Page 91 of The Mafia King's Reign
I think about what he said.I love you, Valentina.Three words from a man who doesn't say unnecessary things. A man who has spent weeks choosing every word like it might be used against him in court.
Sleep pulls me under slowly, warmly, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
And in the last moment before I go under, I let myself feel something I've been refusing to feel since I walked into this mansion.
Safe. Happy. Wanted.
I think I'm falling in love with my monster.
Sleep pulls me under slowly, warmly, his heartbeat steady beneath my ear.
And in the last moment before I go under, I let myself feel something I've been refusing to feel since I walked into this mansion.
Safe.
That's when I hear it. So faint I almost miss it.
The soft click of his bedroom door closing.
My eyes fly open, but the room is dark, and Salvatore is still asleep beneath me, his breathing deep and even.
I tell myself I imagined it.
But I know this house well enough now to know the difference between imagination and reality.
Someone was just in this room.
And they saw everything.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Salvatore
I've watched a lot of sunrises in my life.
Most of them came after sleepless nights from strategizing, cleaning up messes, and standing over bodies that needed to disappear before dawn. Sunrises meant the end of darkness, sure, but they also meant the start of another day filled with blood and business and the weight of an empire I was never supposed to inherit.
This sunrise, though, this one is different because for the first time, I’m waking up next to the woman who is going to be my wife. Valentina's face is peaceful in a way I've never seen when she's awake. No guarded expressions, no sharp comebacks ready on her tongue, no walls built to keep me out.
Fuck, she's stunning.
Her dark hair fans across my pillow like spilled ink. Her lips are slightly parted, still swollen from last night. One hand rests on my chest, fingers curled against my skin like she's holding on even in sleep.
I should get up.
There are a hundred things demanding my attention. Shipments to track, calls to return, and an empire that does not pause for sentiment. My phone has been buzzing on thenightstand for twenty minutes. Each vibration is a reminder that Salvatore Vitale does not lie in bed watching a woman sleep like a man who has forgotten who he is.
I said I love you last night.
I said it in the middle of everything, with her beneath me and my control completely gone, and it came out in the same breath as a command. She heard it. I watched her face change when she did, that split-second flash before the orgasm took her under. She heard it and didn't know what to do with it.
Neither do I.
I've said those words twice in my life before last night. Once to my mother, the night before she died, when I was seventeen and standing in a hospital hallway, and finally old enough to understand that I had never said it enough. Then again, after we laid her to rest.
I have never said it to a woman.
I have been careful about that specifically. I have understood, from the time I was old enough to watch my father use my mother's love as leverage against her, that saying those words to the wrong person hands them a weapon. That a man in my position cannot afford that particular vulnerability.
