"I don't like having to hide," he clarified, moving away from me, then reaching for my hand to pull me up as well. "I don't want you to think that I want to keep it a secret."
"It's really, ah, not a secret," I said, following him into the bathroom, into the shower stall.
"What?"
"Well, um, Salvatore and Brio knew even before the meeting. Brio handed me back my bra after we did it in the kitchen," I told him. "And, ah, Salvatore wiped down the surfaces. Primo somehow knew. And then after that meeting..." I said, trailing off, waving a hand.
"Yeah," he agreed.
"I think it might be smart to just... put the word out that we need to keep our lips sealed about it for a while," I told him, selfishly moving under the water when it got warm enough. "Just for Avi's sake."
"Yeah," Santi agreed, moving forward, wrapping his arms around me.
"Are you trying to be closer to me, or the hot water?" I asked, smirking up at him.
"A little bit of both," he told me, visibly shivering as the water cascaded over his cold skin.
Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward, resting my head against his chest, sliding my arms around his waist, letting myself hold on. Because, for the first time in my life, I was sure I found something—someone—worth holding onto.
It was, at once, an amazing, yet utterly terrifying sensation.
Because it was something I wanted. He was something I wanted. But he was also something I could lose.
I hadn't really experienced loss before. My mother had never been a mother, so leaving her had been like a sigh of relief. And after that, I never got close to anyone aside from the Morellis, so there had never been any risk for heartbreak.
"Hey, Alessa?" Santi called, seeming to sense the change in me, the uncertainty, the insecurity.
"Yeah?" I asked, closing my eyes as I took a steadying breath.
"What if it goes right?" he asked, making a smile tug at my lips as I leaned up to press a kiss to the underside of his jaw.
Yeah.
What if it went right?
I had no reason to start expecting the worst, like I didn't already know the man inside and out. We'd been living together for months. The man had taken care of me when I was sick, and fretted over me when I was hurt. We'd shared countless meals, had engaged in all sorts of conversations.
It wasn't new-new like most new relationships were new.
Because we'd already put a lot of time into getting to know each other.
"So, are you going to wash me, or what?" I asked, feeling a chuckle rumble through his chest.
"Baby, if I ever turn down that offer, I want you to grab my gun and shoot me," he said, reaching for the soap.
From there, well, things got out of hand.
I mean, we almost tumbled through the glass door kind of out of hand.
I wasn't even entirely sure how we both dried off or got back into bed, we were so exhausted.
But I knew we both ended up there.
And I knew Santi reached for me, pulling me toward his side of the bed, settling me up on his chest, then wrapping his arms around me.
And I knew nothing I'd ever experienced before felt quite as good as being in that man's arms, feeling his breath rising and falling beneath me, and hearing his steady heartbeat against my ear.
After a lifetime of taking care of myself, of priding myself on never needing anything or anyone, I was dangerously close to needing this, needing more of the comfort I felt in his arms, needing him.
It was dangerous.
And scary.
And foreign.
But what if it went right?
Epilogue
Santi - 1 week
"You don't gotta be here, man," Brio said, fiddling with the collection of knives lined up on the bookshelf in the apartment he'd just illegally let us into.
It was small even by New York standards, with peeling paint, punch holes in the walls, and roaches circling the sink drain.
He was both right and wrong.
I didn't have to be there. I knew that Brio could handle this job. But that didn't mean it was right to pawn it off on him.
It was important that I had a hand in ending the life of the man who'd taken my son's mother from him.
And it was also important because I had to make my bones eventually. I'd been allowed into the Family on good faith that I would eventually do what every other made man in the mafia had to do.
Take a life.
If I was going to do it, I much preferred it being someone I personally had a lot of anger toward.
Because while Avi was doing okay, while he was adjusting to his new life, there were times you could still find a faraway look in his eyes, when you knew he was thinking about his mother, missing her.