He frantically tried to soothe her. “Mi amore, please, nothing is worth your tears. I beg you, don’t cry.”
She shook her head and cried harder, but he finally understood what she was reiterating in her incoherent sobbing.
“My love, my love, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, so sorry...”
This was all for him.
His one-of-a-kind, magnanimous firecracker was breaking her own heart on his behalf.
He crushed her to him, trying to defuse her upheaval. “Mi amore, it’s all in the past. I just needed you to know.”
She struggled out of his hold and rose above him, her eyes reddened, her lips quaking. “And I’d give anything, everything, if I could undo it all, make you un-suffer every single second.”
He caught her face, stilled its shuddering. “You have. Just telling you, just that it didn’t matter to you, worked like an antidote to the poison I had in my system. I can now leave it all behind where it can’t touch me, or us, again. Just loving you erases it all, makes up for it a hundred times over.”
Her sobs lessened as he talked, stroked her hair, pressed her to his chest.
With her upheaval fading, she spoke against his flesh. “You know what’s driving me insane right now? Besides being unable to go after those who hurt you and making them suffer a far worse hell than the one they put you through? It’s that I had such a ridiculously easy life compared to you. I can’t even share your ordeals except in my imagination. And I hate it!”
He went still beneath her. His heart had expanded until he wondered if it would burst. Not a bad way to go, he thought. If he didn’t want to live forever. To be with Liliana.
“Mi amore, sposami. Marry me.”
His words echoed in absolute silence.
They’d both stopped breathing. The very world stopped turning.
Then both their chests emptied on ragged moans as she raised an unsteady head to look down at him, flabbergasted.
And everything poured out of him. “I never had a heart, but you created one inside me. A heart that was made to love you, that can’t survive without you. So if you want me alive, you’ll have to say yes.”
She burst into tears again. “God, Antonio, yes...yes. But...”
“No buts.”
“I was just going to say—but I think you should slow down, take more time to think about this. After you do—”
His lips silenced hers. “I can’t slow down, and I won’t think about it. I want nothing else but you. I now realize everything in my life has been leading up to this. This moment. This union . You.” He took her in another compulsive kiss. “So never say ‘but’ again.”
“Even if I say that no word remains after what you said ‘but’ yes?”
“You can say anything, as long as it ends in yes.”
And for the rest of the night, she said almost nothing but yes. She whimpered, whispered and screamed it. She said yes to him, to them, and to everything their future together would bring.
* * *
“You have to tell us, Lili.”
Lili turned to the redhead who regarded her with such warm curiosity. Scarlett Kuroshiro, the wife of Raiden, one of Antonio’s brothers, was unearthly beautiful. Her husband, who sat beside her, clearly as besotted with her as she appeared to be with him, was Japanese by birth and as gorgeous as she was in his own way. But what truly amazed Lili was their year-old baby daughter, who mixed them both into an incredible mixture. Their adopted children, five of them from four to eight years old, were all playing on the grounds of Antonio’s mansion with the other brothers’ kids and their nannies.
“Yes, you have to.” That was Jenan, another brother’s wife, the guy who looked like a genie. Sheikh Numair Al Aswad, the brotherhood’s leader. Jenan looked like she’d walked out of Arabian Nights herself, and actually was a princess. “We must know what you did to Antonio,” she said. “What superpowers do you have?”
Lili smirked. “This coming from the pantheon of gods and goddesses Antonio has for brothers and sisters.”
Everyone laughed. They’d been laughing every time she’d said anything. It was either that Antonio had given them strict orders to be super delighted with her every word, or that her brand of humor tickled them as much as it did him.
“It’s fate.” Rafael, the youngest brother, a Brazilian and another juggernaut, hugged his wife, Eliana, into his side tighter. “So our brotherhood would be blessed by the duet of Eliana and Liliana.”
Eliana looked adoringly up at her husband before she winked at Lili. “I somehow don’t think fate conspired such a perfect match just so your brotherhood would have wives with rhyming names. Besides, I’m Ellie and she’s Lili.”