asked him a few common questions (favorite food, favorite place to visit) and then a few that were not (favorite dream, favorite thing to do at night).
The last two he answered, simply, “You.”
I became quiet, thinking about the most important question before I asked it. “I am still here,” I whispered. “Why didn’t you take me back to New York? I know you could have found me sooner. You stayed in Forza d’Agrò longer than you had to.”
His eyes were still on my face. After a few minutes, he turned away from me, reaching for something, and then it touched my leg. I took it from him, holding the picture up to the light to see it better.
“That,” he said.
I was around eleven, kneeling in church, a mantello on my head, my eyes closed, my rosary pressed to my lips. Candles burned in the background of the black and white photo. My mamma kept it on a table in her casa.
“There is no color in that picture except for you,” he said. “I could see it. The life inside of you burning to be set free.”
“And you fell in love with me,” I teased.
He became quiet. I looked at him, meeting his eyes this time. He lifted his little finger. The round diamond and the smaller ones that created the band glinted against his skin.
I stared at the ring and then glanced at his eyes, at the ring, and then back to his eyes again. “I don’t understand,” I whispered.
He took my left hand and slipped the ring on my finger. It felt perfectly. I took it off and handed it back. I grabbed a sheet from the line, covering myself. Then I stood before he could grab me, but that did not mean he could not stop me.
“Alcina,” he said, settling comfortably, the calm in his voice unnerving now.
“We cannot!” I hissed, like someone could hear. “There are arrangements—for you and for me.”
“I knew you’d say that,” he said. “And I have an answer.”
“What is it?” I asked when he did not go on.
“Fuck the arrangements. I’m not bound, and neither are you.”
“I am!”
“You’re not. You’re bound to one man only.” He pointed at his chest. “Me.”
“They will kill you!”
“They won’t fucking touch you,” he said. “Or me.”
His arrogance suddenly made me want to strangle him.
“My choice,” I said. “And my answer is no.”
“You have no choice when it comes to us,” he said. “You know it as well as I do.”
“I will not curse my only love to death,” I said. “I will not!”
“You won’t,” he said.
“You are wrong.” I went to turn when he called my name again. I stopped, holding the sheet tighter to myself.
“Have you ever heard of Italian Roulette?”
“The game?” I said, confused.
“In a casino, it’s a game. In life—it’s something different. It’s a game of fate. Like Russian Roulette. Except it’s a game played without protection.”
I stood there, staring at him, staring at the moon, wondering what madness he was speaking of. Then it made sense. We were not protected. He came inside of me.
He smiled, so fucking cocky. “You could be pregnant.”
I wanted to throttle him, but it was my fault as much as it was his. I did not ask him to put on protection. I did not stop what I knew could end that way.
Mamma always said it took two to tango.
“Bastardo,” I whispered, not at him, but at the bull who had put me in this mess in the first place.
Corrado cleared his throat. “You will marry me, Alcina. Not because of what we did, or what might happen, but because you love me. If you walk away from me, from what I’m holding—” he lifted the ring “—you walk away from life. Don’t say yes to me, say yes to life.”
“That is smug, scorpione. To consider yourself as powerful as life.”
He said nothing, still holding the ring up.
A tear ran down my cheek. I wanted him more than anything—more than life itself. But how could I put his life at risk for love? Love was the definition of selfless, and if I said yes, wasn’t I putting life in front of love?
“Life is just as important as love,” he said, reading my thoughts. “You can have both.”
I wiped the tear away, taking the ring from him, smiling. When I went to bend down to sit next to him, he pulled me over his chest, making me lose my balance, kissing me madly, making my laughter echo in the