by LaQuette
“I did not gift you with your life because of Sanai. I did it because of your grandmother. She was good to my woman and my son. She deserved at least one good deed in turn for that,” Dante growled.
“Dante, I don’t want to hurt Sanai or the baby. There’s an easy way for everyone here to get what they want. You come back, put that asshole Jimmy Rosen back on the street, and you take up the reins again.”
Dante shook his head as he watched his once-friend. How could he have entrusted this man with so much? How could Dante have missed the hatred Bernadino had for him in his eyes?
“How does my return to the family benefit you? You’re still in the family, Bernie. What does me being there get you?”
“It puts me back on top,” Bernadino answered. “I was your second. Jimmy is pushing me out of a family I helped build. If you come back, I get my position back.”
“Never,” Dante uttered. “The only thing you get—the only thing either of you get—is death.”
He watched them send questioning gazes between them, each trying to figure out how he could speak with such certainty.
“Sanai.” She raised her head, her face covered in tears and sweat. “Baby, I promise this is almost over. We’re going to be fine. I just need you to trust me. Can you do that for me?”
She nodded without the slightest hesitation. She believed in him, and he’d never make her regret that.
“Close your eyes, Sanai. Don’t open them until I tell you,” he commanded.
She took one last look at him, as if she was cataloguing everything about him, committing it to her memory. Considering the situation they were in, he couldn’t say he exactly blamed her for that. She then slowly closed her eyes as he’d instructed.
“Awww, isn’t that sweet?” Tomassa cooed. “She’s so obedient, like a little puppy. Is that why you’re so taken with her, Dante? Because she heeds your every directive?”
Dante ignored her. He wasn’t here to trade biting commentary with Tomassa. He was here to get his woman and their unborn child back to safety. It was time to get back to the mission at hand.
“Tomassa, Bernadino,” Dante called. “This is the last chance you’re going to get. Give her to me, or you’ll regret it.”
Tomassa gave a nervous laugh before she spoke. “You’ve got a lot of mouth for someone that’s out here with no backup. There’s no mob that has your back. You walked away from it all. No one will save you. You’re alone.”
“Am I?” Dante asked.
He watched the smile slowly slide off her face at the sound of multiple firearms being cocked simultaneously. Inch by inch, members of Don Mancini’s gang filtered into the light. He saw a brief moment of defiance zip across Bernadino’s face, but the sight of several tiny red laser dots bouncing on his chest, clustering over the area where his heart beat, stopped whatever thoughts he had of moving.
“If you two were really about shit, you’d have known never to fuck with a real Don’s family unless you plan to go all the way.”
He walked over to where Bernadino stood and wrapped his hands around the handles of Sanai’s wheelchair. He took one final look at his onetime friend and turned toward the exit. Before he passed Tomassa, he leaned in close to her ear so no one else would hear him.
“You wanted the attention and adulation that often came with power, but you never realized that being the boss means being ready to lose your life to the jackals that will come to take your place.”
He placed a single kiss on her cheek, delighting in the taste of her salty tears. “Tell the devil I said hello.”
He pushed Sanai to the tiny elevator waiting at the other end of the structure. He backed into the car, pulling her inside and looking out at one of the armed men surrounding Bernadino and Tomassa. He leaned in and pushed the button for the lobby. As the doors began to close he locked eyes with the man staring back at him and gave a slight nod.
When the doors closed Dante heard the familiar sound of silenced bullets hitting their marks. He placed a calming hand on Sanai’s tense shoulders. “It’s over,” he breathed. “You can open your eyes now.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sanai looked down into the sleeping child’s face. Salvatore Gabriel DeLuca was here in the flesh, and Sanai couldn’t be more thrilled. He was rounder than Nazario had been at birth, but aside from that, they looked like the exact same baby.
“Damn, yet again I don’t see anything of you in a child you claimed to give birth to,” Becca said.
Sanai rolled her eyes. Becca wouldn’t be Becca if she didn’t have something slick to say during the most inappropriate moments. “Would you like to see the episiotomy incision to verify that I actually did push a baby into the world today?”
Becca waved her hand in dismissal. “Nah,” she shrugged. “Cooch ain’t my thing in the bedroom or the examination room.”
Sanai couldn’t even find it in her to be shocked by Becca’s words. Considering how tumultuous the last few hours of her life had been, Becca’s blue humor didn’t really register on her worry barometer.
Dante had walked into the parking lot, and without so much as moving a finger he’d saved her. She’d promised Janet he’d save them both, and he had. Tomassa had locked the woman in the trunk of their planned getaway car to keep her from running. Her plan was to keep Janet close long enough for Sanai’s baby to be born. God only knows what she’d have done to the woman once she’d gotten what she wanted.
Fortunately, one of the men who had accompanied Dante to that parking lot found her and set her free. Shortly after Sanai’s return to her hospital room, Dante received word that Janet’s daughter was safe and unharmed, en route to her mother’s care.
Salvatore snuggled closer to Sanai’s chest, pulling her focus to where it should be—on him. She sighed, grateful for the distraction from the horrible events that led up to her little miracle’s birth.
“Linares told me they should know if Salvatore is a match for Nazario soon. He’s promised to call me the second the results come in.”
The silent monster in the room always made its presence known. Soon she would know if one son could save the other.
“I want to know as soon as he has them, but until then”—she smiled, still staring at the little wonder sleeping in her arms—“I’m going to enjoy my new son.”
She sat there stroking light fingers over Sal’s head when Dante came barreling through the door with two armfuls of helium-inflated balloons. He tied them to one of the headrails of her hospital bed to join the previous batch he’d brought her as soon as Salvatore was born.
“If you keep bringing those in here we’re all gonna be breathing helium instead of air.”
“I have another son! I’m gonna buy as many balloons as I want, so deal with it,” he answered.
“You chicks that have men falling all over you can never just say thanks,” Becca interjected. “You always gotta grumble about something or another. Just shut up and say thank you.”
Dante pointed at Becca. “What she said.” He laughed. Becca planted a light kiss on Sanai’s head and nudged Dante’s arm on her way out the door.
“I like her.” Dante continued laughing.
“Only because she agrees with you,” Sanai returned.
“Doesn’t matter.” He leaned down and dropped a quick peck on her lips. “I still win.”
Dante sat on the side of her bed dangling a gold gift bag in front of her.
“Let’s switch,” he offered, holding out his other hand for their son. When the exchange was finished, Dante placed the baby in his bassinette as Sanai plucked all the decorative filler paper out of the bag and saw an antique jewelry box at the bottom.
The elegant curves of the carved material were simple and clean. She ran her fingers over it, admiring its craftsmanship. When she opened it, on the inside of its lid were several names. Each line read Mrs., followed by the woman’s first name and followed by the name DeLuca. As she read the next-to-last name, she recognized Dan
te’s mother’s name. “Mrs. Marie DeLuca,” Sanai read aloud.
She touched the name reverently, remembering the kind and soft-spoken woman who’d always treated Sanai well. Just as she passed over the last letter of his mother’s name, her eyes caught hold of the next carved name.
“Mrs. Sanai DeLuca,” she breathed. Just the sound of that name made her heart ache. She hadn’t realized how much she’d mourned not bearing his name for so many years. She felt the slow slide of a tear escaping her closed lids.
When she opened her eyes again, Dante was holding a gold ring in his hand with a sparkling stone at the top.
“I know this probably isn’t the kind of proposal you wanted,” he began.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered. “Everything I would’ve wanted my proposal to be.”
“I love you, Sanai. That’s the long and short of it. I love you, and I want us to be a family. Will you marry me?”
He lifted her hand and began to slide the ring over her finger, but she laid a nervous hand over his.
“Dante,” she called his name. She watched as the light in his eyes turned to sadness when he recognized truth in her eyes. “No, I can’t marry you.”
“You’re saying no to me?”
She shook her head. “I’m saying not right now.”
He stood up from her bed, his muscular arms folded tightly against his chest. “What the hell does that mean, Sanai? I think you can be a bit more specific than that.”
She reached for him, begging him to return to his perch on her bed. “Dante, I love you. But we’ve got a huge transitioning period ahead of us. We have a new baby. Naz is still under treatment, and if Salvatore’s cord blood is a match, it’ll mean more time at the hospital for all of us. With all that going on, I can’t commit to a marriage. I’m not saying no—just not right now.”
Epilogue
One year later…
Sanai stood in her walk-in closet and kicked off her black flats. She only wore those shoes for two reasons—her feet were too tired to bear the torture of high heels, or she was going to a burial and didn’t want to damage her good shoes in the muddy, claylike dirt of the cemetery. What she wouldn’t give for the former to be the truth.
It was still hard to believe death had visited her small family. One day they were all smiling and laughing at a barbecue in the backyard, the next Sanai was being swallowed whole by grief.
Fresh tears spilled from her eyes as shivers of pain sliced through her body. Over and over again, life just proved how unfair it was.
She felt warm hands squeeze her shoulders and pull her around. Before she had the chance to resist, her face was pressed against the solid mound of chest, and powerful arms were securing her in their embrace.
“Remember, no tears.”
Sanai nodded against Dante’s chest. He was right. Dante had witnessed those very words being said the last time they were all together. The last time they were complete, yet untouched by death.
“I know, it’s just so hard… I just want…”
“She never blamed you, Sanai. You know that. Mrs. Rossi told you herself that Bernadino brought his end on himself. There was no reason to carry guilt over his death or hers.”
Again she nodded. They’d never spoken of Bernadino’s death. According to the official record, he died in Florida two weeks after the incident in the parking lot. She didn’t know how Dante or Mancini had made that so, but according to the coroner’s report, Bernadino and Tomassa died from drowning after drinking too much and toppling into the ocean from her yacht.
It wasn’t until that night a week ago that Sanai had any inkling the elderly woman knew anything different than the official report of her grandson’s demise. She’d sat Dante and Sanai down and told them both that you did whatever you had to do in order to protect your family, even if other family members were the enemy. “No feel sorry, no guilt. You protect bambinos, protect each other, no matter what.”
Sanai felt Dante’s kiss on her cheek. “She loved you.”
“I know she did,” she answered. “She loved me and my kid like we were her blood. I never would have made it if she hadn’t loved me, taken care of me and Nazario.”
“I’ll never be more grateful to another soul for how she took care of the two of you,” he stated.
Sanai turned around and looked over to the door of their bedroom. “Speaking of, where are he and Salvatore?” she asked.
“Downstairs with Becca, Big Tony, and Anthony Jr.,” he replied.
“Okay. Give me a few minutes to change into something comfortable, and I’ll be right down.”
He lifted a sarcastic brow coupled with an impish grin. “Just to be certain, it would be too soon for me to make a really inappropriate joke about sexy times right now, right?”
She nodded and stared at him through the slits of her squinted eyes. “Considering I just buried the closest thing I’ve had to a mother in years today, yeah, probably.”
He raised both hands palm side up and backed out of the closet slowly. “Just checking,” he replied. “Don’t be too long. Tony made lasagna. You know it’ll be gone real quick between the boys and Becca. I don’t know where such a small person puts all that food, but that chick can eat.”
“I’m gonna tell her you said that, Dante.”
“So? I’ve told her that to her face before,” he answered as he walked out of the closet and headed out of the room.
Sanai took a few more moments to gather her emotions and put on some clothes. When she was reasonably sure she wasn’t going to splatter into a bucket of tears, she made her way down the steps to Mrs. Rossi’s apartment.
She made it as far as the door to the dining room when the sight of her kids, their friends, and her man surrounding the table, passing food and verbal jabs at one another back and forth, stopped her forward motion. It was a simple moment, nothing she hadn’t witnessed before with these very same people, but today its meaning was so powerful.
Her sons were thriving, both of them. Salvatore’s stem cells had been a near-perfect match for Nazario. The transplant had been a success, and her boy was healthy and doting over the little brother whose birth had saved his life. Her friends were protective and supportive, always there for her no matter the circumstance. And then there was Dante, in the center of all the chaos, keeping the restless natives in check, making sure—as he always did—that there was no burden for her to carry.
How blessed was she to be a part of all this? How stupid had she been to attempt to walk away from it?
Dante noticed her standing in the doorway. He placed their one-year-old in Anthony Jr.’s arms and walked over to where she stood, backing her into the corridor where he could speak privately.
“Everything all right?” he questioned.
“Yeah, everything is all right.”
“Then why are you out here?” he asked.
“I’m waiting,” she responded.
“For what exactly?” He smoothed his hand down her face and cupped her cheek in a warm palm.
“Ask me again,” she uttered as she waited for him to understand her meaning.
“Ask you again? What are you—” He stopped, watching her carefully as he jumped to the correct conclusion. “But you said no before.”
“No,” she answered. “I said not right now. That was then. I wasn’t ready then.”
“But you are now?” he questioned.
She understood his skepticism. It couldn’t have been easy to hear the woman you love telling you she wouldn’t accept your proposal. But true to his word, Dante hadn’t let that stop him from loving her to his fullest ability. Sometimes it seemed he loved her harder.
“I was afraid, Dante, afraid of losing everything. I was afraid the minute something went wrong, all of it, everything we were building was going to slip away.”
“And now?” he asked.
She deserved that; she could admit it. “I was wrong. You and I together—we’re strongest when it’s us facing whateve
r the world has to throw at us. Naz’s illness, Salvatore’s teething, crazy mobsters trying to kill us. Shit just goes horribly wrong when you and I are not together. So ask me again. Ask me so neither of us ever has to face anything life has to throw at us alone again.”
“I gotta go,” was all he said before he disappeared through the front door of the apartment. When she turned around the door was clicking shut, and she was standing in the hall wondering what the hell had happened. She found a seat at the kitchen table, not quite ready to join the rest of their crew in the dining room.
Did he really just walk away from me like that?
She sat there for a few more moments collecting herself. She’d just about gathered enough strength to walk in the dining room and pretend as if Dante hadn’t completely turned her pseudo-proposal down when she heard the front door open again.
Dante walked through the door and met her in the kitchen. He leaned down and kissed her before he slid to one knee and pulled the engagement ring he’d offered her a year ago from his pocket.
“I couldn’t do this without your ring,” he explained. “Sanai, my only wish in life since the day I met you was to make you mine. I knew all my dreams would come true if I could just accomplish that. You’ve given me two beautiful boys, a home, a family. The least I could do in return is to give you my name. Please, Sanai Ward, will you marry me?”
She felt a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. This moment, this man was everything to her. He’d helped her through the roughest time of her life, stood shoulder to shoulder with her as their son battled cancer and won. He was her everything, and she wasn’t about to allow fear to steal another moment of their bliss together.
“Yes, Dante DeLuca, I will happily marry you.”
He slipped the ring on her finger and grabbed her in a frantic kiss. His lips moved quickly over hers, drawing from her while feeding her at the same time. This was them at their core—frantic, passionate, desperate love that she’d spend the rest of her life aching for.