"I don't like sharing my candy and chocolate, and I always leave my toys scattered all over my room." She bites her lower lip.
"You shared a candy with me," I point out.
"Because I wanted you to agree to be my husband," she says quietly, and before I can control my reactions, my mouth curves up.
Because she looks so guilty about her gesture, about how she tried to bribe me with candy.
"What else should your husband do?" I ask.
Her face lights up, and she starts swinging her legs. That's when I notice she's wearing white tights with glitter. God, how much glitter can one person wear?
"Well, besides smiling and making me smile, he has to pick up all my toys."
"Right, because you leave them everywhere," I respond as I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes.
"He has to have money because I like pizza. Actually, he should just give me his credit card because I also need lots of toys." She emphasizes the word card.
At that, my smile stretches wider across my face.
"He absolutely has to watch cartoons with me. Daddy can't stand them, and Mommy always falls asleep in the middle of the episode."
Her indignant voice makes me laugh, and I open my eyes. Because I don't laugh. Ever. So I look down at her to find she's already staring at me.
"So, do you want to be my husband? I promise if you fall asleep during cartoons too, I won't be mad," she tells me softly.
Before I can answer, her mother appears in the hallway.
"Thank you. Come on, amorino. We need to go home."
Before walking out the door, she pulls away from her mother's grip, comes to me, kisses my cheek, and says, "I'm Roxanne. Don't forget about the wedding. I can wait for you until...hmm. Mommy, how old do I have to be to get married?"
With a laugh, her mother shakes her head and answers. "There's no specific age, cara. But let's say thirty."
"I promise I'll wait for you until thirty," the ray of sunshine tells me, and I memorize her joy.
I remember that night even now because it was the first night I fell asleep smiling, remembering the happiness in her voice. The enthusiasm that one day I'd be her husband. And I promised myself then that I'd try to be what she would've wanted. I started smiling more often, telling jokes and laughing, without any hope I'd ever see her again. Because I never would've dragged a ray of sunshine into the darkness I live in.
But then I saw her in that warehouse a year ago, with blood on her mouth, her hair disheveled, and without that sparkle she had in her eyes back then. With that haunted, lost look, with that wall she built through her jokes and the way it seemed like nothing affected her.
In that moment, I knew I didn't need to drag her into my shadows because she'd already made contact with something evil. And since I wasn't there to protect her when I should've been, I became her shadow, her protector, her husband.
Even though she doesn't remember that she's been mine for over twenty years.
Chapter 37
Damien
"I'm here to see Marco Agosti," I tell the guard at the gate. He speaks briefly with someone through his earpiece before waving our car through toward the Victorian mansion.
Vasili signals that he'll wait in the car because he knows this is a conversation I need to have privately.
He's the one who verified all the information we received and assured me that, however unreal it might seem, the facts don't lie.
Another guard escorts me to the office. When he knocks, Marco's voice invites us in.
I must have something written across my face that tells him we need to talk, because he waves the guard away and rises from his chair, hands in his pockets.
"Good to see you on your feet, Kaminski," he says, though I catch an edge of irritation in his voice.
