He pulled back, studying my face. “After ten years.” He shook his head. “You finally read it.”
“Ten years?” I blinked up at him. “You had the words engraved before we were married?”
“Since I had the ring made for you.”
The laughter that escaped my mouth came out soft—the awe for him thickening it. “Better late than never.”
He was a patient man—in revenge and in love.
“’Bout fucking time.” And he slammed his mouth against mine, returning all of the things I’d shared with him without using any words. “If I couldn’t tattoo the words across the heart in my chest, I did the second best thing. I had it inscribed on your ring and then put it around your finger—lock down. You take my ring off, even after ten years, I know.”
“What about your body?” I raised my eyebrows. “Shouldn’t I be there, too, Capo?”
He grinned and set his hand around my neck, right over the frantic pulse. “We both know that’s a done deal, Mariposa. You’re on me, in me, in all the ways. You’re mine. Today. Tomorrow. Per sempre.”
He had gotten a small blue butterfly tattooed on his hand, right above the wolf’s head. It was as electric as the color of the animal’s eyes. But if the scar around his throat wasn’t enough of a marking, I wasn’t sure what was. He acted like the tattoo was a bigger deal, though, like the cost of saving me hadn’t been the highest of his life.
Something dawned on me then. I knew him well enough to put two and two together after the big ring inscription reveal. “Our arrangement.” I let those two words hang between us for a second. “If you knew you loved me before then…”
A wolfish grin appeared on his face. “The other women?” He shrugged. “Yeah, it would have been an arrangement, nothing more. The terms would’ve been set, and there was no moving them. The only reason I made an arrangement with you—” He watched me for a minute or two, drawing out the moment, before he exhaled. “—I needed to work around your aversion to kindness. What better way than with terms? It was real in a sense—you’d get everything if I died—but other than that, it meant nothing. Agreement or not, that ring was on your finger for good.”
He had been, all along, my “for good.”
“Do you remember when we played twenty questions after our wedding?”
“There is no little man running around with a tab jar,” he mocked my voice.
“Yeah,” I said, not at all surprised by his memory. “I asked you then if you’d ever been in love.”
“I told you no.”
“Next question,” I said, remembering what he had said.
“You didn’t ask me if I was in love, you asked me if I’d ever been in love. I hadn’t. Not before you. Words, Mariposa, have to be used wisely.”
“Fucka me,” I whispered, and then a laugh exploded out of my mouth.
Evelina hushed me with a finger to her lips. “You just scared a boo buttafly, mamma!”
Capo and I moved even closer to each other, laughing quietly. Each year around the sun with him only got better. I couldn’t wait to go a hundred more.
“Mia!” Evelina whisper-shouted, rushing over to meet the little girl. Saverio walked next to her. She was the same age as Evelina.
We didn’t move until the group was close enough for me to hug and for Capo to shake hands. Our group, our famiglia, had grown over the years, not only our family tripling in size. We were a built-in party.
Where I found myself in life was more than I could’ve ever wished for. It went beyond what I ever dared to hope for. More than I ever dreamed I wanted. It was, all along, what I’d always needed.
There were times in my life that I didn’t think I’d survive another ten minutes, much less ten years.
A million years with my capo and our children wouldn’t do, only forever, as long as I lived it with them.
The End