Chapter 48: Emelia

I stare at the beautiful man before me and think of how far we’ve come and what we experienced together.

So much has happened in the handful of months we’ve known each other.

We lost our fathers and had terrible secrets revealed.

I can’t express how awful I feel when I think of how my father truly damaged him and took away the things that mattered most to him. Family. Both his parents were killed at the hand of my father. My father threw his mother off a cliff and shot his father dead.

And yet this man still has love for me.

We exist outside everything. He is it for me. There’s only one answer I can give him.

When I smile, he gives me a hopeful look.

“I, Emelia D’Agostino, take you, Massimo D’Agostino, to be my husband. I love you, and I’m staying with you. It means so much to me that you did this.” I hold up the letter from the Accademia. “You have no idea how much it means. I worked so hard to get in, and I’m so grateful for the chance to go. But more than that, I’m grateful for you. I want to be with you more than anything else. I promise to be true to you in good times, in sickness and in health. I will love and honor you all the days of my life.”

He reaches for me and slips me onto his lap, pressing his forehead to mine.

“You choose me?”

“I choose you, and everything that makes you you.” That means I choose this life too.

“You are mine, Emelia D’Agostino.”

“I think we should go upstairs now.”

I giggle when he lifts me up, pushes aside the documents on the table, and sets me down. As usual, this man never fails to shock me.

“I’m having you here,” he declares, shoving my skirt up my thighs. “I’m going to feast on you right here on the table and enjoy making you come over and over again. Then we’ll go upstairs, and I’ll tie you to the bed and have you screaming my name all night.”

“I like that plan,” I answer, and he kisses me hard.

“Great, now spread your legs for me.”