Page 47

His jaw tightens, a muscle ticking in his cheek as he looks at his own marks on my porcelain skin.

"Did I hurt you?" he asks, his voice dropping into that dark, quiet register where his guilt constantly tries to surface.

I lift my hands, finding the sides of his neck, tangling my fingers into his thick, messy hair to pull his face down until our lips are a breath apart.

"You marked what belongs to you, Romeo," I whisper, meeting his gaze blindly with my cloudy green eyes, letting him see the fierce, untamed pride burning in my soul. "I asked for every single inch. Don't you dare apologize for taking what I gave you."

A ragged exhale leaves his chest, warm against my mouth.

"You are going to drive me to madness, Iris," he groans, his mouth crashing down onto mine in a deep, slow, reverent kiss that tastes of sweet wine and morning fire.

He takes his time with me. There is no violence this morning, no rough slamming against wood or stone. He worships my body with maddening, slow strokes of his hands and mouth, kissing every scar around my eyes, every freckle on my shoulders, and the sensitive dip of my navel. When he slides inside me, it is a slow, agonizingly thick glide that fills me to the brim, stretching my sore walls until I am weeping softly against his chest, clutching his tattooed back as we come together in the golden light.

Afterward, the villa comes back to life.

The hum of the espresso machine down in the kitchen cuts through the quiet morning. I sit on the sunlit terrace wrapped in a plush white bathrobe, my hair brushed and damp, drinking a cup of strong black tea with honey. Sofia sits pressed against my shins, chewing on a bone Tony brought up from the harbor.

Below on the driveway, the sound of heavy boots and luggage carts echoes off the stone retaining walls.

The packing has begun.

Romeo stands at the edge of the terrace balustrade, fully dressed in a crisp black suit, a secure satellite phone pressed to his ear.

"I want the jet fueled on the tarmac at Capodichino by noon," Romeo commands into the phone, his voice carrying the cold, absolute authority of the Don. "Tony has the flight manifests cleared for JFK. Have Jamie meet our transport at the private hangar in Queens. It's time we finish the accounts."

He hangs up, slides the phone into his jacket pocket, and turns toward me.

He crosses the stone terrace with slow, confident strides, stopping behind my wrought iron chair. His hands rest on my shoulders, his thumbs gently working the tight knots in my neck.

"Stay in the sun a little longer, Donna Messina," he murmurs into my hair.

I reach up, placing my left hand over his large knuckles, feeling the heavy platinum band and the cool cut of the emerald against my skin.

"The war will find us whether we sit in the dark or not," I say.

"Let it find us here first," he answers. "When we go back to New York, we go because we choose the ground. Not because we are running."

I lean into him and listen to the sea. For one morning, I let that be enough.

The rest of the morning is small on purpose. Inga, when she calls from New York, keeps her voice careful. Enzo reports the coastal batteries and nothing else. Romeo reads to me from a shipping ledger because I asked him to stop hiding the numbers. The columns mean less than the fact that he does not flinch when I put my finger on them.

I paint until the sun moves off the terrace. Cadmium. Salt. The sound of Sofia's nails. If this is a cage, it is the first one I have ever chosen to sit in with both hands open.

War is coming. I can feel it in the way he checks his phone without letting it vibrate near me. I can feel it in the extra men I see on the path to the dock. I do not ask him to pretend. I only ask him not to put me to bed like a child while he walks into it alone.

"When it starts," I tell him, "you take me with you."

His silence is not refusal. It is a man rewriting a plan he has loved for three years.

"When it starts," he says at last, "you stand where I can reach you. That is the only promise I will make that I know I can keep."

That night I make him keep the second half of the promise.

We walk the villa in the dark. No lamps. No ribbon. Sofia is off the lead, close enough that her shoulder brushes my knee at every turn. Romeo stays one pace behind me and does not speak unless I ask.

Twelve steps down the hall. The seam in the tile where the old palazzo meets the wing he rebuilt. The chair he left in the wrong place on purpose, then moved when I swore at him. I find the terrace latch by memory and push it open. The sea is louder at night. It fills the holes in my vision until I could almost believe I see the drop.

"Again," I say.