Chapter Forty-Seven
Valentina
N erves twist my belly into heavy knots. I try sitting in one of the pews but I’m back on my feet in seconds, antsy and beyond anxious. A cursory glance at my phone tells me that it’s twenty minutes past the time we were supposed to meet, and Matteo’s still not here.
I’m standing in the middle of All Saints Margaret Street church, both dwarfed and awed by the almost overwhelming height of the church’s vaulted Victorian Gothic ceiling. Matteo isn’t overly religious so I’m surprised he asked me to meet him here. I checked the address three times to make sure I came to the right place, but this is it.
The church is beautiful. It feels both grand and somehow intimate, every detail intentional and creating a warmth that’s at odds with the vastness of the space. The ornate carving of the pews, the stained glass windows depicting scenes of love and worship, and the hundreds of once flickering candles all combine to make me feel small standing in reverence of something far more significant.
The candles had to go though. I spent the first ten minutes of my waiting time running around the entire church, blowing them out one at a time, making sure I didn’t miss a single one.
As I continue waiting for Matteo, I wonder if he’ll make me feel foolish for that small act of consideration.
Twenty minutes stretch to thirty.
Maybe he isn’t going to come. Maybe this is finally it.
Our story started with him asking me to meet him and me not showing. Maybe it ends with the roles being reversed.
There have been enough misunderstandings and obstacles and lies between us to wonder if fate is simply against us. Maybe we’re fighting for a relationship that truly isn’t meant to survive.
I choose to ignore those thoughts and to believe in him. He walked into my brother’s office, into a rival Underworld leader’s headquarters, unarmed and unprotected, and put his life on the line for me.
The least I can do is wait, even if the anxiety and doubt are eating me alive.
I make my way down to the altar. It’s the star of the show, standing elevated over the rows of pews and draped in swaths of rich fabric. Soft, colorful light filters through the stained glass windows and casts beautiful pictures onto the walls and stone floor. I tilt my head back and, for just a moment, let myself take in the splendor of this historic place.
Turning away, I suck a surprised breath abruptly into my lungs.
Matteo is coming down the extended aisle towards me, his strides long and confident. He’s staring at me like I’m the most fascinating, exquisite thing he’s ever seen when I’m easily outshined by the thousand year old art that surrounds us.
My pulse beats an uncertain rhythm in my throat. I’m unsure of where to place myself, of what to say, but there’s hope flickering to life in my chest. And behind it, my heart is like a caged bird whose wings flap a thousand beats per second, every single one of those desperate flutters for the man who comes to a stop five meters away from me.
Breathing is difficult.
“I’m sorry I’m late, cara mia . Thank you for waiting for me.”
Relief caves my chest in on itself like a balloon that’s had the air let out of it.
“You were lucky to make it out of there earlier,” I say tremulously. “That was reckless.”
The corner of Matteo’s lip lifts in a conspiratorial smile. “I took a page out of your playbook.”
This is one of the many things I love about him. That he embraces my recklessness, my impulsiveness, my stubbornly passionate side. He doesn’t try to stifle or control it, he only seeks to provide protection for it.
“I told Thiago I wouldn’t marry the man he betrothed me to and he agreed.”
Matteo smiles, his chest moving as he exhales deeply.
“That’s good, Leni, I would have really hated having to go back there. A second conversation would have been far less civil than the first.”
A shiver ambles down my spine at the mild threat in his voice. It’s almost lazy, a guarantee more than a warning. I have no doubt if he and my brother were to meet again on the subject, a lot more bullets would flown.
Standing elevated on the altar, I motion to the church we’re standing in.
“Why did you ask me to meet you here?”
Matteo looks around unhurriedly, taking in the frescoes, the stained glass, the rows of pews. “I wanted you to see it.”
“See what?”
His eyes come to mine. He advances on me, his slow and deliberate progress steadily stealing the breath from my lungs until he’s standing at the bottom of the three steps, staring up at me. “See the exact place I’m going to marry you.”
My eyes squeeze shut. “That’s not funny.”
“Am I laughing, Valentina?”
I open my eyes to find that he isn’t. In fact, his face is as determined as I’ve ever seen it, every muscle taut and focused on me. Sharp, intense eyes reflect the unwavering resolve in his words.
“You’re engaged,” I murmur.
“I broke it off.”
“Y—” My heart catapults so violently into my ribcage, it nearly makes my body stumble forward. “What?”
Matteo doesn’t miss my reaction. A slow, arrogant smile curves both sides of his lips. “I’m not marrying her.”
Even though he’s saying the words, I don’t dare hope that it’s true. Not when I know what the roadblock has been this entire time.
“I thought there wasn’t a way out of it? I thought it was the only way you could keep your position?”
“It was,” he nods. He places a foot on the first step, inching closer. “I’m no longer the Don of the Italian Mafia. I renounced it.”
My head spins. The reality of his words is hard to grasp, like I’m having an out of body experience. I draw back from him but he comes after me.
“The truth is, I was never going to be able to walk away from you. I tried to talk myself out of it, tried to convince myself that this was just a fling and I’d get you out of my system in time to marry the woman I was supposed to, but I was just fooling myself. An hour with you obsessed me to the point of madness for a year and a half, so how could I ever think that more time together would lead to anything other than needing to keep you by my side forever?”
I shake my head stubbornly, refusing to let the emotions pummeling at the doors of my heart and demanding entry, in.
“Not wanting anyone else to have me is not reason enough to marry me.”
Matteo chuckles darkly. “My mind was made up long before you tried to leave me, cara .”
“I didn’t—”
“I can’t look away from you when you’re in the room. Ever since the first time I touched your hair, nothing else has felt quite right to my touch. I made you laugh again and I want to keep making you laugh. I want more of those arepas you made. I want a home with you. I want to come home to you. Everything I can imagine wanting or needing in this life revolves entirely around you,” he confesses, the words tumbling out progressively quicker as he comes ever closer. “How’s that for reasons why I want to marry you?” he asks, voice low.
“Being Don is everything you’ve ever wanted, Matteo,” I urge.
“It was what I wanted. Dreams change and mine have.”
He says it like it’s so simple, but it isn’t . This is too monumental a decision for him to make just for me.
“I—” I croak, my voice dry. I search for the words, as painful as they are. I don’t want to push him away, but I can’t have him sacrificing what he’s spent his whole life wanting just for me. “You can’t, you’ll resent me.”
My back bumps up against the altar. There’s nowhere left to go, and Matteo makes sure I don’t run. He closes the distance between us, pressing me into the marble edge.
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re giving up too much! It’s–it’s,” I search wildly for what to say, landing on, “it’s crazy .”
Matteo smiles softly, his eyes turning heavy on mine, not at all turned off by my panic. He cups my face in his hands, his thumbs rubbing comfortingly at my cheeks.
“I gave it all up for a very simple reason, and it’s not because I don’t want anyone else to have you, although I certainly was never going to let that happen. It’s because if it’s between you or the Mafia, that isn’t a choice.” His gaze rakes over my features like he’s appreciating every single line, spot, and freckle on my face. “I want you more. Period. End of story. I want you every day, every which way, and any possible way. Happy, sad, confused, frustrated, and everything in between. Every feeling, every thought, every loss, every triumph, everything . I want it all with you.”
“You can’t know that! What if in a year—”
“I already know what it is to go a year without you, Leni, and I wanted you every single one of the days that I didn’t have you.” He pulls me to him and presses a heated kiss to my lips. I whimper and hold onto him for dear life. “You don’t need to worry about whether I’ll regret my decision. I won’t. And you never had to ask me to choose—the one thing I’m not willing to lose, the one thing I could never sacrifice or part with, is you.”
I reach my hands around his neck and melt into his chest. The doors to the enclosure around my heart go flying open and the organ flutters up into my throat, searching for contact with its new owner.
Matteo closes one hand loosely around my throat and uses the other on my lower back to press me into him. His lips find my mouth, my cheeks, my nose, my eyes, my forehead. I close my eyes and lean into it, smiling as he kisses every part of me, passionately, desperately, like he’s afraid I’m nothing more than a memory that’s going to fade away.
“I love you,” he breathes, swallowing my gasp in a kiss.
My eyes fly open and find his hovering mere inches from mine with the most devastatingly intense look in them. That same cocky smirk I love so much dances across his mouth.
“I love you,” he repeats and I whimper. “Fuck, every time I say it, your pupils dilate wide enough to house entire galaxies. I love you .” He hums approvingly, possessively, tracking my biological response to words I never thought I’d hear him say. “I don’t question how it’s possible I fell in love with you at first glance, I know exactly why I did. What I do wonder is how it’s possible that people look at you and don’t fall immediately in love. Thank fuck they don’t, by the way, but I have no clue how they can resist the inexorable pull to love you. It’s a pulsing, living thing in my head, in my heart, in my blood, in my very bones , a song that chants your name and your name only. I’m sorry if I ever made you doubt that for even a single second because my commitment to you is unwavering.”
“Have you ever asked yourself why I call you ‘ cara mia ’?” he asks, his grip turning territorial. “Because you’re mine. Because you healed a part of me that I thought would be broken forever. Because you’re stamped on every single one of my heart beats. Because you’ve given me not only something to live for, but something to die for. You belong to me, you have from the day I met you. I earned your soft looks and your smiles and your trust painstakingly over months. They’re mine, just like every other part of you is mine, and that’s why the only person who’s ever going to call you their wife is me .”
A dam teeters on the verge of collapse in my eyes, threatening to spill tears everywhere. I hang onto him, to his words, with every fiber of my being.
“I’m going to get down on one knee and ask you the question I should have asked a long time ago, but before I do, I need to know.” It’s only because I know him so well that I can tell there’s a slight shake in his hand as he brushes my hair back from my face. He’s unsure, anxious. “You’ve never listened to a single order I’ve given you, you’ve never done a single thing I’ve asked you to. You’re stubborn and reckless and impulsive and so I’m asking you—no, I’m begging you—to tell me that you also chose to stubbornly, recklessly, and impulsively ignore the command I gave you when I told you not to fall in love with me.” His eyes turn vulnerable and raw as he whispers, “Tell me you didn’t decide to do what I asked for the first time in your life. Tell me you ignored my order, tell me you also broke the rules, tell me ,” he stutters on the ragged words and rips in a shallow breath. “Tell me you love me too.”
The thick emotion in his voice tugs at my heartstrings. If only he knew the tone and cadence of his voice controls how slowly or quickly my heart beats, he wouldn’t even need to ask the question.
I shake my head and he winces. My arms tighten around his neck in response.
“I fell in love with you a long time ago, Matteo.” Blazing heat unfurls like a fireball in his eyes. “I couldn’t have done what you asked, I couldn’t have not loved you, you made sure that was impossible. When you paid for a kiss, when you called me Leni, when you wiped my tears. When you saved me, when you listened about Adriana, when you put your desires aside to help me find her, and when you found the person I used to be deep inside and brought her back to life. Who wouldn’t love you after all that? Who could possibly resist?”
“I don’t know exactly how long I’ve loved you because I kept those feelings buried under my grief, but one day it pierced through and it was unignorable. It was like having a second heartbeat pounding in my chest, demanding my attention. There was you and nothing was more significant than that. Except you weren’t mine and you couldn’t be. You healed and broke my heart at the same time, because you gave me the antidote to my pain–you–and yet I knew that it would be taken from me one day. That we had an expiration date. I didn’t fight as hard as I could have and should have against the engagement because if I couldn’t have you, then I didn’t care what happened to me.”
“Because we were temporary, I never allowed myself to even dream that I’d ever hear you say that you love me, that you want to marry me, even though I desperately, desperately wanted to hear those words. More than anything.” I lift onto my toes and kiss him like he kissed me, with all the love in the world. “You have no idea what hearing them does to me, Matteo, but you could also never imagine how much I love being able to say them back to you. I love you so much . So much. I’m going to spend every day of the rest of my life showing you exactly how much.”
Matteo scoops me up into his arms and slams his mouth down on mine. There’s everything in his kiss, love, passion, joy, but mostly I taste our joint relief. We fall into each other like two magnets unchained after being kept apart for far too long. I cling desperately to him and he holds me like I’m a part of his body.
I think I’m crying or laughing, or maybe the two, as he lets me go and slides slowly down to one knee. He stares back up at me with gleaming eyes that never once blink or waver, full of a breathtaking intensity like I’m the answer to every question he’s ever had.
“You blind me, Leni,” he declares, voice shaking with emotion as he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a diamond ring. The stone is so massive, I doubt it would have fit into any conventional box, so he holds it up to me between two fingers. “Just so we’re clear, this is a marriage proposal.” He grins. “You blind me to everything and everyone that isn’t you. I can’t spend another second without the assurance that I won’t ever have to live another day without you as my wife. I love you more than life itself, and I need you more than the breath in my lungs. You’re the missing piece of my soul and I’ve lived a half life without it. Put me out of my misery and make me whole, cara —will you marry me?”
I’m nodding feverishly long before he’s even started asking. “Yes! I never thought you’d ask but I always had an answer ready. A thousand times yes.”
A deeply pleased rumble sounds in Matteo’s chest as he rises. His hand finds mine and then he’s slipping the ring onto my fourth finger. I watch somewhat in disbelief at how quickly my future changed into everything I wanted it to be.
“It’s a perfect fit,” I whisper to myself.
“The first night I slept at your apartment, I went through your jewelry box and looked at your ring size.” When I give him an incredulous look, he laughs. “Like I said, I’ve been in love with you for far longer than I realized. I smothered my feelings for you but they kept manifesting regardless.” His thumb runs the length of the band. “I was wrong, you know. You didn’t ruin my life, you saved it.” He purrs possessively. “I fucking love seeing this ring on you, cara mia .”
“I love you, Matteo.” He smiles and his hands find my waist. “There’s just one thing.” I hesitate to burst our happy bubble, but he needs to know. He stiffens, his expression turning wary. “Thiago agreed to break off my engagement, but he wouldn’t agree to us getting married. I don’t know how he knew you’d ask—”
“I told him I was going to marry you. I didn’t want there to be any confusion about my intentions with you.” His jaw sets and a hard glint flashes through his gaze. “And I will marry you, Leni.”
A soft smile tugs at my lips even as anxiety twists my stomach. “Please don’t kill him. He doesn’t know you or what you’ve done for me. He doesn’t trust that you won’t hurt me. It’s going to take some time, but I know I can convince him,” I say, my tone turning imploring.
Matteo rubs my upper arms comfortingly. “I’m not going to kill him,” he reassures me. “I’m not even going to fight him on not marrying you right away, but not because of anything to do with him.” He palms my jaw and presses a sweet kiss to my lips. “I desperately want to marry you, Leni, but I won’t until we’ve found Adriana. If she’s alive, she needs to be at our wedding. She needs to be standing right next to you when you walk down the aisle to me—to me —and officially become my wife. You’ve missed out on too many memories with her to not have her in your wedding photos.” His mouth stretches into a lazily possessive smile, his eyes hooding. “When we do get married, it’ll be on a Saturday.”
His words, his promise to me, swell the walls of my heart until it feels like it’s going to burst. I reach for him, clasping his neck and bringing his mouth down to mine. Where his previous kisses were adoring, mine is pure carnal lust.
I slip my tongue past his lips to tangle with his in a passionate duel. A throaty moan rumbles up Matteo’s throat and falls into my waiting mouth as I arch into him.
“ Cara ,” he rasps thickly, voice distorted by arousal.
“I never said I was sorry about the engagement,” I say, gasping for air. “But I am, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe you’re not mad at me.”
“Oh, Len,” he purrs low and rough as he strokes my cheek. His hand palms my ass and he pulls me closer. “I’m furious,” he rasps. My eyes widen at his tone. “Livid, actually.”
Excitement tingles along my sensitive nerve endings. My blood roars to life in my veins, going from dormant to rushing through my body.
“I didn’t ask for any of it,” I defend, trembling in anticipation at the suddenly dark look on his face. I love Matteo’s savage ruthlessness as much as I love his sweet, caring side.
“You didn’t,” he agrees, his tone deceptively even. Black eyes lift to mine and reveal the depth of his brutal obsession with me. “But you didn’t tell me either. You got yourself engaged and you announced it to me late and like you were going to go through with it. Now that you know how much I love you, I’m going to show you just how furious I am at you for thinking you’d ever marry someone who isn’t me.” His hands dig into my waist, his fingers vicious and possessive. He smiles sharply. “I’m going to punish you and you’re going to hate every second of it.” Matteo kisses my forehead lovingly in direct contrast to his harsh words. “But you’re going to be a good girl and take it anyway, right cara ?”
I nod nervously, shaking with as much anxiety as impatience. Matteo flicks the button of my trousers open and trails two fingers along the band of my panties.
“Use your words. I want to hear every moan, every whimper, every scream when I’m punishing you. Those sounds belong to me and they’re how you’re going to make it up to me.”