Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

She blinked several times, but the bewildered look never left her. I was beginning to worry now. I loved her and she loved me. We had a baby on the way. How could her answer be anything but yes?

“Luca, we’ve just been through two incredibly dramatic experiences in a row. Both of which happened in the past two weeks. Do you really think now is the time to propose?”

“Now may be the only time to propose,” I told her, a bit exasperated. I didn’t want to be short-tempered with her, but it was like she wasn’t taking me seriously.

“But you nearly died today.”

“Yes, I know. And you nearly died, too. I can’t take it anymore. I want to experience this with you, make a commitment with you, before…” I trailed off. What I was going to say was way too morbid.

“Before what? One of us bites the big one?” she asked, incredulity at the max.

Well, I wouldn’t have put it as crassly as that, but yeah. I didn’t speak the words out loud, but she must’ve been able to tell what I was thinking.

“Wow.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You sure know how to make a girl feel important.” She looked insulted. Why the hell did Molly look insulted?

“You are important. You and Anna and this baby are the most important things in the world to me.”

She huffed out a breath. “Okay, I understand that we’ve had a lot of emotionally charged days in a row. Death and destruction and fear. Injuries and fires and pain. I get it. But you’re being too rash about this. I don’t want you to do this out of some sense of urgency, like things are going to go to hell in a handbasket any second so we’d better get engaged.”

She turned away from me.

“I want it to be more like what you said before. Some leisurely time together. A natural conclusion to the love we share. But this?” She pivoted back around, waving her hand back and forth between us. “This is bogus. This is fake. It’s like you think we’re in a zombie apocalypse or something. It reeks of desperation.”

She was right about one thing. I was feeling desperate.

Desperately alone.

And now it looked like I was going to stay that way.

39

Molly

Now he seemed all dejected. Shit.

We couldn’t seem to make any headway, Luca and me. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. If I hadn’t been so in love with him and pregnant with his child, I might’ve cut my losses then and there. I’d never been in a relationship before, but surely, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

It took me a minute to absorb that he was taking this as a no. A rejection. And that’s the last thing I wanted it to be. I knew it was time to clarify my position.

“We’re under attack, Luca. Someone has been attempting to kill us. Literally.”

“Yes, I know,” he said, quietly.

“So what I’m saying is that until that whole situation is dealt with, I think everything else should take a back seat.”

“And what if something else comes along? Another attacker? Another disaster? Another tragedy? What if we wait

for some semblance of peace, but it never happens?”

“It will.”

He pinioned me with his gaze. “Are you sure? Can you guarantee that?”

“Well, no.”

“Molly, I lost my mother’s wedding ring in that fire. The ring I was going to offer to you. It was this stunning emerald one with all these diamonds and now it’s gone. The only thing I had left of my mother’s and it’s gone like it never existed.”

“And that mansion?” he continued. “It’s stood there solid and sturdy for sixty years. We bought it fourteen years ago and made it into our home. Now it’s gone, as well. Burnt to the ground in less than an hour. I had three years with Alana, but the minute she gives birth, she’s taken from me, too.”