Chương 10 - The Sovereign and the Queen
Six months later, the garden of the Lake Forest estate did not smell of sulfur or cordite. It smelled of blooming hydrangeas, damp peat moss, and the crisp, clean air of an early October morning.
The terrace windows that had been shattered during the wedding were replaced with triple-pane leaded crystal that caught the autumn sunlight like prisms. The blood on the marble was long gone, the stone ground down and polished until it shone like mirror-glass.
I stood on the stone balustrade overlooking the lake, wearing a soft cream cashmere sweater and trousers that had been tailored to my exact measurements by the three silent women from Milan who now visited the estate twice a month.
My brother Leo sat at the wrought-iron garden table fifty feet away, arguing happily with Matteo Moretti about the merits of the Northwestern law faculty, a plate of fresh croissants and peach jam between them. Leo’s tuition was paid for the next three years; his apartment in Lincoln Park was secured; and his sister was no longer the maid.
A set of warm, heavy hands settled onto my hips from behind.
I didn't turn around. I leaned back into the broad, familiar solidness of Alessandro’s chest, letting out a long, quiet breath that tasted of black tea and peace.
"Your brother is trying to convince Matteo to invest in a community clinic on the South Side," Alessandro murmured, his chin resting against the top of my head, his voice low, gravelly, and entirely at ease.
"Will you?"
"I already did," he said. "The land was purchased yesterday through an anonymous trust. If your brother finds out it was my money, he’ll spend the rest of the year trying to return it."
"He has my stubbornness," I said, smiling slightly.
"No," Alessandro corrected, his thumbs tracing the line of my hipbones through the soft cashmere. "No one has your stubbornness, Grace. That is a proprietary commodity."
He turned me in his arms until I was facing him.
He wore a dark gray suit, no tie, his shirt unbuttoned at the throat, looking more like an emperor at rest than the don who had dismantled the Bellini family brick by brick over the last six months.
Antonio Bellini was currently serving forty years in a federal supermax in Colorado. Sophia had relocated to Florence, her social circle reduced to three aging aunts and a monthly allowance that arrived only if she remained outside the continental United States. The North Side was quiet. The ports were clear.
And the girl who had once cleaned his wineglasses was wearing a five-carat cushion-cut diamond on her left ring finger.
"Matteo wants to know if the wedding is going to be at the cathedral," Alessandro said, his slate eyes tracing every detail of my face with that same unyielding, possessive focus that had once terrified me in the pantry.
"I told him no," I replied, my hands coming up to rest against his lapels, feeling the steady, rhythmic beat of his heart beneath the wool. "Too many bells. Too many stairs."
"Then where?"
"Here," I said, looking out over the blue expanse of Lake Michigan. "On the grass. With twenty people, no bodyguards, and zero Bellinis."
"Ten bodyguards," Alessandro countered smoothly. "Hidden in the trees. I don't negotiate on perimeter security, Grace."
"Eight," I bargained, raising an eyebrow.
Alessandro’s mouth twitched—that rare, razor-sharp movement that had now become mine alone.
"Seven," he murmured, his hands sliding up to the nape of my neck, his fingers tangling into my hair, tilting my head back until our breaths mingled in the crisp autumn air. "And you wear the emeralds."
"They're too heavy," I whispered, though my arms were already looping around his neck, pulling him down to me.
"They look better on you than they did on my grandmother," he said against my lips, his voice dropping into that deep, reverent cadence that made the rest of the world vanish into white noise. "Everything looks better on you."
May you like
"Is that a mob order, Mr. Moretti?"
"That," Alessandro said, right before his mouth covered mine with the slow, certain ownership of a man who had finally found the only thing in Chicago he could never afford to lose, "is an absolute decree."
