Hint: the good part is the last third...

***

meet my gaze at dinner, and I don't blame her. I understand exactly where she's coming from.

But the truth is that I know a Nero who is completely different from the one she's become used to. It's just going to take time.

Oh. And she's not the only one who noticed something different about me. "Rosalyn," my mom comments with a kind smile, "You look good. Did you do something with your hair?"

A part of me wishes that everything could go back to normal, that me looking happy and ordinary is just the way it is. But we've been through too much for that.

I catch Natalia's eye, and she raises a dry, perfectly-shaped brow. There might be a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, but that's probably wishful thinking.

"I've had a great week," is all I say. I try not to imagine or remember any of the specifics, with my parents and my brother across from me.

As we clear the table after dinner, Natalia and I work in silence. I wash dishes and she dries them, my parents and brother oblivious to the heaviness that's settled between us.

"Rosalyn," she says quietly as I pass her a pan. She smiles a little at me, resigned and tired. "You know he's in love with you, right?"

My heart skips a beat, my face flushing red. I think back to yesterday at dinner, him whispering that line from Great Expectations, his breath warm against my face as he leaned across the counter. "What makes you say that?"

She raises an eyebrow, putting the cloth down and taking a breath. "He told me so."

I remember the things they said today, things I couldn't understand, and their conversation suddenly makes sense. I close my eyes, the thought of it astonishing and confusing and... breathtaking. It makes my insides flutter, my head light.

He loves me. Somehow I can believe it. His hands on my skin, his mouth pressing against me, his dark, sparkling eyes piercing into my head, my soul. It was all real. I'd have to be delusional not to see it.

"I know he's not good for me, Natalia." I look at her, will her to see and understand what I know, why I still care for him after everything. "But he and I are..." I sigh.

The more I've thought about it, about everything that has happened since the moment we met, I have come to believe that we, Nero and I, were fated to end up here. Fated to fall, deep, and not to return.

"I know, Ros." She puts a hand on my shoulder, and the look of understanding and emotion on her face makes me want to fall into her arms. "I know it's real."

I smile, a little relieved, and she shakes her head, chuckling a little. "I don't know what the hell you did to him, Rosalyn, but..." She sighs, and there's a far away look in her eyes. "Today, that man I saw was..." She searches my face for something. "I haven't seen that part of my cousin in a long, long time."

I can see how the thought if it makes her emotional, brings back so, so many memories. The way things used to be. The innocence of the past.

But, none of us are innocent any more. I think I've realized that, once I accept this as truth, the world becomes much lighter.

•§•

in the living room drinking our coffee, my dad looks at me and I can tell something is up.

"Rosalyn," he begins, a look of mild concern on his face, "I just found out about something at the firm today that you might want to know about."

This piques my curiosity. I know it has something to do with the mafia, with Caleb, with the things that I am trying to put in the past. I don't even know if I want to hear it.

"Good news or bad?" I give him a dry smile. I know he's being careful, that he thinks I'm still fragile. But, I've grown a thicker skin these last few months. Especially after the last couple of days.

"It could be both." He seems encouraged by the fact that I look strong. I am strong. "Law enforcement is trying to bring down the Vancouver mafia completely. Finally. They're looking for someone high-ranking who is willing to confess everything, give names, information. Except, they're going to offer whichever bastard comes forward complete immunity."

He misreads the shocked look on my face as disappointment and disgust. Daniel sounds angry about it too. "I know it's not ideal, Ros.

I wish every one of those assholes ends up behind bars. But they need an in."

I catch Natalia's eye from across the room. She and I are thinking the same thing. The timing of this could not be more coincidental, more convenient. It's like a sign from the universe.

"That's crazy," I admit, sounding dazed. "Do they expect a lot of people to come forward?"

Nero will have to be fast, before someone else agrees first.

"It's not that easy, Rosalyn." My dad shakes his head. "There is a strict code of silence. It's likely no one will come forward. No one will want to risk being seen as a traitor. They could be killed."

My heart beats fast in my chest. "Wouldn't they be well protected, though?"

"It just takes one bullet, Ros," Daniel says bitterly.

"Daniel," my mother warns. The room goes silent, remembering.

I ask more questions. Maybe too many, but they aren't suspicious. They tell me that if someone came forward, especially with some evidence, they would be able to lay convictions for the other members of the mafia. Send them all to jail for a very long time.

But Daniel's words stick with me. What if someone finds out that Nero told? It would take one opportunity, one gun, one shot. The thought of something happening to him, after everything, makes me sick to my stomach.

How could I handle that, too?

•§•

his door, and when he opens it, my chest flutters at the sight of him.

Before he can say anything, tell me anything, I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him close and kiss him, soft and sweet and hot, and his hands come to grip my hips, his mouth capturing mine and his lips melting into me.

My hands trail up his broad chest, across his shoulders. I slide my fingers under his shirt, tug it off his head and let it fall to the floor. He uses a rough hand to tilt my face back, his lips and tongue kissing me so deep that I sigh against him. There's so much heat in his touch, so much affection. It's dizzying.

He peels off my blouse, I fumble with the buckle of his jeans. By the time we stumble to his bed, we're left in only our underwear.

He lays me down gently on his mattress, hovers over me, touches a gentle string of kisses across my jaw, down my neck, against my collar. My fingers twine themselves into his hair, and the smell of him, earthy and minty and masculine, fills me with calm, sends a rush through my veins.

"Nero," I whisper as he brushes his thumbs across the tips of my heavy breasts, puckered and straining against the material of my bra.

"You're so beautiful, Rosalina," he mumbles against my stomach. "You're so perfect." The warmth from his voice rippling across my skin makes me shiver.

I arch my back and he undoes the clasp of my bra, slips it off and tosses it somewhere. He takes my breasts softly in his rough, skillful hands, in his mouth, and I sigh his name, fire flooding through every inch of my skin and flesh and bone.

I clench my legs together, feeling the slickness between them. There's already an ache for him at the centre of me.

As his lips rake across my belly, his fingers trailing down my hips, my eyes flutter shut, my hands tangling into his thick hair.

He slowly slides my panties off, and the warmth of his breath against me as he travels down my body makes me writhe into the cool sheets.

My hands slip beneath the waist of his briefs, he helps me tug them down. When our naked bodies line up, just touching everywhere, he meets my eyes. The darkness and the brightness and the spark of fire in those dark eyes of his makes me weak, makes me ready to fall apart.

Natalia's confession fills my mind and I believe it, meeting his gaze. He doesn't hide. His nose brushes mine tenderly, and I let my fingers roam through the dark waves of his hair.

I feel his hardness against my thigh, and I want him so bad that it hurts. He rests his forehead against mine, kisses me softly, then reaches over to his nightstand.

I guess he bought more condoms.

"Dolcezza," he whispers beside my head. "As much as I love being inside you with nothing in the way," his lips tickle as they brush my ear, "I really don't want to get you pregnant, carina."

Probably a good idea. My hands tangle with his and we fumble to tear apart the packaging, and he lets me slide it on, cursing as my teasing fingers float across the length of him.

"Nero," I whisper, clutching his face in my small hands, "Make love to me." My voice is breathy, and I see his eyes soften, see something in them that makes my heart clench in my chest.

He kisses me oh so softly, his eyelashes fluttering across my skin. "Cuore mio," he breathes against my lips, using a hand to brush a strand of hair gently from my face. My heart, he calls me. Every part of me aches from the rawness in his voice. "Se sapessi, amore mio," he says hauntingly into my ear, and I don't know much Italian but it sounds like he just called me his love, and oh, the way the blood rushes through my veins, my heart.

All I can do is wrap my arms around him and whimper his name, and with his eyes wide and bright and unyielding on mine, he slides into me and I can't help the sound I make, how deep he fills me, how whole it feels.

His eyes never leave mine. With every thrust, a hand travels gently down my body, my skin hot beneath his touch, the other clutches my face, a thumb strokes my cheek. He places gentle kisses to my forehead, my lips, softly over my closed eyelids.

There aren't words that can explain the emotion that he manages to convey to me with his eyes, the things he tells me with each movement of his hips and the flutter of his lips across my skin. Waves of pleasure travel through me and I am surrounded by the warmth of him, of his affection, his arms and skin and mouth, everywhere.

"Dolcezza," he mumbles into my ear, "Ti amo, Rosalina." The look in his eyes is so dark, so indescribably real. He kisses me, and it sends heat through every last inch of me. "Ti amo più della mia vita."

It doesn't matter that I don't speak Italian because I know what it means. I know what he's saying and his eyes are the most incredible things I have ever seen, and when he kisses me, holds my face in his hands, the heat and emotion and the love that radiates from his skin are so obvious that there are tears in my eyes, he tastes the salt of them on my lips and brushes them softly with his fingers, kisses them away.

"Sei tutto ciò di cui ho bisogno, gioia mia." Just as I'm about to reach a searing, blistering, earth-shattering climax, he gathers me close and whispers, "You're everything, Rosalyn. You're everything to me."

My back arches, my body presses into him, and I cry out his name, say it over and over as I ride the most intense, blinding, blissfully long orgasm I have ever experienced, and he finishes with me, my name leaving his lips in a whisper that seeps into my skin.

I collapse onto the sheets and he falls on top of me, and my arms wrap themselves around him and we stay like that for a long time, trying to recover from the most incredible, the most extraordinary, passionate, consuming sex I have ever had, that I am sure he's ever had.

My body and my mind and my heart and my soul belong to him, in this moment, and he belongs to me.

Our chests rise and fall, my hands drift softly through his hair, his face rests against my shoulder and I can't move, can't think, the aftermath of it heavy and brilliant.

When he eventually slides out of me, he rolls off and tugs me back towards him, and I nestle into the crook of his neck, breathe in the musky scent of our sin.

Against his jaw I mumble, "I love you too, Nero." His fingers become still on my hips and he brings his nose to brush mine, and when his lips find mine this time, it is a confession of everything he was too scared to say, everything we both irrationally feel with every part of us.

We hold each other long after the sun dips out of the sky, long after it's dark and the world around us sleeps.

A part of me knows that I have been catastrophically in love with him for a long time, but only now can I admit it without shame.

When we eventually drift to sleep, it is with us wrapped around each other, arms and legs tangled and our warm skin pressed together and our chests rising and falling to the rhythm of two hearts beating as one, my breaths falling steadily onto the calm, slack features of his face.

***

A/N:

One of my favourite scenes between them so far. I'm curious if you think it's too soon for them to admit out loud that they're in love with each other.

Personally, I felt that this was a long time in the making. Let me know your thoughts!

XOXO Ami

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