Because for the first time since all of this started, Fiero isn’t choosing revenge, or fear, or loyalty, or expectation. He’s choosing me.
And when he deepens the kiss, his forehead pressed against mine like he can’t believe this is real either, I realize something I think I knew all along.
I’m choosing him too.
EPILOGUE
Pfeiffer
The first thingI notice is that nobody looks surprised. Not when we walk into the wedding reception, Fiero’s hand wrapped firmly around mine. Nor when he pulls a chair out for me at the table. Nor when he presses a kiss to my lips halfway through dinner like it’s instinct.
Nobody questions it and nobody challenges it, because this isn’t a secret anymore.
I’m not hidden in shadows or tucked away behind closed doors. I’m not a weakness he’s trying to bury beneath a cloak of loyalty and revenge.
But I am his obsession—he’s made that very clear. He rarely lets me out of his sight. There’s armed security outside my father’s apartment, and on my tail wherever I go. I don’t mind it really—it’s Fiero’s way of keeping me safe. It’s as though now that he has me, he isn’t going to let anything come between us again.
The wedding itself is beautiful. After a long engagement,Contessa Castellano and Benito Bernadi have finally walked down the aisle, and what a pretty aisle it was.
They chose one of the grandest chapels in the city and had the very best florists fill it with hothouse peonies and tulips. The bride wore white to the wedding but black to the reception dinner and looked utterly stunning in both.
Two of her sisters are carrying young children in their arms while the third bustles about straightening trains and veils, holding bouquets and occasionally spinning her small niece and nephew around the tables. They look so happy and content it brings tears to my eyes.
I always thought of the Di Santo’s and their associates as monsters, but seeing them with their families and women they are obviously crazy about, makes me see beyond their reputations to the people they are beneath.
To think of them as monsters now would be hypocritical too, because I, now, am deeply in love with a mafia don.
Since I walked back into the club, we’ve been almost inseparable. He’s been harshly protective by day, tender and adoring at night. I split my time doing shifts at the hospital, a night a week at the club and plenty of moments with Dad.
Yet, no matter what I’m absorbed in, I can’t stay away for long. Fiero Bellucci always beckons me home with a dark brow and wetted lips.
Months ago, I would’ve felt wildly out of place here. But now, I sit beside the most dangerous man in the room while his fingers lazily trace circles on the inside of my wrist beneath the tablecloth, and it doesn’t make me recoil anymore.
I feel Fiero’s warm gaze on the side of my face.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, smiling.
His brothers have each come around to our relationship in their own time and their own way.
Remo, despite his early plea, has struggled the most, but Iunderstand. After what they went through as boys, I don’t blame any of them for taking time to accept me. They’re being asked to change a narrative they’ve clung onto their entire young adult lives.
Cassio was the most readily accepting, but would occasionally catch himself being pleasant to me, then scowl as if he worried he’d gone too far.
Brando barely says a word, but the glares have softened, which I take as a good sign.
There’s only one person I still don’t know how to be around. Vivienne.
Fiero’s Head of House has been standoffish more than she’s been kind, though the scales are tipping to the latter more these days.
I return Fiero’s soft stare. “Can I ask you about Vivienne?”
His jaw ticks. “Sure. What about her?”
“You’re close with her.”
He opens his mouth to protest, but I stop him.