After Five Years of PTSD, The Don Heir Begged Me Back

Bianca turned to Dario. Her gaze lingered on him.

"I kept you waiting. I've finished my degree."

"I came back for you."

The light in Dario's eyes lit up at her words.

Bianca was smiling like the brightest star in the sky.

"What's yours is yours. I'd come back, no matter how long it took."

The hall went quiet for a moment.

Everyone there understood. The betrothal had been hers and his. I had only been a stand-in, set on the table when she didn't want her seat.

A Vellari capo even sighed aloud: "Now this — this is what the Donna of our Famiglia should look like."

Dario stood frozen for a few seconds.

Then his face softened. The corner of his mouth twitched, as if uncertain how to make the shape, but in the end he managed it. The smile wasn't pretty. It was awkward — like a man who hadn't smiled in so long he was trying to remember which muscles to use.

But he smiled.

He had never smiled at me like that. Not once.

I stood there holding a cup of tea, unaware that the heat had scalded my fingertips.

Dario seated Bianca beside him himself — in the place that should have been mine.

She talked to him in a low, easy tone, saying things about psychology, throwing around terms — "hypervigilance," "intrusive memories," "the neural mechanisms of avoidance behavior."

"Do you understand — what she's saying?" Dario said suddenly, turning to look at me.

I shook my head.

She had a master's in psychology. The words were too technical. I didn't understand.

He gave a small smile — a more natural one than the one he'd offered the room.

"She gets me," he said.

Those three words landed on me heavier than every cruel thing he'd said in five years.

I made it through the rest of the dinner. I made it back to my room before I let myself collapse.

Dario said I didn't understand him.

That wasn't true.

I had tried. Desperately. But no one in the house would speak about him.

It took five years of watching me pour myself into him before old Marco, the butler, was finally moved enough to say a few words.

"The young Don wasn't always like this. As a boy, he laughed. He greeted every servant warmly."

"Then his little brother died — not the lady's son, but the young Don loved him dearly."

I'd heard the rumors. People said Mrs. Vellari had killed the bastard child to protect her son's claim.

"After that, there was a soldato of his, name of Luca. Took a bullet meant for him. The young Don has never let anyone close since."

"He shattered the pocket watch Luca left him. Spent three months trying to find every piece. Never managed to put it back together."

Something twisted hard in my chest.

I went to enormous trouble to track down Luca's mother in Sicily and beg a photograph of the watch.

I made three trips to Florence to find the best clockmaker. The Latin engraving on the back, every letter — exact.

I had thought Dario would be glad.

I wiped my eyes, wrapped my arms around my knees, and tried to talk myself down.

Sophie. He didn't mean to lash out at you. He cherishes those memories too much. You shouldn't have touched what he holds most sacred. He's a sick man. Anyone in his place would have reacted the same way. He just didn't see what you meant by it.

I repeated it like a prayer, over and over.

But when I thought of his face as his fingers closed around my throat — the tears wouldn't stop.