Epilogue
DANTE
ONE YEAR LATER
The expansion plans are spread across the grass beside her.
She hasn’t noticed me yet. Reading glasses on. The ones she pretends she doesn’t need. Shoes somewhere behind her. Bare feet in the garden. Red wine stain on the hem of her dress from Gia’s birthday dinner three nights ago because she refused to change out of it.
I built walls for years. Kept everyone at arm’s length. Told myself it was strategy.
Don’t deserve it. Still don’t.
She looks up.
Smiles.
My pulse kicks hard against my ribs. A full year. That smile still hits like a fist under my sternum.
“You’re staring.”
“I’m allowed.” I lower myself to the grass beside her. “You’re my wife.”
“For a whole year now.”
“For the rest of our lives, tesoro.”
She sets the papers aside. Leans into me. Her ring catches the afternoon light when she threads her fingers through mine.
I designed it myself. Cognac diamond. White ones around it. The dark gold of her eyes when she’s thinking. When she’s wanting. When she looks at me like I’m worth what she gives me.
“I was going to survive you.” The words come out before I can stop them. “That was the plan. Marry you. Keep you at arm’s length. Never need you.”
She tilts her head back to look at me. “How’s that working out?”
“Terribly.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “You ruined everything.”
Her laugh fills the garden.
Cristo.
I’m thirty-five years old. The Don of New Orleans. And that sound still makes my hands unsteady.
I kiss her because I can. Because she’s here and she’s mine and I still can’t believe it.
“Take me inside,” she murmurs against my mouth.
I don’t need to be asked twice.
Our bedroom smells like her now. Her books on the nightstand. Her perfume on the vanity that used to be my mother’s. Her earring on the tray where I keep my watch, like it belongs there. Like she always did.
I stop just inside the doorway.
She turns back to look at me.
One breath. The last second of the man who told himself he didn’t need this.
Then I cross the room.
I undress her with no rush. We have time now.
“Bella.” I breathe her in as the dress pools at her feet. Jasmine from the garden. The warm salt of her skin underneath. Heat and Cassia.
“Every time. Every single time, you take my breath away.”
She reaches for my shirt buttons, just as unhurried. “Flatterer.”
“Truth teller.”
I walk her back toward the bed, mouth on her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast above her bra. She unhooks it herself, impatient, and a groan scrapes out of my throat.
“Fuck, Cassia.” I drag my teeth along the curve of her breast. “Do you know what you do to me?”
“Show me,” she whispers.
Cazzo. This woman.
I lower her onto the mattress and follow her down, find her nipple, suck until she gasps.
Her fingers rake through my hair and hold me there.
The sounds she makes go straight through me.
Small. Hitched. Desperate. I switch to the other breast, roll the stiff peak between my teeth, graze until she arches off the bed.
Her breasts are fuller than I remember. Heavier in my hands.
My hands still.
“More,” she breathes.
“I’ll give you everything.”
I kiss down her stomach, hook my fingers into her underwear, drag it down her legs. She’s already wet when I spread her thighs, already trembling when I lower my mouth to her.
“Dio.” I lick through her folds, slow, savoring. “I’ll never get enough of this. Never get enough of you.”
She moans, hips lifting off the bed.
“Stay still.” I pin her down with one hand flat on her stomach.
Long, drawn-out strokes over her clit. Two fingers sliding inside, curling against the spot that makes her cry out.
“You’re shaking,” I murmur against her. “Already close?”
“Don’t stop,” she gasps. “Please don’t stop.”
“I know where.” I press deeper, curl harder. “I’ve memorized every inch of you.”
A tremor runs through her, hips rolling against my hand.
“That’s it. Let me hear you.”
She gives me a sound so raw it makes my cock ache. I seal over her clit and she comes apart, thighs clamping around my head, my name torn from her throat.
I ease my touch as the aftershocks roll through her. Press a kiss to her inner thigh.
“Cristo, you’re beautiful when you let go.”
When I crawl back up her body, she’s already reaching for my belt. Her fingers work the buckle, the button, and when her hand wraps around me I hiss through my teeth.
“Fuck.” My forehead drops against hers. “Your hands on me.”
She strokes once. Twice.
I grab her wrist. Pin it above her head.
“Not yet. I need to be inside you.”
I shed the rest of my clothes and settle between her thighs. My cock presses against her entrance, slick with her arousal. She wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me in.
“Amore mio.” I sink into her, watching her face. Her lips parting. Her eyes fluttering closed. The flush spreading down her neck to her chest. “You feel so fucking good. So tight. So wet.”
“Dante.” Her nails dig into my shoulders. “More. I need all of you.”
“You have all of me.” I bury myself to the hilt. “Every inch. Every goddamn piece.”
I move. Long, deep strokes that wreck us both. Not the desperate fucking of our first weeks. Not the frantic reunion after I came back from the edge. Her body knows mine. My body knows hers. Every roll of her hips meets my thrust. Every breath syncs.
“Look at me.” I stop moving. Buried inside her. Completely still. “Open your eyes.”
She does.
Dark and shining and full of everything I spent a decade telling myself I couldn’t have.
“Dante?”
“I don’t deserve this.” Raw. Ripped from somewhere I keep locked. “I don’t deserve you.”
Her hand finds my face. Thumb tracing the line of my jaw. She doesn’t argue.
“You’re here. That’s enough.”
The last locked thing inside me lets go.
I move again. Harder. Deeper. Like the stillness cost me and I need her body to pay it back.
“Ti amo.” She clenches around me. “You’re everything. You hear me? Fucking everything.”
Her hips rise to meet each thrust. I reach between us, thumb finding her clit, circling the way she likes.
“I love you,” she whispers.
“Then come for me.” I press harder, angle my hips. “Come on my cock, amore mio. Let me feel it.”
Her back arches. Her nails score down my back and the sting of it pulls a groan from my chest.
She shatters. Her whole body locks around me, and I bury myself to the hilt and let go, coming inside her with her name breaking apart on my tongue.
“Cazzo.” I press my face into her neck. Breathe her in. Jasmine and sweat and sex. “Cassia.”
After, I hold her against my chest. Press my lips to her temple. Her hair. The curve of her shoulder.
She makes a soft sound and burrows closer. Her fingers trace idle patterns over my heart.
“Worth waiting for,” she says, her voice a low hum against my skin.
“What is?”
“This. You. All of it.”
I press a kiss to her hair.
We lie there as the light shifts from gold to amber.
“Gia thinks we should expand to Baton Rouge next,” she says after a while.
“Whatever you want.”
“She also has answers. About Romano. The Benedetti timeline.”
My hand stills on her back.
“That can wait. Tonight is about us.”
“I know.” She lifts her head. “I just wanted you to know. We have the full picture. It’s done.”
The man who killed my father is dead. The conspiracy is dismantled. Closed.
Cassia shifts against me. Takes my hand. Guides it slowly down her body.
Presses it low on her stomach.
Holds it there.
I go still.
“Cassia.”
“I found out yesterday.” A tremor runs through her voice. Her eyes are bright, brimming. “I wanted to tell you here. In this house. Where everything started.”
“Tesoro.” The word rips out of me. My voice cracks on the second syllable. “You’re sure?”
“Three tests. And Gia confirmed it this morning.” She laughs, tears spilling down her cheeks. “We’re having a baby, Dante.”
My hand is shaking.
The Don of New Orleans.
My hand is shaking.
My throat closes. My vision blurs at the edges and I let it.
“Dio.” I can’t get a full breath. “Cassia. A baby.”
She cups my face. She’s crying, laughing through it.
I kiss her. Taste salt.
“Both of you.” My voice comes out wrecked. Raw. My hand spreads wide across her stomach. “I love both of you.”
She pulls me down until my forehead rests against her belly.
I close my eyes. Press my lips to the skin where our child is growing. My hands won’t stop trembling and I let them. I let all of it happen. The shaking. The tightness. The crack in my chest that isn’t breaking.
It’s making room.
But even now, a shadow presses at the edge.
Renzo.
He’s been disappearing for weeks. Came back from Milan with bruised knuckles and eight pounds missing. Someone breached our firewalls, and he traced it to a hacker embedded in the Benedetti network. A ghost. He’s been hunting him ever since, and whatever he’s finding is eating him alive.
His eyes are flat where they used to be just empty. He looks at me sometimes like he’s trying to memorize my face.
I won’t let him go much longer. That’s not a plan. That’s a promise.
Tomorrow we’ll tell the family. Gia will cry.
Renzo will nod and grip the back of my neck in that way he has when words fail him.
Marco will demand to be the favorite uncle.
Nico will say something that makes everyone laugh.
Nonna Rosa will press her magnolia handkerchief to her face and whisper Mama’s name like a prayer.
Tomorrow.
But tonight I hold my wife. I hold what’s coming. And I breathe.
Just breathe.
THANK YOU