Page 157 of The Temptation
It stays.
It builds.
It eats away at you.
But if I have any chance of making this marriage withLucia work, by being the kind of man she deserves, I have to put my demons to bed once and for all. It’s time to let go of the past and put my mother and all the emotional baggage she left me to rest.
So, we’re heading to the cemetery where my father is buried. My parents are about to be reunited, and I hope once that’s done, I’ll finally find some peace.
As for the information Lucia gave me on my paternal grandparents, I’m going to sit on that for a while. I need time to wrap my head around it first.
There’s a part of me that desperately wants to meet them, but there’s another part that isn’t sure. What if I don’t live up to their expectations, or worse … what if they don’t like me?
I’ve spent a lifetime feeling like someone nobody asked for. Unwanted and unchosen. I’m not about to unwillingly reopen that festering wound inside me. I’m not rushing this. I won’t put myself back in a place where I’m begging to be enough.
Never again.
“Are you okay?” Lucia asks as we meet in the foyer.
“I’m fine,” I lie, because the truth is I’m nervous.
It feels like I’m about to meet someone I’ve thought about often throughout my life. But the reality is, I’m going to a gravesite to visit a headstone … a ghost. To see my father’s last resting place, not the man himself.
I tuck the box under my arm and open our front door, gesturing with my free hand for Lucia to exit first.
The moment I step out behind her, though, I stop dead in my tracks.
“What the fuck is that?” I mumble under my breath when I see the black Ferrari sitting in the driveway with a large red bow sitting on the bonnet.
Lucia dips her hand into the small bag hooked over herwrist. “Your last present,” she says, pulling out a key fob and dangling it between her fingertips.
The diamond ring I bought before the wedding—the one meant for her, but never given—now sits on her finger, catching the sunlight like it was always meant to be there.
The night after we consummated our marriage, I pulled the ring from my drawer and slid it onto her finger. No words were needed, just the quiet understanding that she was mine, and I was hers. I’m grateful it’s me who gets to be her forever guy.
“You bought me a Ferrari?”
She lifts one shoulder in a casual shrug, like it’s nothing.
But it’s something.
It’s massive.
It’s completely over the fucking top.
I’ve gone from a lifetime of receiving no gifts to this …
“You like?” she asks, waggling her eyebrows.
My eyes move from the key fob to the car, then snap back to her face. “Are you fucking insane?” When a smile curves her lips, I find myself immediately adding, “Actually, don’t answer that.”
She bounces on her feet as she holds out the key. “You have no idea how turned on I am about seeing you sitting behind the wheel of that car. I’m wet just picturing it.”
I bark out a laugh because this woman drives me crazy in the best possible way.
I step towards her and slide my arm around her waist, tugging her petite body into mine. “It’s too much?—”
She lifts her hand, placing a finger against my lips, effectively cutting me off. “It’s not. TheFamigliain Italy is thriving under Dante’s rule. That,” she says, gesturing towards the car with a tip of her chin, “costs less than I make in a day.”
