Page 66 of Cardinal House

“Certainly,” Vito doesn’t hesitate, pushing to stand and turning towards the long wall of glass. His fingers find, what looks to me like, an invisible handle and then the glass is folding and opening with a gentle push.

“Do you want me?” Wolf asks, taking my chin between his warm, calloused fingers, and turning me to face him. His yellow-caramel eyes bright on mine, he reads my answer without words, “You call me if you want me, okay?”

“Yes, Wolf,” I nod once, his lips pressing lightly to the corner of my mouth, before he releases my fingers from his, allowing me to stand.

“Don’t wander too far.”

“I won’t,” I smile, and it’s the first real lie I ever tell.

Chapter 30

Wolf

Luna stares at the fountain for the entirety of the story that Vito tells. I already know it. Vito told me, repeatedly, this same story at least a hundred times over the last few days. We’ve discussed his employee and come to a mutually agreed upon end for him, after I’d told him a brief version of the story that Luna told me when she started to remember.

I don’t take my eyes off of her as Vito talks and she stares out at the gardens. I know even before she asks that she wants to go out there. For the air. To breathe. So I’m not surprised when she requests just that.

Luna slips past Vito without really looking at him, and he watches after her as she passes the fountain she’s been staring at for the last hour, before bringing his eyes back to me.

The sun is going down. The sky a deep pink, wisps of fluffy peach-orange clouds drifting over the tops of the trees. Luna follows down a winding path into the nearest copse of trees and then sits. I can see the top of her head, the large white bow secured at the crown of her skull.

“I’m going to marry that girl, Vito,” I voice before turning back to face him.

He doesn’t react outwardly, but the subtle tensing of his fingertips over his thigh is telling. He wants to be the one in control here, to be swooping in and saving her, keeping her, making up for all the years they’ve been apart. I understand it. I would be the same. But that’s not how this is going to go.

“You are?” He lifts a single brow slowly, his bight eyes on mine in challenge, and I could smirk, I could say something cocky, annoyingly knowing.

But that’s not, at all, what that statement is about.

“Yes, I am.”

His eyes tighten just slightly, his brow dropping back into an arch over his eye, and then he sniffs, cocking his head to one side, before reaching forward for an empty glass on the table.

“I won’t pretend I don’t want her moving back in here with me, with la famiglia, but I have-”

A large bang sounds overhead, cutting him off, his bright eyes instantly flicking to the ceiling with a small twist to his mouth. Slowly, his chin lowers in time with his gaze, and he’s levelling a look on me that speaks of darkness and sin.

“-Something I’m dealing with right now,” he finishes. Smirking slightly as he says it, the space above us falls silent after several thuds and thumps. “And it is not… ideal for her to stay here at the moment.”

“Luna will stay where Luna wants to stay,” I tell him, levelling him with a look as my eyes flick back to her.

The top of her head still in the same place, the tail of her white bow flicking like an irritated cat’s tail in the wind.

“She’s spent her life being controlled, not being allowed to go outside in the sun. The last thing she needs is to be cooped up in here like a princess in a locked tower. We’ve got a good life at Cardinal House, and you’re welcome to visit any time, but I have no intention of uprooting her, unless that’s what she wants.”

I stare him down, meaning every word, but I know, without having to ask her, that she won’t want to be away from me. We’ve fallen into routine over the last few weeks.

She brought me back to life.

I love her.

And she loves me.

And no one has ever loved me as wholly as she does.

‘What are the words you say to someone that you want to be buried with, same coffin, same headstone, same consecrated earth?’

“I want to visit,” he tells me, lifting a foot to cross his legs, resting an ankle across his opposite knee, resting the empty tumbler he took from the table against his thigh. “I want to attend the wedding.”

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