Chapter 36
CASSIA
The ceremony ends in a blur of camera flashes and champagne. Nonna Rosa pulls me into a hug that smells like jasmine and happy tears. Giada squeezes my hands, mascara tracking down her cheeks.
My mother clutches her tissues and says something I can’t hear over the noise, but her face says everything she’s never known how to put into words.
Dante’s hand finds the small of my back, guiding me through the congratulations. Every few seconds someone new appears. A face I half-recognize. A name I should remember. A handshake or a kiss on the cheek. I smile until my face aches.
Three conversations I can’t follow. Four handshakes with men whose names I forget the instant they turn away. The noise rises around me like water, and I hold the numbers like a rope when the current pulls too hard.
“Ten more minutes,” he murmurs against my ear. “Then you’re changing.”
“Bossy.”
“You married me anyway.”
I did. God help me, I did.
Ten minutes turns into twenty, then thirty. More handshakes. More champagne. More faces blurring into one long stream of congratulations. At last, Dante catches Giada’s eye across the garden and tilts his head toward the house.
She materializes at my elbow within seconds.
“Come on, Donna.” She loops her arm through mine. “Time for the real dress.”
She leads me upstairs, past the guards who nod as we pass, into the master bedroom where a garment bag waits on the bed.
Giada helps me with the zipper. The ivory silk pools at my feet, and I step out of it with reverence. That dress carried me down the aisle. That dress made me a wife.
But this next one? This one is for dancing. For celebrating. For the woman I’ve become.
The champagne gold slides over my skin like liquid fire. Form-fitting through the bodice, flaring at the hips, a slit that climbs high on my left thigh. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see the invisible daughter anymore.
I see the Donna.
“He’s going to lose his mind,” Giada says, grinning.
“That’s the idea.”
She laughs and pushes me toward the door. “Go. Before he comes looking.”
I find him at the edge of the garden, talking to Marco about something that stops mattering the second he sees me.
His whole body goes still. His lips part, then press into a hard line.
His eyes travel from the gold fabric at my shoulders, down the curve of my waist, to the slit that reveals my bare leg with every step.
His chest expands on a breath he doesn’t release.
His hands flex at his sides, fingers curling into fists and opening again, like he’s fighting the urge to cross the distance himself.
When I reach him, he doesn’t say anything. Just looks at me. His gaze moves over me the way his hands will later. Slow. Deliberate. Claiming every inch before he’s touched a single one.
“You like it?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“We’re not staying long.” His voice drops to gravel. A promise and a warning in the same breath.
Marco clears his throat. “I’ll just be somewhere else.”
Neither of us watches him go.
The first dance is ours. The band shifts into a slow number, one with too much saxophone and not enough rhythm for anyone who knows how to dance. Dante doesn’t know how to dance. He holds me too tight, moves a half-beat behind the music, and steps on my foot twice in the first thirty seconds.
It’s perfect.
“You’re terrible at this,” I tell him.
“I know.”
“I don’t care.”
His hand spreads wide across my lower back, pulling me closer.
“Good. Because I wasn’t planning on getting better.”
I rest my head against his chest. His heart beats strong beneath my cheek.
Weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear that heartbeat again. Now it’s the only sound that matters.
“I love you,” I say, my mouth pressed to his shirt.
His arms tighten. His lips brush my hair.
“Ti amo, tesoro.”
My father finds me between songs. He stands at the edge of the dance floor, looking like he’d rather face a firing squad than ask his daughter to dance. But he’s here. He showed up. After twenty-four years of looking through me, he’s looking at me now.
“May I?”
I take his hand.
The dance is awkward. Silent. His grip is stiff, unfamiliar, like he’s forgotten how to hold someone without breaking them. We’ve never done this before. Never had a reason to.
I count his steps because there are no words to count. His hand sits on my waist like he’s holding a bird he’s afraid will fly away. Too light. Too careful. Twenty-four years of distance living in the two inches of air between us.
“Your mother hasn’t stopped crying,” he says at last.
“I noticed.”
More silence. The music swells around us, filling the space where words should be.
“You’re happy here.” It’s not a question.
“I am.”
He nods. Once. Like that’s all he needed to know.
We don’t say anything else. We don’t need to. He came. He danced. He saw me.
It’s enough.
Renzo appears at my elbow like a shadow given form.
“Dance?”
It’s not a question. With Renzo, nothing is. I take his hand anyway.
He holds me at a formal distance, one hand at my waist, the other gripping my fingers like he’s handling something fragile. Or dangerous.
The music plays, but neither of us is listening.
I count the measures because there’s nothing else to do with the silence between us. His expression gives me nothing. Those eyes, flat and watchful, cataloging me the same way he’d catalog a threat.
I remember the first time we spoke alone. That empty hallway, those empty eyes. If you hurt him, there’s nowhere you can go that I won’t find you.
I believed him then. I still believe him now.
The dance ends. He releases my hand, takes a single step back. His gaze pins mine for one long beat.
“You’re good for him. Don’t let him forget it.”
Before I can respond, he’s gone. Disappeared into the crowd like he was never there.
I stand alone on the dance floor. My hands are shaking. Not from fear. From something deeper than that. My ribs ache with it, my eyes stinging.
I’m one of them now.
Near the bar, Renzo catches my eye. He slides a glass of water across the counter toward me. Not champagne. Water. Because he’s been watching. Because he pays attention.
By the time I look up to thank him, he’s already gone.
“Cassia.” Nico materializes beside me, champagne flute in hand, that charming smile locked in place. But underneath the warmth, those eyes are still watching. Still reading. Some things never change.
“Nico.”
“Welcome to the family.” He clinks his glass against mine. “Officially.”
“It only took three months and a near-death experience.”
His smile widens. “That’s faster than most. Dante’s picky.”
“I’ve noticed.”
He glances across the garden to where Dante is watching us, arms crossed, looking like patience itself reaching its limit.
“I think your husband wants you back.”
“He always wants me back.”
Nico laughs. A real laugh, the sound warm and full.
“Good. He deserves someone who knows that.”
He melts away into the crowd, and I turn to find Dante already moving toward me, cutting through guests like they don’t exist.
His hand closes around my wrist.
“We have guests.”
“They can wait.”
The bedroom door clicks shut behind us and his mouth is on mine.
He kisses me like he’s been starving for it.
Like the ceremony, the photos, the dances, the endless stream of congratulations have all been torture and I’m the only relief.
He grabs my waist, my hips, the curve of my ass through the silk.
He pulls me hard against him and I feel him, thick and straining through his trousers, and a sound escapes me that I couldn’t stop if I tried.
“Do you have any idea,” he growls between kisses, “what you’ve been doing to me all night?”
“Tell me.”
“This fucking dress.” He slides up my ribcage, brushing the undersides of my breasts. “Every time you moved. Every time you smiled at someone else. I wanted to tear it off you.”
“So tear it off.”
“Not yet.” He pulls back just enough to look at me. His pupils are blown dark, his chest heaving, and his gaze makes my legs press together. “I have to see you in it first.”
He walks me backward until my shoulders hit the wall. He pins my hips, pressing into the hollows above my hip bones. He holds me there, heat radiating off him, not moving. Just looking. The seconds stretch.
Then he drops to his knees.
The sight of him there. This man who commands an empire, who gives orders that end lives. On his knees before me. My stomach clenches, heat flooding between my legs so fast it makes me dizzy.
He runs up my bare leg, finding the slit in the dress, pushing the fabric aside. He presses a kiss to the inside of my knee. Then higher. The sensitive skin above my knee. The tender inside of my thigh. He takes his time, dragging along my skin, stubble burning a trail that makes my legs tremble.
“Dio,” he murmurs against my skin. The vibration of his voice ripples through me. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
He hooks into my underwear and drags it down my legs. I step out of it, shaking, and he tosses it somewhere behind him without looking.
“Dante.”
“I’ve been thinking about this all day.” The words land hot against my skin. “Watching you dance with other men, smile at other people, be perfect and untouchable while I couldn’t have you.”
He presses his nose against me and inhales. A sound tears from his throat. Raw. Wrecked.
“Cazzo. You’re already wet.”
“I’ve been wet since you looked at me in this dress.”
“Good.” He traces along my slit, parting me. “Every inch of you. Tonight, I’m taking all of it.”
His mouth finds my pussy and I gasp, my hands flying to his hair, gripping hard.
He groans against me and the vibration sends sparks shooting up my spine.
He tastes me like I’m the last thing he’ll ever eat, like he’s trying to memorize the flavor of me, and the sounds he’s making.
God. Wet and hungry and desperate, like he’s the one being ruined.