“For what?”
“For giving her a childhood. A real one.”
I slipped my arm around her waist and pulled her close.
“She’s my daughter now,” I said. “I’d do anything for her.”
Sofia looked up at me, and something shifted in her expression.
“And what about me?” she asked softly.
I turned to face her fully.
“What do you mean?”
“What am I to you, Lorenzo?”
Her voice was barely a whisper, but the question hung between us like a thunderclap.
I looked at her for a long moment.
Then I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her.
She froze for half a second.
Then she melted into me, her hands clutching my shirt, her breath warm against my lips.
When we finally pulled apart, she was crying.
“I’ve wanted that for so long,” she whispered.
“So have I.”
She laughed, a sound caught somewhere between joy and disbelief.
“I thought you saw me as a responsibility. Someone you had to protect.”
“You are someone I have to protect,” I said. “But you’re also the woman I’ve been looking for since the night you saved my life.”
She kissed me again, and this time, it felt like coming home.
One year later, Sofia and I were married in the garden beneath the old oak tree.
Elena stood beside her mother, holding a bouquet of wildflowers and grinning so wide I thought her face might split in half.
Carlo stood beside me as my best man, his arms crossed and his expression stern, but I saw the faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
The ceremony was small. Just family. Just the people who mattered.
When I slipped the ring onto Sofia’s finger, she looked up at me with tears streaming down her face.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“I love you too.”
We kissed, and Elena cheered, and the Doberman barked, and for the first time in fifteen years, I felt like I could breathe.
That night, after Elena had been tucked into bed and the house had fallen silent, Sofia and I stood on the terrace beneath the stars.
She leaned against me, her head resting on my shoulder.
“Do you ever think about that night?” she asked softly.
“Every day.”
“Do you regret it?”
I looked down at her.
“Regret what?”
“That I pulled you out. That I saved you. If I hadn’t, you wouldn’t have spent fifteen years looking over your shoulder. You wouldn’t have had to hunt down your own family. You wouldn’t—”
I silenced her with a kiss.
“If you hadn’t saved me,” I said quietly, “I wouldn’t have you. I wouldn’t have Elena. I wouldn’t have this life.”
She smiled, her eyes bright with tears.
“Then I’d do it all over again.”
“So would I.”
We stood there in the darkness, holding each other, while the stars turned overhead.
And for the first time in a long time, the past felt like something we could finally leave behind.
Two years later, Sofia was pregnant.
Elena was beside herself with excitement, insisting on helping with everything from painting the nursery to picking out baby clothes.
“What if it’s a boy?” she asked one evening, sprawling across the couch with her head in my lap.
“Then he’ll be your little brother,” I said.
“And if it’s a girl?”
“Then she’ll be your little sister.”
