Chapter 47
VIOLET
He takes my hand and leads me down the hallway toward the bedroom, and I'm running my fingers along the inside of his wrist, already feeling the shift in the air between us.
I’m so turned on I can hardly think straight—the effect this man has on me started the day I first laid eyes on him and hasn’t ceased.
Then he stops. In the hallway. Three feet from the bedroom door. Just stops, his hand still holding mine, his back to me for a moment before he turns.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"Nothing's wrong."
"You stopped walking. In my experience, men don't stop walking toward the bedroom unless something's wrong."
He doesn't smile. His expression is serious, and not his usual dark, commanding seriousness. It’s more uncertain. A look I've almost never seen on his face.
"I need to say something," he says. "Before we go in there. Before this goes any further."
"Okay."
My heart skips a beat. Is this bad? It feels like it might be bad.
Is he going to tell me he can’t do this, that he’s not ready to be a dad?
I imagine him confessing that it’s too much.
He tried, but it’s just too much. He’ll cut me a check, get me and Patrick situated somewhere else, but he can’t do anything more.
He looks at me and takes both my hands. And the man who has never once hesitated in front of federal prosecutors, grand juries, rival syndicate leaders, or armed kidnappers—hesitates.
“What… what is it, Gianni?”
"I haven't told you I love you," he says. The words hang in the hallway, simple and factual.
"I…” The word—the letter, really—falls dumbly out of my mouth.
"I have for a long time, really. Maybe from the moment I laid eyes on you. But I haven’t told you. And you deserve to know why."
"Gianni, you don't have to—"
"I do." His hands tighten on mine. "I’ve spent my entire life making sure that nothing I care about can be used against me. It’s…
a survival mechanism. The men I grew up with, the men I work with, the men who've tried to kill me—they don't go after your bank accounts or your business holdings.
They go after the thing you love. They find it, and they use it, and they destroy it to destroy you. "
He pauses. The hallway light catches the silver at his temples, the dark intensity of his eyes.
“I’ve watched it happen, watched it happen to men who were stronger than me and smarter than me.
They were brought to their knees because someone found the one person they couldn’t live without and put a gun to their head. ”
His jaw works and he looks away. “So, I made a decision, and I made it a long time ago. I would never give anyone that weapon against me. I would never love someone so much that losing them would end me. Everyone stays at a distance, far enough to protect them, far enough to protect myself.”
“And then I showed up.” My voice is barely above a whisper.
“And then you showed up. You and Patrick.” His voice roughens. “I tried, Violet. I really tried to keep you at a distance, knowing how I felt, how I could feel, about you. I tried to be professional and strategic and treat you like a variable I could manage. But I failed.”
Gianni looks away, shaking his head at the very idea of failure. “I failed completely and utterly. Because the truth is I’ve been in love with you since the night you let me into your apartment and handed me a glass of cheap bourbon in a chipped glass. But I’ve been too goddamn afraid to say it.”
"Afraid," I repeat. "You."
“Me. And fear doesn’t come easy for me—not fear of gun or prisons or the government or any fool stupid enough to come for my leadership. But I’ve been terrified of these three words. Feeling them is one thing, but saying them aloud?”
“That… that makes it real.”
He nods, then lifts my hands to his mouth and presses his lips to my knuckles.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve said it our first night together.
I should’ve said it in the hospital. I should’ve said it at the cabin.
I should’ve been saying it every goddamn morning and night since you’ve been here.
And it was almost too late. I nearly lost you, lost our child, and you would’ve left me without ever knowing how I felt. ”
My eyes are burning and my throat is tight. This man in front of me, the head of an empire, a man who hasn’t bowed to anyone and never will, is standing in front of me, holding my hands, telling me he’s afraid.
"I love you," he says. "I love you, and I love Patrick, and I love this baby, and I am done being afraid of saying it."
I reach up and take his face in both hands, feeling the stubble against my palms and the warmth of his skin and the tension in his jaw that melts the moment I touch him.
For a long moment, I’m totally speechless. What do you say to a confession like that? But I open my mouth and the words come without me even needing to think them.
“I love you too.”
The statement is simple and one of the truest things I’ve ever said.
“I’ve loved you since you read my manuscript out loud and liked it. I’ve loved you since you showed me you didn’t mind sitting on the kitchen floor with Patrick and playing pretend. And I’ve loved you since you sat on my horribly uncomfortable pull-out couch and drank my cheap bourbon with me.”
My stomach tenses. It hits me in these moments that Gianni wasn’t the only one who was afraid.
“I spent four years being loved wrong. And part of me never wanted it again. When I thought of love, I saw the same thing you did—a way for someone to hurt me, to control me. So I put up my walls and never gave the idea second thought. And those walls were so thick and strong part of me worried they’d block me from seeing the real thing if it did ever show up.
But I do. I see it in you. And I don’t have the slightest doubt that I feel the same way. I love you, Gianni—so goddamn much.”
He smiles. Then he kisses me. But it’s not a slow and controlled kiss.
It’s raw and real and tastes like cheap whiskey—just how I like my kisses from him.
He pulls me against him and I feel the weight and horror of the last month dissolve between us, like our touch is all it takes to banish the fear.
We make it through the bedroom door. Barely.