"Oh yeah? What are you going to—Salvatore!"
I grab her waist and pull her onto my lap, fingers finding her ribs. She squeals, laughing and squirming as I tickle her mercilessly.
"Stop! Stop, I'm sorry!" But she's laughing too hard to sound sorry at all.
"Apologize properly."
"I'm… stop, I'm sorry!"
I relent, but I don't let her go. Instead, I wrap both arms around her, pulling her tight against my chest. Her laughter fades into something softer, breathless. She tilts her head back to look at me, and I see the walls coming down, the anger dissolving.
She leans in and presses a kiss to my chest, right over my heart. The gesture is so simple, so sweet, it hits me harder than I expect.
I brush my lips against her forehead. "I'm sorry, baby. It won't happen again."
She's quiet for a moment, then nods against me. "Okay."
"I mean it."
"I know." She shifts in my lap.
We settle again, the moment easing into something even more natural than before. I hold her close, and she melts against me, her body soft and trusting.
We start talking about everything and nothing. She tells me about her book, a mystery about a lost edition, which sounds exactly like the kind of book she'd be into. In return, I tell her about my brothers. Dante and his shadows. Matteo and his numbers. Raffaele and his darkness, and Elio and all his women. What it means to be the don. To carry everything.
"You know," she says softly, "you can turn it off when you're with me. You don't have to carry everything all the time."
I let out a quiet breath. "Turn it off?" I shake my head slightly. "I don't think I know how to do that."
My thumb brushes over her hand, slow, absent.
"But…" I glance at her, something honest slipping through. "I do know that I'm different when I'm with you. Lighter. Like I don't have to be… all of it."
A pause.
"With you, I can just be whoever I am in that moment."
"You know why I was so upset about the woman?" she says, her voice quieter now, stripped of its usual edge. "My ex used to cheat on me… all the time. It made me feel so insecure."
She swallows, her gaze dropping for a second before she forces it back up to mine.
"So seeing Mia… she's beautiful. Perfect, really. And I just," she lets out a small, shaky breath. "I guess it made me feel like I wasn't enough."
For a moment, I don't say anything.
I just look at her.
Then I reach for her. My hand comes up to her face, my thumb brushing just beneath her eye.
"Look at me, Valentina."
She does.
"There is no world where you are not enough." My voice is low, steady. Certain. "Not for me."
My grip tightens just slightly, just enough that she feels it. Feels me.
"And don't ever compare yourself to her again," I add, quieter now, but sharper. "Mia is nothing. She was nothing before you, and she's nothing now. Not to me."
