“Yes,” I said, because I did.
Because Dante proved to me every single day that I was worthy of love and he showed me just how much he had of that to give not only me, but Aurora and our entire family.
“Do you know how much I love you?” I asked him.
His face creased into that small, close mouth smile that was just for me. It wasn’t his flashy grin or showstopper smile, just this intimate little curl that was mine alone.
“Yes,” he echoed. “Enough to change your entire life for me.”
“I changed it for the best thing that ever happened to me,” I corrected. “It wasn’t as horrible as you make it sound.”
“I would live with the guilt if everything hadn’t worked out as well as it did,” he admitted as he palmed my still-flat belly. “Ghorbani & Lombardi has been massively successful so I didn’t completely ruin your dreams of being a lawyer.”
I laughed. “Not at all. I never thought I’d be famous for representing criminals and mobsters, but I can’t complain. Most of them are good men and women.”
This was true.
I never took a case if I truly felt the person a harmful criminal, but most of the time, I had no problem taking on clients in the mafia or other gangs. I’d recently represented the Prez of The Fallen MC in New York on trial for manslaughter and got him off on self-defence.
Maybe I wasn’t the hero I’d always thought I’d be in the courtroom, but I represented the kind of people I’d come to know and love. The kind of person I’d become. The anti-hero. And that was infinitely more interesting than anything I could have dreamed up in my youth.
“They’ll be proud to have such a gladiator for a mother,” he told me, splaying his big hand entirely over the width of my belly. “Just like Rora is.”
“She will be over the moon about the babies.”
“Certo, she might not leave your side again.”
I hoped that wasn’t the case.
We still took Rora to therapy six years on from her mother’s death, which helped, but we’d also given her a cellphone so she could keep in touch with us all the time. It helped allay her worries and it was a simple fix.
Often, she would just texted us one word. A word her zio Sebastian had taught her.
Insieme.
Together.
The same word that had banded my siblings and I together as kids.
“I was thinking Chiara or Georgina for girls,” I suggested, thinking of Dante’s mother and Bambi. “And maybe Amadeo or Jacopo for boys.”
If it was possible, Dante’s eyes grew even warmer on my face. “Bellissima. Those are perfect.”
“For the record, capo, you have nothing to feel guilty for, ever. You gave me the only two things I ever really wanted.” I threaded our fingers together on my belly. “True love and a family.”
“Cheesy,” he teased and then he kissed me.
And I didn’t care if it was cheesy, because it was the truth.
Most of my life I thought success meant money and career, that rigid structure and adherence to societal guidelines would make me happy and beloved.
The truth was, the only thing that brought me peace was chaos.
A lot of people would have said loving Dante condemned to me to hell. The truth was, loving him saved my life. Because he reminded me what it was like to be alive.
What really matter.
I pressed our tangled hands to my belly, tucked my chin into his neck to breath in his lemon grove and ocean brine scent and enjoyed this moment of tranquility before our new brand of chaos was born.
DANTE
Watching Elena Lombardi give birth to the children we created together after years of trying and failing was the single most incredible experience of my life.
My woman was a fighter so even when the babies took twenty-eight hours to agree to enter the world, she didn’t complain. In fact, she took every moment like a gift, her face suffused with gratitude that she could ever have this experience with them and with me. I fed her ice chips, stroked back her sweaty hair, and let her hold my hand to the point of breaking.
Because I felt the same way.
Nothing about this was anything less than perfect.
I’d done a lot in my forty years on the planet.
Gone to the best schools, reiterated myself three times into three very different men, and until then, the greatest thing I’d ever done was love Elena Lombardi.
When those tiny little humans entered the world, screaming at the top of their lungs like the fighters they were born to be, that become the single best accomplishment of my life.
Creating them and giving Elena her dreams of motherhood.
She looked at those dark heads of hair, into those red, scrunched little faces as if the entire universe was imbedded in every pore. There was so much awe in her tear glazed eyes, so much wonder. A blind woman discovering sight, a mute her voice. It was an expression of waiting finally relieved, a miracle she had been waiting for all her life finally actualized in her arms.
In the perfect forms of a tiny boy and girl.
“Ciao, mio piccolo capo e mia piccolo donna,” she whispered in a threadbare voice worn with the weight of her emotions. One knuckle reached up to feather against our baby boy’s flushed, silken cheek and she gasped at the sensation of feeling our son under hand. “Welcome to this mad, bad world, little bosses. We are so grateful to have you.”
A sob wrapped firm fingers around my throat and throttled me. Instead of trying to find meager words to explain the tumult of emotions rioting through me, I leaned against the side of the bed and carefully around one arm around my woman, the other gently cupping the head of our newborn son, the fingers extended to brush our daughter’s petal soft cheek.
“They are so beautiful,” Elena breathed, dazed and awed. “How did we create such perfection?”
My laugh was almost a bark of disbelief. “Lottatrice, you just gave birth to twins and you look like a goddess. It is no wonder to anyone but you.”
“I’m not perfect,” she murmured as she stared at our children nestled in her arms. “I stopped trying to be a long time ago and look what it got me.”
She tipped her head up, a sweet, exhausted smile on her face. There was so much love in her eyes, I couldn’t look at her without feeling like I couldn’t breathe.
“A man better than I could have ever dreamed of,” she told me. “And three children when I thought for years I wouldn’t have any.”
I kissed her soft mouth, tasting her joy straight from the source.
A moment later the door creaked open and Tore, Mama, and Rora appeared.
“Someone wanted to see their siblings,” Tore explained, holding Mama’s hand as they moved into the room.
“Come meet them,” I encouraged, opening my arm for my thirteen-year-old daughter who stepped into me, leaning over with an expression of awe that almost rivaled her mother’s.
“They’re so beautiful,” she breathed. “And we have one of each.”
Elena and I laughed.
“What do we call them?” she asked as she softly reached out to run a finger over the boy’s silken cheek.
“What do you think of Amadeo Jacopo and Chiara Georgina?” I asked her, squeezing her against my body because I could feel her still as soon as I spoke the names.