Page 28 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)

Where they were sitting was directly in front of a full-length mirror on the opposite wall. The Rossellini sisters, heads pressed together, both of them crying, stared at their reflections.

“You know,” Luisa said quietly once she’d wiped her tears away, “I thought Gennaro was the coldest, cruellest bastard on this earth. And he is a bastard, but he’s so much more, too.

He just never dared let me see it. I’ve had to forgive a lot to get to where we are now, and I’m so glad I did because the love I’ve found with him is like nothing in the world. ”

Marisa stared dumbly at her sister’s reflection. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You know why.”

“But you hate Rico.”

“Yes, but I hated Gennaro too, and I know now that I would be as desperately unhappy as you are if I had to live without him.”

“You don’t know what he did,” she whispered. She hadn’t told them. She couldn’t.

Luisa squeezed her tighter. “I can make a good guess from that letter. He’s an entitled, selfish bastard who thought he could play with you for whatever nefarious reason, but he greatly underestimated your power.

” At Marisa’s teary questioning stare, she smiled and kissed her temple.

“Your beauty is as strong inside as it is outside. He didn’t stand a chance. ”

“You think I should forgive him?”

Luisa shook her head with a sad smile. “Only you can decide if he deserves that, but whatever you decide, I will always have your back and I will always love and support you.”

Unable to sleep, Marisa slipped out of her room and silently padded down the stairs and out into the garden.

The grass was wet from the earlier rain and squelched between her bare toes as she walked to the swing that had been attached to the apple tree in the centre of the lawn since she was a little girl.

It still took her weight, and she swung on it gently, staring up at the stars illuminating the night sky.

In a few hours, they would be invisible to the eye but not gone.

They would still be there, waiting for the Earth to complete another rotation to reveal themselves. And Rico would still love her.

He did love her. She felt it in her heart as deeply as she felt her love for him.

Closing her eyes, she thought back to that morning in the church when she’d prayed to God for help. He’d delivered Rico to her. Imperfectly perfect Rico. That’s what she’d believed.

Wasn’t it possible that God had delivered her to him ? Delivered them to each other?

She thought about what Rico said that time, about bad boys needing good girls to tame their worst instincts and good girls needing bad boys to bring out their suppressed desires .

Wasn’t that what they’d done for each other?

She could never hope to fully tame someone like Rico Esposito, but why would she want to do that when to fully tame him would stop him being Rico?

And Rico, the man who loved her, was wonderful.

Considerate of her feelings and fiercely protective of those feelings and of her.

Protective and considerate of her family because he saw them as an extension of her.

When Rico loved, it was without restraint, and he loved her and was taming his worst instincts for her.

He might have brought the sexual side of her nature to the surface, but he didn’t want to change her.

He loved her exactly as she was, and for as long as the world turned and the stars lit the skies, he would always love her. Just as she would always love him.

Swinging higher and higher, she gazed back up at the stars, letting all her thoughts and emotions coalesce until certainty solidified, and she jumped off the swing at the highest point of its arc, just as she’d done so many times as a child.

She landed perfectly.

Running back into the house, she flew up the stairs and knocked on her sister’s bedroom door. It was a few moments before the door opened, Luisa wrapping her robe around her. Behind her, fast asleep, Gennaro, who refused to sleep in a bed without his wife in it.

“What’s wrong?” Luisa whispered.

Marisa shook her head. “Can you ask Gennaro if he can get me to Naples?”

Luisa studied her carefully. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

“I’m more certain about this than I’ve ever been about anything.”

Tears filling her eyes, Luisa nodded. “When do you want to go?”

“Now.”

Rico let himself into his parents’ home.

Now only his mother’s home. She looked splendid, head to toe in black, holding onto her sisters, sisters-in-law and closest friends, the grieving widow at her best. When she saw her youngest son, she broke away from them to embrace him tightly as if she hadn’t seen him for weeks rather than just hours.

She disapproved of his decision to step away from the family empire but had kept tight-lipped about it.

Rico was quite sure she believed it a knee-jerk reaction he would soon change his mind about.

He wouldn’t. His brothers, once they’d finished fighting between themselves over who would be Don and have overall control, would decide between themselves the best way to take it all forward and whether they wanted to continue using threats, intimidation and violence to force their way.

They were methods that had served the family so well and for so long that he didn’t imagine much, if anything, would change.

He wanted no part in it, and no part in the hunt for Niccolo Martinelli. Run, Niccolo. Run .

Rico loved his family, but his loyalty had transferred in its entirety to Marisa.

It didn’t matter that he would never see her again; when she’d wrapped herself around his heart, she’d wrapped herself around his conscience too.

He would never be able to look himself in the eye again if he did anything that would cause her chin to wobble and her eyes to fill with tears of distress, even if she wasn’t there to know about it.

He would know. And he would know how deeply it would upset her.

His brothers had barely suppressed their glee when Rico announced his intention to step away from it all.

One less sibling to fight with (although he suspected they thought the same as their mother in that he would one day come crawling back to the fold).

They’d been less impressed when he’d signed over the casinos to Siena .

Let them fight it out. All Rico wanted was to see his father put to rest and then try to find a way to live the rest of his life without Marisa.

He didn’t even have a photo of her. All he had were her letters.

He should have known he was falling for her when he started keeping those letters safe in an elaborately carved wooden box that had once belonged to his grandmother.

He’d started using it after their second lunch together.

Weeks before leaving for Accardiano, he’d taken to reading them before going to sleep. Reading each and every one of them.

She’d woven into his dreams, waking and sleeping, long before he’d even been aware of it.

God, how was he supposed to go on without her?

There was a tap on his arm. Turning, he found his sister beside him. He had no recollection of his mother walking back to her friends or of himself walking into the kitchen and looking out over the sprawling lawn.

Just as widowhood suited his mother, being the jilted bride suited Siena.

While he knew she grieved their father, he sensed in her a clear-eyed steeling of her spine.

The future she’d resigned herself to for the benefit of the family was gone.

Their father’s control was gone. She would never willingly give that control to anyone else.

“How are you holding up?” she asked him quietly.

He shrugged and mustered a smile. “I’ve been better.”

Her answering smile was sympathetic. “I would use this moment to lecture you that what you’re feeling is karma for the hundreds of women you’ve treated like shit over the years, but I wouldn’t even wish your suffering on Tommaso.

” At the expression on his face, she shook her head.

“I always know the shit you and those two arseholes get up to.” Bringing her mouth to his ear, she whispered, “I’ve banked it all.

" Then she kissed his cheek and sashayed away, leaving Rico with the very strong and sudden feeling that the Espositos were more likely to get their first Donna than another Don .

The call came out that the funeral cars had arrived.

It was time to say goodbye.

Although Rico had spent hours at the funeral home over the past few days with the body that had played host to his father, stepping out of the farmhouse and making the walk to the limos, knowing this was the last walk to him, the last drive, the last goodbye…

Grief welled up with such force that it doubled him over. Grief for his father, grief for Marisa, grief for the future he’d destroyed.

Surprisingly, it was Tommaso who put a comforting hand on his back and guided him to the waiting car, Tommaso who stayed by his side throughout the funeral mass and then helped him back in the limo for the procession to the cemetery, and Tommaso who held him up as they threw their red roses on the casket when they reached the mausoleum that would be their father’s final resting place.

And it was Tommaso who noticed the figure standing in the distance beneath one of the ancient trees encircling the cemetery when it was all over and the mourners were returning to their cars.

“Look,” Tommaso said quietly.

Rico followed his brother’s gaze and blinked. Blinked again to clear the sun from his eyes and the angel bathed in its light it had tricked him into seeing.

The angel bathed in a sunlight that shouldn’t have been able to penetrate the thick trees she stood amongst was still there.

His heart stuttered.

He had to be seeing things. It couldn’t be her. It couldn’t be.

But he couldn’t tear his stare away

A hand clamped on his shoulder. Through the roar in his ears, he heard Mattia say, “What are you waiting for, idiot? Go to her.”

He staggered across the cemetery without seeing or hearing anyone else. His gaze was fixed on the angel that became less of a sun-drenched shimmer with every step he took toward it; the slender figure with the glorious chestnut hair and mesmerising dark brown eyes slowly emerging.

When he was only feet away, he stopped. For the beat of a moment, the sun’s rays formed a halo above her head, and then he blinked, and it was her. His angel. Marisa.

For the longest time they did nothing but stare at each other before her throat moved and she stepped closer to him.

“I’m so sorry about your father,” she whispered. “I know what he meant to you.”

Unable to speak, the beats of his heart violent enough to hurt, he could only hold her gaze, terrified to blink again in case he blinked her away.

Tired eyes brimming with compassion, she took another step closer.

Taking a long breath, she tilted her head a little and in a stronger voice said, “I don’t think Clare ever did remarry.

I think the love she and Henry shared was so strong that she knew she couldn’t hope to find anything like it with anyone else.

I don’t think she’d have even wanted to try and find it.

” Her final step closed the distance between them.

She placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “But that could be me projecting because of how I react to their story…” Her voice broke as a tear rolled down her cheek.

“… and because of how I feel about you.”

“Am I dreaming this?” he asked hoarsely, unable to believe the words soaking in his ears were real or that the marks of her fingers and palm on his skin and the delicate fragrance of her skin and perfume he was breathing in were real.

“I hope not.” She swallowed. “Because if I close my eyes and find you’re gone, I think I might lose my mind.”

He lifted a trembling hand and slowly speared it through the cloud of silky hair, bringing a lock of it to his nose; closing his eyes as his airwaves filled with the familiar scent of her shampoo.

Suddenly, he could bear it no longer, and he cradled her head to peer intently into her damp eyes.

Fighting his own tears, he said, “Please tell me you’re here to come back to me.

Please, Marisa, forgive me. Please. I am nothing without you.

Let me back in your life, and I swear I’ll never hurt you again.

I swear I’ll prove myself worthy of you. I swear it.”

Another tear spilt down her cheek, but she smiled shakily and dug her fingers tighter into his cheek. “You already have.”

“I was stupid and cruel and –”

She pressed her thumb to his mouth and shook her head. “Rico, I forgive you.”

Despite his desperation for her forgiveness, he knew he would never deserve it. “ How ?”

“Because I believe in you and because I love you.”

“How can you believe in me after everything I’ve done?”

“How can I not?” She brought her mouth to his and kissed him gently.

“I know your penance is real. Your remorse is real. You wouldn’t feel those things if your soul was as black as you believe it to be.

You kept your promise to me, and I know if you promise to always love and be faithful to me, that you will keep it, because I have faith in you. ”

“I don’t deserve your faith,” he choked.

“But you will.” Her mouth curved into the most beautiful smile. “I have faith in that.”

“I only have faith in you.”

“Then let that be enough.” It felt like the light of her smile penetrated his heart. “You protect my heart, and I’ll protect your conscience.”

“I’ll guard it with my life for all my life.”

“I know you will.”

“My love for you is the only good and pure thing in the whole of my life, and I swear I will love and be faithful to you forever.”

This time, her smile penetrated his soul, the soul she’d saved when she’d burrowed into his heart and claimed it for her own, and now Rico found himself breaking into a smile too as it finally sank into him that this was real, that the love of his life was willing to forgive and take a second chance on him, and as their mouths fused and Marisa’s arms enveloped him, the light she carried inside her saturated him and the despair he’d carried like a weight lifted and the future opened itself up to him.

A future with Marisa. A whole life with his angel.