"The future." The words come out before I can second-guess them, and I feel him tense slightly beside me. "Just—wondering what it looks like now. For us."
He's quiet for a moment. "What do you want it to look like?" he asks finally.
The question catches me off guard. No one's asked me what I want in so long—not my father, not Romeo, not even Luca himself during those terrible weeks when our marriage was nothing but punishment. The fact that he's asking now, that he actually cares about my answer, makes my throat tight.
"I want—" I blink away the wetness in my eyes. “I want this to be real. That’s all. I want us to love each other. I want our child to grow up in a house full of love instead of resentment. I want to wake up next to you and not wonder if you're going to look at me with hatred or disgust."
"Giulia—"
"I want you to forgive yourself," I continue quickly. "For whatever you think you did wrong. For falling in love with Valentina, for not recognizing me sooner, for being cruel after you found out the truth. I want you to understand that I forgive you for all of it, and I need you to forgive yourself too."
His hand tightens on my shoulder, and when I tilt my head to look at him, his eyes are suspiciously bright. "It’s hard," he says, his voice rough. "I don't know if I can forgive myself for the things I said to you, the way I treated you. You were desperate and scared and trapped, and instead of trying to understand, I just—I punished you. Over and over again. I made you suffer because I was hurt, and that's not something I'm proud of."
"I know." I reach up and cup his face, forcing him to look at me. "But you're not that person anymore. You're not the man who said those cruel things or who deliberately made our marriage miserable. You're the man who came for me when I was kidnapped. Who took a bullet meant for me. And I know you loved me. We both did the wrong things. It doesn’t have to stay that way."
"I should have told you sooner that I loved you," he says quietly. "I should have told you when I first started to realize that I couldn't keep punishing you forever. But I was scared that if I admitted I still loved you, it would make me weak. That it would mean you'd won somehow."
I lean forward and press a gentle kiss to his forehead. "We can't change the past. All we can do is decide what we want the future to look like and work toward that together. It's going to be hard. Probably the hardest thing either of us has ever done. But I think—I think we can do it. If we both want it badly enough."
"I want it." He leans his forehead against mine. "I want you. I want our family.”
The relief that floods through me is so intense it's almost painful. "Me too," I whisper. “It feels like a lot has changed. Everything feels different now compared to yesterday. Or last week. Or—or any time since you found out the truth."
"It does feel different." His hand moves in slow circles on my back, soothing and gentle. "I finally started fighting for you like you’ve been fighting for me.”
"I like that." I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. "Fighting for each other. That's what I want us to be."
“I’m sure Dante will be glad we’re not fighting each other any longer,” Luca says with a low, grim chuckle. “It will make things easier on him.”
"I wish—" I let out a slow breath. "I wish he cared about whether I was happy. Whether we were happy. Instead of just whether it looks good for the family."
"I know." Luca's arms tighten around me, protective and comforting. "But you have me, and Romeo, and Savannah. You have your friends. You have people who care about you as a person, not just as the don's daughter or a political asset."
"Do I have you?" The question comes out smaller than I intended, my voice cracking slightly. "Really have you? Not justbecause we're married or because of the baby, but because you choose me?"
"Yes." Luca says it firmly, his thumb pressing against my jaw so I have to look at him. "You have me, Giulia. All of me. I choose you because I want to, not because I have to.”
"I choose you too," I whisper. The words feel like a vow more binding than the ones we spoke in the church weeks ago. "I'll always choose you."
We lie there in comfortable silence for a while longer, and I find myself thinking about the future in a way I haven't allowed myself to before. Not the future I was resigned to—a cold marriage, a resentful husband, a child growing up in a house full of tension and unspoken anger, but the future I actually want. The one that feels possible now that we've finally stopped fighting each other and started fighting for each other instead.
I imagine waking up next to Luca every morning, his arms around me, no walls or defenses between us. I imagine decorating a nursery together, arguing good-naturedly about paint colors and furniture placement. I imagine holding our baby for the first time, seeing Luca's face when he becomes a father, watching him discover a capacity for gentleness and love that he didn't know he possessed.
I imagine family dinners where we're actually happy. I imagine growing old together, watching our child grow up, building a life that's ours rather than something imposed on us by duty or obligation.
The images are so vivid, so achingly real, that they make my chest tight with longing.
I feel him drift off next to me, and I close my eyes, letting myself fall asleep, too, comfortable and safe in his arms the way I’ve wanted to be for so long.
This won’t be simple. We’ll have to learn to trust each other again, how to navigate our marriage, what we both want out of it,and everything else that goes along with that. But it feels like, as long as Luca is by my side, as long as he wants this as much as I do, there’s no way we won’t figure it out.
The future is finally, completely ours, to build into whatever we want it to be.
And this time, no one is going to stop us.
EPILOGUE: GIULIA
The car seat looks impossibly small in Luca's hands as he carries it through the front door of our brownstone. Lucia is asleep inside, her tiny face peaceful beneath the soft pink blanket that Luca's mother, whose name our daughter now has, would have loved to see wrapped around her granddaughter. She’s barely here, but everything already feels different. During those long months of pregnancy, when I tried to picture this moment, I couldn’t have imagined just how different it would feel.
