My Mafia Husband Chose My Sister, So I Chose My Lost Love novel · Chapter 18 of 32

Chapter 18: Free

I stood in the hospital hallway with the phone against my ear and didn't say anything.

"Ms. Sorrentino?" the lawyer said. "Are you there?"

"Say it again."

She laughed. "You're not married."

I closed the phone.

Gia was watching me from her plastic chair.

Sandro was in the doorway of his room in a hospital gown and his wet jeans, with tape over his eyebrow.

"Well?" he said.

"It's done," I said. "He didn't fight it."

"Why not?"

Gia answered before I could.

"Because he wants to marry me before the baby comes," she said quietly. "He told me in October. He said a Vescari son isn't born a bastard."

Nobody said anything.

Then the marshal came down the hall with three coffees and a face like a closed door.

"Car's outside," she said to Gia. "Bangor. Now. No arguments."

Gia stood up.

She came over to me, slowly, in Sandro's sweater.

"You went in the water," she said.

"He was drowning."

"You didn't even look at me first. You just went." She swallowed. "Nobody in that house would go in the water for anybody."

She didn't hug me. She touched my wrist, the way she had under the Sunday table.

Then she went with the marshal.

The old man drove us home that afternoon in his rusty Ford.

Sandro's truck was still on its side at the edge of the bay. A wrecker was coming tomorrow.

The old man stopped at the top of the lane and didn't turn the engine off.

"I'll keep the dog tonight," he said, looking straight ahead through the windshield. "She snores. You two need your sleep."

Sandro opened his mouth.

"Get out of my truck," the old man said.

We got out.

The loft was cold. The stove had gone out while we were gone.

Sandro knelt and built it up again, slowly, favoring his ribs.

I stood by the hatch-cover table and took the pawn-shop ring out of my jeans pocket.

It had been through the bay with me. It was still there.

I set it on the table.

Sandro looked at it over his shoulder.

He didn't reach for it.

"Not yet," he said. "I'm going to ask you properly. Somewhere better than a cold loft with a stitched-up face."

"You think I'll say yes?"

"I think you'll make me wait. And then you'll tell me what I did wrong in the asking."

I laughed.

He stood up and turned around.

The fire was catching behind him, and the light came up the walls.

"Annie," he said. "Tell me what you want tonight. Not what's safe. What you want."

I crossed the room.

I put my hands on the hem of his thermal shirt.

"Can I?"

"Yes."

I lifted it over his head, carefully, past the stitches.

The bruise ran across his chest from his left shoulder to his right hip, dark purple, the exact line of the seatbelt I'd opened under the water.

I put my mouth on the top of it, very lightly.

He shuddered.

"I'm not anybody's on paper anymore," I said against his skin. "Not his. Not the government's. Not the family's. Just mine."

"Just yours," he said.

"And tonight I want to give it to you. All of it." I looked up at him. "Yes, Sandro. Tonight. Yes."

He took my face in his hands.

He kissed me like we had all the time in the world, because for the first time in ten years, we did.

He kissed me like we had all the time in the world, because for the first time in ten years, we did.

His hands were still on my face.

His thumbs moved over my cheekbones, very light.

"Tell me what you want tonight," he said again. "I want to hear it from your mouth."

I pulled back enough to look at him.

"You," I said. "Naked. In that bed. On top of me."

His eyes went dark.

"That's a start."

"I want you to stop asking permission." I put my hand flat on his bruised chest, above the purple line. "I want you to stop treating me like I'll break."

"You had your hands in the bay yesterday." He caught my wrist. "I know you won't break."

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