EPILOGUE 1
Ayear ago, I would’ve laughed in someone’s face if they told me this would become my life. Not because it sounded impossible. Because men like me didn’t get to keep things this good.
Instead I would’ve bet money this would end in blood.Mine, probably.
The resort sat buried high in the Alps, wrapped in snow thick enough to silence the world beyond it. Private. Remote. The kind of place people with too much money and too many secrets escaped to when they wanted to disappear for a while.
It was quieter here than Sicily. Not silent. Never that. There was always noise—wind pushing through pine trees, distant laughter carrying across snow, the muffled scrape of skis against packed ice outside the resort. But it felt cleaner somehow.Like the world had softened beneath all the white.
The kids had spent the entire day turning it into complete chaos. Romano and Matteo nearly launched themselves off a staircase trying to wrestle. Sophie convinced Kyra to start a snowball war against Antonio until Alessia threatened all of them with early bedtime.
I stood near the edge of the slope, watching Roxanne absolutely fail to snowboard.
“Rox,” I called out as she nearly wiped out again, “you’ve got the balance of a drunk baby deer.”
“Shut up,” she snapped immediately before losing balance again.
Kyra’s laughter echoed across the slope. “Mamma sucks at this.”
“Language,” Marcello said calmly from beside me.
Kyra stuck her tongue out at him innocently. “You say worse.”
Marcello adjusted Valentino higher against his chest without missing a beat. “That’s because I’ve earned it.”
A smirk tugged at my mouth.
The kid in his arms looked deeply offended by the cold, bundled in enough winter layers to survive an arctic expedition. Watching the world with those same sharp grey eyes people used to warn others about when they looked at me. Only on him, they looked almost ridiculous.
He glared suspiciously at everyone like he was personally evaluating whether we deserved to exist near his mother.
My son.
The realisation still hit strangely sometimes. Because there’d been a time I genuinely believed I’d never survive long enough to have this.
“What are you glaring at?” Marcello asked dryly.
Valentino blinked once. Still suspicious. Marcello sighed like the child had exhausted him beyond repair before lifting him easily into his arms anyway.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s get you inside before you catch a cold.”
A strange warmth settled inside me as I watched him disappear toward the resort with my son balanced against his shoulder like he’d been doing it forever.
Fatherhood had softened the edges around family without dulling the man beneath them. And that was the thing about Marcello that people got wrong. Everyone feared the violence first.They never noticed the control it took for a man like him to choose softness instead.
Darius had survived the warehouse. For a while, anyway.Nobody told me exactly what Marcello did to him after that. They didn’t need to.
For nearly a month, he came home some nights with blood across his knuckles and a silence in him that felt colder than usual. Roxanne never asked questions. She just cleaned his hands carefully while he watched her like he was trying to punish himself for not protecting her sooner.
And then one day, it stopped. No more blood. No more late-night disappearances.
Just Marcello standing behind Roxanne in the kitchen one morning, holding her a little tighter than usual while she laughed at something Kyra said. Like some part of him had finally buried a ghost that had been haunting her for too long.
Hours later, by the time the kids finally went to sleep, the resort had gone quiet beneath the storm outside. Alessia and Antonio disappeared into their room not long after, leaving the lower floor wrapped in low firelight and silence.
I walked into the sitting room and immediately stopped.Roxanne stood near the fireplace wearing a black silk nightgown that barely covered the tops of her thighs.
Fuck me.
The thin fabric clung to every dangerous curve of her body, dark hair falling loose over one shoulder while amber firelight slid across warm golden skin.
And Marcello—the bastard—sat stretched across one of the loungers with a whiskey in one hand and his iPad balanced against his thigh like this woman wasn’t standing half naked three feet away.
Roxanne walked straight toward him, climbed into his lap without hesitation, and plucked the iPad from his hands.
“No more work.”
Marcello barely looked up. “Five more minutes.”
“You said that twenty minutes ago.”
“Because you’re distracting.”
“You seemed very focused to me.”
He took the iPad back smoothly. “That’s discipline.”
I tsked from the doorway. Roxanne turned slightly when she heard me and—
Christ.
That smile still hit me low and hard.
Marcello glanced up finally, gaze flicking toward me before settling back on her.
“He’s staring again.”
“Can you blame me? She looks absolutely ravishing and you’re busy looking into the screen. Stronzo,” I said honestly.
Roxanne laughed. Marcello muttered in Sicilian beneath his breath before setting the iPad and his glasses aside entirely at last.
“Happy now?”
“Much,” she said, kissing his cheek.
She slid off his lap slowly before turning toward me. A year later and she still wrecked me on sight. And yeah. I was absolutely fucked.
Because that was the thing about Roxanne. No matter how much time passed, my body still reacted to her like it had been denied something vital for years. And she still looked at me like she hadn’t fully gotten used to me being here either. Like part of her still found this impossible.
I crossed the room slowly until I reached her, my hands sliding instinctively down her waist before pulling her flush against my bare chest. Warm silk. Warm skin beneath. Fucking lethal combination.
Mine.
Not owned. Not possessed. Not in the clean way decent men loved. In the dangerous way, starving men looked at their last meal.
My mouth brushed slowly against hers. Soft at first. Then deeper like I’d been thinking about it all day. Because I had.
When she leaned into me with a quiet sound, it punched the air from my lungs. She rolled her hips against my cock slow enough to drive me fucking insane.
Behind her, Marcello took a slow sip of whiskey.
“Careful,” he said lazily. “She’ll forget I’m still in the room.”
Roxanne smiled against my mouth. “Impossible.”
I kissed her again anyway. Because I could. Because she let me. Because I’d spent too many years wanting her to waste the chance I’d finally been given.
A year ago, every touch between us tasted like conflict. Somehow, now, it felt like home. I thought loving her would eventually destroy all of us. Instead, it built something.
Her fingers slid into my hair, tugging just enough to make my cock twitch painfully as I pulled her closer, the silk of her nightgown riding over her hips beneath my hands while the fire cracked behind us.
I squeezed her ass hard, kneading, dragging her against my cock shamelessly until she whimpered into my mouth because self-control stopped existing around her a long time ago.
Marcello watched us over the rim of his glass, calm as ever, though I caught the slight tightening in his jaw when Roxanne melted further into me.
Jealousy still existed between us sometimes. It no longer felt sharp enough to destroy what we had built, outweighing her happiness.
Marcello still looked at me sometimes like he was imagining all the ways he could bury my body. The difference was—now he handed me whiskey after.
Roxanne pulled back slightly, breath uneven, eyes darker now as her gaze flicked between us. There was no fear in her anymore when she looked at us like that. No shame either.Just trust. And want.
And fuck—that might’ve been the most dangerous thing of all. Because trusting us this much should’ve terrified her. Instead she melted into it.
Marcello moved behind her slowly, one hand settling at her waist before he pulled her back against his chest. His mouth found the pulse beneath her ear, slow enough to make her shiver. The air changed with it. The kind of charged stillness that made all three of us aware there was no going back.
I watched her eyes flutter shut. Watched her finally stop bracing against wanting. And maybe that was the thing none of us understood in the beginning.
This was never about destruction or competition. It was about finally finding a place where none of us had to divide ourselves to be loved.
Marcello’s fingers curled lightly around her jaw, guiding her gaze toward him.
“Are you sure?” Marcello asked carefully.
That more than anything almost undid me. Because even now—even here—he was still making sure she wanted this.Roxanne turned slightly toward him, her fingers sliding slowly along his wrist before she nodded once.
“I’m sure.”
The room seemed to hold its breath around the words. As though something irreversible had finally settled between us.
Most nights, she still slept in Marcello’s bed. Some nights, she crawled into mine instead. And every single time it still felt like I’d stolen something sacred.
But this was different. This was the first time none of us were pretending this thing between us existed separately. The first time we were choosing it together.
Roxanne looked at Marcello again then, softer this time.
“Are you okay with this?”
Marcello went still for half a second before his hand slipped beneath the silk at her thigh, fingers dragging slowly higher, until they settled on the mound of her pussy.
“For you?” he murmured against her skin. “Always.”
Fuck.
That shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did. A sharp pang lodged itself behind my ribs at that. Not jealousy. A far more dangerous ruin: love.