Chapter Fifty-Two
Gualtiero
Ella stares at me, wide-eyed and completely silent.
My heartbeat launches like a rocket, climbing, climbing, climbing, until it feels too big for my chest.
She loves me. I know she does. But love and the yes I’m longing to hear are not the same thing. Especially after what happened today.
And I need her yes more than I’ve ever needed anything in my life. Especially after what happened today.
This must feel like it’s coming out of nowhere for her. Her stunned expression proves it.
For me, it hasn’t.
Is this the right setting? Hardly.
But it is the right moment.
If today taught me anything, it’s that life is cruelly good at stealing time you think you still have.
“What?” Ella whispers, her voice tight, as if her throat is closing around the word.
Her disbelief widens my smile even as fear claws at my ribs.
God, she’s beautiful. So beautiful, I can barely breathe.
“Ella Rose O’Neil,” I say again, forcing my voice to stay steady, “will you marry me?”
She blinks like she needs to reset reality. Then, for the first time since I sank to my knees, her gaze drops to my open palm.
My mother’s ring rests there, waiting.
Her good hand flies to her mouth.
Instead of a diamond, a sapphire catches the light, framed by two intertwined platinum branches dotted with tiny diamonds. It matches the color of Ella’s eyes perfectly. How could it be a coincidence?
If ever I had any doubt this ring was meant for her, that alone would have erased it.
My throat tightens.
Why isn’t she saying anything?
My stomach knots. It’s a sensation I hate.
I am control. I am certainty. I am the man who makes decisions and watches the world obey.
But right now, I’m none of that.
Right now, I’m a man on his knees, holding out his heart.
Ella lifts her eyes to mine again, and the room blurs around the force of it.
Her lips part.
Her brows draw together, as if she’s trying to solve an impossible puzzle.
I hold my breath.
“Why are you asking me this now?” she whispers.
It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but it’s not a no.
I can work with that.
“Because it’s the perfect time,” I say softly.
“The perfect time?” Her voice trembles. “Tiero, I do love you, but I think you’re only asking because of what happened today. You’re scared.”
She says it like she doesn’t understand that fear is the most honest thing I’ve ever felt.
I search her face, taking her in. Her damp hair. The way her cheeks are still flushed from the bath. The cast she holds carefully out of the way. The curve of her belly that’s barely there and yet already owns my entire soul.
My chest tightens hard enough to hurt.
“Yes,” I say. “I am scared.”
Her eyes widen at my admission. For a moment, she looks at me like she doesn’t know who I am.
“I’ve never been scared of anything in my life,” I say quietly. “It was trained out of me a long time ago.”
My voice roughens.
“But then I met you, and suddenly I learned what fear is. Real fear. The kind that steals your breath and makes your hands go cold.”
I swallow, forcing the words past the knot in my throat.
“I’m afraid of having to face a life without you. It makes me choke up just thinking about it,” I admit. “I was watching you today, and I realized how quickly I could lose everything. Not eventually. Not someday. In seconds. Right under my nose.”
Ella’s eyes shimmer.
She presses her lips together like she’s trying to hold herself steady.
“But this proposal has little to do with that.”
I lean forward a fraction, keeping my voice low.
“I’ve wanted you as my wife since the first day we met.”
Disbelief flashes across her face.
“It’s true,” I say. “I knew from the moment our eyes connected, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you’re it for me. You walked out of that small café in Taormina, and I sat there thinking I had just met the woman I would marry.”
I let out a short, helpless breath.
“And before you ask, no, I never contemplated marrying anyone else before. Not once.”
Ella’s hand lowers from her mouth, and her fingers press to her throat as if she needs to check her pulse.
I should feel powerful in this moment. I should feel like the man who can bend the world.
Instead, I feel exposed.
“I know you think this is sudden,” I say, quieter now. “But it isn’t. It’s been a long time coming.
“This ring has been in my pocket since we left Sicily for Rome.”
Her eyes flick to the ring again.
“I carried it every day,” I admit. “Because I wanted to be ready when the moment was right. Not convenient. Not perfect. Right.”
My throat tightens again, and I hate it, but I keep going. I won’t hide from her.
“Even when you ran. Even when we were separated, I still carried it. Holding it reminded me every day of the only important thing in my life.
“You.”
Ella’s eyes soften in a way that makes my chest ache.
“Angel,” I whisper. “There isn’t a better moment than now. Because it has you and it has me in it… and that’s all we ever need.
“I can’t promise you a world with no danger. I can’t promise you peace overnight.”
Her breath shudders.
“But I can promise you this.”
I lift my eyes to hers.
“I will spend the rest of my life choosing you. Protecting you. Building something that belongs to us. Not to my name, not to my family, not to the life I was born into. To us.”
Her eyes glisten, and tears finally spill, silent and bright. I feel them like a punch to the chest.
My hand tightens around hers.
“My life is not worth living unless it has you at its center,” I confess. “Walking beside me. Holding my hand. Looking at me the way you are right now.”
Ella’s lips part, and she draws in a shaky breath.
“So I am asking you…” I say, and my voice breaks slightly on the words.
I hate that it does, and I love that it does, because she deserves the truth.
“…not because today scared me.”
I lift the ring again and give her a smile that only exists for her.
“But because I want to grow old with you. Make a life that is ours. Raise our child together and make many more.”
Color rushes into her cheeks, a flicker of heat cutting through her eyes. It nearly kills me.
I take a slow breath, steadying myself. I hold her gaze, refusing to look away.
“So I’m asking you again, Ella Rose O’Neil.”
The words are quiet. But they are everything.
“Will you marry me?”
Time stretches.
Seconds feel like hours.
Her eyes go from me to the ring and back again.
And still she says nothing.
My stomach drops into freefall.
I’ve bared my soul, and now I’m suspended in this unbearable limbo, waiting for the only verdict that matters.
Waiting for her to either save me or ruin me.