Farrell watched Jenna after she turned her face to the helicopter window. She was as lovely as ever, her long chestnut hair falling in glossy waves around her shoulders, her cheekbones high enough to warrant a magazine cover.

He would never get tired of looking at her.

Leo made an adjustment to their altitude and Farrell forced himself to face forward, checking the controls to make sure all was well before slipping a hand into his jacket pocket and closing his hand around the small velvet box there.

It had become familiar in the two weeks he’d been carrying it around, the shine of the ring inside no less brilliant for the many times he’d stared at it.

He was being foolish.

Since he’d bought the ring, he’d had at least ten solid opportunities to ask Jenna to marry him, but none of them had felt right.

Or that’s what he told himself when he needed a good excuse not to feel like a bloody coward.

In his more honest moments, he had to admit he was scared.

It was a ridiculous admission, and one he would never have spoken aloud, but he wasn’t in the habit of lying — especially to himself.

He wasn’t worried about Jenna leaving him. They were happy. Or he was happy, and he did everything in his power to make sure Jenna and Lily were happy too.

It was true that he’d been gone more lately, taking extended trips to New York, and more recently Las Vegas, aiding their efforts to bring the old Syndicate territories under control.

And maybe he hadn’t been as focused on Jenna and Lily as he should be when he’d been home, owing to the constant conference calls with Nico, Christophe, and Luca, the assistance they’d given Damian in New York, the problems in Vegas.

Jenna seemed to take it all in stride, and if she’d looked a little more tired lately, her mouth set in an uncharacteristically anxious line, well, who could blame her? Farrell made sure she had plenty of help both in Tuscany and in London, but household staff — no matter how beloved — was no substitute for a partner.

It was still Jenna who took primary responsibility for Lily, who made sure Lily ate the right food and did her homework and learned to be kind and smart and fierce.

It was Jenna who made decisions about the houses and properties Farrell had scattered all over the world and Jenna who ran her charitable foundation and Jenna who visited Ethan, Farrell’s autistic brother, when Farrell couldn’t get to the institution where Ethan had lived since he was a child.

Farrell cursed himself. He should have been home more, should have insisted Nico go to the States more often, or better yet, Christophe, who had no children.

It was vanity that kept Farrell moving. Vanity and the hunger for violence, which hadn’t abated since he’d gotten Jenna back, since he’d learned about Lily.

He’d once used Jenna’s abandonment and his father’s death as an excuse for his rage, but he’d finally come to accept it was the way he came.

Hitting things felt good.

It was part of why he’d been sent to talk to Damian when they’d begun the takeover of New York; he understood Damian’s quiet fury, knew that no amount of reason would appeal to it, that it could only be channeled, not extinguished.

“Ten minutes.”

Leo’s voice, streamed directly into Farrell’s ear through the helicopter’s communication system, broke into Farrell’s thoughts.

He nodded and took another look at the controls. He trusted Leo implicitly, but he could never be too safe when it came to Jenna and Lily.

And therein lay the insecurity about Jenna and the marriage proposal.

He’d made a fatal error when she’d first come back to him, had allowed a breach of the Cornwall property in spite of the already-heavy security he’d installed there.

Jenna and Lily had survived, but Lily had been forced to hide in the stables, and for one terrifying moment, Jenna had been held at gunpoint by Adam Denman, Farrell’s oldest friend.

Farrell hadn’t thought twice — before or since — about shooting Adam in the head, but the moment still haunted him.

Afterwards, Jenna had left him again, retreating to London with Lily while Farrell doubled the security at all his properties and installed Leo in the city to keep an eye on Jenna and Lily from afar.

He’d only gotten them back after a months-long manhunt that had set he and Jenna on the run through Europe.

Jenna hadn’t wanted this life. She’d made that clear from the beginning. Had made it clear when she’d walked out of his life, pregnant with Lily.

When she’d kept Lily a secret for five long years.

Their time together on the run had seemed to change her mind, but as much as he hated to admit it, his fear lingered.

Fear that she would change her mind. That being his wife was a bridge too far.

He let go of the box in his pocket and focused his attention on Rome in the distance. They had a whole week ahead of them at Nico’s compound. There would be food and family, minimal business talk, plentiful time to show Jenna that she was still his number one priority.

That he would be a good husband to her.

And if she said no, it would still be okay. He’d never been traditional anyway, had never wanted the trappings of marriage. The desire to call Jenna his wife was childish, a relic of convention that had been dead to him since quitting Oxford and embarking on a life of crime.

Whatever her answer to his proposal, they were together. They shared a child. They loved each other with a totality unknown to most people in the world.

Those were the things that mattered.

He didn’t need marriage to know that she loved him — or to know that he would love her until his last breath.

It was one of the only things he knew was true.