Maybe he has.
And with his forehead against mine and his voice wrecked, his next words also feel etched in stone.
“This changes everything.”
I laugh shakily. “Everything was already changed.”
And in the half-dark of Red Hook, with danger still prowling outside these walls, I realise with a clarity that frightens me more than any gunshot?—
I am no longer running and I’m no longer untouched.
I am his wife, Lucia Dragoni.
And Giovanni Dragoni has finally claimed me.
Giovanni
Her breath is still shudderingwhen I finally lift my head.
The warehouse is dim and echoing, the air that was previously thick with the metallic ghost of gunfire now flavoured with the sweet scent of my wife’s sublime surrender.
Diu, all I can see is her—flushed, trembling, furious with feeling, her mouth swollen from my kiss, her eyes dark with the kind of surrender that isn’t weakness so much as inevitability.
I have taken cities with less impact than this moment.
I rest my forehead against hers, breathing hard, my hands still braced at her waist because letting go would be a mistake I can’t survive.
Our words echo around the dark cavern.
This changes everything.
As if I wasn’t already irreversibly altered.
Her broken little laugh in response, the sound tunnelling straight into my exposed places, rings again, and I wonder if she knows how true they are.
Everything was already changed.
Christo.
It was changed the first moment I set eyes on her, the first time she looked at me like she wasn’t impressed.
Changed when she ran. Changed when I followed.
And changed when I put my body in front of bullets without thinking, because my instincts have never been clearer than they are with her.
My wife.
My ruin.
My anchor.
I drag in a breath, forcing the world back into focus beyond the heat between us, beyond the temptation to stay here until the city forgets our names.
Outside, danger still prowls.
Bellandi’s men won’t have been the only ones listening.
“La Fratellanza Nera will hear about this,” I murmur, more to myself than to her.
