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“Hey, dolcezza,” he calls out, smiling. Sweetness. I equally hate and adore Leo’s pet name for me. I love he calls me something no one else does, but why does it have to be something so innocent and pure and sisterly?
“You’re exquisite, dolcezza. So special. Kind, smart, beautiful, and compassionate. And you should remain that way.”
“You’re disgusting. I hope she gave you an STD and your dick falls off.”
“I would take a thousand bullets for you, dolcezza, and you never need to thank me. Protecting you is the one thing I am permitted to do. And I am going to protect you until the day I die, even if I have to cherish you from the shadows.”
I can’t have Leo, and I must let him go.
Natalia is more than the sum of how she looks.
I know I will live the rest of my life and never come close to finding anyone like her. Because she is one of a kind. One in a million. A deity among mortal women.
“In every lifetime, I would choose you, Natalia.”
It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.’”
The only life ending is Carlo Greco’s, and we will be alive to dance on his grave.”
The five families have agreements in place that divvies up districts in New York,
“Yes, sir. I love her in a way I will never love any other woman. I would die for Natalia, Don Mazzone. So, if that is what you must do, I will die knowing it was for the best reason.”
They have saved me from a fate worse than death.
A crack forms in my heart. So loud I feel like everyone must have heard it.
“He’s gone, Leo. Mateo is gone. What am I going to do without him?”
“I know, and I want it. I want you.”
“I love you enough not to want to ruin your future.”
“If we can’t be together, we can’t be anything.”
“I will always love you, Nat.”
“Goodbye, Leo. I hope you find some peace and someone amazing who showers you with love and worships the ground you walk on because you deserve to be loved like that.”
“Maybe in the next lifetime, we will get to be together,”
And then she leaves. Taking every single part of my heart with her.
“I have another son, and I need you to help me to teach him our ways.”
“Don Accardi wants to marry you?”
“I love you, Nat. I can’t keep denying it. Run away with me. Let’s disappear off the face of the earth. Ben would cover for us. I know he would. We can be together.”
Natalia marrying Don Accardi will strengthen the five families.
“Juliet was the love of my life,” he says, his voice cracking a little. “She will always be the love of my life. I promise I will look after you, Natalia. I will take care of all your needs, but I will never love you.
“I want to know what it feels like to have sex with the man who owns my heart. I want to experience that one time.
“Make love to me, Leo. Let me feel what it’s like to love you in every conceivable way before I have to give myself to another man.”
and I know, for as long as I live, I will never love anyone as much as I love him.
“No made man is permitted to disrespect his wife in such a blatant way. He’s been wining and dining his lover all over Chicago, without giving a shit who sees him.
“You are still the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
“You two love each other. You always have.” His lips kick up. “Who am I to stand in the way of true love?”
The Colombians. The Russians. Gino’s double agenda. That they suspect Gino and Maximo Greco are working together against us.
My husband now has another reason to want me dead.
“Keeping tabs on me, darling wife?”
“Did you fools really think you could demand I end things with Marcella and I would just comply?
“Put the gun down, Papa,” Caleb adds, his arm extended, training his weapon at Gino. “If you hurt my mother, I will smash your fucking head in and laugh the whole time I’m doing it.”
“Protecting and loving my mom the way you should have but never did.
Natalia is going nowhere. You both must pay. You were in this together. You both killed my wife.”
“Maximo Greco killed Juliet, so why the fuck aren’t you taking it out on him?”
“I’m trying to save your life, Gino, because if you don’t remove that gun from my sister’s head in the next ten seconds, you’re a dead man. I’m throwing you a lifeline. Take it.”
“I will tell you the deal I made with Greco and reaffirm my loyalty to you, provided I’m officially sworn in as The Outfit’s don, I get to divorce your sister, and you guarantee my safety and that of my sons and my future bride.” He drills a poisonous look at Leo. “You will also demote Messina to soldato.”
“I found out I was pregnant a week before my wedding.” “What?” Ben’s tone is laced with disbelief.
“So, instead she married me and told me on our wedding night that she was pregnant with another man’s child.
“You were pregnant with my baby?”
“I wish I had known it was yours when I aborted the bastard,” Gino says with an evil grin plastered on his face. “I would have enjoyed her screams all that much more.”
Gino murdered my baby, and I have never forgiven him. I never will. Though he claimed to believe my lie about the rapist, he still held it against me. He turned from a man I thought was open to compromise into a cold, hard, detached husband hell-bent on keeping me at arm’s length.
“I can’t believe you were pregnant and you didn’t tell me. I can’t believe you went through all of that alone.”
I swore then I would never forgive him, and I would never give him a baby. I didn’t want to carry a child unless it was yours.”
