Page 94 of Wounded King

I tense and watch her, ready for another anxiety attack, but she surprises me when she nods. "Okay."

Okay?

"Okay?"

She nods. "Yes. I want to be with you, and if this is the only way, I'm in. As long as I know my family is taken care of."

I laugh dryly, "You make it sound so…" I'm looking for the right word.

"Unromantic?" She supplies.

"Business like." I nod.

"But it's more than that, isn't it?"

"You know damn well it is. I've never proposed to anybody before." I tell her. "We'll work the details out. Trust me?"

"With my life." She answers, tugging at some strings in my heart I didn't know were still alive. What I feel for her is confusing the hell out of me. There is the sexual pull, sure, but there is also possessiveness and something tender, something that makes me want to talk to her. I've never wanted totalkto anybody in my life. Something furry brushes between us. The fucking cat.

"Felix." Violet purrs. "I think he likes you."

"I'm so happy about that," I deadpan, staring at the four-legged creature I'll be sharing my living arrangements with.

"Pet him," she coaches.

"Violet," I say, rising, "there are some things I won't do, even for you."

She laughs. "He'll win you over, just wait."

Yeah, I have a feeling hell will freeze over before that happens.

I watch her as she smiles down at the cat like she didn't just say yes to marrying a man who's spilled more blood than he'll ever confess. Like she hasn't just let me track her, claim her, own her.

She reaches for my hand, regarding the ring on her finger thoughtfully. "Can I ask you something?"

My muscles tighten instinctively. "You can ask."

Her voice is softer now, barely above a whisper. "Are you marrying me because you love me… or because it's the best way to protect me?"

Fuck.Thatquestion.

I turn away for a second, staring at the skyline beyond the window. My jaw flexes. I'm considering lying, but she deserves honesty. So I give her what I can. "I'm marrying you because I don't know how to be without you anymore." My voice comes out low and gruff. "Because the thought of you walking away again? That nearly killed me. And yeah, protecting you is part of it—but it's not the reason. It's the consequence."

I glance back at her, and her eyes glisten as if she doesn't know what to say.

"You want me to say it clean? Fine. I want you. I need you. I'm better when you're near, and I'm fucking worse when you're gone. And maybe I don't know what love is, not the way you want it wrapped in flowers and white lace, but what I feel for you? It's real. And it's not going anywhere."

Silence hums between us. Then she steps forward, presses her palm to my chest, right over my heart.

"I don't need flowers, Marcello," she says. "Just don't lie to me. And don't leave me behind."

I pull her in until her body melts against mine, and I bury my face in her hair. "Not in this life. Not in the next."

But I can feel it. The want lingering between us. Three little words. Three little words I've never spoken aloud in my life. Words I've never said to anybody. Not my mother. Not my sister. Definitely not to my bastard of a father or that rotten excuse of a brother. Not even to Zia Rosa—though she's probably the only one who's ever truly deserved to hear them from me.

My mother loved my father with a kind of devotion that should've been noble—but it wasn't. Some might call it tragic. I call it pathetic. She had royal blood running through her veins, a true mafia principessa, and he treated her like dirt under his boot. He was a street rat who clawed his way to the top by swinging fists and stepping on necks. He hated her for being everything he wasn't born to be, and she loved him for reasons I still can't understand, maybe because he pretended to love her sometimes, maybe because he broke her down until even the scraps of his attention felt like something sacred.

I watched her worship a man who degraded her every chance he got, and it made me sick. Sick to see how she clung to his empty gestures, how she smiled at compliments like they weren't just currency to buy her silence. I remember the nights they would leave for parties—her with her hopes high, him already halfway drunk. And the nights they came back… all screaming and broken glass. I would hide in my room, fists clenched, wishing I were older, bigger, strong enough to stop it.