my soon-to-be father-in-law. I still love the game, and I have negotiated with him regarding his efforts to throw games for profit. That is, of course, the least important thing, though.
What is important is that Leanna and I have had a chance to get to know each other. We have dated, like normal people might. We have discussed our upbringings, lives, and families.
And with each new day, I know for sure that I wouldn’t just kill for her, I would die for her, as well.
“You ready, boss?” Dominic asks, grasping my shoulder as I adjust my bow-tie for the millionth time.
I grin at my friend, at the tuxedoed figure staring back from the mirror, at the whole impossible situation.
“Never been more ready for anything in my life,” I say.
We step into the hall, through the heavy double doors, and into the aisle of the grand old Catholic church. The music swells, echoing off the vaulted ceilings, and every head turns. Campisi, Barkov, Chicago Reaper, all eyes are on me.
I take my place at the dais, and then Dominic walks in, Misha on his arm.
I donotmiss how Misha winks at stupid Conor as she walks by, where he sits on the edge of the aisle. He grins and winks back before noticing my scowl, which instantly wipes the grin from his stupid face.
Over my dead body will that match happen.
But every trace of irritation disappears when Leanna appears at the door, her father at her arm.
She’s radiant like an angel in white, her gown skimming her body, clinging in all the places that make men lose their minds.
My grin spreads, uncontainable, when her eyes meet mine. She walks too slowly for my liking, every step a kind of exquisite torture.
When she makes it to the dais, her father lifts her veil and kisses her cheek. He gives me a pointed look that is more fatherly than mafia Don, before taking his seat next to Leanna’s brother, Ezra, in the front row. I do not yet trust him, but we are working on it.
I barely hear the priest’s words; I hear nothing but the pounding of my own heartbeat because all I can see is her. This woman, who once upon a time stood nervously and awkwardly in front of me. The woman who kept showing up, week after week. I didn’t know what she was doing to me at the time. But she did.
Later,after the party, we are in the home I bought for us, a few miles from her dad’s sprawling compound.
“I can’t believe this is ours,” Leanna marvels, looking around at the renovations she managed over the past six months.
