“Franco, I’d like to ask your permission to propose to your daughter,” I tell him. “I want your blessing. I’m not saying when I will propose. I’m not saying it will be soon. But I know damn well that I’m going to want to – need to – and I’m not ashamed to ask you, man to man, for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
Aida is staring at me with her mouth open wide, shock dancing across her expression. Lyndsey blinks with tears in her eyes.
Even Franco looks a little choked up.
“Well, shit,” he sighs. “You have it, Arty. You’ve got my blessing.”
“Thank you, Frankie,” I say. “That means a damn lot.”
Aida’s hand gets tighter and tighter around mine like she can barely hold on, like she thinks she’s going to float up and away and out of this moment, landing in some deranged land where I didn’t claim her and she isn’t mine.
But I did. And she is.
Nothing is ever going to change that.
“Oh, how exciting,” Lyndsey says, fluttering her hands together in hummingbird claps. She sits up and smiles broadly. “A little tip for the proposal, Arturo—”
“Mom.”
“Please, I’m all ears,” I smirk, enjoying seeing my queen squirm a little.
“Aida has always dreamed of going to the Grand Canyon. Ever since she was a girl, she’s said—”
“Mom, seriously,” Aida says, her cheeks flaring. “This is next-level embarrassing.”
“I know what she dreamed,” I growl softly.
“What?” Aida says. “How?”
“You dreamed of standing at the edge and singing into the canyon. You dreamed of hearing your voice come back to you from a hundred different places.”
Aida tilts her head at me. Lyndsey gasps dramatically. Even Franco’s eyebrows perk up, as he leans forward and asks, “Arty, how the hell did you know that?”
“I know her,” I say. “She loves singing. More than anything.”
“Almost anything,” she murmurs, shooting me a meaningful look with those excited bright eyes.
Does that mean she loves me as fiercely as I love her?
“So just to make this clear,” Franco says, sitting back with a grin I haven’t seen in years. “You got rid of the assholes who’ve been tormenting me for most of my adult life. You handled his Cartel friends. You saved my daughter’s life. And now you’re a fucking mind reader, too? What’s next, flying?”
We all crack up at that, the four of us, and then even Jackal stands up and starts padding back and forth, howling and whining through a grin.
Whatever happened next I know we can face the future together.
With Aida and the family, we’re going to build together, nothing can wreck us.
Nothing can wreck what we have.
Our love is the strongest thing in the world.
Chapter Twenty
Aida
I wake the next day sensing that my Arturo isn’t beside me.
All night, I woke up to claw across the silk sheets and grab onto him, feeling the heat of his body, burning beneath the muscles. Or hug closer to him if he already had me in his arms, laying my cheek against his chest so that I could hear the rumbling of his heartbeat.
To confirm that he was there, that yesterday with Mom and Dad – and when he turned into a beast to save me – wasn’t all a little girl’s fantasy.
No, it’s real, it happened.
He’s mine.
And I’m his.
The sun is glowing through the silk curtains, already hanging above the horizon, the room flooded with the curtain-filtered sunlight. I sit up and look around at the floating red motes, letting out a yawn.
After everything happened – not to mention the wild way Arturo unleashed on me last night – I’m still tired despite it probably being almost lunchtime.
I dress in some sweatpants and a hoodie, my best bet if I want comfortable clothes around the estate. Arturo wouldn’t want anybody seeing me in a bathrobe.
That’s just for him.
And it feels so good to be his personal plaything, my womb blazing hotter and firmer each moment, silently telling me that she’s doing her work. She’s taken Arturo’s seed and now she’s going to paint us a future with it.
I make my way through the house, heading down to the main balcony. Arturo likes to eat out there. Otherwise, he’ll probably be in the gym or in the city for work.
I hear him as I approach the balcony, his voice raised, and another man’s voice beneath it.
I freeze when I reach the door.
The other voice belongs to the man who kidnapped me, the man in the leather jacket who tapped the silencer of his gun against the glass.
“Aida,” Arturo growls from the other side of the door. “It’s okay. Come here, please. Nobody is ever going to hurt you.”
I walk onto the balcony, finding Arturo stood with his back to the railing, his hands behind his back, clean shaven and ready to do business in his dark blue suit. His silver hair is swept, and his near black eyes glint as he stares at me, and then nods at the man sitting between us.
At first, I think I’ve made a mistake. This man is completely bald, as though he’s shaved recently. His cheeks are sunken. He looks broken. But then I look closer, and I see I’m right, it’s him. He has the same eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” Elmo says. “Aida, Miss Capullo. I am so, sorry.”
“Tell her what you told me,” Arturo grunts.
Elmo licks his lips, wringing his hands. Jackal brushes up against me and I absentmindedly let my hand move through his fur. The big dog gives a rumble of protection. I tickle his scruff, letting him know it’s okay, and he settles down.
“I was forced to kidnap you by the Peacekeepers. They threatened my niece in California. They even kidnapped them once. I’m sorry. I was a fucking junkie, an idiot. I’ve been a junkie for too damn long now. When they took me – when they broke me out of that cell – do you know what I did after I finally fought them off and won my freedom? I locked myself away. I waited for the shivers to pass. I waited for my self-respect to come back. I knew if I went out into the world, I’d find drugs and use again.”
“And then he returned here,” Arturo says, “to accept his punishment.”
“Punishment?” I mutter.
Arturo nods gruffly, his eyes hard.
“Whatever you want done with him, that will be his fate,” he snarls. “He scared you. He betrayed me—threats or no threats. But kidnapping you is by far his worst crime. So it’s only fitting that you choose his punishment.”
“But if he never kidnapped me,” I say, “we wouldn’t be together.”
Arturo grinds his teeth, then sighs. “No, Aida. I don’t accept that logic. It doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“He did frighten me,” I say, glancing at him.
He looks so sunken, so lost.
“Do you believe him, Arturo?” I say, turning back to my man. “Do you believe it was the drugs? Do you think he can change?”
Arturo is silent for a long time, his eyes off in the past.
Finally, he nods.
“I think so,” he says. “But it’s your choice.”