His Adam’s Apple bobbed with a hard swallow and Santino pressed his lips to her forehead in a bruising kiss. “Aishiteru,” he murmured against her skin.
His first spoken word of Japanese.
Her heart melted at the gesture as much as the meaning, and she leaned into him, curling her arms around his torso for the lingering second he allowed the display.
“What,” Nonno gasped, his tone more ragged than ever, “what the hell just happened, Santino? Why did you allow this outsider—”
Santino exhaled, the sound more a tickle across her skin than a sound that greeted her eardrums, and straightened. He turned them to face the room from their position as the backdoor quietly closed in the background. His arm curved around her back, hand anchoring over her outer shoulder. “This is my fiancée, not some outsider. No, this is not how I wanted you tomeet, and yes, I’ll agree to proper introductions another time. I think we’d all prefer that. But mind how you speak of her atalltimes, because she isn’t just my future. She isourfuture.”
An undefinable sound that tore at Reiko’s heart preceded the unmistakable tone of a warning chime from the heart monitor beside Lorenza’s bed. Sparing her would have been kinder.
Reiko’s attention was ripped away by movement in her peripheral—movement in front of them, as her head was turned. She looked forward again and nearly blanched to see Santino’s grandfather approaching.
He walked with a hunch, and probably usually used the cane that leaned, forgotten, against the side of the sofa, but neither his slouched form nor his limp disguised his truth. He was, or had once been, an impressive man in his own right. Perhaps never as tall as Santino, but he was clearly where Santino got the blue eyes and if she had to guess, probably the light hair. Though Nonno’s was thin and silver now.
“Nonno?” Santino asked, a note of cautious curiosity in his quieted voice.
The older man raked his cloudy blue eyes over Reiko unabashedly. He was the first man who’d done so since Santino had swooped into her life, she was pretty sure. His eyes locked onto hers before she could dwell on that. “Do you expect me to thank you for killing my granddaughter?”
Reiko sucked in a breath at the grating question.
“Nonno,” Santino said again, more firmly.
“No,” Reiko answered before either man could say more. She kept her words as soft as she dared, taking her cue on acceptable volume from Santino, and valiantly held the elder man’s stare. “I don’t want gratitude, and I won’t ask for your forgiveness. Whether or not I had taken action, your granddaughter would not have survived the hour. We all know it.”
Saying the words aloud drove it home in a way she hadn’t consciously processed yet. She’d killed a woman. She had ended another human’s life with her own hands. The reality of that was heavy, until she forcibly repeated—to herself—what she’d just told Santino’s grandfather.
Her own actions had only changed the face of Adele’s executioner. Adele’s death itself had been long decided. If she was going to survive in the world of the mafia, probably it was best she not get hung up on more detail than that.
Nonno released a throaty, wheezy growl. “And what gave you the right to interfere?”
Santino’s chest heaved, the sense of irritation radiating from him.
Reiko lifted an arm and curled it around his back, her fingers digging into his hip. “You see where I’m standing right now? This gives me the right. I will never be a quiet decoration on a shelf, merely taken down and shown off from time-to-time. I will behere. Always.”
Santino’s grip tightened. “Fuck,” he muttered, the sound barely carrying.
Nonno’s eyes narrowed, his nostrils flaring. “So, what is it you want with my grandson?”
Reiko smiled, the expression arguably too warm for the scene but wholly honest, and replied, “Everything.”
“I will behere. Always.”
A little more than twelve hours after she’d so confidently said those words, and Santino still hadn’t recovered. The memory of her sweet words was like an adrenaline shot to his libido, every time.
He groaned even as he nibbled at the skin of her throat before hauling himself upright in the interest of letting her rest. He could admit he’d been a bit overenthusiastic that morning before they’d dragged themselves from bed. But fuck had it been worth the exertion.
“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not helping,” Reiko said, squirming over his lap.
Santino made no effort to stop the grin, dropped another kiss to the corner of her mouth, and finally reached for the tablet he’d had the foresight to bring over to the table. He queued up the page he wanted and slid it in front of her. “Just thinking about you, beautiful,” he teased. “Now, go shopping. I feel bad your poor chrysanthemums have been neglected, so buy yourself some more, and whatever else you want. We’ve got a big house and plenty of garden space.”
She didn’t know it yet, but he’d already decided to have her sit down with a landscape architect and redesign the garden however she liked. He didn’t want to overwhelm her, though, and she’d had an emotional reaction to learning he was renovating the wardrobe and attached ensuite rather than force her to live with a space that held bad memories. So, one thing at a time.
Reiko made an adorable face as she examined the website displayed on the tablet. “Snapdragon Blooms,” she read aloud. She was actually reading the store’s biographical page. Then she pointed to the screen and turned another adorable frown at him. “Santino, this place is located in New Jersey. Shipping’s going tobe insane. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good florist inMissouriwe could use.”
He chuckled and gave her a squeeze. “Oh, trust me, beautiful. This is the place.” Just imagining the look on Dante’s face when he heard Santino’s name and address popped up on the billing information for a large order at Mrs. De Salvo’s flower shop would be worth the expense on its own. Probably he did need to properly explain the whole inter-state mafia alliance thing to his fiancée, though.
One thing at a time,he reminded himself.
