Page 18 of The Proposal

I’m not one to hold grudges unless you’re a Mortelli because then I’ll hate you ’til my dying day. I’m simply having a moment, like everyone does, where I lose my cool. I’ll eventually move on and get the fuck over it. It’s what I do.

The car stops parallel to the house, and my driver gets out and opens the back door. I just sit there, trying to summon the strength to exit the vehicle.

Nothing will be the same once I walk through that door. I won’t see my father lounging in his recliner chair, sipping on his glass of amaro after dinner. That bitter herbal liqueur that is made from a mix of botanicals, roots, and spices tastes like arse if you ask me, but he loved it. He claimed it was a good digestif after a meal, but I’d rather have heartburn than consume that shit.

He’d sit there for hours in the evenings, the sound of Giuseppe Di Stefano, his favourite opera singer, or the old classics from Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin blaring from the record player. If I’m being real, it used to drive me fucking crazy, but right now, I’d give anything to hear it again.

I will also no longer find him sitting behind his desk in his office, where he spent his days making calls or talking shop.

I might have been a thirty-one-year-old man still living at home with his father, but I only stayed because he wanted me there. When Papa wasn’t surrounded by his men, he lived a pretty solitary life, and there was no way I could leave him alone like that.

I was just a kid when I lost my mum, but I remember how much my father loved her. He worshipped the ground she walked on. He was never the same after her death.

“Is there a problem, Mr Mancini?” Dario, my driver, asks, and that’s all it takes to set me in motion. If I’m going to take over where my father left off, I can’t let my men see anyweakness. A crack in my resolve would only undermine my authority.

I alight from the car and button up my suit jacket before turning and reaching for Arabella’s hand. She eyes it sceptically but eventually wraps her dainty fingers around mine, which I’m thankful for.

I don’t let go of her hand as we ascend the front stairs. At this moment, she’s my crutch and unaware that with every step, she’s giving me the strength to walk through that door and face what lies on the other side.

I fill my lungs with air as I reach for the door handle and step inside. The first thing that hits me is the dead, oppressive silence. There’s no music, distant chatter, or mouthwatering smells of Lina cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

It doesn’t feel like the home I once loved anymore … it feels hollow and empty. Maybe Alexander was right; I should’ve sold it and started over. At the time, though, it felt like I’d already lost so much, and getting rid of this place seemed like another blow I wasn’t ready to face.

“It’s nice,” Arabella says, squeezing my hand.

I arch a brow as I turn my face in her direction. “Nice?” This place is anything but nice. “It’s gaudy … over the top, just like my father was.”

A sprawling monstrosity of marble floors, gold fixtures, and crystal chandeliers dripping from every ceiling, each room more opulent and ostentatious than the last. It was only the best for him.

Arabella winces, which tells me she was just being polite. “This can be your first job as the lady of the house … to redecorate.”

Her pretty green eyes widen. “You want me to decorate your home?”

“Our home,Bellezza. You are my wife now … what’s mine is yours.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.”

“I can really decorate it?” I don’t miss the hint of excitement in her voice. “However I like?”

“However you like … no expense spared.”

My words have her doing something I didn’t expect. Shesmilesat me, the first real one I’ve ever seen from her. And it’s genuine, no mask … no pretences. It hits me like a punch to the gut, making my heart tighten in my chest.

“Okay.”

I arch a brow. “Okay,” I repeat the word, solidifying our agreement.

“Is this your mother?” she asks, stepping forward to eye the large painting on the wall.

Papa had it commissioned a few years before we lost her. A marble table is positioned below it. A statue of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus sits in the middle, and candles flank each side.

My father’s shrine to his wife.

He would light those candles and say a prayer for her every morning.

“It is.”

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