I was beginning to see a pattern here. A frightening one. He didn’t want to put off having anything anymore because he doubted he’d be allowed to keep it. Including me. I tucked my hand under his chin and pulled it toward me.
“I’m not going to die in childbirth, Luca.” I could tell from the absolute hollowness in his eyes that he didn’t believe me, that maybe he couldn’t believe me. Time to nip that in the bud. “I’ll even get a full body scan if you want.”
He chuckled softly, but with zero levity. “Promise?”
“Yeah, I promise. And I’ll do you one better.” I sighed. “Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, I’ll marry you.” He didn’t so much as crack a smile. He was waiting for me to drop the other shoe, I could tell. We were going to have to work on that. “But you’ve got to have faith in me. And you have to have faith that things will be okay.”
“I have total faith in you. It’s the other kind of faith that isn’t my forte.”
“I’m not an expert in that, either, but I’d like to believe that we can have a happy ending together. Don’t you?”
His eyes lost their hollowness as they filled with love. So much love that it almost made me tear up again. “More than anything,” he said. “So does that mean we’re engaged?”
I nodded, grinning at him and watching his face finally lift. “We’re engaged.” I’d just leaned down to give him a kiss when Alessandro careened through the hospital room door.
“Uh, sorry to interrupt. But we got the bastard.”
“Who?”
“Roman.”
Before meeting and falling for a Varasso, I’d never given much thought to fate. Things happened or didn’t happen, but I never needed a reason for it. I’d call it luck or coincidence. I never saw any method in the madness. Then I came into Luca’s life, and everything he’d endured made me question my previous beliefs on the matter.
I decided I still didn’t believe in fate, or at least not the way he did. I didn’t believe a curse was at fault for all the tragedies in his family line. I mean, research anyone’s history and you’d find similar misfortunes. Premature deaths and illness. Acts of God. Accidents. All sad, true. But a curse?
Not to me.
And maybe not to Luca either anymore. He’d challenged my beliefs, but I’d challenged his, as well. Hopefully in a positive way.
Roman Petrella had turned out to be so much more than any of the Varassos had thought. Though his surname was Petrella, he claimed Angelo was his father. He had no evidence of this, though, and he refused to submit to a paternity test. What we determined after watching him tied up to a chair for about twenty minutes, was that the guy was off his rocker.
He did not have any issues with low intelligence, though. He might be certifiable, but he was also smart as a whip. He’d pretended to be mentally challenged to pull the wool over our eyes. And he’d succeeded. It frightened me how easily he’d duped us all.
He reminded me of Charles Manson in the way he could be so brilliant and psychotic at the same time. He was the reason my sister was dead. He was the reason Francesca and two of the trusted Varasso guards were dead. And he’d killed them believing this delusion that he could take over the Varasso clan.
We’d underestimated Roman Petrella, but he’d underestimated us, too.
The Varassos were not your ordinary affluent family from the Philadelphia suburbs. They—correction, we—were one of the oldest and most established families of organized crime. We were members of the Italian mafia, and we conducted all our business subtly and with great efficiency.
I wasn’t the little woman sipping brandy and eating bon bons. I was Molly Greene Varasso, otherwise known as Queen Molly, and I wasn’t going to put up with any threats to my family.
And neither was my husband.
The runner formally known as Roman Petrella disappeared without a trace the night Luca and I were engaged. And if anyone asked, we would say we weren’t aware of his last known whereabouts, but he had mentioned something about needing a vacation.
A permanent one.
After experiencing a violent and wretched winter, Luca and I were married in the spring. As the petals of pink cherry blossoms danced in the air of Fairmount Park during the second week of April, we vowed to love each other not till death do us part, but for always.
Through trial and tribulation, we’d both come to believe one thing: that no matter what—including hell, high water, fire and death—our love would never die.
I adopted this as my belief for all my important relationships. As I stood over my sister’s casket, I told her my love for her would never die. When my father succumbed to his cancer two months later, I told him the same thing.
My mantra had always been stand tall, stand strong. And I continued with that, but the addition of knowing my love for my loved ones would never die helped me to mourn them, and then to begin to heal.