“I’m not,” he stated firmly, bringing me into his chest where he cradled me tenderly against his body. “Just as I know you won’t abandon me while I’m in there. I’ll find a way to pay the fine and return to you. Then you’ll find a way to put this RICO case behind us both for good.”
I stared blindly at his black shirt as he held me, listening to the steady thud of his heart against my cheek. It lulled me more than his words had, reminding me that what he had between couldn’t die unless both of us did. It was in our blood and bones, in every beat of our hearts.
Even if he was in jail, we’d still belong to each other.
“I’ve always had to work so hard at everything. You shouldn’t have to fight this hard to be loved,” I whispered, feeling suddenly tired, defeated.
“Are you fucking kidding me, Elena? Fighting for love is an endless battle and it’s also the most epic war you’ll ever wage. I promise you, you find the right person, you’ll be willing to die on that battlefield, scarred and victorious. Why do you think I’m willing to do this?” He tipped my chin up so I had to look though my tear glazed eyes into his own coal dark ones. “I want to take ownership of my actions so that you have choices. So that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life as a fugitive from a country you fought hard to be a part of and succeed in. I won’t take that from you because I love you.”
“I’m not asking you to martyr yourself for me,” I countered. “It kills me that you think I need that when I’m being honest in saying I don’t. The old Elena needed the white wedding in the society pages and the nice brownstone and the office on the top floor. This Elena, your Elena, only needs you, our family, and a sense of adventure.”
“This is our next adventure,” he said in a way I knew he had made up his mind and would not be swayed. “I won’t leave New York a bleeding wound and run off to greener pastures. You deserve more. Addie, Chen, Jacopo, Frankie and maybe Marco deserve more not to mention all the other men in the outfit. They could die because I’m their boss. How can I let them die when I’m not even there to fight with them?”
The sigh that unraveled from my lips was as long as a ball of untangled yarn. “Dante…why do you have to be the most honorable bad guy in the entire world?”
He laughed, the sound gruff with relief. I let him hug me tighter and slowly moved my arms around his waist so I could hold him too.
“It’s definitely inconvenient,” he agreed. “But we can do this, lottatrice mia. If we can take down the capo dei capi of Napoli, we can find a way to rid myself of these bogus charges. Do you remember? Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore. Whoever is against this love, suffers and then dies.”
His words galvanized me as he meant them to, which irritated me, but not enough to ignore the truth in them.
I’d been planning to take down Dennis O’Malley before we fled the country, I had ideas and plans already set in motion. Maybe I could pick up those threads and continue to weave a new future with them.
I didn’t doubt my own abilities as a lawyer. I didn’t even doubt my resolve as Dante’s wife. I wouldn’t leave him, not even if the worst happened and he was imprisoned for life. My heart was his and always had been, just waiting in my chest for him to come along and activate it.
It was funny to think of love as passive, as if you could fall into it like stumbling over a misplaced shoe. Love required work, it didn’t just happen. Like a flower it required tending to, a serious of action to make it beautiful and fulfilled. I’d always thought love just happened and then it just stayed. How wrong I’d been.
Dante was right, love was worth fighting for and I’d been fighting for it unwittingly all my life. I’d fought for my siblings in Naples, for Daniel however poorly that had ended, and now, I could fight for Dante too, for however long it took to win.
“If you feel like you need to do this,” I said slowly, tipping my head up to look into the eyes of the only man I’d ever loved. “Then we’ll do it. I’m just scared.”
“That’s okay,” he murmured, drawing his thumb over my lower lip before he gently placed a kiss there. “I’m happy you care enough to be scared for me.”
“I’m scared for me, too,” I admitted, even though it hurt to rip that truth off my soul. “I’m afraid of what will happen to me without you? Will I go back to who I was before? Because she wasn’t happy or healthy.”
“Maybe not, but that version of you didn’t die, Lena. You just stopped cutting yourself in two and letting one side wither and die. You’re whole now, and you have much more to do with that than I do.”
I scoffed. “It wouldn’t have happened without you.”
His palms cupped my ass and lifted, taking me into his arms so he could sit down and place me comfortably in his lap again. Only when I was perfectly arranged to his liking, our left hands linked so our wedding rings faced up, did he respond to me. “Flowers don’t thank the sun for shining on them or the rain for its wet. Whatever happened to you because of knowing me was always in you to give. I think you just needed a little love to realize how magnificent you are. How magnificent you’ll continue to be even while I’m gone.”
“See,” I said, tears in my throat but banished from my eyes. I didn’t want my remaining time with Dante to be sullied by crying. “You always say the right thing. How do you do that?”
His smile was just a suggestion around his full lips, an implication and a secret all at once. It was intimate and small, not his usual full-bodied grin that he shared with everyone else. It was just for me.
“Some people have hobbies, art, music, playing sport. Mine is learning you.”
Twenty-Two
Elena
If you’d asked me before, I would have said I’d miss my life if I was forced from it. I liked my routine, the neat orderly line up of activities that got me through my day. The Sunday dinner with whomever of the twins and Mama were in town, the cases I spent hours after dark working on alone in my echoing home and the frequent TV and movie binge watch nights I had with Beau. I would have said I would miss it all. Even my bitterness, that constant aftertaste like coffee breath I wore on the back of my tongue for so long I didn’t know taste without it.
But I found, in that car rolling into New York City, a place I’d dreamed about my entire childhood having just returned from my birthplace I’d sworn vehemently I’d never return to, that I didn’t miss it at all.
Not even a little.
I yearned for my Mama, her semolina scented arms and the soft press of her bosom against my cheek as she comforted me. I missed Cosima who was never around much and even Sebastian, though our connection was still fragile.
I missed what I always missed about Giselle. The ‘what-if things had been different’ and ‘if only I hadn’t this, this, or that’. I longed for Beau because he was mine and only mine in a way no one else could understand.
But I didn’t miss my mausoleum of a house or the glass shard of a skyscraper that housed my much-worked for office. I didn’t even really miss the law, at least, not in the way I thought I would. I had always wanted to be a hero, someone on the right side of justice, and in a way, being with Dante still let me do that, only now I was a vigilant instead of a stock hero bound by the limitations of the law.