Page 147 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Can you really get out, Luca?" I asked. "Of something like this?"
"Slowly, bella mia. No one gets out all at once, but I don't want our child growing up in a fortress." He rested his hand on my belly, over the table, with no disguise at all now.
"Cognatina."
Raffaele's voice came across the terrace—linen pants and an open shirt, charming as ever, with that smile that had greeted me on the staircase months ago.
"Raffaele."
"Did the fratellone tell you?" He pulled out a chair and sat down across from us. "That I've become the official workhorse while he goes off to play golf with the Greek shipowners?"
Luca almost smiled.
"I don't play golf."
"You'll learn." Raffaele took a cornetto from the tray. "A legitimate businessman plays golf, fratellone. It's part of it." He looked at me, and the smile softened. "I'll take the ugly part, cognatina. So you can raise this child in a house where you can open the windows."
I swallowed hard.
"Raffaele. Thank you."
He shrugged, light. But I saw it—saw there was weight under the charm.
"I've always been the one who does the dirty work so he doesn't have to," he said, and winked. "Only now it's official. There's even a title." He stood and kissed the top of my head—a brother-in-law's gesture, finally with no edge to it at all. "Take care of my nephew, cognatina. And that one too." He pointed at Luca. "Because without you he goes back to being unbearable."
Then he left.
"You're treating me like porcelain," I said.
We were in the room, the light coming in golden through the window. He'd laid me down on the bed with such care that I almost laughed—like a man setting down an antique vase.
"You're pregnant," he said, serious.
"I'm six weeks pregnant, Luca, not eight months." I rolled my eyes. "I'm not going to break."
"Bella mia…"
"I spent three months imagining a way to stab you while you slept." I pulled him by the shirt. "I think I can handle you kissing me like you mean it."
He laughed.
Laughed for real—that short laugh, down in his chest, that had turned into an out-loud laugh somewhere along the way. He leaned in and kissed me, and he meant it, and I felt his smile against my mouth.
"Bossy."
"You like it."
"Madonna, I like it."
He unbuttoned the dress with his fingers, slowly, but this time with no solemnity at all—lightly, kissing every bit of skin as it appeared, and when he kissed just below my ribs I laughed, because it tickled, and he raised an eyebrow.
"Ticklish?" he said. "The dangerous signora Moretti is ticklish?"
"Shut up."
He kissed the same spot again, on purpose, I squirmed, smacked his shoulder, he laughed too, and for a second we forgot that sex was supposed to be a serious thing.
The other times—the first, after the attack; the second, with the confession; the third, on the honeymoon; the one at the Hotel Lucia, on the eve of the war—there had always been weight.
