The Curvy Young Bride Whispered, “May I Touch?” to Campania’s Most Feared Mafia Boss—He Answered, “Then Let’s Get Married,” but Months Later She Found the Letters Proving Another Woman Had Been His Perfect Strategic Choice

The Curvy Young Bride Whispered, “May I Touch?” to Campania’s Most Feared Mafia Boss—He Answered, “Then Let’s Get Married,” but Months Later She Found the Letters Proving Another Woman Had Been His Perfect Strategic Choice

Part 1

In my defense, I had never seen a man calm a terrified horse like that.

Ciro Santangelo did not shout.

He did not call for one of the men scattered around his countryside estate.

He did not even seem angry when the mare jerked against the lead rope hard enough to drag another groom through the dirt.

He simply stepped forward.

Rolled the sleeves of his white linen shirt to his elbows.

Took the rope.

And planted his feet.

For four minutes, I watched the most feared man in Campania absorb the panic of half a ton of muscle through nothing but his grip and a voice so low I could barely hear the words.

The horse heard them.

That was enough.

Slowly, the mare stopped fighting.

Ciro released the rope.

His shirt clung slightly to his back.

His breathing was heavier than usual.

And his forearms—

Well.

That was where my judgment abandoned me.

“Something has caught your attention, Signorina Ferretti.”

I looked up.

Ciro was staring directly at me.

My name is Paloma Ferretti.

I was twenty-four years old, honey-blonde, blue-green-eyed, plus-size, and cursed—or blessed—with a tendency toward honesty my mother had spent my entire childhood trying to cure.

Apparently, it remained terminal.

“I was admiring your horse.”

“The horse is behind you.”

I glanced over his shoulder.

He was correct.

Unfortunately, I was still staring at his arm when I looked back.

He noticed.

Of course he noticed.

Men did not become Don of one of Campania’s most powerful families by missing obvious information.

I walked closer.

Then, because some reckless part of me had apparently decided that death by social impropriety was preferable to another afternoon of polite garden conversation, I asked:

“May I touch?”

The stable yard became very quiet.

Ciro’s storm-gray eyes changed.

Not anger.

Interest.

“Do you understand what you just asked?”

“I asked whether I may touch your arm.”

“Alone.”

“Yes.”

“Without a chaperone.”

“I had noticed.”

“In my world, a young unmarried woman alone with me in a stable yard asking permission to touch me creates complications.”

I considered that.

“You seem like a man capable of managing complications.”

Something almost became a smile.

Then he folded his arms.

That did not help.

“You are unmarried.”

“Yes.”

“I am unmarried.”

“I am aware.”

“Your family intends to find you a husband this season.”

My eyebrows rose.

“You have been investigating me?”

“I notice things.”

“That is my line.”

“It is a useful habit.”

He studied me.

“I also require a wife eventually.”

“That sounds deeply romantic.”

“I was not attempting romance.”

“Excellent. I would have been alarmed.”

And then, with the same tone another man might have used to order coffee, Ciro Santangelo said:

“Then let’s get married.”

I blinked.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You cannot possibly be serious.”

“I am almost always serious.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know enough to be interested.”

“From one inappropriate question?”

“I know every woman placed in front of me for the past decade has performed.”

He stepped closer.

“They smile when they do not want to smile.”

“They agree when they disagree.”

“They pretend interest because they want the position attached to my name.”

His gaze held mine.

“You appear incapable of pretending anything.”

“That is not a proposal.”

“No?”

“It is an accusation disguised as one.”

“Then answer the accusation.”

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came.

My family had already spent months discussing respectable matches.

Men with names.

Land.

Connections.

Men who looked at me as though my body were something to tolerate in exchange for the Ferretti name.

Ciro, by contrast, was looking at me like I was interesting.

Not beautiful in the decorative sense.

Not acceptable.

Interesting.

That was far more dangerous.

“Ask me properly,” I said.

His expression softened.

He stepped closer and held out one hand.

He did not reach for me.

He waited.

“Signorina Paloma Ferretti, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

I looked at his open hand.

Then placed mine inside it.

“Yes.”

A pause.

“But I still intend to touch your arm.”

His smile appeared before he could stop it.

Brief.

Unexpected.

Entirely unguarded.

“I look forward to it.”

Six weeks later, I became Donna Paloma Santangelo.

The wedding was private.

Elegant.

Efficient.

My mother was delighted by the elevation in status.

My father was relieved that the entire marriage problem had apparently solved itself without months of negotiation.

Neither asked whether I loved him.

At that point, I did not.

I barely knew him.

What I knew was that Ciro had instructed the dressmaker not to disguise my body.

“Make the gown fit Paloma,” he had said.

“Do not make Paloma fit the gown.”

I carried that sentence with me to the altar.

On our wedding night, I expected Ciro’s confidence to become entitlement.

Instead, he stopped at the threshold of his own bedroom.

Waiting.

The most feared man in Campania did not cross the room until I made the choice.

So I approached him.

Looked at his chest.

Then his face.

“May I touch?”

His eyes darkened.

“You already know the answer.”

“I want to hear it.”

“Yes.”

His voice roughened.

“Always yes.”

My palm settled against his chest.

His heartbeat was fast.

I smiled.

“You’re nervous.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“Mafia bosses do not become nervous.”

“Then perhaps I should verify my findings.”

For all his reputation, Ciro was careful with me.

Patient.

More interested in whether I wanted something than in what tradition said he could expect.

And when the night ended, I fell asleep against his chest understanding something I had not expected.

The man who terrified half of Campania had made me feel safer in a single room than most respectable men had managed in twenty-four years.

Marriage changed us quickly.

Or perhaps curiosity did.

Ciro’s estate included restaurants, property interests, import businesses, and enough legitimate financial paperwork to fill entire rooms.

I began reading.

At first because I was bored.

Then because I found it fascinating.

One evening I looked over a shipping agreement.

“Paragraph seven.”

Ciro glanced up.

“What about it?”

“The early termination penalty.”

He frowned.

“It rises fifteen percent every quarter.”

“Yes.”

“By month eight, leaving the agreement costs more than the goods.”

Silence.

“You read the entire contract?”

“Yes.”

He stared at me.

“You missed it.”

“I had not finished.”

“You were on paragraph twelve.”

“That is irrelevant.”

“It is extremely relevant.”

The sound that escaped him was so unexpected I stared.

Ciro Santangelo was laughing.

I discovered I liked making him do that.

Soon I was attending meetings.

Reviewing restaurant operations.

Asking questions.

Offering opinions.

And the extraordinary thing was that Ciro listened.

I suggested converting unused rooms in the east wing into administrative offices rather than continuing to rent commercial space.

The savings approached thirty thousand euros annually.

He approved the change.

No patronizing praise.

No surprise that his wife understood arithmetic.

Just:

“Good idea.”

And then he implemented it.

The marriage began changing somewhere in those ordinary moments.

I learned how to ruin Ciro’s concentration.

A finger lingering at his collar.

My hand sliding across his shoulder when I passed his chair.

Standing one second too long inside his arms after he helped me from a car.

At our first formal dance in Naples, his hand settled firmly at my waist.

“You know exactly what you’re doing.”

I widened my eyes.

“Doing what?”

“Do not use my own methods against me.”

“I learned from an excellent teacher.”

He nearly missed a step.

I considered it a triumph.

More importantly, I began seeing myself differently.

For years I had been taught that my body entered a room before I did.

Too soft.

Too large.

Too visible.

With Ciro, I never felt like something that needed reducing.

He looked for me across crowded rooms.

Recognized my footsteps.

Reached for me in his sleep.

And gradually, somewhere between teasing him over contracts and sitting barefoot beside him near the fire, I stopped thinking of our marriage as an arrangement.

I fell in love with him.

That was why the letters hurt.

Ciro had asked me to retrieve a ledger from his study.

I opened a lower drawer.

A bundle of correspondence sat inside.

Eight months before our wedding.

Potential marriage alliances.

Family influence.

Political advantage.

Strategic value.

My name was not on the list.

One name appeared repeatedly.

Donna Alessia Moretti.

Thirty years old.

Widowed.

Experienced.

Sophisticated.

Connected to powerful Sicilian interests.

Ciro’s aunt, Teodora, had strongly supported the match.

And Ciro himself had written:

Donna Moretti would be a wife of considerable strategic value. She understands the demands of the position and requires no education in the responsibilities of the title.

I sat in his chair for a long time.

Our marriage had started impulsively.

I knew that.

But until that moment, I had never understood what the alternative had been.

Alessia was the calculated choice.

The prepared choice.

The woman his world said should stand beside him.

And I—

I had walked into a stable yard at the right moment.

Weeks later, Alessia Moretti returned to Naples.

She was tall.

Slender.

Perfectly composed.

She looked at me with a smile almost warm enough to disguise what lived underneath.

“The new Donna Santangelo.”

I took her hand.

“Donna Moretti.”

“How fortunate you are.”

“We are both fortunate, I think.”

“Of course.”

Her eyes traveled over me.

“Ciro is not easily persuaded into marriage. I have wondered what convinced him so quickly.”

“We suited.”

“How lovely.”

She smiled.

“To suit so conveniently.”

There it was.

Convenient.

The exact word I had been trying not to use since reading those letters.

And suddenly, for the first time since marrying Ciro, I wondered whether the life I thought we were building had ever truly been mine at all.

Part 2

Alessia never attacked me openly.

She did something far more effective.

She helped.

She corrected seating arrangements with a sympathetic smile. Mentioned casually that she had managed a Sicilian estate for six years. Praised me for being “brave” whenever I made a mistake.

I began comparing myself to her constantly.

The lavender gown I wore when everyone else chose black.

The dialect phrase I pronounced incorrectly.

The associate’s wife whose name temporarily escaped me.

Alessia would have known.

Alessia would have been prepared.

Alessia had been the strategic choice.

I had been the impulsive one.

Without noticing, I began disappearing inside my own marriage.

I stopped adjusting Ciro’s collar.

Stopped curling into the chair by his study window.

Stopped touching him as I passed.

Ciro noticed.

Two weeks later, he found me alone.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I’ve been occupied.”

“Paloma.”

Something in the way he said my name broke through everything.

“Would you have married Alessia Moretti if I had never walked into that stable yard?”

He went completely still.

I told him about the letters.

Then asked again.

“Would you?”

For once, Ciro hesitated.

“I probably would have considered it.”

The truth hurt exactly as much as I expected.

“She would have been an excellent strategic match.”

I stood.

“Then I was right.”

“No.”

He crossed the room and knelt in front of my chair.

Ciro Santangelo.

On his knees.

Holding my hands.

“Alessia Moretti would have been the correct choice for my empire.”

My eyes burned.

“Paloma, you are the first choice I ever made for myself.”

He told me how his father had nearly destroyed everything through reckless trust and emotional decisions.

How Aunt Teodora taught him that a Don’s marriage was an alliance.

A calculation.

Control.

“Alessia made sense on paper.”

“And me?”

His eyes held mine.

“You were the thing I never calculated.”

“That is a terrible compliment.”

“It is the highest one I know how to give.”

Then he said:

“I spent ten years making only correct decisions.”

His fingers tightened around mine.

“And then you asked to touch my arm, and for the first time in my adult life I chose something because I could not bear the thought of watching it walk away.”

“When did it become real?”

“When I started listening for your footsteps.”

My breath caught.

“When I looked for you in every crowded room.”

His voice softened.

“When the chair beside my desk felt wrong because you weren’t sitting in it.”

I felt the wall inside me begin to crack.

Three weeks later, another challenge arrived.

My mother had heard that I attended meetings.

Reviewed contracts.

Offered opinions.

Apparently, someone had described my confidence as remarkable “for a woman of her proportions.”

I knew immediately who had been speaking to her.

Alessia.

My mother came to the estate determined to remind me what kind of wife she believed I should be.

And this time I understood something.

Ciro could defend me.

He probably would.

But if I wanted to stop feeling like the accidental woman who had stolen someone else’s place, then eventually I would have to stop waiting for him to tell the world why I belonged there.

I would have to do it myself.

Part 3

My mother arrived on a Wednesday afternoon.

She wore pearls.

That should tell you everything.

My mother used pearls the way generals used uniforms.

Whenever she believed a situation required correction, discipline, or the restoration of proper standards, she appeared wearing them.

She kissed both my cheeks.

Looked at my dress.

Then at the estate.

“You seem comfortable.”

“I am.”

“I hear you’ve become very involved.”

“In what?”

A pause.

“The business.”

“Some of it.”

“Ciro’s business.”

“Our legitimate businesses.”

Her expression tightened.

“How modern.”

“Terrifying, apparently.”

She did not appreciate that.

At dinner, Ciro mentioned one of the restaurant reorganizations.

“The new vendor arrangement begins next quarter?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Estimated savings?”

“Twelve thousand annually. Perhaps fourteen if the coastal location performs.”

My mother’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

Ciro continued eating.

Nothing else happened.

The real conversation took place the next afternoon.

I was walking toward Ciro’s study when I heard my mother through the partly open door.

“She has no business attending meetings with those men.”

I stopped.

Ciro answered calmly.

“Why?”

“She is your wife.”

“I am aware.”

“She should be managing the household.”

“She does.”

“Planning dinners.”

“She does.”

“Producing heirs.”

Silence.

Heat climbed my neck.

Then my mother continued.

“Not reading shipping agreements and offering opinions on investments. It isn’t seemly.”

Ciro’s voice became very quiet.

“What precisely is unseemly about competence?”

“She is twenty-four.”

“Yes.”

“She has no experience.”

“She identified a fifteen-percent penalty clause my advisers missed.”

No answer.

“She moved restaurant administration into unused estate space and saved nearly thirty thousand euros in one quarter.”

My throat tightened.

“She has memorized the names of associates, wives, tenants, children, staff members, and suppliers because she understands that organizations are made of people before they are made of accounts.”

Still silence.

Then my mother made the mistake.

“It simply isn’t what a wife of her stature should be doing.”

“Her stature.”

Ciro repeated the phrase so softly I knew my mother was in danger.

“I meant her position.”

“No.”

A pause.

“You meant exactly what you said.”

I closed my eyes.

My mother had spent twenty-four years teaching me to make myself socially smaller.

Smile differently.

Stand differently.

Dress strategically.

Never give anyone additional reason to criticize.

She believed she was protecting me.

Perhaps sometimes she was.

But protection repeated often enough had become instruction.

Do not take up the space you naturally occupy.

Inside the study, Ciro spoke again.

“I will not have Paloma diminished.”

My breath caught.

“Not by gossip.”

“Not by society.”

“And not by her own family.”

His voice stayed controlled.

“She is exactly what this estate needs.”

“Not because she fits a mold.”

“Because she had the courage to ignore one.”

I could have entered then.

Could have run into the room and thrown my arms around him.

Part of me wanted to.

But another part understood that something was still unfinished.

For years, my mother had been the voice telling me I occupied too much space.

Then Alessia had discovered exactly where that wound lived.

Ciro could reassure me.

He could love me.

He could defend me.

But if I wanted that wound to close, eventually I would have to speak for myself.

My mother found me on the terrace the following morning.

“You heard us yesterday.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

Her posture stiffened.

“I was only trying to protect you.”

“I know.”

She looked surprised.

“You do?”

“You’ve always been trying to protect me.”

I placed down the papers I had been reviewing.

“That’s the problem.”

Her face changed.

“Paloma.”

“You taught me every social rule before I was old enough to understand why I needed them.”

“You taught me how to enter rooms.”

“How to remember names.”

“How to read whether someone was insulting me while pretending to compliment me.”

“That is useful.”

“It is.”

I nodded.

“And you taught me that my body was the first problem I needed to manage before anyone would care what came out of my mouth.”

Silence.

My mother looked away.

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

She flinched.

I continued.

“You corrected every dress.”

“Every photograph.”

“Every serving.”

“Every time I sat comfortably instead of elegantly.”

“You told me the world was cruel, so I should never give it additional ammunition.”

“That was true.”

“Maybe.”

My voice softened.

“But eventually I stopped needing cruel strangers.”

“I had your voice instead.”

That hurt her.

I saw it.

Good.

Not because I wanted revenge.

Because sometimes pain is the only thing that forces truth through defenses.

My mother sat across from me.

“I was afraid for you.”

“Of what?”

“That people would dismiss you before knowing you.”

“They did sometimes.”

“Yes.”

“And I survived.”

She looked at me.

“I did not know how to teach you that.”

“That I could survive?”

“That you didn’t have to become smaller first.”

For the first time, my anger eased.

My mother’s methods had wounded me.

But perhaps they had also come from her own fear.

That did not make them right.

It made them human.

“I wish you had,” I said.

“So do I.”

No dramatic embrace followed.

My mother did not become a different woman overnight.

Neither did I.

But something shifted.

Then came the syndicate gathering.

Forty of the most powerful men in the region.

Their wives.

Associates.

Families whose names had controlled entire industries longer than I had been alive.

Alessia would attend.

So would my mother.

I considered wearing black.

Correct.

Elegant.

Safe.

Instead, I chose crimson.

The gown followed my curves exactly.

No tricks.

No attempt to make my waist disappear or my hips seem smaller.

When I walked downstairs, Ciro was waiting.

He looked up.

Stopped.

“No.”

I froze.

“What?”

“You cannot wear that.”

For one horrible second, every insecurity returned.

Then I saw his face.

“Why not?”

“I have negotiations tonight.”

“Yes?”

“I require the ability to form coherent sentences.”

I stared.

Then laughed.

“That sounds like a personal problem.”

“It has become one.”

He offered his hand.

I took it.

At the gathering, I expected to be afraid.

Perhaps I was.

Courage and comfort are not the same thing.

But I walked in anyway.

I greeted people by name.

Discussed a restaurant lease.

Asked one associate about his daughter’s examinations.

Spoke with another family about a tenant issue on property owned by the Santangelo estate.

When I did not know something, I said so.

When I did know something, I stopped pretending I did not.

That was new.

Across the room, Ciro watched me.

Not constantly.

He had business to conduct.

But every time our eyes met, something warm passed between us.

Not ownership.

Recognition.

Then Alessia approached.

Her smile remained flawless.

“Paloma.”

“Alessia.”

Her gaze passed over my red gown.

“Bold.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m not entirely certain I meant it as praise.”

“I decided to accept it anyway.”

A tiny pause.

“You’ve become confident.”

“I always was.”

“That is not how I remember it.”

“No.”

I smiled.

“You met me during an inconvenient two-week crisis.”

She recovered quickly.

“I hear you continue attending Ciro’s business meetings.”

“I do.”

“That must require considerable study.”

“It does.”

“Some of us were raised around those responsibilities.”

“I know.”

Her expression shifted.

I continued.

“You would have been an excellent wife for Ciro.”

She went very still.

So did I.

Because once the sentence was spoken aloud, I discovered it no longer frightened me.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I read the correspondence.”

A faint change entered her face.

“The proposed match.”

“His aunt’s recommendations.”

“Your qualifications.”

Alessia lifted her chin.

“I see.”

“You were strategically ideal.”

“Yes.”

“I imagine you would have managed the household beautifully.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Does that not disturb you?”

“It did.”

“And now?”

I looked across the room.

Ciro was speaking with several associates.

He sensed me watching.

His eyes found mine immediately.

The same way they always did.

I looked back at Alessia.

“Now I understand there is a difference between being the correct answer on paper and being the person someone chooses when nobody is calculating.”

Her smile became tighter.

“That sounds sentimental.”

“Terribly.”

“Sentiment can ruin powerful men.”

“So can living entirely by fear of it.”

For the first time, Alessia Moretti had nothing to add.

And that was when I understood something else.

She had never been the true threat to my marriage.

She was simply very good at touching wounds that already existed.

If I stopped believing I was competing with her, the competition ended.

Later that evening, my mother approached.

I braced instinctively for a correction.

My dress.

My posture.

Something.

Instead, she took my hands.

For several seconds, she simply looked at me.

“You look like a queen, Paloma.”

I almost joked.

Then I saw her eyes.

She meant it.

Not because I was Ciro’s wife.

Not because I was standing inside one of the most powerful rooms in Campania.

Because she was finally seeing me without simultaneously imagining how I might be improved.

“Thank you.”

Her eyes filled.

“I should have told you things like that sooner.”

“Yes.”

She laughed softly.

“That honesty.”

“You raised me.”

“Clearly.”

She squeezed my hands.

Across the room, Ciro watched.

That night, after everyone left, I found him in the sitting room.

“You spoke to Alessia.”

“Yes.”

“Do I need to be concerned?”

“No.”

“Should she be concerned?”

“Ciro.”

“What?”

“You are enjoying this far too much.”

“I have spent weeks watching Donna Moretti destabilize my wife.”

“I destabilized myself.”

“She assisted.”

I laughed.

Then became serious.

“Did you mean what you told my mother?”

“All of it.”

“That I make the estate better?”

“Yes.”

“Even when I make mistakes?”

“Especially then.”

I frowned.

“That makes no sense.”

“It does to me.”

He took my hand.

“You ask questions.”

“You tell me when I’m wrong.”

“You notice details other people ignore because they are too busy protecting their position.”

“And you irritate me with remarkable consistency.”

“Finally, an honest compliment.”

He kissed my knuckles.

I watched him for a moment.

“Do you regret it?”

“The marriage?”

“The stable yard.”

Ciro’s eyebrows rose.

“You mean the afternoon a woman stared shamelessly at my arm and somehow convinced me marriage was the most practical solution?”

“I was not shameless.”

“You asked to touch me.”

“I was conducting an investigation.”

“Of my arm?”

“Structural integrity.”

His mouth twitched.

“No.”

“What?”

“I do not regret it.”

His expression changed.

“You are the only decision in my adult life that became more correct the less strategic it was.”

This time I kissed him first.

A year passed.

Not perfectly.

No marriage becomes true because two people survive one argument.

We had others.

About business.

Family.

Security.

My habit of reading contracts in bed.

His habit of assuming he could work through dinner.

We reconciled.

We learned.

Our marriage became less dramatic and more valuable.

I discovered that love was not the stable-yard proposal.

That was attraction and impulse.

Love was Ciro remembering exactly which tea I wanted when I was tired.

It was me knowing when the silence in his study meant concentration and when it meant he needed someone to sit nearby.

It was disagreement without punishment.

It was the ability to say something painful without fearing the other person would use vulnerability as a weapon.

One warm autumn afternoon, I returned to the stables.

Ciro was examining a new mare.

Coat discarded.

Sleeves rolled.

Exactly as he had been the first afternoon we met.

The light caught the first silver beginning to thread through his dark hair.

After a year of marriage, the sight still affected me with humiliating efficiency.

He glanced up.

“No.”

I stopped.

“I have not said anything.”

“I know that expression.”

“What expression?”

“The one that changed my entire life.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

I crossed the stable yard.

Stopped in front of him.

Then lifted my hand and placed it over his chest.

His heartbeat changed beneath my palm.

I smiled.

“May I touch?”

Ciro caught my hand.

“You are already married to me.”

“So?”

“You cannot continue using marriage as the consequence of asking.”

“Then I shall invent another consequence.”

“Will you?”

“I have an entire lifetime to think of them, Don Santangelo.”

His arm settled around my waist.

The movement was familiar now.

Easy.

Home.

Then he smiled.

That rare, unguarded smile I had first seen escape him in this exact place.

Only now it did not look quite so unfamiliar on his face.

He had learned to smile more.

I had learned to shrink less.

He kissed me beneath the autumn light.

No audience.

No negotiation.

No family strategy.

No Alessia.

No calculations.

Just the two people who had begun with an improper question and an even more reckless answer.

For years, I had thought being brave meant not being afraid.

I was wrong.

I had been afraid when I crossed that stable yard.

Afraid during our first night.

Afraid when I read Alessia’s name in Ciro’s letters.

Afraid when I finally told my mother what her constant corrections had done to me.

Afraid walking into that syndicate gathering in crimson.

Boldness had never been the absence of fear.

It had been curiosity becoming louder.

Truth becoming more important.

The decision to reach anyway.

I had asked Ciro whether I might touch him because I wanted to know whether what I saw was real.

A year later, my palm rested over his heart.

Still strong.

Still racing faster than he would ever admit whenever I stood too close.

I smiled.

“You’re nervous.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“Mafia bosses do not become nervous.”

“We have already disproved that theory.”

“Paloma.”

“I can feel your heart.”

“You are intolerable.”

“You chose me.”

“I did.”

The humor disappeared from his voice.

He looked at me with that same directness he had possessed from the beginning.

“I would again.”

And there, finally, was the answer I had once believed I needed Alessia’s letters to give me.

I had never been the perfect strategic choice.

I had been something more frightening to a man like Ciro Santangelo.

The choice he made freely.

I lifted my face toward his.

“May I?”

He smiled.

“Always yes.”