I am thinking about the moment my father started in on me—the way he does, the way he always has, picking apart every decision I make, every move I make, finding it lacking. Findingmelacking. I felt myself tensing, preparing to swallow it down the way I always do, to nod and accept and promise to do better.
And then Rosalina spoke.
"With all due respect, Don Salvatore, I think you are being unfair to your son."
The memory makes my chest tight. No one speaks to my father like that. No one challenges him, especially not in front of theentire family. But she did. She looked the most powerful man in the Italian mafia in the eye and defended me, told him he was wrong, stood up for me when no one—not my mother, not Gabriel, not Luca, not anyone—ever has.
She risked everything to protect me. And she didn’t even hesitate.
"Dante?" Her voice pulls me back to the present. "You’re doing it again."
"Doing what?"
"Staring. With that look on your face." She turns in my arms, and now we are chest to chest, her hands coming up to rest on my shoulders. "What is going on in that head of yours?"
I reach up and trace the line of her jaw with my fingertips, feeling the softness of her skin, the delicate architecture of her face. She is so fucking beautiful it makes my teeth ache. I have known that since the moment I saw her crying in the O'Connor gardens—this stunning, heartbreaking girl who looked at me like I might save her or destroy her or both.
But tonight I realized something else. Something that has been building since the moment she walked down that aisle, since she stood in our kitchen making sandwiches and dancing to music only she could hear, since she pinned Gabriel on the balcony in her estate, and stole Luca's hoodie and played video games with the kind of focused intensity most people reserve for actual combat.
She is so much more than beautiful.
"I am thinking," I say slowly, carefully, testing the words on my tongue before I let them out, "about how no one has ever defended me the way you did tonight."
Her expression softens. "Dante?—"
"No, let me finish." I cup her face in my hands, tilting it up so she has to meet my eyes. "I spent my whole life learning to take whatever my father dishes out. Learning to swallow criticism and doubt and disappointment and pretend it doesn’t cut. Learning that no one is going to stand up for me, that I have to prove myself every single day, that love is something you earn through perfect behavior and flawless execution."
My thumbs stroke her cheekbones, and I feel something crack open in my chest—something I have kept locked down for so long I forgot it was there.
"And then you—" My voice catches. "You, who have known me for three months. You, who married me under false pretenses and has every reason to hate me. You stood up in front of my entire family and told the Don he was wrong. You risked his anger, his disapproval, everything, just to defend me."
"Because hewaswrong," she says fiercely. "He was wrong about you, Dante. You are not weak. You are not soft. You are?—"
I kiss her before she can finish, unable to stop myself, needing to taste the words on her lips. She makes a small sound of surprise that melts into a sigh as she opens for me, her hands sliding up into my hair, her body pressing against mine.
When I pull back, we are both breathing hard.
"Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?" I ask, my forehead resting against hers. "That night at the O'Connor compound, when you were sitting in the gardens crying?"
"That I was a mess?" she offers, but there is no bite to it.
"That you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen." I kiss her forehead, her temple, work my way down to the sensitive spot behind her ear that makes her shiver. "I thought it was just physical attraction. Lust. Maybe possession, because you were supposed to be mine—or so I believed because I thought you were Erin, but the principle stands. I told myself that was all it was. All it could be."
My lips trail down the column of her throat, and I feel her pulse jump beneath my mouth. "But then I got to know you. Got to see who you are beneath all that beauty. And Rosalina—" I pull back to look at her, needing her to see the truth in my eyes. "You are so much more than I ever imagined. You are brave and fierce and funny and smart and so fucking stubborn it drives me crazy. You defend the people you love with everything you have. You make Luca laugh and you challenge Gabriel and you look at me like I hung the moon when I know damn well I did not."
"Dante—" Her voice is thick with emotion, her eyes suspiciously bright.
"I thought I wanted you because you were beautiful," I say, and the words feel like confession, like surrender, like admitting something I have been trying not to see. "But I was wrong. I want you because you are you. Because you make me laugh and keep me on my toes and defend me to my father even when it costs you. Because you are the kind of person who trades her entire life to save her best friend. Because you see me—not the Don's son, not the heir to an empire, just me—and you stay anyway."
I kiss down her neck, slow and reverent, taking my time. My lips trace the frantic beat of her pulse. "I’m not sure what this is between us. I’m not sure I know how to name it. But I know that when you stood up for me tonight, something shifted. Something clicked into place that I didn’t know was missing."
My hands slide under the hem of her t-shirt—my t-shirt—finding warm, soft skin. "I know that when I think about my future now, you are in it. Not because you have to be. Not because of some alliance or arrangement. But because I want you there."
I lift the shirt slowly, carefully, giving her time to stop me if she wants. She does not. She lifts her arms and lets me pull it off, leaving her standing in just her panties, her skin flushed pink in the bathroom light.
"You are so beautiful," I breathe. "But that is not why I want you. I want you because of who you are. Because of your courage and your loyalty and the way you make me feel—like maybe I’m not as broken as I thought. Like maybe I don’t have to keep proving myself because you already see me as enough."
"Dante." Her hands frame my face, pulling me down so our foreheads touch. "You are enough. You have always been enough."
