But as we sit there together, eating takeout on her bed, a documentary on in the background, I realize something: this is exactly where I want to be.
Not at Dragovari Tower strategizing with Matti. Not hunting down Aurelio. Not sitting in a room full of soldiers planning our next move.
I want to be right here. With her.
I reach for another spring roll and settle back into the pillows, my leg pressing against hers under the covers.
Fuck it.
40
Vin
The next day, Sophie’s curled against my side, her head on my chest, one hand resting on my abs. She’s feeling better but I asked her to keep the restaurant closed one more day to make sure.
There’s a cooking show on, but neither of us is watching. We’ve been like this on the couch for hours just talking.
“So you really never plan to get married?” Her voice is conversational, like she’s not asking for herself but just curious. “Other than for alliance purposes?”
I grunt. “Already answered that.”
“I know.” She traces lazy circles on my abs under my shirt. “I’ve just never heard of a mafia boss who wasn’t married with a wife at home and agumartucked away somewhere.”
A wife and a girlfriend. I raise my eyebrows and shake my head. “That shouldn’t surprise you that I wouldn’t want tworelationships when I don’t even want one. And that’s the old school way anyway.”
“And you’re not old school?”
I shake my head. “Those guys basically had two full families.” I stare at the ceiling, thinking of the men I grew up watching. “Two sets of kids they had to keep separated. Two women they had to juggle. Too much of a fucking headache if you ask me.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “But why? Why have two families instead of just one?”
I shrug. “Old school guys say there are some things they would never ask the mother of their children to do.” I can hear my father’s voice, his friends, the justifications I grew up hearing. “‘She kisses my kids with that mouth.’ But you still want certain things, so you find someone else to do them.”
Her hand stills on my stomach.
I can’t let her know that I’ve been thinking about what I want more and more thanks to her. That she is the one woman I can see being a perfect wife, in the bedroom and out of it. That she’s my woman for the moment but maybe, just maybe, I want her for a lot more than that.
So I keep going, trying to prove to her, maybe prove to myself, that I’ll never do this shit. “You end up catching feelings at some point. Or you want to give them what they want once you have them trained, so they stick around and stop giving you shit about not being the wife. Before you know it, you’ve got two women making demands, two households to manage, double the ways for your enemies to get at you.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if the wife just did all the things?” She sounds so fucking innocent. “One woman, one family. No lying.”
“I don’t want to have to answer to anyone. Much less lie. So for me, it’s easier to do neither. If I have to marry for an alliance, I’ll do it but I’m putting it off for as long as fucking possible.”
“Hmmm.”
That fucking sound. I know that sound. I narrow my eyes at her even though she can’t see my face. “What.”
“What?” All innocence.
“What are you not saying, princess?”
She shifts against me, her breath warm through my shirt. “I was just thinking that sounds like a stressful existence. Especially for someone with a high-stress job.” She pauses. “Wouldn’t you want a safe space to come home to? A comfortable home, good food, someone to take care of you?”
“I can hire people to do all that.”
“But you can’t hire someone to love you. To genuinely want to do those things to make you happy, not just to check a box on a to-do list so they can head home to the people they actually care about.”
I don’t like where this is headed. “Food is food. Sex is sex. You don’t need love for those things.”
