And then she whispered, “I can’t do this.”
My heart stopped in my chest.
“Can’t do what?” I asked.
“This,”she said, gesturing to me and her.
“You mean –betogether?”
“YES.”
I drove for what seemed like an eternity in silence.
Then I said quietly, “I’ve been daydreaming a lot lately about asking you to marry me.”
She turned and looked at me in shock. “…what?!”
“I said, I’ve been daydreaming a lot lately – ”
“Iheardwhat yousaid. What the hell are youthinking?!”
“I love you, Em. I love you more than any other woman I’ve ever been with.Waymore. I never evenknewwhat love was until I met you. You’re my favorite person in the world – my favorite person I’ve ever known in my entire life. I can’t imagine living without you.”
She started crying again, and wiped at her tears with her hands.
“Don’t you feel even a little bit the same way about me?” I asked.
“Yes!” she said, sobbing. “Yes – that’s why this is sohorrible!”
“Because of what I do?”
“Because of who youworkfor, Giorgio!”
“But you metthem, Emilia. They’re good people. I know you can see that.”
“Theyseemlike good people, yeah, but the things theydo –the things that happen to them – normal people don’t have strange men show up and burn their shops down!”
I almost said,In my line of work they do,but I stopped myself.
Instead I went with, “You talked to Don Rosolini’s wife, right? She’s a good person.”
“I know she’s a good person, because she was the one who told me I had to make the right decision forme.”
I nearly did a double-take.
HUH?!
Emilia kept talking. “And getting married to a mobster is not the right decision for – ”
“Wait –whatdid Don Rosolini’s wife tell you?!”
“She said she married her husband for love, and she thought she could learn to live with him being in the mafia, but it only worked because she ignored it. And then things started happening over and over where shecouldn’tignore it. And now she’s scared to death that something horrible’s going to happen to her. I can’t live like that, Giorgio! I was afraid the entire time Maurizio was stalking me – I can’t go back to that!”
I was still reeling from what Alessandra had said to Emilia –
But I got back in the fight as soon as I heard Maurizio’s name.
“AndItook care of him for you,” I said.“Me. I’mthe one who made it so you didn’t have to be afraid anymore.”
