Page 52 of Playing the Sicilian's Game of Revenge

“I went to see Julia. Dante’s wife. To warn her what was about to happen.” He shook his head. “No, that isn’t true. I wanted to prove you wrong. To get her blessing and rub it in your face.”

“How mature,” she murmured. “But I’d already warned her.”

He sighed. “Yes. So she just kept going on and on about how much she loved her son, how that mattered more to her than Dante’s feelings on anything. She said...a mother only wants a happy son, and I... I know it is what my mother wanted.” He bowed his head. “I did not want to think of it, deal with it. I would have set it aside forever, but between the two of you, I felt...cursed. Haunted.”

Saverina couldn’t stop herself from frowning, because it sounded rather accusatory, all in all.

But he continued. “I went to the cemetery. I did what you did with your sister’s grave. Tidied up a bit. But I did not feel her there. Even when it began to storm. I tried to speak to her, but it was...fruitless.”

She swallowed at the lump in her throat. This was why he was wet and muddy. He’d been to the cemetery. “I do not often feel Rocca there either.”

“You do not?”

He seemed to need the reassurance, and maybe she was a fool to give it. But she could not deny him this. “Not in the cemetery usually. I think... I think cemeteries are more for the living than the dead. I feel her in other ways. I’ll see something that reminds me of her, and it is as if she’s there with me. Looking at it too.”

He studied her for a long time, his gaze raking over her face. Then his other wet hand came up to cover her other cheek.

“Do you remember the first time I kissed you?”

“I’m not sure where you’re going with this, but yes.” His clothes and hair were dripping on her, but she did not dare move away from his gentle grasp. “We were leaving the theater, about to go our separate ways. I wasn’t sure what to make of you. You hadn’t even tried to hold my hand. Then you kissed me.”

“You’d told some joke that reminded me of my mother. It would have made her laugh, and my mind drifted to what it would be like for the two of you to meet. I suppose... I felt her there. I did not like it. It made me angry.”

“So you kissed me?”

“I thought that would take the anger away.” He shrugged. “It did. After a fashion.”

“I do not think this is the grovel you think it is.”

“But it is. I do not get angry. I do not let it win. Everything is cold and calculated so I can win. But you have frustrated me, and I thought I could solve it in all manner of ways, but I never did. I never could solve you.”

“I am not a problem, Teo.”

And then he did something...unfathomable. He laughed. A true laugh that crinkled his eyes and made his entire being seem...lighter. “You are. But problems are not always bad. Sometimes they are something you learn from. Something that changes the course of your life. You have changed mine, Saverina. I cannot let my anger go, but for Julia’s love of her sons, for my love of you, I can let this revenge go.”

Her heart tripped over itself. “All of it?”

He nodded. “I think I understand what Lorenzo meant. I could hurt Dante, but it would not teach him any lessons. He is an evil man who would hurt his own legitimate son. Why should me hurting him change anything for him? It will only make him a worse person, likely. But one thing that will never make sense to him is me just...living a good life.”

“What life do you want?”

He released her face, reached into his pocket and pulled out the ring he’d given her. His proposal had been fake then.

It wasn’t now.

“A life with you, Saverina. I love you. It is not easy for me. I cannot promise that it ever will be. Love feels dangerous, so tenuous. Grief is the other side of love, and it threatened to swallow me whole.”

She nodded and had to work hard to speak past that lump in her throat. “I’d rather live a life with grief than without all the love that is the other side of it. Grief is bearable when you share it. When you accept it. When you grow from it.”

Teo inhaled deeply. “You have taught me this. By being you. By speaking of your own grief. By never being afraid to ask me about my mother, my grief. You have forced me to face that which I did not want to, but needed to. And while you did all that, you loved me. You asked me what I wanted. I was so afraid of what I wanted, Saverina, but I am not a coward. Not anymore.”

He took her hand in his. “I want you. A life with you. A family with you. Will you love me? Marry me? Share your life and grief with me?”

Saverina let out a shaky breath but did not answer right away. She loved him, yes, but she had to make a decision that was best for both of them. She looked into his eyes, though, and saw truth. Because love was bright and wonderful and happy, but it came with harder things.

He’d made his peace with that. Finally. She could see it in his eyes. “Yes, I will.”

He slid the ring onto her finger, and then she flung herself at him. He was cold and wet, and a mess. But he was hers.

---