Chapter 25
GIOVANNI
It’s been two months since the boxing gloves.
Since the cheap trainers sitting on polished floors like an accusation neither of us could quite step around.
I stand at the edge of the terrace with a glass of water I haven’t touched, watching my wife swim.
Lucia cuts through the pool with the same stubborn grace she brings to everything, her strokes clean and sure, her body moving with a beauty and strength that still catches me off guard even after everything.
The afternoon sun turns her skin into something warm and alive, and for a moment I feel the kind of quiet that used to seem impossible. I know and accept that it’s not because my world has become safer.
It’s because she’s here. She stayed, despite everything. And because lately, staying has started to feel like the most violent choice of all.
I’ve found myself doing something unfamiliar these past weeks.
Thinking. The kind that starts and ends in emotional investments. And yes, the kind that used to be anathema to me because no amount of strategizing or calculating or watching for knives could stop the scathing terror it arrived with.
Soul-searching, some hippie-dippy would call it, as if I’m some sentimental bastard who belongs in the rusty pages of poetry instead of raging blood.
And within that… inward searching, I recognise that it’s been easier to call Lucia reckless than to admit the truth.
That I chased her away long before she ever ran.
I told myself I protected her by withholding parts of my life, by curating what she knew until she was settled enough, married enough, bound enough that she would not bolt.
I told myself that was kindness. That was caution and care, in the only language I had ever been taught.
But caution and care and… this terrifying emotion I’m beginning to recognise as… Diu miu…love, doesn’t survive on omissions.
And I’m finally forced to face that my silence did not soften the truth.
It sharpened it. Because when she discovered what I was, it didn’t arrive as something we could confront together.
It arrived like a trapdoor opening beneath her feet. And she did what any woman with fire in her spine would do.
She fled, went far away, not to punish me, but to find air. To find peace.
I brought her back. And God help me, I would do it again. Because that’s the kind of man I am. The exact man she married.
But should heaven forbid this happen again, what would I be bringing her back to, if I never truly change the foundation beneath us?
More carnage? More control dressed up as devotion? More of her surviving me instead of living with me.
All these months later, we talk. We laugh. We touch. We fuck. We’ve found our way back into one another’s arms in the slow hours of the night, as if desire can stitch up what honesty avoided.
But there’s still something sitting between us, unspoken and heavy.
I’ve never apologised. Not properly. Not as a husband. Only as a Don who believes regret is weakness.
Lucia… my Lucia… my little, sexy and fierce dragunnida, deserves better than that.
So I make a decision that’s very long overdue.
I set the untouched glass down, turn away from the pool, and walk inside with purpose that feels more terrifying than any negotiation I’ve ever entered.
The kitchen smells of herbs and simmering stock.
Caterina stands at the counter, scribbling on her notepad with the severity of a woman who believes food is both religion and weapon.
She doesn’t look up until I speak.
“Caterina.”
“Yes, Don Giovanni?”
I pause.
Then, evenly, “Tomorrow night, I want a table set for two.”
Her pen stills. “A table is always set for two.”
“Not like this,” I say.
Now she looks up. Her eyes sharpen immediately, as if she can smell change the way she can smell garlic burning.
“I want candles.”
Her brows lift.
“I want the old silver.”
Her mouth tightens and quivers.
“I want my wife’s favourite meals. All of them. But maybe let’s start with the one she tried to make the night I came home bleeding.”
Caterina’s expression flickers as understanding dawns, slow and devastating. Then, to my absolute shock, she bursts out laughing.
It’s not a polite chuckle or an indulgent giggle. It’s a fucking full-bodied, scandalised laugh that goes on for nearly a minute.
I stand there, unmoving, waiting. Is she… having a stroke? Do I need to summon one of my doctors?
When she finally sobers, wiping at her eyes, she finds my face unchanged. The amusement drains from her immediately.
“Oh,” she says quietly. “You’re serious.”
My jaw clenches, my fists tightening in my pockets as I battle the ball of unfamiliar anxiety growing inside me and deal with the insanity unfolding in front of me. “I’ve never been more serious in my life.”
Caterina studies me for a long moment, then inclines her head with the gravity of a priest accepting confession. “Si,” she says. “Va bene.”
Then, because she cannot help herself, she adds under her breath, “Miracles do happen.”
My jaw tightens. “Caterina.”
She lifts her hands innocently. “I said nothing.”
I turn to leave, already regretting half of this.
At the doorway, her voice stops me. “Don Giovanni.”
I glance back. Her eyes are softer than usual.
“She cares for you… despite everything,” she says simply. “Do not waste it again.”
I leave the kitchen with that lodged somewhere deep, sharp and undeniable. And as I walk back towards the terrace, towards my wife, towards the life I have been trying to hold together with brute force instead of truth, I realise something else.
Tomorrow night is not about dinner.
It is about surrender.
Mine.
Lucia
I’m not running.
Not really.
I simply absent myself in a way that feels almost wicked, because Giovanni and I have spent months turning avoidance and inertia into a weapon, and tonight I am turning it into a gift.
He’s looking for me.
I know he is.
I can picture it with painful clarity: the way his gaze will sweep through rooms, the way his jaw will tighten when he doesn’t immediately find what belongs to him, the way irritation will sharpen into something darker, more anxious, more intimate than he ever admits.
The way he’ll start barking at his men if I continue to elude him.
The truth is, I haven’t gone far at all.
I’m still in our home, still on Dragoni Estate, inside the borders of his world, but tucked into a small staff cottage at the edge of the estate with Ella hovering like an excited sprite and my uncles standing awkwardly in the corner as if they cannot decide whether this is the most romantic thing they have ever witnessed or the most insane.
Perhaps it’s both.
My security detail is outside.
Every single one of them has been blackmailed, bribed, emotionally manipulated, or outright threatened into silence.
It turns out men who have sworn loyalty to me as Donna are not immune to the kind of pleading that comes from a woman who has finally decided she is finished with half-measures.
“You tell him,” I had said earlier, voice deadly sweet, “and I will make your life unbearable in ways even Giovanni has not yet imagined.”
They had stared.
Then, one by one, they had nodded. Ella had laughed until she nearly cried.
Now she stands behind me, adjusting the fall of fabric at my shoulders with trembling hands.
“You look… divine,” she whispers.
I glance at my reflection, and for a moment my breath catches.
I’m not wearing the kind of gown Giovanni would have chosen. It’s softer than that, simpler in its lines, the kind of elegance that does not scream wealth so much as certainty.
Tonight is not about proving anything to the world.
Tonight is about proving something to him.
And to myself.
I love him.
Wreckage or not, blood or not, history and lies and fear and all the things that tried to split us down the middle, I love Giovanni Dragoni with a clarity and unfathomable depths that frightens me.
And I’m done running from it emotionally. Done pretending I can keep pieces of myself untouched.
It’s time to bare it all.
I lift my phone and call Caterina. She answers on the second ring. “Yes, Donna.”
“Is everything in place?” I ask, unable to keep the nerves from my voice.
A chuckle rolls down the line, rich with the kind of amusement she has been indulging far too often lately. I hope she’s not having a fucking stroke. That would be most inconvenient.
“Si,” she says. “Everything is in place.”
“You’ve been laughing a lot,” I tell her suspiciously.
“Life is long,” Caterina replies serenely. “One must find entertainment where one can, especially when the young thrill you with their foolishness.”
I narrow my eyes at nothing, parsing through what I’m certain is an insult. “It might be time to replace the chef.”
Her laughter deepens. “Try it,” she says simply, and hangs up.
Ella bites her lip, watching me. “You ready?”
No. Absolutely not.
Yes.
I inhale. Exhale. Then truer words pour out of me. “I have never been more ready for anything in my life.”
Two hours later, the signal comes. Caterina’s message is brief.
He is coming downstairs.
My pulse becomes a drumbeat.
The night air is warm as I arrive in the golf buggy and step out onto the largest terrace. My heart catches then aches as I stare at the estate, transformed into something unreal and beautiful and magical.
Candles line the stone in soft rivers of light, lanterns hung from trees, music low and aching in the background.
Flowers everywhere.
Not the stiff arrangements of obligation, but petals scattered like someone has taken beauty and thrown it with both hands.
For the first time, I have splurged his money without flinching. For the first time, I have allowed myself to give him something extravagant without feeling like it makes me smaller.
Because love is not submission.
Love is choosing.
My uncles flank me, proud and misty-eyed in a way that makes my throat tighten as Ella moves ahead, tossing petals with solemn joy.
And then Giovanni appears.