But so will this.
"Salvatore?" I say quietly.
"Mm?"
"Thank you. For all of this."
His hand moves through my hair. "You're welcome, Mrs. Vitale."
I smile against his chest and let my eyes close.
Home.
EPILOGUE
Six Months Later
Salvatore
Iam at my desk when she appears in the doorway.
I notice her the way I always notice her, immediately, entirely, before I have consciously decided to look up. Six months of marriage, and she still does that to me. Walks into a room and rearranges it.
Literally. She has rearranged most of the rooms.
The study now has soft throws draped over the leather chairs. The main hall has paintings she selected, landscapes, not portraits of dead ancestors. Even my study has cushions. Cushions. In a room designed for discipline and control, my wife added cushions because she wanted it to be "more inviting."
When I pointed out that the estate was designed with a specific aesthetic in mind, she looked at me with those eyes and said, "Yes. Cold. I wanted it to be more... cozy."
Cozy.
The Vitale estate. Cozy.
My brothers laughed when they first visited after her touches.
I didn't stop her.
Our bedroom is different too. Warmer. Softer. There are candles on the dresser that she actually lights. The curtains are a shade of blue she picked out herself, something about "bringing the ocean inside." The bed has more pillows than any two people could possibly need.
I haven't touched a single thing she's changed.
Because when she rearranges the estate, what she's really doing is making it ours. Not mine. Ours.
And I want her to feel completely at home in the mansion.
But something is different right now.
She is standing very still, which Valentina almost never does. She is a woman who occupies space fully. She gestures when she talks, paces when she thinks, and has strong opinions about where furniture should go and everything else she chooses to argue about. Stillness on her means something.
Her expression is careful in the way it only gets when she is choosing her words.
I set down my pen.
"Salvatore." Her voice is steady. "We need to talk."
I look at her for a long moment.
And then something moves through me that I don't fully expect. It’s not fear, not the cold calculation of a man assessing threat. Something older. Something that goes all the way back to a garden, and a promise I made when I had a bullet wound and she had every reason to walk out my door.
