“I won’t allow that,” I reiterated in a voice that felt like stone, the words hard and painful in my throat before I said them. “This shit isn’t just my business, Frank, it’s family.”
Finally, his face softened and he sagged a little. When he reached forward to clasp my shoulder, I did the same to him. We stood there like that for a long moment just taking in air, sending out prayers for our brother Marco.
“Your woman is on the patio being all domestic preparing dinner with Tore,” he finally muttered. “The old man’s laughing with her. It’s a scene I never thought I’d witness. She doesn’t know about Marco yet.”
“Some good today, then,” I allowed as we broke apart and moved in tandem toward the house. “I’ll add it to my win with Rocco.”
“He agreed to back our plans for the city?”
“If I marry Mirabella Ianni.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah.”
“Another fire,” he pointed out gently.
“Not afraid to get burned, Frankie,” I reminded him casually as we made our way into the kitchen at the back of the villa and out the massive glass doors.
The sight of them hit me like a wave, taking my thoughts out from under me.
Elena sat at the round wood table in the seat I usually took facing the citrus grove. She hadn’t curled her hair, the strands loose and wavy beneath a green, white, and red kerchief she was using to hold back the mass of it as she bent to cut rounds out of a zucchini. The strap of her white linen dress had slipped off one shoulder, the skin browning in the Napoli sun. She hadn’t noticed me yet, fixed on her task, but her mouth held wide by a genuine grin as Tore told her a story I recognized about my time spent in the villa as a boy.
He was leaned back in his chair with a glass of red wine held in one hand, the other telling his tale in tandem with his voice as it moved through the air in that quintessentially Italian manner. His face was creased with the depth of his smile, his aura utterly relaxed.
I couldn’t breathe for the beauty of the scene. My two favourite humans, the only two who loved me enough to fight for me, smiling together at the dining table, the rolling green mountains at their back, the soft strains of Andrea Bocelli playing in the background.
This was what I’d wanted since my mother died.
Exactly this.
A family.
A home.
Sensing me, both of them stopped almost simultaneously and swiveled their heads to look at me. My throat closed up as twin smiles broke open their faces.
“Dante,” Elena sung happily, more care-free than I’d ever seen her.
She opened her arms for me instantly.
“Figlio,” Tore greeted in that low rumble, tipping his chin at me.
“I’ll do anything to protect this,” I swore in a muted whisper to Frankie beside me before I strode across the red flagstones to Elena’s side.
When I bent to her, she offered her mouth without hesitation, my conservative girl blooming so fucking beautifully after only a few days of my love and validation.
My heart pounded slow and hard in my chest, each pulse heavy with awe and fear. I’d never had so much to lose and never been so unwilling to lose any of it.
“I missed you this morning,” she whispered in my ear after accepting my kiss. The words made her blush, but she powered through. “I ached for you.”
I kissed the top of her kerchiefed head and then coaxed her to get out of her chair so I could take her place then bring her down into my lap. She allowed me to manoeuvre her and settled naturally in my lap. Something on the table caught my eye, fresh cuts in the wood beside the muted tone of my carved initials ‘EDD.’ I leaned forward, taking her with me, to peer at the table and then swallowed thickly at what had been newly cut into the wood.
EDDS + ECL.
Edward Dante Davenport Salvatore had been joined by Elena Caprice Lombardi.
Emotion threatened to strangulate me.
When I looked up, my gaze snared on Tore’s golden eyes, his expression suffused with tender happiness. He liked this for me. Elena for me.
My heart burned.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Elena said, showing me the knife in her hand, her lips curled on one side in a little smile. “I didn’t like the look of it alone.”
“No,” I agreed gruffly. “This is better.”
“I have to talk to you,” I told her, leaning in to press a kiss to the hickey still purpling a spot on her neck. “Will you go for a walk in the grove with me?”
She frowned slightly, running a hand in the back of my hair in a way that made me want to fucking purr. She didn’t realize it, because she thought she was cold, but the way she offered me comfort was automatic and beautiful.