He turned slowly, his expression carefully blank.
“You’re still here.”
“I’m still here.”
“Your money is in an account Francesca set up. The car can take you anywhere you want to go.” His voice was controlled, but his hands betrayed him, curling into fists at his sides. “You’re free, Arya. Completely free.”
“And if I don’t want to be free?”
Hope flickered in his eyes before he shuttered it.
“Don’t do this if you’re not sure. I can’t… I won’t survive you walking away twice.”
I crossed the space between us and took his damaged hands in mine.
“I’m not walking away. I’m walking toward you, if you’ll have me. The real me, not the character I was playing.”
“The real you is all I’ve wanted since you spilled dessert on my shoes and looked at me like I was death incarnate.”
He pulled me close, 1 hand cradling my face, the other at my waist.
“But my world is dangerous, Arya. There will be threats. Enemies. Violence. I can protect you from most of it, but not all of it. Are you sure?”
I kissed him, cutting off his words.
“I’m sure. I’m terrified, but I’m sure.”
His arms came around me, holding me like I was something precious and breakable.
“Then marry me for real,” he said. “Marry me. Not for my grandfather. Not for money. Marry me because you want to spend your life with a man who will probably drive you crazy, but who will love you until his last breath.”
“Yes.”
The word was easy. Natural. Right.
“Yes to all of it.”
He kissed me then, not with desperation, but with promise.
And for the first time since my father died, I felt like I had found home.
Six months later, we married for real.
A small ceremony. Just immediate family. Francesca was my maid of honor. Even Marco attended, his jaw healed, his relationship with Dante still fractured but mending slowly.
I wore a different dress, but the same ring. Nona Lucia’s diamond, which had always fit perfectly.
Nono cried during the vows, which he denied vehemently later.
And Dante, my dangerous, possessive, impossible man, promised before God and family to protect me, honor me, and love me for whatever time we had.
“You’re mine,” he whispered as we danced at the reception, his arms wrapped around me, his heart beating against mine.
“I’m yours,” I agreed. “But Dante?”
“Yes, wife?”
“You’re mine too. Don’t forget it.”
His laugh was warm and real.
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Outside, snow began to fall, soft and silent and full of promise.
Inside, surrounded by family who had become mine, held by the man who had saved me by letting me save him, I finally understood what it meant to belong.
Not because someone owned me.
But because I had chosen to be owned.
And that made all the difference.
