Page 193 of Forced Vows

After a quick shower, I pull on Miceli's discarded shirt. He paints naked. Yum!

I tear myself away from the eye candy to go to the bedroom where all of the finished canvases are stored.

You can tell the difference in painting style between Miceli and his father at a glance. While my fiancé paints wildly imaginative, if sometimes morbid fantasy covers for books, his father painted portraits.

The only portraits I've seen from Miceli are the two he did of me.

Every painting I pull out on his father's side of the storage room is a portrait of some member of the De Luca family.

You can tell the ones from when he had just started painting, and those from when he was older, but one thing that is common among all of them is the love you can feel of the artist for the subjects of the paintings.

There is one portrait, almost life-size of Aria that brings tears to my eyes. She is painted as a beautiful, ethereal being, almost angelic. That the painter worshipped her is clear in every stroke of paint.

"I always wanted to show that to my mom, but this was my father's secret, and I didn't have the right to expose it."

I turn to face Miceli, making no effort to hide my tears. "Your father is dead. Your mom is still alive. Do you really think he would want you to withhold all of this from the people that loved him and that he so obviously loved. "

"A promise is a promise."

"But was your promise for after death?" Did his father really swear him to posthumous secrecy?

Miceli stares at me for a very long time before saying, "It was never actually spoken out loud."

"So, you're going on the assumption of what you thought he wanted you to promise him that you never actually did." That's not a vow. "It's not a promise when you didn't actually make it."

"He was so adamant about me hiding my weakness –"

"Being an artist is not a weakness," I break in. "Your dad was afraid to express his emotions but he had them. All of you would've been happier if he had told you the things in his heart while he was alive."

When Miceli doesn't disagree, I go on. "Now you have the chance to show your mother the depth of the love your father had for her and your brother how proud he was of him. They're like love letters written for each of you."

The conflict in Miceli's expression hurts my heart. "I can't make you share these with them. But I will tell you that if it were me and there was something out there from my dad, no matter what it was, that let me feel his love one more time, I would want it."

My fiancé sighs. "You're right, but showing them the paintings means telling them about me."

"Would that be such a bad thing?"

"It might be. Sev could decide that I'm not strong enough to be Don of the Genovese."

"I don't think your brother's that's stupid."

Miceli's smile is sardonic, but something is flickering in his eyes. Hope? "I'll think about it."

"While you're thinking about it, consider this: are you going to teach our children that their gifts make them weak? Because I won't support that."

I am going to hang at least one piece of Miceli's artwork in all of the rooms of our penthouse.

If that means his family cannot come to visit, so be it. Because he said to make it into a home and the only way that happens is if both our hearts are in the design.

His heart is in his paintings.

~ ~ ~

The following weeks are a dream I don't want to wake up from.

The self-defense classes start the day after Miceli gives me access to the studio. He spends an hour every day teaching me. Despite my former training, there's nothing easy about learning the skills he wants to teach me.

But he flies my cousins in by helicopter twice a week to join us and that helps make up for the sore muscles and bruises.

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