Chapter 19 - Alessandro
Emma steals bacon from my plate with the same fingers that traced constellations on my chest last night, and I realize I’ve been watching the kitchen’s exits for ten minutes while she hums completely off-key.
The sound should be painful—she's murdering the melody of some pop song I vaguely recognize—but coming from her mouth while she wears nothing but my white shirt from last night, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.
Even if it's probably making the guards posted outside question their career choices.
Just two nights ago I claimed her virginity, and she's already transformed my morning routine from strategic planning to watching her destroy breakfast with endearing incompetence.
One perfect morning of making love to her on every surface we could find, marking her, owning her, and still my cock gets hard just from watching her lick grease off her thumb.
"That's my breakfast you're demolishing," I point out, though we both know I made extra specifically so she could steal it after burning her own.
"Mmm," she agrees, taking another piece directly from my plate while her other hand reaches for the coffee maker.
The movement makes my shirt ride up, exposing the bruises I left on her hip yesterday morning.
Three of them, perfectly spaced where I gripped her while fucking her against the door frame.
The morning light streaming through the kitchen windows turns everything gold, including her skin where my marks bloom purple against it.
Gun oil still clings to my fingers from last night's cleaning ritual—old habits that even her presence can't break—mixing with the domestic scent of coffee and bacon.
"Your bacon is about to become charcoal," I observe, nodding toward the pan she abandoned when she started her theft campaign.
She spins around with a spatula raised like a weapon—good instinct, wrong tool—then laughs when she sees the smoke. "Shit, the bacon."
She yanks the pan off the heat, waving away smoke while I automatically open windows, checking the street beyond the gates for that silver sedan I've noticed three times this week.
Nothing yet, but my neck prickles with the sensation of being watched.
The guards' footsteps echo in the hallway, their morning rounds as predictable as my need to map every exit even in my own home.
Three ways out of this kitchen. Four if you count the window.
"Breakfast is ruined," she says mournfully, staring at the blackened strips like they've personally betrayed her.
"Come here," I command, settling into one of the kitchen chairs, positioning myself to see both entrances.
She approaches with that shy smile that still appears sometimes, like she can't believe she's allowed to touch me. I pull her sideways onto my lap, her legs draped over the armrest, her body fitting against mine perfectly. The weight of her grounds me.
"You planned for my breakfast disaster," she accuses, but she's already reaching for another piece from my plate.
"I know my wife's cooking skills." I feed her a piece, watching her lips close around my fingers, sucking the grease off with deliberate slowness that makes my cock stir despite how thoroughly we explored each other last night.
"Yours is better anyway," she admits, then steals another piece directly from the plate.
We eat like this, her on my lap stealing bites while I pretend to protect my food, the kind of easy intimacy I've never had with anyone.
No performance, no careful control, just Emma being Emma—the girl who burns bacon and hums off-key and makes me forget that I've watched men die for less than what she does to my self-control.
My phone buzzes on the counter—Marco, probably, wondering why I missed the morning check-in. I ignore it. Let him wonder. Let them all wonder why Alessandro Rosetti has gone soft for his wife.
"I want to see Saturn's rings tonight," she says suddenly, her fingers playing with the hair at my nape. "The telescope should be able to show them clearly with the weather we're having."
"I'll make it happen," I promise immediately, already wondering about the optimal viewing time, whether we need any adjustments to the telescope, which guards to post on the roof, how to ensure perfect conditions while maintaining security.
She cups my face, forcing me to look at her instead of mentally arranging defensive positions. "Alex, you don't have to orchestrate every moment. Sometimes perfect just… happens."
Her hand covers mine where I've been unconsciously tapping against her thigh, already planning contingencies.
The gentle understanding in her voice makes me still.
She sees me—the controlling nature, the need to manage everything, the paranoia that keeps us both alive—and accepts it without judgment.
"I can't help it," I admit. "I want to give you everything. Want to lock you in this house where nothing can touch you."
"You already have given me everything," she whispers, pressing a kiss to my jaw.
"Tell me something real," I say, still holding her on my lap as the morning grows warmer. "Something you've never told anyone."
She tenses slightly, then relaxes against my chest with a sigh that carries weight. The expensive coffee sits forgotten as she prepares to trust me with something that matters.
"You want to know about my mother."
It's not a question. She knows I've been noting every mention, every flinch when mothers come up in conversation, filing away every piece of information for future use. In my world, knowing someone's wounds means knowing how to protect them—or destroy them.
"She got sick when I was twelve," Emma begins, her voice going distant. "Cancer. Started in her lungs, spread everywhere before we even knew something was wrong. She'd been hiding the symptoms, working double shifts at the factory to pay rent."
Her fingers find mine, interlacing them like she needs the anchor. I stay silent, though my mind is already calculating how I would have handled it—which doctors could have been bought, which treatments could have been acquired through back channels. The powerful survive. The poor just die.
"Tommy was only eight. He didn't understand why Mama kept getting thinner, why she couldn't play with him anymore. I tried to shield him, but kids know. They always know."
Her brother—the one she sacrificed everything to protect, the leverage that trapped her. Hearing about their shared childhood makes my jaw clench with retroactive rage at everyone who failed them.
"The medical bills…" She laughs, but it's bitter. "You can't imagine what dying slowly costs. Every treatment that didn't work, every specialist who couldn't help, every medication that might buy her another month—it all came with a price tag that might as well have been a million dollars."
I can imagine. I've seen men beg for their lives over less. But I keep that darkness to myself, just hold her tighter.
She curls deeper into my chest, seeking comfort I'm desperate to provide, even if comfort from me comes with blood under its fingernails.
"I watched her dying by degrees. First she couldn't work.
Then she couldn't walk. Then she couldn't even hold a cup of water without help.
And I was completely powerless to stop it. "
My arms tighten around her involuntarily.
The thought of young Emma, just a child herself, watching her mother waste away while trying to protect her brother—it makes something violent rise in my chest. If I could reach back through time, I'd destroy everyone who failed to help them. I'd paint Chicago red with their blood.
"The debt collectors started calling before she even died," she continues, her voice barely above a whisper. "Like vultures circling. When she finally passed, we had nothing. Less than nothing. We had debt that would take three lifetimes to pay."
"That's how you became…" I trail off, not wanting to say 'servants' like it's shameful when I'm already planning how to retroactively destroy every debt collector who harassed a grieving child.
"That's how we became trapped," she says gently. "The Hewsons bought our debt in exchange for our service. Modern day indentured servitude dressed up as employment. My brother and I, we belonged to them from that moment."
She pulls back to look at me, tears streaming down her face. "I was so powerless, Alex. Watching her fade away, knowing I couldn't save her, couldn't even make her comfortable. It's the worst feeling in the world, being that helpless."
I wipe her tears with my thumbs, my own throat tight with rage for everyone who failed her. "You were a child. It wasn't your job to save her."
"But it became my job to save my brother," she says. "And look where that led us."
"It led you to me," I growl, the possessive darkness creeping into my voice. "And now you'll never be powerless again. Anyone who tries to hurt you, to make you feel helpless—I'll feed them their own organs while they watch."
She shivers at the promise in my voice, but doesn't pull away. She's learning to love my violence when it's wielded for her protection.
"Do you regret it?" I ask, the question that's been burning since she revealed the truth weeks ago. "The path that brought you here?"
She considers for a long moment, her fingers tracing patterns on my chest through my shirt, occasionally catching on the chain that holds my St. Christopher medal—protection I never believed in until I had her to protect.
"I regret my mother's suffering. I regret that my brother's in prison. I regret that I had to lie to you at first."
"But?" I prompt when she pauses.
"But I can't regret the path that brought me to you." The words come out sure, decisive. "Even with everything—the fear, the deception, the danger—I'd do it again if it meant ending up here, in this kitchen, stealing bacon from your plate while you plan seventeen ways to keep me safe."
Something cracks in my chest, the last wall I've been maintaining even after everything we've shared. She's here for me. Not the Rosetti name or the money or the protection, but me, Alessandro, the man who wakes early to make backup bacon because he knows she'll burn hers.
"I love you," she says suddenly, the words natural as breathing, not a dramatic declaration but simple truth stated while she sits on my lap in our sunlit kitchen. "I probably have since that night you gave me the telescope, when you actually listened to me ramble about stars."
The words make me want to lock every door and never let her leave this room where she's safe and mine and loves me despite the blood I'll never wash clean.
Women have said they loved me before—usually while eyeing my watch or my car or my family name.
But Emma says it like it's just fact, like loving me is as natural as burning breakfast.
"Emma," I start, but she presses her fingers to my lips.
"You don't have to say it back. I just needed you to know."
My last defense crumbles entirely. This woman who started as a servant, who was forced to pretend to be someone else, who I thought I was corrupting—she's the one who's destroyed and rebuilt me.
I pull her closer, breathing in her scent mixed with my cologne from my shirt. "You bring light into my life. Make me believe there's something more to all this violence and family and bullshit. You make me feel real."
She smiles, that genuine smile that appears when she forgets to be afraid. "We're making each other real."
The morning sun climbs higher, painting her skin gold, and I know with absolute certainty that I would burn the entire world to keep this moment, this woman, this unexpected love that's demolished everything I thought I knew about myself.
My phone buzzes again—Marco, insistent. Something about the Irish getting bold near the docks. Let them. I'll deal with it later, after I've reminded my wife exactly who she belongs to.
I stand abruptly, keeping her in my arms. "Come with me."
"Where?" she asks, but she's already wrapping her legs around my waist, trusting me completely even though she knows my hands have blood on them that won't wash off.
"Our rooftop," I say, carrying her through the mansion's quiet halls, noting the guards' positions, the new camera I had installed yesterday. "I need you under the sky where you taught me to see stars, where you showed me who you really are."
The morning air on the rooftop is already warm as I carry her to the spot where we've spent so many nights mapping constellations together.
The telescope stands sentinel, but I lay her down on the blanket we keep up here.
I automatically scan the perimeter—no movement, no threats visible, but that silver sedan is parked just down the street. Later. I'll deal with it later.
"Alex," she breathes as I cover her body with mine, but there's no urgency this time, no desperate hunger. This is something else—tender and sacred in a way that makes my hands shake even though they've been steady while taking lives.
I undress her slowly, revealing skin I've memorized but still need to worship.
My shirt falls away from her body, and she's bare beneath me, gorgeous in the strengthening light.
I kiss every bruise I left on her hips, every mark that proves she's mine, but gently now, reverently, even as the possessive monster in me wants to add more.
"Ti amo," I whisper against her throat, the Italian coming unbidden. "Ti amo anch'io, stellina."
She gasps, understanding even without translation. "Say it again."
"I love you too, little star," I tell her in English, then Italian again, then in every language I know while I position myself between her thighs. "Je t'aime. Te amo. Ich liebe dich. And I'll kill anyone who tries to take you from me."
When I enter her, it's slow, careful, both of us maintaining eye contact as our bodies join. This isn't fucking. This isn't even making love. This is something beyond physical—a claiming of souls under the brightening sky.
"My sanctuary," she whispers, her hands framing my face as I move inside her. "You're my sanctuary, Alex."
I growl softly, needing to mark her even in tenderness.
We move together in perfect synchronization, no rush toward completion, just the steady build of pleasure mixed with emotional intensity that makes us both shake. The city wakes below us, but up here in our private universe, time stops.
When she comes, it's with my name on her lips and tears in her eyes. I follow her over, whispering "Ti amo" against her mouth as my body shudders with release. "Mia per sempre"—mine forever.
We stay joined, neither wanting to separate, as the sky transforms from blue to gold around us. This rooftop where she first trusted me with her love of stars has become holy ground, our sanctuary from a world that would destroy this tenderness if it could.