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Alessia looked down at her wedding ring, turning it once around her finger. My heart soared. She hadn’t taken it off. She had kept it on while I was at Mila’s grave. She had slept beneath Maxim’s roof, surrounded by my family, wearing it. That meant the world to me.
“I have conditions,” she said.
“I accept.”
“You don’t even know what they are.”
“They don’t matter. I agree to all of them.”
“Don’t agree because you’re afraid that I’ll leave,” she countered, her eyes narrowing.
“I’m agreeing because I already know the alternative. Anything that gives me secret authority over you does not belong inside our marriage.”
Her shoulders relaxed just a little bit.
“Every active contingency plan involving me is shared with me from now on,” she said. “Not after you’ve arranged it. Not once you believe the danger is serious enough. You tell me before anything is put into place. If the timing is so tight that a plan has to begin immediately, you tell me as soon as the immediate threat is contained. No emergency may be invented to win an argument, even if you think I’m making the wrong one.”
“Yes.”
“You will not send me anywhere without my consent. Not another house, another city, or another country. You may recommend something. You may argue. You may bring every security expert in Boston into the room and let them explain why I’m wrong.” Her chin lifted. “But you do not move me without my consent.”
“Never again.”
“And every plan involving my grandparents follows the same rule. No one decides for them just because they’re old.”
“Understood.”
She paused, so I waited, and she stared at me for several seconds, as though the waiting itself was another answer she needed.
“What do you want from me tonight?” she asked.
“Nothing you do not freely choose.”
“That sounds careful.”
“It is.”
“Give me the less careful answer.”
I drew a slow breath.
“I want my wife to come home with me.”
Her lips parted slightly.
“I want you arguing with me in the kitchen and leaving mug rings on furniture I spent years keeping unblemished. I want your designs on the dining table, your grandparents criticizing my cooking, and your voice filling every silence I once convinced myself was peace. I want the woman who came into my house and made it a home.”
My eyes moved to her ring.
“I’m asking you to choose me beyond all of it,” I continued. “But you do not owe me that answer tonight. You may remain here as long as you need to. You may come home later or decide that your home has to be somewhere else. I will not use our marriage, the family, or the danger to force an answer from you.”
Tears finally slipped over her lashes, and she wiped them away with visible irritation. “That was almost romantic,” she mewled.
“I’m working on it.”
Her mouth trembled as she crossed to the table and placed one hand on the black box.
“I’m still angry,” she said.
