Epilogue
Pfeiffer
The first thing I notice is that nobody looks surprised. Not when we walk into the wedding reception, Fiero’s hand wrapped firmly around mine. Nor when he pulls a chair out for me at the table. Nor when he presses a kiss to my lips halfway through dinner like it’s instinct.
Nobody questions it and nobody challenges it, because this isn’t a secret anymore.
I’m not hidden in shadows or tucked away behind closed doors. I’m not a weakness he’s trying to bury beneath a cloak of loyalty and revenge.
But I am his obsession—he’s made that very clear.
He rarely lets me out of his sight. There’s armed security outside my father’s apartment, and on my tail wherever I go.
I don’t mind it really—it’s Fiero’s way of keeping me safe.
It’s as though now that he has me, he isn’t going to let anything come between us again.
The wedding itself is beautiful. After a long engagement, Contessa Castellano and Benito Bernadi have finally walked down the aisle, and what a pretty aisle it was.
They chose one of the grandest chapels in the city and had the very best florists fill it with hothouse peonies and tulips. The bride wore white to the wedding but black to the reception dinner and looked utterly stunning in both.
Two of her sisters are carrying young children in their arms while the third bustles about straightening trains and veils, holding bouquets and occasionally spinning her small niece and nephew around the tables. They look so happy and content it brings tears to my eyes.
I always thought of the Di Santo’s and their associates as monsters, but seeing them with their families and women they are obviously crazy about, makes me see beyond their reputations to the people they are beneath.
To think of them as monsters now would be hypocritical too, because I, now, am deeply in love with a mafia don.
Since I walked back into the club, we’ve been almost inseparable. He’s been harshly protective by day, tender and adoring at night. I split my time doing shifts at the hospital, a night a week at the club and plenty of moments with Dad.
Yet, no matter what I’m absorbed in, I can’t stay away for long. Fiero Bellucci always beckons me home with a dark brow and wetted lips.
Months ago, I would’ve felt wildly out of place here. But now, I sit beside the most dangerous man in the room while his fingers lazily trace circles on the inside of my wrist beneath the tablecloth, and it doesn’t make me recoil anymore.
I feel Fiero’s warm gaze on the side of my face.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, smiling.
His brothers have each come around to our relationship in their own time and their own way.
Remo, despite his early plea, has struggled the most, but I understand. After what they went through as boys, I don’t blame any of them for taking time to accept me. They’re being asked to change a narrative they’ve clung onto their entire young adult lives.
Cassio was the most readily accepting, but would occasionally catch himself being pleasant to me, then scowl as if he worried he’d gone too far.
Brando barely says a word, but the glares have softened, which I take as a good sign.
There’s only one person I still don’t know how to be around. Vivienne.
Fiero’s Head of House has been standoffish more than she’s been kind, though the scales are tipping to the latter more these days.
I return Fiero’s soft stare. “Can I ask you about Vivienne?”
His jaw ticks. “Sure. What about her?”
“You’re close with her.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but I stop him.
“I don’t mean in a way that’s a problem. I just… I’d like to understand. She means something to you. And you to her.”
He shifts around on his chair and turns me so our knees touch and our hands are clasped between us.
“Vivienne is…” He looks up and sighs. “Vivienne is the reason I began to talk again.”
My whole body warms, not with jealousy because she got to be that reason, but with gratitude. “How?”
“Her ex-husband used to drag her along to Atlantic City every fall and make her watch while he’d gamble, drink, take drugs, hire girls. He treated her like shit.”
I now feel terrible for assuming she was nothing more than a cold-hearted woman.
“We were similar back then. Both of us sitting in corners, watching. She was waiting for the moment when her ex would snap and drag her back to their hotel room to beat her into submission. I would wait for the moments when assholes like him tried to screw over the house, then I’d give them my own particular brand of punishment. ”
“But… didn’t you help her?”
He breathes steadily. “Not right away.” He glances down at our hands, his tone regretful.
“My job was to protect the business, not every woman whose husband couldn’t handle the drink and flew fists whenever he lost.”
My stomach twists into a painful knot.
“But one night, I was off duty and I came out of the casino for a smoke. I heard her screams coming from a side alley. I was sick to the bones of hearing that kind of sound and decided enough was enough. I rounded the corner, found him pummelling her half to death, and put a bullet in his head without even blinking.”
“Oh my God,” I whisper. “Was she okay?”
“Not at first. She left Atlantic City the next day, but a year later, she came back. That time she fucking enjoyed herself, gambling her ex’s money and sampling the cocktails.
She would sit with me some nights and just talk to me, even though I never said a word back to her.
Everyone else had… given up on me, I guess. ”
I feel a tear roll down my cheek.
“I started to look forward to seeing her. She came to Atlantic City more often and I would cut out articles from the papers for her—pieces about poker and food and stuff I thought she’d be interested in. I suppose we became friends.”
His brow dips into a line and a heaviness falls over his shoulders.
“Then she told me I should start up business on my own. She’d been watching the dynamic between my father and I.
Said that I’d saved her and now it was her turn to save me.
But I didn’t listen. All I knew at that point was how to keep my mouth shut and my fists bloody.
Not many businesses called for that, you know? ”
He looks up with a wry smile on his lips and I want to sink into his deep, trusting eyes.
“Eventually, she lost patience trying to convince me and announced she was leaving Atlantic City—for good.”
A long pause follows and he brushes his thumb over my hand, thoughtfully.
“It felt like I was losing my mama all over again. I hadn’t realized that’s what she’d become—a mother figure. Watching her lose confidence in me and walk away felt like a stab in the chest. So I called after her…”
I tighten my grip on his hands.
“That was the first time I used my voice in years.”
It was a long time ago and I was only in the picture as a villain everyone despised, but I would have been proud of him. I am proud of him. He’s the most impressive man I’ve ever known.
“From that moment on, I threw myself into the club. Not this one, but the first iteration down in Jersey City. Vivienne’s been by my side the entire time.
She could run this place if she wanted to, but she doesn’t.
She just wants to play a role and support me and my brothers.
She saw the way our father treated us and she doesn’t have kids of her own. She kind of adopted us, I guess.”
My heart suddenly explodes with love for Vivienne and I completely understand why she reacted to me the way she did for so long.
I feel Fiero’s lashes lift. “She likes you, you know.”
I blink in surprise. “She does?”
“The amount of shit she gave me when I let you leave… Jesus. Anyone would’ve thought I’d killed every member of her family.”
“You didn’t, though,” I check, squinting.
“Just the one.”
“Okay.”
Then he looks up, a glint in his eye. “Dance with me.”
I blush furiously as if everyone in the room heard his command. He stands and extends his arm, and there’s something almost old-fashioned about the gesture.
For all his hurt and brutality and darkness, Fiero loves with a softness I need.
The room seems to waltz around us as he leads me onto the dance floor. His palm settles against my waist and every part of me stills instinctively beneath the weight of it.
It’s not fear that makes me still, though. It’s trust.
After all the pain and destruction and all the ways we nearly ruined each other, I trust him.
Fiero studies my face carefully. “Are you okay? What is it?”
I smile up at him. “Nothing.”
“Why do you stare at me?” he says, smiling.
“Because I like when you stare back.”
He doesn’t take another breath before he comes down on my lips and kisses me fully, in front of the Bellucci’s, the Di Santos’s and every other mobster worth his salt.
I love this man.
I still think he’s beautiful. Not in the polished way male models are beautiful, but the kind of beautiful that feels dangerous to stare at for too long. With his sharp suits, dark eyes and permanently sinful mouth.
When he detaches his lips he lifts his lashes. “Are you happy?” he asks suddenly.
The question catches me off guard because there’s vulnerability underneath it.
I slide my hand up the back of his neck. “Yes,” I whisper honestly. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.”
That night, he touches me like he’s still afraid I’ll disappear.
Moonlight spills through the bedroom windows while Manhattan glows gold beneath us. We’re naked between cool sheets—a relief after the blistering Long Island sunshine.
Leaning on one arm, his other hand moves slowly to my waist—still the only place he’s touched. Tonight, I want to feel his hands everywhere. He presses his weight into me, his fingers digging lightly into my skin.
His forehead presses against mine as his cock rubs me between my legs working me up into a heated state.
“Are you okay?” he whispers.
The fact he still asks me, every single time, makes my throat swell with emotion.
I look up into his eyes and nod. “Yes, Fiero. I’m more than fine. I want you to touch me.”