Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 45702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45702 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 152(@300wpm)
“Since they found out about you wanting to leave the life, I mean,” I murmur. “…It just feels like everything with your family now is about them pulling you back in with them,” I sniff, losing my cool.
I told myself I wouldn’t get emotional if the topic came up.
He goes quiet again, and I can’t read his expression.
His serious, no-bullshit face is impossible, but damn, it is sexy as hell.
“I wanted to leave the life, and I have,” he says finally, taking my hand in his, running his huge thumb over the equally huge diamond on my engagement ring.
“But family is family, and they’re all a bit like that, I’m afraid,” he shrugs. “We’ll be our own family, Jasmine. We already are. But mine will always be just the way they are, like it or not.”
“How about we have a little ceremony, just us? Just Mama and Papa,” he says, compromising already.
I roll my eyes at myself for letting my emotions get the best of me. I find myself nodding my head as I start to list more and more members of his family that we just couldn’t leave out.
“But I do want my own dress,” I caution him once we’ve made an exhausting list of guests for the wedding that’s already looking like it’ll be bigger than anything Rocco’s family could plan on their own.
“Us,” he promises me, putting his hand on my belly again.
“Us,” I repeat back to him, sniffing a little tear as he tells me the only thing that’ll ever matter.
“I love you, Jasmine. Love you to the moon and back.”
“I love you too, Rocco….”
My Rocco.
EPILOGUE
ONE YEAR LATER
Rocky
“Honey! Where’d I put my…. Oooh, never mind. Found it!” I call back, slipping my watch back onto my wrist.
Groaning as I haul myself up from under the sink in the kitchen.
Smiling as I shake my head because I know she hasn’t heard me.
Too busy talking to Mrs. Peters.
The old lady neighbor who told me which apartment belonged to Jasmine the first time we met.
Washing my hands in the same sink, I test the drain and make sure my handiwork isn’t leaking.
One down, fifty-seven to go….
But I don’t have to do them all today. Or do I?
I guess that’s up to the owner of the building.
“All done, Mrs. Peters. Would you like me to fix anything else while I’m here?” I ask, moving into the living room and lifting baby Max into my arms, sitting myself on the edge of her couch next to my wife.
“Oh, you!” the old woman scolds me, shooing my words as she swats with a chubby, pale hand.
“I already told you, the maintenance men you lined up are due to report next week. They can fix everything.
I nod, recalling that it’s only taken so long on account of Jasmine and me getting waylaid on our honeymoon in Italy.
Plus, it took some time for the courts to prosecute the entire Portello family, except for Maria.
But it took them even longer to offer their profits from crime assets up for auction.
An auction only the Martinelli’s lawyers learned about.
Fast forward a little, and the deeds on everything that used to read Portello now says, Martinelli.
And one of the first things I wanted to do was to make sure that Jasmine’s ex-landlord was out of the picture.
Old Mrs. Peters sprang to mind as the best candidate to take over the running of the place.
And if she owns it, even better.
Less tax for us that way, and well…Jasmine gets to revisit her old place anytime she feels like it, which is never.
“That man of yours,” she remarks to Jasmine, wagging her finger at me. “He’s a keeper. A real man of his word,” Mrs. Peters lectures her.
And Jasmine can only smile up at me. “Don’t I know it,” she replies with a smile and mouths the words I love you to me.
Something I never tire of hearing from her.
Little Max starts to kick and giggle, but both Mommy and I know his little routine heart by now.
“I’ll go,” I tell her, excusing myself and searching for Max’s changing bag by the couch.
“If only I was twenty, no, fifteen years younger!” Mrs. Peters warns Jasmine with affection. “You’d have a fight on your hands for that man. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” she gushes, and as Jasmine agrees, I listen to the old lady reflect on how simple things used to be.
How decent people used to be to one another.
About a time when family was everything, and anything else simply wasn’t worth worrying about.
“Are you paying attention, Max?” I whisper to my little man, cradling his tiny body in my palm, marveling at how big he’s getting.
He started the world early, beating Jasmine and me to the altar by a few weeks. Almost two months.
That meant a scary ride for us, but our little family was already rock-solid once Max’s health was given the all-clear.