27. Franco
27
FRANCO
F or the rest of my life, I would cling to this memory.
Stunning Chloe silent. Wowing her and maybe giving her a little dose of actual shock.
Her mouth dropped after I told her my intentions. Her lips remained parted in an O that gave me filthy ideas. It was nice to know my girl still loved giving head. But it was even nicer to know that she wanted to stay with me.
For good, I hoped. Officially, as my wife.
We were only ten years late to make it happen.
“Will you marry me, Chloe Dawson?”
She clamped her lips shut and strained to swallow. Not long ago, before we started talking and relaxing, she seemed sleepy and lazy, so lax snuggled in bed with me. Now, her eyes were wide open. Clear and alert.
“What did you just say?”
I grinned, enjoying this way, way too much. I'd wanted to say those words to her so many times when we were younger. We talked about marriage and loosely agreed that, yeah, of course, we’d get married one day. We were adamant back then that we were soulmates, that it was Kismet for us to meet and fall in love, no matter how young we were. According to that one saying, When you know, you know . Well, when we knew, we knew.
“Marry me, Chloe.” I slid closer to her, needing to feel more of her soft, warm body flush to mine. “I won’t let you go again. I hated that I did before. I won’t let you go. Or Caleb. I want you both in my life for good, officially.”
“Oh, Franco…” She sighed, speechless for more. Her eyes shone with tears, but the happy smile on her face led me to believe she was holding back tears of joy.
“I want a chance to get to know my son. Our son. I want a chance to have another child with you. All the kids we want. I’ve lost too much time with you, and I want the opportunity to have my time now.”
She sniffled, blinking back the tears that built along her lids. “I’m… Damn. Sorry. You’re overwhelming me.”
“In a good way?”
She leaned in to kiss me. “In a very good way! This is more than I ever could have counted on happening.”
“Why?” I had to understand. “What will it take to show you that I love you with all that I am?”
Her smile was soft and delicate. “I feared you’d be so mad. All this time, the longer I kept Caleb from you, my fears worsened and deepened. I was nervous to get my hopes up too high. This is, literally, all that I could have ever dreamed for.”
I wiped my thumbs over her cheeks, swiping the stubborn tears away. “Don’t cry.”
“It’s a happy cry.” She kissed me again. “I dared to hope that you’d still love me. I’m not doubting you. I’m battling the walls I built up to protect myself. I’m knocking over all the times I told myself to be realistic, the assumptions that I stacked up that claimed you’d never forgive me for hiding your son from you.”
“If you’d tried to hide him for any other reason than to keep him safe…”
She shook her head. “No. Hell no. He’s your son, and I wanted you to have each other. It was all the other stuff in life that stood in the way. You don’t understand how hard it was. I ran from you. I broke it off with you in such a bold, sudden, and harsh manner by taking off without a goodbye. Yet, you loved me enough and knew yourself enough not to pursue me.”
“It was hard. So many times, I talked myself into looking for you, but I refrained from messing it up. I figured that you made your answer clear, that you didn’t want me.”
“No, Franco. Not at all. And in your not fighting for me, not chasing me, I was ‘free’ to experience the opposite. When I broke it off with Wes after only a few months, he couldn’t let me go. He was deranged. Obsessed. And in that difference, I saw how stupid I was to ever let you go.”
“You’re stuck with me now.”
She nodded, seeming excited to cling to that promise.
“But I need to know if you can be stuck with me.”
Her face changed to a deep frown as she reared back to look at me fully. “What do you mean?”
“Can you adjust to living with me? Living here and knowing what the family does?”
She’d always known. We started and built our relationship when she was a senior in high school, aware that the Constella name represented the Mafia. Her parents did their best to taint her views of what such an organization was like. That if it was a crime family, every member was automatically evil to the bone and the default enemy of anyone on the right side of law.
That was erroneous in so many ways, but most of all in the manner that grayness was unaccounted for. Supposedly, good people like cops, such as Wes Morrison, could do very bad things like abusing power and stalking defenseless women. Whereas, reputedly bad people like us Mafia men could do heroic things like killing true sinners and saving those who needed security.
“Can you try to adjust to this sort of life? Where sometimes the danger is higher and we need to lock down in the houses? When you’ll need to have bodyguards around you and Caleb at times?”
She sucked on her lower lip.
“It’s not always a world of high stakes like it is right now. It’s not always a constant of danger right on our doorstep. We do all we can to keep our homes as safe and free of business as possible.”
“I can see that,” she replied. “Nina, Tessa, and Eva have tried to explain a lot of this.”
I was glad that she had them. And that they had her. All four of them clicked like sisters.
“Most of the danger at the moment will be over soon.”
“With… the Giovannis?” she guessed.
“Yes. Dante, Romeo, and I, Liam as well, we’re very confident that our two top enemies will cancel each other out. The Devil’s Brothers MC and the Giovanni Family. We’ve been monitoring them and investigating both groups. It’s been a waiting game, because if we were to attack both, we’d be outnumbered. But any day now, we’ll get the news that they’d eliminated each other as they’re equally prone to infighting and making stupid, rash decisions that get people killed.”
Her sigh was soft against my face, and I was glad that she didn’t break eye contact. I knew this was hard for her. She was soft and light and all things that were good. I would always keep my darkness from her, but I had to know if she could compromise.
“What about Wes?”
I frowned. “What about him? I’ll kill him.” Coming out with that fact as bluntly as possible was the best method to discuss it. To the point and honest. Wes Morrison would be dead for all he’d done.
“Even if he wasn’t the one who put the hit out for those men to shoot the deli?”
“Of course. I will not let that man be a threat to the woman I love.”
To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Here I was telling her, point blank, that I intended to murder a man, and she didn’t blink or wince.
“I wished so many times that he’d die.” Her admission was a weak, carefully given whisper, and that surprised me even more. It was proof that she could lean between the black-and-white rigidity of good versus evil.
“So many times,” she repeated, firming her expression into one of pain and anger. “He was a monster to stalk me, to try to con me and trap me.”
“And we don’t need monsters like that in the world.”
She nodded. “So long as I remember that, that some monsters will get what they deserve, it’s nothing more than a reminder that Karma is at work.”
I exhaled a breath of relief. I wanted her to keep her goodness, her innocence, but it soothed me to know she was flexible with her moral compass, too. The last thing I needed was for her to assume I was a perfect hero who did no wrong. I never wanted her to view me as a villain, not completely.
“What’s your answer, Chloe?” I was determined to steer this conversation back on track. “Will you marry me?”
She nodded. “Yes, Franco, I’ll?—”
I frowned. Watching my reaction, she went still.
“Wait. Never mind.”
She gaped at me. “What?”
“Before you officially accept, I need to ask Caleb for his permission to marry you.”
She swooned, actually cooing an aww that made me smile.
I didn’t miss how protective he was of her. First when he asked if I’d keep her safe. Then further back, when he said he didn’t care if Wes was bothering him because it meant that Chloe was spared.
I didn’t want to barge into their family unit. All his life, that boy knew her as his mother in real time and only my name and likeness in a photo.
I wanted to do this right, and asking Caleb for his permission would go a long way toward understanding where our priorities should be.
“I love you, Franco.”
I kissed her. “I love you too.”
Finally, after years of trying to get over her and failing, I knew why.
It was impossible. We belonged together. As we lay together and closed our eyes, we fell asleep with the idea that tomorrow would bring us one day closer to the happy ending we should’ve had years ago.