The Mafia Boss Asked, “May I Continue ” — Their Forced Marriage Became a Love Story
She walked into that wedding believing she was being handed over to the most dangerous man in Philadelphia. Luciano Msina was a mob boss, cold, feared, capable of starting a war with a single order. But on the first night they were alone, he did something no one expected. As he touched her face, he asked only, "May I continue?" It was in that instant that Valyria realized the man everyone called a monster was the only one who truly cared about her choices.
Hi, I'm Lena. A special shout out to those of you watching book one for free here on the My Stories platform. Completely adree and uninterrupted. Chapter [music] 1. The white dress and the enemy. The mirror in the room reflected a bride I didn't recognize. The dress was heavy, white as dirty snow, and the lace at the neckline scratched my collarbone as if even the fabric knew I was being handed over.
You look like a frightened meringue, said Sienna Marchetti, my childhood friend, and the only person in that room who still treated me like a human being. She adjusted the veil in my hair with the care of someone handling a bomb. A gorgeous meringue, but a frightened one. Breathe, Valyria. I'm breathing. You're holding it in. I let the air out through my mouth and looked at the reflection again.
26 years old, only daughter of the head of the Caruso family. In an hour, the wife of the man my father had sworn to destroy until last spring. The door opened without a knock. Don Emiliano Caruso walked into the room with that cold elegance I'd always found sharper than any knife in our house. Sienna looked away.
My father didn't greet me. The car arrives in 20 minutes, he said. Head up always, I answered. He looked at me through the mirror. For a second, I thought he was going to say something fatherly. Instead, he straightened his own tie and added, "It's the price of peace, Valyria. Remember that when he touches you?" The door closed again.
Sienna muttered a curse under her breath that made me laugh against my will. "I told you he was a charmer," she murmured. "Let's go before I throw a shoe at your father's head." "Holiday." The armored car glided through the wet streets of Philadelphia until it stopped in front of the old church downtown.
A cold gray spring, exactly the color of my mood. Sienna squeezed my hand before letting me go onto the runner. Head up, she imitated my father in a deep voice. Then, serious and eyes sharp. I'm here. I walked down the aisle of the church with my heart pounding in my ears, heads turned.
On one side, the Carusos, on the other, the Msenas. Everyone smiling like people bearing their teeth before biting. And at the end of the aisle, him, Luciano Msina, standing at the altar in a black suit, a single red rose on the front of his shirt, hands crossed in front of his body, taller than I remembered, quieter, too. His name alone was enough to silence an entire room.
And there, at the altar, he didn't even need to move for the air to change. His eyes met mine when I was still 10 steps away. I didn't lower mine. I had sworn to myself I wouldn't. I saw the corner of his mouth move. It wasn't a smile. It was something else. Something that looked more like recognition than courtesy, as if he had noted the detail and filed it away for later.
The priest spoke. I said yes when I needed to. He said yes without any change in his voice, like someone closing a contract. The rings went onto the right fingers. The kiss at the altar was a calculated brush of lips, cold, respectful. Even so, I felt the warmth of his mouth run down my spine like a warning. The hall was too big for the number of people who hated each other inside it.
Toasts raised, smiles of steel. I caught myself counting the emergency exits along the wall, the way my father had taught me when I was still a child. A tall man in a gray suit with a closed off face stopped beside me holding a glass he clearly had no intention of drinking. Mrs. Msina, he said in a low voice. It took me a second to realize I was being addressed.
That name still doesn't fit me, I answered. It doesn't fit anyone in the first hour. A pause. Mateo Greco. I work with your husband. You mean I survive my husband? He glanced at me sideways. I saw the shadow of a dry smile at the corner of his mouth. It vanished before it became a real smile. Something like that. He agreed. I found it funny.
It was the first thing close to funny I'd felt all day. I looked across the room and found Luchiano talking with the concilier, an older man holding a teacup. He was already looking at me. He had seen Mateo make me laugh. His expression didn't change, only his eyes. His eyes landed on Mateo for two seconds too long. Mateo understood.
He picked up the glass. He tilted his head toward me as if saying goodbye. Welcome home, Mrs. Msina. Shanter. The Msina mansion appeared at the end of a driveway lined with dark trees, too tall, too old, with lit windows like watchful eyes. I stepped out of the car with Luciano's hand offered in the air between us.
I took it because the security men were watching. His hand was warm, too warm for someone with such cold eyes. We climbed the hall stairs in silence. He walked ahead of me down the second floor corridor, stopped at a door that wasn't the one at the end, opened it and stepped aside. This is your room, he said. I looked inside.
A large bed, a tall window, a vase of white liies on the dresser. None of his things in there. It's not yours, I said. No. He was leaning against the door frame, hands in front of his body, watching my face search for the trap. No one will touch you in this house, Valyria. His voice dropped half a tone, not even me. I stood in the doorway, gripping the hem of my dress hard enough to crumple the lace.
The most feared man in Philadelphia had just asked permission to exist near me, and I didn't know which was worse, the threat I'd expected, or that permission I hadn't asked for. Chapter 2. [music] The House of Strangers. I woke with my throat scratching. It took me a second to remember where I was.
The ceiling was too high, the sheet too heavy, and the light coming through the window had a shade of gray that wasn't from my house. I sat up in bed and the smell hit me. Sweet, dense, familiar in a bad way. Liies. I sneezed three times in a row. My eyes watered. I remembered with irritating clarity a doctor telling me at 8 years old that those flowers and my nose would never be friends.
20 years later they were still declared enemies. I got out of bed, opened the bedroom door, and went down the wide staircase barefoot, still with my robe tied wrong. I was going to warn the first maid I found. I didn't make it that far. A woman in an apron was coming up with a new vase in her hands. No liies, small white roses, simple without a strong scent.
She stopped midway up the step when she saw me, hesitating for a second over how to address me. Good morning, ma'am. I was just bringing these. You were just bringing them. Sir gave the word early this morning. She shifted the vast to her hip with the ease of someone used to precise, silent orders. He said you would need them.
I stood in the middle of the staircase with my nose running, not quite sure what to feel. No one in my life had ever swapped out a flower for me without my asking, not even my father, man. The dining room was too long for two people. The dark wood table reflected the cold morning light, and the silence of the room was the kind that seems deliberate.
Luchiano was already seated at the head when I came in. Black coffee in his cup, newspaper open beside his plate. He didn't look up when I pulled out the chair at the other end. Good morning, I said. Good morning. A maid poured my coffee. Another brought bread. Luchiano folded the newspaper unhurriedly and finally looked at me.
There was no surprise on his face. There was in fact no expression at all. Did you sleep well? Enough. The liies taken care of, I said, and lifted the cup to my mouth so I wouldn't say thank you. He nodded once, went back to the newspaper. The silence settled between us like a third guest no one had invited. I ate slowly.
I watched out of the corner of my eye, the black shirt without a tie, the sleeves folded up to the middle of his forearms, a watch that probably cost, I cut the thought off. Too much. It cost too much. Even his objects needed to intimidate. Do you always eat in silence? I asked. Always. What lovely company.
The corner of his mouth moved half a millimeter. It vanished before I could be sure it had existed. You get used to it. I won't. He turned the page of the newspaper without comment. I won that round by his forfeit. So I ate the whole piece of toast, feeling ridiculously victorious. One. Sienna arrived in the middle of the afternoon with a bottle of wine under her arm and the smile of someone about to test the host's patience.
Her heel struck the marble of the hall like a declaration of intent. I came to see if you're still alive. She hugged me tight and I brought a gift. You know there's an armed man at every door of this house, right? That's why I came in the afternoon. At night, I wouldn't make it out of here in one piece.
Mateo appeared at the end of the corridor with a folder in his hand. Saw Sienna, registered the bottle, registered the smile, and said in the same dry voice as the night before, "Miss Marchetti, I figured you'd come earlier. You figured wrong then. I arrived right on time. I figured last Wednesday. I laughed. It was a laugh of surprise. Too loud for the house.
the kind that escapes before you can hold it in. Sienna looked at me with the wide eyes of someone who's discovered something new. Matteo just tilted his head and continued down the corridor with the folder without hurry or vanity. That one's my favorite, Sienna whispered. Don't tell the others. She night fell early, bringing a damp cold that crept in through the large windows.
Sienna left before dinner after making me promise three things I had no intention of keeping. I took refuge in the mansion's library because it was the only room that seemed built for someone to breathe. Shelves up to the ceiling, an armchair by the window, a low lamp casting an amber glow over the old spines.
I grabbed some art history book and pretended to read. The door opened without a sound. Luciano stopped in the doorway, a shirt even simpler than the one from breakfast, sleeves still folded, hands empty. He didn't ask permission to come in, nor did he intrude. He just stood there, surveying the room like someone checking whether anything had been moved.
"May I?" he said. Finally, the house is yours. That's not what I asked. I looked at him over the book. My heart did a strange thing that I decided to ignore with determination. "You may." He crossed the room and stopped near the closest shelf. He touched the spine of one volume with his index finger slowly, without pulling it out.
It was my brother's, he said quietly. This whole shelf. It took me a second to grasp the weight of the sentence. I knew the story of the brother. Everyone in our world knew it. The name, the date, the void he left behind. Do you read his books? Sometimes. I closed my book carefully. The conversation had lasted three sentences and already felt more real than everything we'd exchanged in 24 hours of marriage. Luciano.
He looked at me. His eyes were darker under the low lamplight. And there was something there that wasn't coldness. It was restraint, which is a completely different thing. Did you eat today? The question came out without my planning it. It was the silliest thing I could have asked a man like that.
And I heard my own voice and wanted to pull every syllable back out of the air. I saw his shoulder stiffen for just a second, maybe less, but I saw it. His hand let go of the book's spine. His mouth parted half a millimeter as if he were going to answer. He didn't. He tilted his head once in a gesture that was neither a goodbye nor a thank you and left the library without saying another word.
I sat in the armchair with the closed book on my lap, staring at the empty doorway. Somewhere in that mansion, for the first time, someone had realized that the head of the Msina family had just been disarmed by a four-word question, and I knew without wanting to know that that someone was me. Chapter 3. Silences that [music] speak. The weeks began to pile up like leaves at the back of the garden without anyone sweeping them, without anyone noticing, until the day the whole layer became impossible to ignore.
When I realized it, it was the second Friday of April, and the calendar on the desk marked almost a month since the church. I already knew where the cup he used in the morning was kept. I knew he drank his coffee black, no sugar, but with a small spoonful of honey when the night had been bad. I knew that when his shoulder was tense, he turned the ring on his finger with his thumb twice before speaking.
They were useless pieces of information, but I collected each one like someone keeping the key to a door they haven't found yet. On the morning, I woke with a heavy head from a dream I couldn't remember. I went down the stairs and found the coffee already made in the kitchen. The cup was on the counter, turned toward the side where I usually sat. There was no note.
There didn't need to be. He came out of the office only when he heard me stir the spoon. You slept badly, said Luchiano, leaning against the doorframe, dressed to go out. How do you know? You came down before 7. I looked at the clock above the stove. It was 6:40. He didn't wait for an answer.
He took his overcoat from his arm, set it on the hook in the corridor, and left through the garage side. I stood there with the cup between my hands for a length of time I couldn't measure. It was that same week that the library armchair began to appear with a folded blanket over the arm. I would fall asleep reading.
I would wake with the blanket on my lap. No one commented. It was never the same blanket two nights in a row. On Friday, the house changed its breathing. I noticed it from the number of men in the corridors. There were no longer two at the entrance and one on the stairs. There were four at the entrance, two on the stairs, and one planted near the library door, pretending to be there by chance.
Mateo passed me in the late afternoon with the same face as always, only without the usual joke. Did something happen? I asked. Nothing that needs you, ma'am. Mateo. He stopped, turned half a step toward me, considered the sentence before letting it out. Reinforcement. That's all. It wasn't all, but I didn't have the authority to push the door.
I went up the stairs, turned left in the second floor corridor, and stopped in front of the office's halfopen door. Inside, Lutiano was with the consilier, Titiano Bernardi, the family lawyer, gentle voice, and a teacup always in hand, seated in the armchair facing the desk. The two stopped talking when they saw me.
It was the kind of silence that doesn't fall by chance. Someone holds it. May I? I asked, leaning against the door frame. Always, said Luchiano. Titiano stood with the delicacy of men who know how to read rooms. I was just on my way out. When the door closed behind him, what remained was the smell of the tea and the soft sound of the clock on the shelf.
Luchiano folded a paper in half unhurriedly and tucked it into the top drawer. "Who's the one bothering you?" I asked. He looked at me for a second longer than he needed to. "No one who will get anywhere near you." "That's not what I asked. It was the only part that matters." I held his gaze until I understood that I wasn't going to get anything out of that drawer that night. I left without slamming the door.
I didn't give him the satisfaction. In the early hours of Saturday, sleep abandoned me again. I went down barefoot, more out of habit than strategy. The kitchen light was on. Luciano was at the counter, no jacket, his white shirt open at the collar. He had a glass of water in front of him and his fingers resting on the edge of the sink.
He looked up when he heard me come in and didn't seem surprised. "You, too," he said. "Me, too." I poured water. I leaned against the counter on the other side. The silence between us had changed texture over the last few weeks. It was still silence, but it no longer hurt. "My brother slept less than I do," said Luchiano without looking at me.
He used to say that sleeping was opening the door to whoever wanted to come in. Was he right? He was tired. He pushed the glass a centimeter to the side, like someone reorganizing a thought. I didn't get there in time that night. 6 minutes short. I've counted 6 minutes every night since then. I didn't answer. Some things don't ask for an answer.
They ask for the weight of a body beside you. I walked to the back door. I pushed it open. The cold air came in through the gap. The porch was dark with the city's lights in the distance, blurred. I felt him approach before I heard him. He stopped behind me. He didn't touch me. He stayed close enough for me to feel the warmth of his shirt against my back.
You should go back, said Luciano. Low. Why? Because if I stay here another minute, I'll forget the reason I gave you a separate room. I turned my face. His eyes were darker than the garden. He tilted his head a centimeter. I tilted my chin a centimeter. A whole centimeter was missing. He stepped back. It was the most violent gesture I'd ever seen him make. Go to sleep, Valyria.
I climbed the stairs with my breath short and the clear impression of having lost something I didn't yet have. On Sunday afternoon, the greenhouse was too warm for spring. He called me there because he knew it was the only place in the house without ears in the ceiling. About yesterday, I began. No, he cut in without harshness.
About what I didn't say yesterday. I waited. The wedding night. He turned the ring twice with his thumb. I'm not putting it off because I don't want to. I'm putting it off because you don't owe me anything. When it happens, it'll be because you wanted it, not because you signed a paper. The greenhouse smelled of wet earth and some flower I didn't know.
And if I want to, I asked, not recognizing my own voice. He didn't answer. He just kept the question. The way he kept everything that mattered somewhere locked inside him. I went up to my room that afternoon with a problem, both new and old at the same time. The problem wasn't him. The problem was that I had started to want.
Chapter 4. May I continue? 3 weeks after the altar, I walked down the corridor barefoot. I hadn't decided in bed. I decided the moment I turned off the light and realized that turning it off no longer made a difference. The darkness on my side of the house was made of the same material as the darkness on his.
The night gown was the simplest one I had. I don't know why that seemed important. Maybe because if I was going to appear at his door, I [clears throat] wanted to appear without armor. The door was a jar. I pushed it with my fingertips. Luciano was in the armchair by the window. Shirt open at the collar. A book open on his thigh.
The side lamp lit half his face and left the other half in darkness. He looked up without moving for a second. I thought I would lose my nerve. What do you want, Valyria? His voice was low, controlled. The question was a door he was offering me to leave through. I could have walked back out. I had time. You, I answered.
The word hung in the middle of the room, suspended, as if it needed space of its own. He closed the book with a calm that made me tremble more than haste would have. He stood. He crossed the steps between us like someone measuring every centimeter. He stopped in front of me. He didn't touch me yet.
Are you sure? You put it off for weeks. I came here on my own. That's not certainty. It's courage to me. It's the same thing. He laughed through his nose. Low, almost to himself. It was the second time I'd heard him laugh, and the first time he let it last. He brought his hand to my face. He rested his fingers behind my ear, slid his thumb down to my chin.
I closed my eyes for just a second and when I opened them, he was still there waiting. He looked at me like someone checking whether the door was still open. May I continue? The question disarmed me in a way I couldn't put into words at that moment and maybe never will. No one had ever asked me for anything. My father didn't ask.
The world I grew up in didn't ask. Permission was asked of men. For women, things were announced. I said yes with my head before I could say it with my mouth. He leaned in slowly. It was a short kiss, restrained, carrying the weight of everything that had been put off. When he pulled his face away, he rested his forehead against mine.
He breathed. The bedroom door closed at some point. I didn't see who closed it. Morning came through the gap in the curtain, brighter than I remembered a morning being in that house. I woke with his hand on my arm, not gripping, just resting, as if he'd fallen asleep, afraid I'd disappear during the night. I looked at the ceiling for a while, listening to his breathing beside me, and understood that I wasn't going back to the other room. He woke when I moved.
"Good morning," said Luchiano, his voice from too little sleep. "Good morning, without ceremony, without looking away." He pulled my hand to his mouth and kissed my fingers. Then he got up, pulled a shirt on over his chest without buttoning it, and went to the door. "Coffee on the porch. In 10 minutes, who decided?" "I did. Deal.
" He left smiling, and it was the second time in 24 hours that I had seen him smile. The porch was cool. He'd had the two cups served on the same side of the table, side by side. Instead of opposite ends, he sat. He pressed his knee against mine under the tablecloth and left it there. We ate little. We talked less.
His hand rested over mine between one bite and another, and it was strange to realize that that small gesture told me more than everything that had been said since the church. Sienna showed up before noon in sunglasses too big for the sun that was out. You've got the look of someone who slept, she said at the entrance.
I do a little Sienna. Fine, fine. Let's go out. You need some air that doesn't smell like a possessive man. Luciano appeared in the corridor in time to hear it. Come back early, he said. To me, I will. He looked at Sienna. Take care of her. I always take care of her, answered Sienna with the lightness only she could put into a sentence.
You're the one who's behind in that department. Messina. Matteo opened the car door. He looked at Sienna without moving a muscle of his face and then at me with that dry half smile that was his signature. Two SUVs behind. Don't worry, I'm not I lied. We left through the gate. Philadelphia had that clean spring light that comes after the rain.
Sienna was talking about someone she'd seen at the salon. And I laughed at things that weren't all that funny because laughing that morning was easy. It was on the curve after the roundabout that I noticed. Sienna, look behind us. She turned. Where are Matteo's cars? The avenue was empty behind us. Too empty. The driver hit the radio, a short phrase in Italian, then silence from the other end. I saw his shoulder stiffen.
Hold on, he said. He sped up. It was no use. A black SUV came from the cross street and cut in front. Another pulled alongside us before the driver could swerve. The window on my side shattered before I understood it was glass. Sienna screamed my name. A large hand grabbed my arm, pulled me through the window, threw me onto the street pavement.
I felt the asphalt scrape my knee. I saw the black shoe of a man I didn't know stopped next to my head. I saw Sienna being shoved back into the car with her hand pressed to her bleeding temple. "Get up," said the man. I got up. They pushed me into the second SUV. The door slammed. The engine accelerated. I looked through the rear window and saw the street receding.
Saw the car with Sienna stopped sideways. Saw the spring sky stay blue as if nothing were happening. And I thought, with a cold clarity that didn't match the moment, that across the city, a man who had learned to ask before touching was about to discover that someone had torn me out of his own garden. Chapter 5. The [music] whole city.
The smell was the first thing I could process. mold, old oil, something metallic I didn't want to name. I opened my eyes and the ceiling of the warehouse was high with dark beams crossing the span. My hands were tied behind the chair and my left wrist hurt in a specific spot as if someone had gripped it too long.
I tried to remember how I'd gotten there. The closed car, Sienna bleeding, the window forced open, a huge arm around my neck. After that, darkness. A metal door creaked on the other side of the warehouse. You're awake. The voice came before the face. When the man stepped into the circle of light from the single lit bulb, I recognized the type before the name.
A captain's bearing. The right age. Resentment at the corner of his mouth. He introduced himself like someone demanding credit. Aratzio Falcone. Maybe your husband mentioned me. He hadn't. But I knew the story. The name no one spoke in the mansion. The captain demoted two years before. He pulled up a chair and sat in front of me like someone sitting down to talk business.
You're smaller than I imagined, Caruso. And you're exactly the size they said, I answered, and my voice came out steadier than I expected. Small? He smiled without humor. He took a cigarette from his jacket pocket, lit it slowly, blew the smoke off to the side. Your husband is making noise across the city.
I said nothing. Inside, my heart pounded so loudly. I was sure he could hear it. The port's been shut down since yesterday. Three of my men have already turned up with broken fingers. Arazzio took another drag and this time it was he who avoided my eyes. He's burning money like it grows in his garden over you.
Are you telling me this to scare me or to brag? I'm telling you so you understand that the man you married is losing his mind in real time. He leaned in and when he gets here because he will get here. I want to make sure he finds you the way I decide. I kept my chin up. Inside, something very old from the time when I was a child in the Caruso house whispered that this was how the stories ended for the women of my blood.
I swallowed hard. Why are you doing this? He let out a low laugh. Because he took what was mine, and now I'm going to take what's his. He left. The metal door slammed. I was alone for hours that had no name. The light didn't change. The smell didn't change. At some point, it began to rain outside, and the sound of the drops on the roof became the only reliable company I had.
I thought of Luchiano. I thought of the porch, of the cup he'd pushed to my side that morning. I thought of his face close to mine the night before, of the low question. I thought that I'd waited three whole weeks to say yes, and that maybe it had been too late. I squeezed my eyes shut hard. Not yet, I told myself. Not yet.
The door opened again. Orazio came in with another man who was carrying a piece of paper. He threw the paper into my lap like throwing out trash. Read it out loud. I looked down. It was a short letter written in a hurried hand. It asked Luciano to turn himself in in exchange for me. I looked up. I'm not going to read this. Orio came closer.
His heavy hand struck my face lightly, without enough force to hurt, but with enough force to make clear who was in charge. I tasted iron in the corner of my mouth. Yes, you will. Do you really want him to come? I forced the air to come out [clears throat] clean because if he comes, you don't leave this warehouse alive.
His hand stopped in the air. For a second, I saw what I wanted to see. Fear. Small, hidden, but [clears throat] fear. He left again. This time without saying anything. I don't know how much time passed. The cold light of the single bulb didn't change. But through the gap in the door, I saw the day brighten and darken again. It had been Monday when they threw me into that warehouse.
When I heard the rain start for the second time, I figured it was already Wednesday, maybe Thursday. At some point, I fell asleep without meaning to. And when I woke, it was because someone was shouting. It wasn't a shout of anger. It was a shout of command. Then came the first shot. Then the second, then many together. So many that they stopped sounding like separate shots and became one continuous sound, like stone striking stone.
The bulb above me swung. I shrank into the chair. The metal door opened with a kick. A body fell into the warehouse. It wasn't him. A second man came in, rifle raised. I recognized the shoulders before the face. Mateo. Later, I would learn that it had been Sienna, with her temple still being stitched, who managed to crawl out of the overturned car and call him before passing out, and that it was because of her that this door was being broken down.
Now, behind Matteo, him, Luchiano came into the warehouse with a gun in his right hand. His black jacket was soaked in three places, and not all the blood was someone else's. There was a deep cut on his left temple, another at the corner of his mouth, and the right sleeve hung open at the shoulder.
His eyes came straight to me, and it was as if the room stopped existing for a whole second. He crossed the warehouse without running, but in steps that ate up the distance. He knelt in front of me. His hands were trembling as they began to cut the ropes. "Are you whole?" "I am. Look at me." I looked. His eyes ran over my face, my neck, my wrists, with the precision of someone cataloging damage.
When he reached the corner of my mouth, where Arazzio had struck me, his jaw locked. He said nothing. He cut the last rope. "Aradzio?" I asked. He won't bother anyone anymore. His hand rose to my face. His thumb passed close to the cut. It was the most delicate thing I'd ever felt anywhere in my life. I stood.
My legs didn't obey. He caught me by the waist before I fell. And that was when I felt how much he himself was trembling and how much of the blood on that jacket was his own. I didn't think. I threw my arms around his neck and held on. I felt his body relax against mine all at once, as if up until that moment he had stayed standing on willpower alone.
"You're hurt," I whispered into his shoulder. "I'm alive." Matteo appeared at the edge of my field of vision and said something low that I couldn't hear. Luchiano answered without letting go of my waist. We walked out of the warehouse together. The rain had stopped. The Philadelphia sky was turning light gray.
That shade that comes before the sun rises. Inside the car, he pulled me to his side. He rested his temple against mine. He said nothing for minutes. Neither did I. I learned on that drive back something no one had taught me in 26 years. that someone had almost died for me and that I without thinking twice would do the same for him.
Chapter 6, the decision to stay. Morning entered the Msina mansion through the window of his room, slow and without ceremony, pouring a thin light over the dark wood floor. I was sitting on the edge of the bed with a basin of warm water in my lap and a cloth in my hands. Luciano was in front of me, shirtless, his left shoulder bandaged by a doctor who had appeared in the early hours and vanished before the sun rose.
His bruises were scattered across spots I didn't want to count. I wet the cloth. I pressed it slowly to his temple where the cut had been cleaned but still looked too recent to be touched without care. He didn't move. He just looked at me. Why did you come in person? I [clears throat] asked.
Lo, you had men for that. I didn't. Yes, you did. I didn't. Valyria. I squeezed the cloth harder than I needed to. The warm water ran down my wrist. You could have died. I know. And you went anyway. He held my wrist before I could press the cloth again. His hand was warm, his fingers firm without gripping. His eyes didn't waver.
I went because if it had been another man who walked into that warehouse and pulled you out, I would never sleep again for the rest of my life. It was me. It had to be me. I let the cloth drop back into the basin. The sound was small in the silence of the room. I didn't cry. I thought I would, but I didn't cry. I just stayed still with his hand still on my wrist.
And I felt something very calm settle in the middle of my chest as if it had finally found a place to live. There was a knock at the door. Mateo opened it a crack. Boss, Titiano's here. A brief pause. Oratzio confirmed. The faction dismantled the rest. You decide whenever you want to talk. Luciano made a sign. Mateo closed the door. I looked at him.
"It's over," I said. "It's over." I lifted the basin. I carried it to the bathroom. I poured the water into the sink and stood watching the liquid disappear down the drain for longer than I needed to. My hand resting on the cold edge of white marble. The day passed, the way days pass after storms, slowly, without big words.
We had lunch on the porch, side by side, without anyone needing to arrange it. The food was warm and the silence between us was different from the silences of the first weeks. Less distant, more like a choice. Sienna called three times. I answered the second, assured her I was whole. Promised to visit the following week. She cried. I almost cried with her.
I hung up and stayed with the phone in my hand for a minute, looking at the garden without seeing anything. In the afternoon, Luciano slept. I sat in an armchair beside the bed and kept trying to read a book my brain refused to absorb. Every now and then I'd look up to check whether he was breathing. He was his chest rose and fell slowly, his expression softer than he probably allowed when he was awake.
Night came slowly with a sky that turned orange before turning dark blue. I was on the porch, my elbows resting on the cold iron railing when he appeared in the doorway. He'd changed his shirt, his bare feet on the wood floor. His eyes found me headon. "Come here," I said before thinking. He came. He stopped in front of me.
Close enough for me to feel the heat coming off his skin, even through the fabric of the shirt. I held out my hand. He took it. "Have you decided?" he asked. "I've decided." "What?" I looked at him. at the temple still marked, at the restrained mouth, at the dark eyes that had crossed a whole city looking for me to stay. His hand squeezed mine.
It was the only visible reaction he allowed himself. "Come," he said. "Lo, we walked together down the corridor. He opened the bedroom door and let me go in first." Before I turned, I felt his hand rest lightly on my waist, and his mouth find the corner of mine in a short kiss that carried everything neither of us had said.
The door closed behind us. The next morning came bright with the smell of coffee coming from somewhere in the house. I woke with my face pressed against his chest and his hand open on my back as if it had stayed there all night to make sure I didn't slip away in my sleep. I stayed still for a while, listening to his breathing and the silence of the mansion.
The light came in horizontal through the window, golden and new. Then I got up. He followed me without complaint. We went to the porch with coffee in our hands. The sun was beginning to rise behind the buildings of Philadelphia. Slowly, painting the sky a pale orange, I leaned against the railing. He leaned against me from behind.
His chin rested on my shoulder with a weight that didn't weigh, only warmed. His free hand found my waist beneath the robe I'd borrowed from him. We stayed like that for a while. The coffee went cold in the cups. Neither of us cared. That day at the altar, he said, his voice low against my ear. I'd already decided. I laughed. It was a small laugh, almost a sigh, I know.
We drank the coffee slowly. Down below in the garden, a bird landed on the edge of the fountain and took flight the same second. The sun finished rising over the city. For an instant, my eyes drifted to the Philadelphia horizon in the distance. The buildings cut against the clear sky. I remembered for just a second something I used to think as a child, that rotten blood always finds a way to collect its debt.
I pulled the thought back in. I rested my head on his shoulder and let the warmth of his hand on my waist bring me back. The sun was over Philadelphia now, bright and new, and I had chosen to stay. Lena, here that wraps up book one, and I've already finished book two. You can get access to it for a really small fee. For 3 years, I believed I had finally learned how to be happy until the day the world collapsed in silence.
I went pale reading the envelope. I locked the brown folder in the office drawer with names Valyria should never see. And I began disappearing at night without explanation. While she carried our child, I negotiated with demons from my past, men I'd sworn never to meet again. I paid what I didn't have.
I promised what I couldn't deliver. All for a single chance to save them both. But Valyria saw the signature. She recognized the contacts and she concluded that I had chosen crime once again. I watched her pull away, her eyes full of pain and disgust, thinking I was running from her, that our marriage had been a mistake, that I didn't want her anymore. And I said nothing.
Because there's a pain worse than losing her. It's knowing that if I tell the truth, she might not survive the night. The clock is ticking. The folder stays locked. And I don't know if I'll make it in time. What if she never finds out that it was all for her? What if what I hid in the drawer isn't enough? What if when I finally open my mouth, all that's left is the silence of a destroyed family? Valyria has already left and I still don't know if I'll be able to bring her back alive.
>> Like I said, that was just a taste of book two. To watch it uncensored, just click on the first link here in the pinned comment. I'll see you on the other side in a few seconds. Remember, just click on the first link down here in the comments and book two complete. No ads, no interruptions will already be available for you. It's very simple.
Book two is something I'm loving making. You're loving it, too. So, I promise there will be more. It's where you find increasingly spicy stories, a true dark romance, and precisely because this version is getting more and more heated. The video isn't well accepted publicly on YouTube.
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