Epilogue
“Did you hear?” Niccolo asked as he picked me up after my fight in the amphitheater.
I had won and killed two opponents. The crowd had chanted my name, but their faces had reflected abhorrence and fear.
They couldn’t stay away, even if my actions disturbed them.
It was the drug of choice in their pathetic lives, a little otherworldly charm for their ordinary existence.
I slid into the passenger seat. “Did I hear what?”
“Remo Falcone got married. He now lives in Falcone manor with the Mione twin and the twins they have together.”
I frowned. Remo had kidnapped a woman from the Outfit, but he later returned her. It seemed impossible that Remo, who was like me in so many ways, managed to have a family.
“You seem surprised.”
“I am.”
“Why? If you can make a marriage work, why can’t he? You two aren’t that different.”
I nodded. He was right. But being with Amelia was one thing.
She was almost a part of me, but creating life and caring for it were entirely different matters.
Amelia and I both had lost our mothers early and been subjected to brutal fathers.
We didn’t know the first thing about being a decent parent.
“Can you see me as a father?” I asked.
Niccolo slanted me a cautious look as he pulled up to the gates of Amelia’s and my home.
“I have never thought about it. Have you?”
“No.” Amelia and I had never bridged the subject either.
We had spent the last three years together building a new life, a new home.
Niccolo dropped me off at the base of the hill, as had become our ritual.
I walked up the driveway past the sprawling flower beds that Amelia had planted herself.
Dahlia, cosmea, hydrangea, sea asters, and many more flowers created an ocean of dark pink, white, lavender, and deep purple.
I followed the path up to our house. Every time I caught a glimpse of the new Romano Manor, with its dark facade, arched windows, and glass dome, I let out a deep breath.
I marveled at how the big windows in the front reflected the gardens, making it look as if the inside of the house, too, was filled with trees and flowers, and bushes.
I opened the door to our house, breathing in the fresh air.
Maybe this was how freedom smelled; light, with a distant, flowery note.
In the center of the entrance hall, a huge bouquet of dark purple dahlias and dark pink cosmea decorated a dark wood table.
Flower arrangements brightened every room of the house.
I took my bone crown off my head and removed the heavy fur coat, then stashed both of them in the wooden chest in the cloakroom.
Those belonged to the man, the monster, outside of these walls, not to the man I allowed myself to be with only Amelia.
In black linen pants and barefoot, I walked into the living area, which seemed to be right in the garden through the two big french windows.
Amelia wasn’t at the piano. The piano had been an invitation, and she played every night without prompting.
It was my favorite part of the day. I’d never joined her again.
Hearing her play was everything I needed.
My feet relished in the softness of the dark purple rug as I crossed the distance toward the windows.
One of them was open, and I went outside, following the low hum down to Amelia’s newest creation: a flower bed with native wildflowers that bloomed in dark blues, steel gray, and bloodred.
She stood amid the hip-high flowers and plucked the most beautiful blooms for another bouquet.
She wore a big straw hat and a flowy white dress with spaghetti straps.
Her face lit up with a smile when she spotted me, and my chest filled with peace.
The darkness always caught up with me. It was a part of me, but with Amelia, I learned to live in the light.
She held up the loosely bound bouquet. “It’s for our bedroom.”
I smiled. She never used roses for her bouquet; those were reserved for the arches around my mother’s grave. I could never look at a rose without remembering what happened to her.
She picked up the hem of her dress and stepped out of the flower bed. She was barefoot like me as she padded over to me. Her brows drew together. “You look pensive.”
“I am,” I admitted.
“Did something happen at the fights?”
I shook my head and took Amelia’s hand, pulling her against me. “I think the crowd missed your beauty. I caught several men glancing at your empty throne.”
“Next time, I’ll come again. Today, I just needed something else to banish the darkness.”
I nodded. Last night, a nightmare had woken her, sweaty and terrified. They had become rare for her, and for me too, but sometimes they caught us by surprise with their ferocity.
I kissed her, then marveled at her beauty. Could I love someone who looked like Amelia but had my blood too? Could I love a small version of myself?
“Remo has twins.”
She blinked and looked away, confusion reflecting on her face. “I’m not sure he’s someone I can see with the patience for kids.”
I shrugged and stroked her hair. “Can you envision me as a father?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh. Wow. I never really thought about it. But you take care of me. You show me love, so… why not?”
Why not. Thinking of my dark thoughts, my need for blood and gore, my impatience, and my constant need for Amelia’s body, I found many reasons. “Do you want children?”
She bit her lower lip and peered down at the flowers in her hand.
“Not now. I don’t feel…” She released a breath as if she couldn’t find the right words.
“I don’t feel whole enough yet. I feel like you, and I still need to work through so much before we can consider taking care of someone else. It’s not something I want to fail at.”
I nodded, relieved that Amelia felt the same way I did. “What if we’re never whole enough?”
What if I never was?
Amelia touched my cheek with a soft smile.
“You’re whole enough for me, and that’s enough.
Maybe we’ll never feel at a point in our lives when we’re whole enough for children, and that’s okay.
I have you. I have Flavia and Luciano. My heart is full.
And once I start doing the flower arrangements at Camorra weddings in the region, I’ll be very busy.
My life doesn’t have a void I need to fill. ”
I kissed her. She smiled against my mouth. “But maybe there’s room for something else in our lives.”
I frowned.
“Rodolfo told me one of his cats had a litter with eight babies, and he wants to get rid of them. So far, he only has a home for three of them. We have so much space. We could give the other five a home.”
“Cats,” I murmured.
“I always wanted a cat or a dog, but my father hated animals unless he could use them to show his power. And you like the lions and tiger and cheetahs.”
I chuckled at the hopefulness on Amelia’s face. “They don’t live under the same roof as we do.”
Amelia simply smiled up at me. “Cats would look great in our mansion, and in old Scottish castles, they kept the rats out.”
“We don’t have rats,” I muttered, but Amelia merely smiled. “All right. But the cats probably will avoid me. They are difficult and can sense that I’m not quite trustworthy.”
Amelia shook her head with a laugh, stepped on her toes, and kissed my cheek. “I knew you’d say that. Rodolfo is already on his way to pick them up for us.”
I sighed then smirked. I closed my fingers around Amelia’s slender throat, forcing her higher up on her toes. “You know I’ll have to punish you for your insolence, dove. What if I’d said no?”
She shivered, her eyes glazing over with lust. “I expected you to punish me, but I knew you wouldn’t say no.”
Her breathless voice went straight to my dick. “Upstairs. Now.”
She rushed past me, casting a glance over her shoulder before she began to run, dropping the flowers in the process. I smiled to myself as I started the chase. When I reached the winding staircase to our turret, I was already rock hard. I couldn’t wait to bury myself in Amelia.
I found Amelia where I almost always did, since we’d installed the swing in one of the rose archways a couple of weeks after Rodolfo had dumped five unruly kittens in our garden.
Amelia perched sideways on the wooden board, one leg curled up, the other dangling down, while she swung gently back and forth, reading a big tome. Five cats sunbathed on the grass and pathway around her, but their heads lifted at my approach.
Amelia beamed when she spotted me.
But she wasn’t the first to greet me. The biggest of the five cats, a stubborn but gentle-minded ginger, raced toward me and began to purr and press itself against my legs. I bent down and gave its head the pet it demanded, before I walked over to my wife, where she sat on the swing.
I bent down and kissed her. “How was your day?” she asked.
“Brutal, but successful,” I said. Niccolo and I had killed two drug dealers who’d kept part of our money.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “Not now.” I usually spilled the bloody details of my daily work to Amelia after I woke from a nightmare. They still came on occasion, but not as often as they used to.
Every cat except for the black male that favored Amelia sauntered up to me for a greeting. I had grown used to their furry presence and to my surprise, their warm purring body on my lap after a particularly rough day, and before I dared to go up to Amelia, always calmed me.
Amelia chuckled when the black beast rolled over on its back, presenting its belly. “He’s jealous. That’s why he doesn’t like you.”
“I’d be jealous too if I had to watch someone else do what I do with your beautiful body every day.”
She smiled coyly up at me. “We could eat outside today. I asked the maid to set up the table beside the lake. Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes.” She patted the spot beside her on the swing. “Why don’t you join me?”
I had knelt before her while I’d eaten her out on that swing, but I’d never swung on it. “I haven’t been on a swing…since I was four or five.”
She raised her eyebrows, and I grabbed her hips and hoisted her to her feet, then sat on the swing and pulled her onto my lap. I pushed us back with my feet, then let the swing fall into a slow rhythm.
Amelia drew in a deep breath and leaned her head back against my shoulder. “Sometimes I forget the past. It’s strange and catches me by surprise every time it happens, but I love those moments.”
“I learned to focus on the moments from the past that I cherish, like when you first read The Tale of Peter Rabbit to me, or when we held hands through the bars, or when you smiled at me. That makes the past seem not quite as dark.”
She nodded. “That’s true. There are moments of beauty even in our past. I wished there was a way for me to travel back in time and tell young Nestore that this would be his future, then he’d never want to give up.”
I chuckled. “But, dove, young Nestore had a vision of that future, and that’s why he survived. You embodied that vision, which was why I couldn’t let you go.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and a soft smile curled her lips. “I’m so glad you kidnapped me and made me your wife.”
I cupped her cheek and kissed her. It was one of my many sins that I regretted the least.
Amelia was my wife.
My love.
My life.
The woman who saved me every day.
The End