Page 208 of Mafia and Scars

He pauses, cup halfway to his mouth. His eyes flicker to his pocket square, then back to me, and I watch the familiar process—thinking, translating from the language of his heart to the language the world understands. The smallest crease forms between his brows, and I want to smooth it away with my thumb.

“I like them,” he says simply. “I like the colors.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He sets his cup down with the same careful precision he brings to everything, but his hands aren’t quite steady. “Bright colors were…too loud. They felt like sirens going off in my head. Like someone shouting all the time in a crowded room full of people who wouldn’t stop talking. I thought avoiding them was the only way to make the noise stop.”

My throat tightens. All those years of black clothes, of carefully controlled environments—not preference, butsurvival. “And now?”

“Now I can look at them without my whole body wanting to run away.” His voice grows softer, more wondering. “I realized this because you wear colors constantly—that yellow dress you wear all the time, the blue sweater you had on the first morning I made you coffee, the green scarf you wrap around Leon when it’s windy. They don’t hurt anymore when I see them on you or the others.” He glances toward the planters where the daisies bob with their wild, unplanned beauty. “I discovered I like to wear them too…if I’m in control. If I can choose the shades that feel like music instead of noise.”

My chest goes warm and tight. “So, you made a new system?”

He nods, and there’s something almost shy in his gesture. “Monday to Sunday. Red to violet. A progression I can count on.”

“A rainbow,” I whisper, and the word tastes like hope.

“A spectrum,” he replies, and the corner of his mouth tilts upward in that rare smile that feels like a glittering sunrise at the start of a day full of hope. “And for some reason, these colors make my head feel…more happy.”

The way he says it—so careful with words that don’t come naturally, so precise with emotions he’s still learning to name—lands somewhere behind my ribs and blooms into something too big for my chest to hold.

I stand up from the planter and reach across, brushing my knuckles against the violet edge of his handkerchief. Soft fabric, bold choice, quiet courage.

He doesn’t pull away. Instead, he stands very still, like he’s memorizing the touch, the moment, the way color looks between us.

“I like the colors too, Viktor,” I say, and I mean so much more than handkerchiefs. I mean his courage. His growth. His willingness to let the world be bigger and brighter than his fears. “I like them so much.”

“Avelina…will you marry me?”

My breath catches in my throat for a moment. But I instantly know my answer. “Yes, Viktor. I’d love to.”

And when he smiles—really smiles, full and unguarded—it’s every color of the rainbow all at once.

The simplicity of it steals my breath.

He tugs the square free, folds it once more with impossible precision, and slips it into my palm. “For you,” he says simply.

The silk is warm from his chest and as violet as the wildflowers that refuse to stop blooming. And I know in this moment: this is his rainbow. His spectrum. His love.

And he’s built it all for me.