Chapter 26 #2
She shook her head. “I’m angry because you took my choice away, Pietro, not because you’re sotto capo. I am angry because you decided for me what I could live with, then came to my apartment prepared to offer me love only on the condition that it fit your understanding.”
I swallowed and let her continue.
“If you step down, it has to be because it is the right life for you, not because you think I need a cleaner version of you to be able to love you.” She leaned back slightly, eyes never leaving mine.
“I don’t want a man who reshapes himself every time fear shows up.
I want a man who knows who he is and tells me the truth of it, even when it’s ugly. ”
God, I loved her.
“And that,” she added more softly, “is why the answer is no.”
“You don’t want me to step down?”
“I don’t want you to offer it like that.”
I let out a slow breath. “That is an important distinction.”
“It is.”
I nodded once. “I’m trying to learn the language of you.”
The corner of her mouth moved despite herself. Barely. But I saw it.
“You are not fluent yet,” she said.
“No,” I admitted. “But I am deeply motivated.”
That earned me a proper exhale that might once have become a laugh if things between us were not so fragile.
I reached into my coat pocket and slid my phone across the table toward her. “Before you dismiss me entirely, Sophie’s cane.”
She looked down despite herself.
The photos filled the screen one after another: black lacquered wood, silver detailing along the shaft, the handle elegant without being too delicate, the whole thing striking enough that even I had to admit it was excellent work.
There was also, tucked in one image, the optional set of tiny silver star decals Sophie had insisted on “for emotional drama.”
Emily’s whole face changed. The hardness around her mouth eased, and something warmer, more unguarded slipped through before she caught it.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “That’s perfect for her.”
“I know.”
She glanced up. “Don’t ruin this moment by being smug.”
“Too late.”
She shook her head, but there was affection threaded through the gesture now, and that alone felt like more than I deserved.
“She’ll lose her mind over the stars,” she said.
“That was the stated goal.”
Emily handed the phone back more slowly than necessary. “Thank you.”
I looked at her for a long second before asking the question that had been sitting in my chest since she said no.
“There is hope for us still, isn’t there?”
She stilled.
I kept my voice even, the effort costing me something. “I know you still love me.”
Her gaze sharpened. “That’s a dangerous amount of confidence for a man in your position.”
“It isn’t confidence. It’s observation.”
She looked away first, which was answer enough.
“What would it take?” I asked quietly. “For me to make this right?”
She said nothing again.
I forced myself not to fill the silence too quickly, then failed.
“I understand now, or at least I’m beginning to. I know why what I did was wrong. I know that I took something from you I had no right to take, and I would never do that to you again. Not for fear, not for love, not for any reason.” I swallowed. “Tell me what it would take.”
Emily folded her arms over the table and looked at me with an expression I still didn’t know how to survive. Too soft for indifference but also too guarded for mercy.
“I don’t think this is the kind of thing I can hand you as a checklist, Pietro.”
“That is inconvenient.”
“Life often is.”
I nodded slowly. “Then tell me something true,” I said.
She considered that for a long while.
“It would take time,” she said at last. “And consistency. And you not running the second life gets hard and calling it sacrifice. It would take me believing that if I say yes to you again, I’m saying yes to a man who will stay in the room with me when things get ugly instead of deciding alone that ugliness means it’s over. ”
“I can do that,” I said.
“Maybe,” she replied. “But you saying it is no longer enough.”
I sat with that and, annoyingly, found myself thinking of Olivero, of all people, and his infuriatingly good suggestion.
Lily. Violet. Two women who had loved men like us and come out the other side stronger, still laughing in sunlit rooms, still looking at their husbands adoringly, as if survival together had deepened rather than cheapened the love.
Emily deserved to see that.
Not as proof that she had to choose me.
As proof that choosing a man like me did not automatically end in ruin.
I looked back at her. “What are you doing for New Year’s Eve?”
Suspicion crossed her face at once. “Why?”
“Answer first.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you think party animals like me do on New Year’s Eve? I’ll watch television in sweatpants and probably fall asleep with leftover chips on my face.”
The image was so immediate and so perfectly her that I smiled before I could stop myself.
“Would you spend it with me?”
Her expression became cautious again.
“I don’t know.”
“Think about it.”
She held my gaze, then nodded once.
I rose carefully from the chair and reached for my cane. “All right.”
“All right?” she repeated.
“I’m trying this new thing,” I said. “Where I don’t demand an answer the second I want one.”
That nearly made her smile again.
I took that as a small victory and made myself walk away before I ruined it.
By the time I reached the library doors, one thing had settled into place with perfect certainty.
It was time for the big guns.
If I wanted Emily Hart to see that men like me could fail, learn, be forgiven, and still love well, then there was only one thing left to do.
I was calling my mother.