2:00 a.m. and we were finally stepping inside a hotel room, my aching body ready to collapse.
Angelo wasn’t faring much better, he was more hunched over than before, and although he tried to make like he wasn’t in immense pain, he was sweating like nothing I’d ever seen before.
“You need to lay down,” I told him, worried he might collapse. “You seemed fine before you disappeared with Anthony. What happened?”
A smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth as he took a seat on the bed. “Anthony wanted to remind me of just whose niece I was falling for.”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. “He hit you?”
“More than once.”
I guess I wasn’t entirely surprised. While Anthony hadn’t been in my life for long, I could tell how protective he was of the people he called family.
“You’re falling for me?” I asked softly, my voice barely above a whisper.
He looked at me from beneath a heavy set brow, his eyes dark and possessive, like he wanted to brand me somehow so everyone knew I was his. “You think you could be with a man like me?”
“You mean a man who fights to protect the people he cares about? A man who feels so much passion and love for his culture, his family and heritage? A man who has helped to show me how important it is to stand up for yourself and your dreams?” I didn’t let my voice waiver, I wanted him to know how I viewed the man he was deep within.
He shook his head. “No, I’m talking about the man who’s taken more lives than I can count, and who runs on the wrong side of the law with guns and drugs and criminals. The man who could be killed tomorrow, or locked up for years.”
I heard what he was saying.
Angelo was smart, the things he did were well calculated and thought out. He was dangerous, and people feared him because of what he’d had to do in order to get to where he was. He earned respect, and he didn’t let people get away with doing things that disrespected him or the family.
How do you love a man who wouldn’t hesitate to put a bullet in someone’s head and walk away like it was just another day at the office?
How do you love a man who deals in guns and drugs and other illegal activity?
You just do.
Because you know that with him you were stronger, and that the future with him just seemed so much more worth living than one without—even if that future only lasted another day. Because without him, I’d still be sitting back, going to college and law school, waiting for the day where I would work for my father but resent every fucking moment of it.
If Sophie’s death had taught me anything it was that my life could end tomorrow, we weren’t promised shit in this world. There were a million things I wanted to do, that I wanted to see, that I would like to experience.
Sure, life with Angelo would be dangerous—deadly even—but that was just how life was. Wrapping yourself in a bubble and never stepping outside your comfort zone was not a life I wanted to live. I could get hit by a car tomorrow, and if that happened, I didn’t want to have regrets about life or love.
I walked over to where Angelo sat, his eyes still watching my every move even in the silence. Kneeling down in front of him, I reached up and cupped his face in my hand. “You can try to scare me off all you like, but I know who you are,” I told him with utter sincerity.
He finally took a breath, his dark eyes piercing through me. “You’re not scared?”
I licked my lips. “Absolutely petrified,” I whispered, and his eyes widened. “But not of who you are or what you do. I’m scared of how you make me feel. I’m scared of how none of that shit matters to me.”
“Emerson…” he started, shaking his head.
“No, it’s true,” I interjected. “Listen to me. You were right. I’ve spent far too long letting other people make my decisions, relying on others to support me, and help me to be strong. I know what I want. I’ve known this whole damn time, for most of my life—dance is something that isn’t a passing phase for me. It’s life, it’s who I am and who I want to be.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, but he didn’t try to stop me.
This was it, this was me releasing every bit of emotion I’d held inside, every time that my father threatened to stop paying for my dance classes, making me cry for days as I wondered when I could go back again. This was for every second I put others’ aspirations and dreams before my own. Every time I watched my friends or my sister or my mom or dad succeed in something that made them happy, knowing that I might never get to feel that way.
“You make me strong, you empower me,” I explained, standing to my feet. His hands moved to the back of my legs, his fingers gripping onto my thighs as I looked down at him. “Not because you push me, and challenge me at every turn, but because you gave me the courage to push myself, and not care what anyone else says.”
It’s not about having someone beside you, telling you and reminding you that you can do it. It’s about being strong enough to stand alone and say hell yeah, I can.
“You can do anything you want to do,” he said finally. “It’s up to you to do it. You could lose everyone you care about tomorrow… and trust me, in this life, that’s a very real possibility. And it will hurt, but if you have strength in yourself, you won’t let it break you. You have to continue to live your life, or you’re just wasting air.”
I thought about Uncle Anthony in that moment. He’d lost his wife, a woman I could tell he cherished like she was the moon in a night sky. The light in the darkness of the life he was living.
When she died, he could have laid down and let it destroy him, but that’s what his enemy wanted. Instead, he made a stand, he took back power. Then he raised four kids, and Angelo. He created a home for them, gave them everything they needed, including love. He continued to build an empire, one where people respected him, where no one dared to challenge him and where he could show how strong a family really could be.
Sure, the mafia world was full of danger, illegal activity, and war. But it was also about these men protecting their families, doing what they had to do in order to make sure the people they cared about lived another day. It was about not letting the little people get walked all over, preserving their culture and identity, and making sure that the future of their families was secure.
Angelo was the type of man who you’d see walking down the street toward you, and you would cross to the opposite side. From the outside, he looked scary. Hell, he was scary.
But just like Anthony, this man loved hard.
It wasn’t just lending a family member money kind of love, or helping them out when they got in a rough spot kind of love. The way Angelo loved was unapologetic. It was a, willing to take another person’s life, would risk his own for you, loyal without fault, unbreakable, kind of love. And something that special, that intense, was worth fighting for and worth believing in.
I licked my lips. “I don’t want to waste any more air.”
“Good,” he said, twisting his fingers into my hair and drawing my mouth to his. I was cautious, not wanting to hurt either of us more than we already were, but I also wanted to leap on him and ride out the crazy emotions of the day with him inside my body. Just as his hand slipped down over my breast, there was a knock at the door.
Angelo growled deep in his throat, ignoring the banging that followed until a voice called out. “Open up, asshole.”
It was Gio. We both pulled back and frowned at each other in confusion.
Angelo took a deep breath, and with an annoyed sneer, he walked over and pulled the door open.
Gio was leaning against the hallway wall. “You didn’t kill them all,” he said simply.
Angelo raised his eyebrow. “Say what now?”
Gio rolled his eyes. “We went to clean up the mess you made…” Gio’s eyes moved to me for a brief second, with a look that if I wasn’t mistaken was one of respect. It still made my stomach turn though, knowing what I’d done to deserve it. “You knocked him out cold, but he wasn’t dead.”
Angelo leaned against the door. “That could be helpful…” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “You want to come with me tomorrow to have a little chat with him?”
I saw Gio’s eyes brighten, growing a little wider, making him look like a child who’d just been told Christmas was coming a day early.
Gio gave a quick, sharp nod. “We’ll keep him comfortable until then, let me know when you’re ready.”
With that, he was gone, and Angelo shut the door behind him. I could see the cogs turning in Angelo’s head. “Looks like all is not lost after all,” he said with a smirk.
I didn’t ask what he was going to do with the guy.
Don’t ask, can’t tell—that was the mafia motto I’d begun to live by.
The less I knew, the better.