THREE YEARS LATER
Stretching my neck, I stare at my reflection in the mirror.
“You look handsome, Daddy,” Luca says. My eyes find his in the mirror. His are deep pools of brown—full of happiness and trust. Three years old and, along with his two-year-old sister, Raven, the apple of mine and his mother’s eye.
“Thanks, son,” I say, flashing him a smile in the mirror that makes him giggle. “Not as handsome as you though.”
“And not as beautiful as Mommy,” he adds with an assured nod.
“No, definitely not as beautiful as your mommy.”
The door bursts open and Max walks through it, carrying the three-month-old Maximo Junior in the crook of his arm. “You not bolted yet, Loz?” He gives a wicked laugh and slaps me on the back.
“Fuck you,” I mutter quietly so Luca doesn’t hear me.
Max smiles at my reflection. “You look good, compagno. You okay?”
I slide my finger beneath the collar of my shirt and roll my neck again. “Why does everyone keep asking me if I’m okay?” He’s the third person in the past half hour who’s asked me that.
“Because it’s a big day.” His eyes meet mine in the mirror.
I know what they’re all thinking. It’s taken three long years and a hell of a lot of red tape to get us here. Who would have thought that getting a divorce from a dead man could be so difficult? Before I can reply to Max, Dante bounds through the door with two kids in his arms and another six scurrying around his feet. My daughter runs to me, clambering up my leg until I lift her and pull her close. She squishes my cheeks together and I press a soft kiss on her perfect little nose.
Max rolls his eyes. “How did we wind up with all the tiny demons in here?”
“They followed me,” Dante says with a shrug. “I’m like the Pied Piper or something. Besides, there are blow dryers and perfume and way too many people fussing around in that room. The kids are better in here with us, where there’s a giant ass TV.”
I place Raven on the floor to play with her brother and cousins. Maximo glances around the room, still holding onto Maximo Junior while his daughters, Bella and Jess, take control of the TV remote. “How in the hell did we end up with all these kids?” he asks with an exaggerated sigh. “I mean they outnumber us by far too many for my liking.”
Dante looks around the room at all of our kids laughing and playing together and a smile spreads across his face. Ten cousins all growing up in one house—it can get rowdy. They adore one another, and although they fight and squabble constantly, they fight for each other as much as against. They’re going to rule the fucking world together once they’re all grown. And nobody knows besides us yet, but Mia and I are about to add one more to the brood. We didn’t plan a third, but I spend so much time inside her, those odds were never going to be in our favor.
“So, how you doing, brother?” Dante asks.
I roll my eyes, but before I can snap at him for asking that fucking question, the door opens again. “Jess, please don’t take off your dress, sweetheart,” Joey says, spying her daughter about to pull her beautiful yellow dress off over her head.
“I hate dresses, Mommy,” Jess whines. “I want to wear a suit like the boys.”
“I know, baby, but it’s only for a few hours,” Joey replies sweetly.
“You should have let her wear whatever she wanted.” My niece is every bit as headstrong as her mother.
“She told me yesterday that she wanted to wear a dress!” Joey throws her arms in the air. “The child is a law unto herself.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” Dante says good-naturedly, giving our sister a kiss on the cheek.
“Hey!” Joey playfully swats his chest.
Max wraps an arm around her, their son drifting off to sleep cradled against his chest. “You look beautiful, baby girl.”
“Thank you,” she says, her cheeks flushed.
“What are you doing in here anyway?” Dante asks. “Did Mia send you in here to make sure Lorenzo wasn’t having a breakdown?”
I scowl at my brother in the mirror.
“Nope.” Joey shrugs. “That woman is as cool as a goddamn cucumber.”
Dante laughs. “She kinda has to be to put up with Lorenzo.”
The three of them start talking about the ceremony, but their chatter fades away and becomes white noise. I feel a heaviness in my heart that I was expecting, but it rankles just the same.
“I need to see her,” I say, interrupting their chatter and making the three of them stare back at me through the mirror.
“Who? Mia?” Joey asks with a frown.
“Yes.”
“You can’t. It’s bad luck,” she insists.
“I need to see her, Joey. Make it happen.”
She blinks at me. “Lorenzo? Are you—”
“Just do it. Please.”
“Okay. Okay. I’ll think of something.” She gives me a reassuring smile, but Max and Dante watch me with concern.
Five minutes later, I’m standing in the pantry with the door open waiting for my bride and under strict instructions from my kid sister that I will, under no circumstances, step out of this tiny room and look at Mia before the ceremony.
Her soft footsteps approach and my heart beats harder in my chest. The scent of her perfume makes my cock twitch. I’m so tempted to go out there so I can pull my fiancée into my arms, but I made Joey a promise.
“Hey you,” she says softly. Her shadow falls across the floor, and I figure she’s leaning against the wall right outside the door.
“Hey.” I reach my hand out for hers, and she laces her fingers through mine. Her skin is warm and soft like silk.
I swallow the thick knot of emotion stuck in my throat.
She squeezes my hand tighter. “She would be proud of you, you know that, right?”
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes. This woman has such a beautiful fucking soul, and I don’t know what I ever did to deserve her. How many women would comfort their husband-to-be on their wedding day because they thought they were thinking about someone else? “I love you,” I rasp.
“I know.”
“You have any idea how much restraint it’s taking to not pull you into this pantry with me and kiss you?”
“Only kiss me?” She giggles softly.
“Well, it would start with a kiss at least.”
“And within two minutes I’d be bent over with my beautiful wedding dress around my waist?” she whispers seductively.
“Don’t be putting ideas in my head, sunshine.” Visions of her bent over with my cock inside her later aren’t enough to shake this uneasy feeling I’m carrying though. I lift her hand to my lips and brush them across her knuckles. A deep sigh rumbles through my chest.
“It’s okay for you to think about her, Lorenzo. I’m thinking of her too.”
“You are?”
“Yes. I’m grateful to her for making you the man you are today, and I always will be. I’ve been thinking about her all morning. What her dress was like. How excited she must have been to marry you.”
Thinking about my first wedding day, I smile. Me thinking about Anya isn’t an issue for Mia, I know that with my whole heart, but not talking to her about it is. It’s a mistake I made a long time ago and never will again. “She wore a white silk dress,” I say, picturing her walking down the aisle toward me. “The corset was tied so tight she almost fainted at the altar.”
“Were you nervous?”
“Fuck yeah.” I laugh. “My father had all but disowned me. Anya’s family did the same to her. But nothing had ever felt so right before.”
“Are you nervous today?” she asks softly.
“No. Not even a little,” I admit, pressing a soft kiss on her knuckles. I’ve never been so sure of anything as making this woman my wife. “You?”
“Nope.”
“Kind of feels like every single moment in my life was supposed to lead me right here. To you. To Luca and Raven.”
“And the accidental jellybean,” she whispers.
“Yeah, and him too.”
“Him?”
“I got a feeling.” I shrug.
She chuckles lightly. “Me too, actually.”
The silence hangs between us for a few moments. “I didn’t ask to see you because I was thinking about Anya.”
“You didn’t?”
My heart sinks and I close my eyes. “No.”
“Then what is it?” she asks, her voice tinged with concern.
“I have something I need to tell you. But I need you to know that I did what I did for me, tesoro. It shouldn’t stain your conscience.”
“You killed Jake,” she says—a statement not a question.
“You knew?”
“I suspected it was no accident. I figured you’d tell me when you were ready.”
“I don’t want to have any secrets when I make you my wife. I shouldn’t have kept it from you this long.” I squeeze her hand tighter and brush my thumb over her knuckles. “But I didn’t want you to feel any guilt about what happened because it was between me and him, not you. Then a few days later, Luca was born and, well, there never seemed to be a good time to break your heart.”
“You’re not breaking my heart. I understand why you did what you did. I get now why a man like you can’t let those kinds of things lie. And it’s okay. The way you protect the people you care about is one of the million things I’ve grown to love about you.”
“Thank you, and not just for this. Thank you for loving me, sunshine. For giving me Luca and Raven and the new little guy. For bringing me joy beyond anything I could’ve imagined ever having again. And thank you for thinking about Anya today. It means everything to me.”
“She’s a part of you, Lorenzo, and I love all of you.”
I know that she means that too. There isn’t a spiteful, cruel, or jealous bone in this woman’s entire body. “I love you too, sunshine. Are you okay?”
“I’m perfect.”
“Yes you are.”
She laughs. “I didn’t mean—”
“I did.” I’m seconds away from pulling her into this room with me. “You’re better than perfect, Mia. You’re fucking incredible. You and our children are everything to me, you know that, right?”
“You’re everything to me too, Sir.”
I can’t stand not having her in my arms for a single second longer. Closing my eyes, I pull her into the pantry with me.
“Lorenzo!” she squeals as her body crashes into mine.
“I’ve got my eyes closed,” I tell her, wrapping my arms around her waist and savoring the heat of her body through my shirt.
“Me too,” she giggles. “I don’t want to see you until I’m walking down the aisle.”
I dust my lips over hers and she shivers in my arms. “We’d better make this quick before Joey comes in here and busts us.”
“So kiss me, Mr. Moretti.”
“With pleasure, Mrs. Moretti.” I seal my lips over hers, licking across the seam until she opens wide for me, allowing me to slide my tongue inside.
Mia
Apart from the days Luca and Raven were born, this has been the most incredible day of my life. I almost cried when I saw Lorenzo and our son waiting for me at the end of the aisle. And then Lorenzo turned and looked at me, and his face …
I wipe away a tear as I recall the amount of happiness and love in his eyes. Since the night he gave me his collar, I have never once doubted his love for me, but to see it so raw and primal today nearly made my knees buckle before I reached him. This day has been difficult for him in some ways. Unlike mine, his first marriage was a happy one. Anya was the love of his life, or at least she was a love of his life, because I know that I am too. He used to feel guilty for loving me, but now he sometimes feels guilty for still loving her and I wish he wouldn’t. His loyalty and passion are two of my favorite things about him.
Someone places a glass of champagne in my hand, and I accept it with a smile. As soon as their back is turned, Lorenzo switches it out for his empty one, giving me a knowing wink. At eight weeks pregnant with our third child, alcohol is definitely off limits for now, which is fine at this huge wedding reception, but later, when it’s just close family in the kitchen, it won’t be so easy to hide. Apparently, an intimate get-together in the kitchen with just the siblings, and Max and Kat of course, is a Moretti family wedding tradition.
Looking around, I can’t help but sigh at the sight of people dancing and laughing, Raven and Luca playing with their cousins while Joey, Max, Dante, and Kat keep an eye on them for the evening. Lorenzo Moretti isn’t a dancer, but he happily took the floor with me for our wedding song, and now I’m content to sit beside him with his arm draped around my shoulder. As long as he’s by my side, I’m happy and at peace. It’s hard to believe that a man so dangerous and violent is the man who makes me feel safer and more cherished than I ever have in my life.
“You feeling okay, sunshine?” he asks, searching my face with narrowed eyes.
“Never better,” I assure him.
“Good, because I have a surprise for you.” He takes my hand and pulls me up from my chair and the music stops abruptly. Lorenzo grins down at me, but I’m too confused to smile back. Then the opening bars of “Bright Side of the Road” play, and I swear my heart actually skips a beat.
Lorenzo gestures to the dance floor. “Will you dance with me, Mrs. Moretti?”
“This … it’s …”
“Our song.” He guides me toward his siblings, our children, and our nieces and nephews on the dance floor and wraps his arms around my waist. I giggle when he dips me, and when he pulls me back up and we begin dancing, a dreamy sigh falls from my lips.
“You hate dancing,” I remind him.
“But I’d do anything for you, sunshine.” He gives me a soft kiss on the lips.
“Daddy!” Raven demands, pulling on the leg of his suit pants.
He rolls his eyes and scoops her up, keeping one arm around my waist as he rubs his beard against her cheek, making her giggle. Luca sidles up to me, curling his little hand in mine and shaking his hips to the music.
“He definitely got your rhythm,” Lorenzo says.
“You have pretty good rhythm yourself,” I reply with a wicked grin.
His eyes darken and then he winks at me. We dance to our song, surrounded by Dante and Kat with their kids, and Joey and Max with theirs, and Toni joins us too. When the chorus kicks in, we all sing along, even my Lorenzo. I place my free hand over my stomach, delighted over our family growing bigger. This must be a fairytale, right? No one could ever possibly be this happy.
Lorenzo presses his lips against my ear. “I love you, sunshine.”
My smile widens. Yes, a person truly can be this happy. “I love you too.”
