Epilogue: Kira - Marrying the Mafia Daddy

I burst through the double doors of the lecture hall at a dead sprint, my backpack half-zipped and my laptop threatening to spill out with every step.

Professor Hewitt called for one more question, and my hand shot up before my brain could stop it, and now it’s 3:45 p.m and Domenico is waiting at the airport, and I’m going to be late for our honeymoon before it’s even started.

“Kira.” Vinny’s voice says from behind me, footsteps pounding the floor. “Slow down before you break your neck.”

“I can’t slow down.”

I shove through the next set of doors into the warm September air. The campus quad is full of students sprawled on the grass, enjoying the last warm days before Boston remembers it’s supposed to be miserable, and the contrast between their leisure and my panic makes me want to scream.

“Domenico’s going to kill me.”

“Pretty sure he’s not going to kill his wife on your anniversary,” Vinny deadpans, catching up beside me with that infuriating ease of his. He’s not even breathing hard. “Though if anyone could make a man reconsider marriage after one year, it’s probably you.”

The car’s parked at the curb where Vinny left it three hours ago, a black SUV that looks like every other black SUV in the DeLuca fleet except this one has the scratch on the rear bumper from when I backed into a parking meter last month.

Domenico didn’t even blink when I told him. Just said, “Next time, let Vinny park.”

Vinny hits the locks as we approach, and I yank the passenger door open, throwing my backpack onto the floor before I’m even fully inside. He’s already in the driver’s seat, engine running, pulling away from the curb before my seatbelt clicks.

“So,” he says, merging effortlessly into traffic, “want to explain why you decided today of all days to become the most engaged student in the history of higher education?”

“I asked one question,” I defend.

“One question that turned into three, and then Professor Hewitt decided you were the only person in the room worth talking to, and suddenly we’re twenty minutes past the end of class.”

Vinny shoots me a look that’s half exasperation, half affection.

“You know he has office hours, right? You could’ve saved the deep philosophical inquiry into nonprofit tax structures for a day when your husband wasn’t waiting to whisk you away on your honeymoon.”

Slumping in my seat, I press my palms against my eyes. “I know. I’m an idiot.”

“Yes,” he agrees cheerfully. “You are.”

The thing about Vinny—the thing I didn’t expect when Domenico assigned him to me a year ago—is that somewhere along the way, he stopped being just my bodyguard and started being something closer to the brother I never had.

The kind who teases me mercilessly but would also, without hesitation, put himself between me and a bullet. Which he has already done, and I think that’s when everything changed.

“Did you at least get whatever earth-shattering insight you were chasing?” he asks, weaving around a delivery truck with practiced ease.

“I did, actually.” I drop my hands and stare out the window as Boston slides past. “Turns out the tax exemption for religious organizations is more complicated than I thought. Saint Benedict’s could be leveraging way more if we restructured the fundraising arm.”

Vinny makes a noise that’s somewhere between impressed and deeply bored. “Thrilling.”

“It is thrilling,” I argue, already imagining the smile on Father Joseph’s face when I tell him. After my honeymoon, of course.

The truth is that even if I’m late, I don’t regret asking questions when I have them. Going to college is a dream I never even really knew I had. And even if Domenico has more money than sense, I won’t make light of it.

This is me making something of my life, and I want to grasp every chance. Even if it comes in the form of asking questions. Especially when, at only twenty-two, I’m already one of the oldest students in some of my classes.

Besides, what I learn here is going to help not just me, but Saint Benedict’s as well. While studying, I’ve cut back on my volunteering hours. But I’m still there every Tuesday.

“We’re going to make it,” Vinny says, checking the dashboard clock. “Traffic’s light for once. Your husband’s dramatic ass scheduled a four-thirty departure, which means we have…” He does the math in his head. “Twenty-eight minutes to get there, park, and get you through security.”

“There is no security at the private terminal, Vinny.”

“Semantics. There’s still a guy with a clipboard who looks at your ID and judges you for being late.”

I groan and slump further. “He’s going to be so smug. You know how he gets when he’s right about something. That little half-smile. The one where you can’t tell if he’s amused or planning a murder.”

“Sounds like my Tuesday.”

“Shut up.”

We hit the expressway and Vinny opens it up, the SUV eating miles in no time at all.

“So,” I say, watching the city thin out as we approach the airport, “you really have no idea where we’re going?”

Vinny’s expression doesn’t change. “Nope.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God.”

“Shame on you for swearing when you’re lying.”

Instead of looking chastened, he outright laughs. Loudly. “Listen, even with God on my side, I wouldn’t betray Domenico. And he’s sworn me to secrecy.”

Sighing, I give up questioning Vinny since it’s kind of not fair. Not to him, and not to my husband, who has been smugly and infuriatingly silent about where we’re going. One year of marriage, and the man still treats information like it’s contraband.

I’ve tried everything—seduction, bribery, outright demands—and all I’ve gotten for my trouble is him smirking and saying, “You’ll find out when we get there, baby.”

It should be annoying, and it is. But it’s also exciting.

The private terminal comes into view, a low-slung building with more glass than seems structurally sound, and my stomach does a little flip.

Vinny pulls up to the curb and kills the engine. “Go,” he says. “I’ll get your bag.”

“Which you will then use as a shield when I tell Domenico this was all your fault.”

“I accept this fate with dignity.”

I’m out of the car before he finishes the sentence, already running.

I burst through the doors to the private terminal with my hair coming loose from its ponytail and my cheeks flushed from running, and there he is.

Domenico stands near the entrance with his hands in the pockets of his charcoal suit, looking for all the world like a man who’s been waiting exactly as long as he intended to wait and not a second more.

Donna stands beside him in a neat navy dress, her hands clasped in front of her, and three of Domenico’s men are arranged at polite intervals around the room like furniture that happens to be armed.

My husband’s eyes find mine the second I enter, and that half-smile—the one that lives rent-free in the particular chamber of my brain reserved for things that make me both furious and weak in the knees—spreads across his face like he’s been saving it just for me.

“You’re late,” he says.

“Vinny’s fault,” I say immediately, striding toward him. “He parked on the wrong side of campus, and then he drove like my grandmother.”

From behind me, Vinny makes a sound of profound betrayal. “She’s lying. She held the professor hostage with questions about tax law. I had to physically remove her from the building.”

“I was engaged in scholarly discourse,” I correct.

Domenico pinches the bridge of his nose, which he often does when Vinny and I argue. The first few times he witnessed it, he looked annoyed. When we started sharing inside jokes, he looked downright murderous.

It took a while for him to accept that whatever closeness had developed between Vinny and me was completely harmless.

He gets it now. Mostly.

Every so often, Vinny makes me laugh a little too hard or says something only I understand, and Domenico gets that look again. The one that says he knows there’s nothing to be jealous of and would still quite happily replace my bodyguard with someone eighty years old and female.

Not that I’d ever let him, and I’ve made that very clear.

“Your luggage is already aboard,” Domenico says as he takes my hand. His fingers close around mine, warm and familiar, and something in my chest settles the way it always does when he touches me. “Donna packed for you.”

I turn to Donna, who offers one of her gentle, unflappable smiles. “Everything you’ll need, dear.”

“Thank you,” I say warmly.

Vinny deposits my backpack beside a sleek carry-on I don’t recognize but assume is also Donna’s work, and the terminal staff move around us. I’m about to ask—again—where we’re going when something catches my eye.

A little boy, maybe three or four, passes through the terminal holding both parents’ hands while talking a mile a minute about something I can’t hear.

This is normal kid stuff. The kind of scene you see in airports every day and never think twice about. Except Domenico’s attention catches on him. His eyes follow the family across the room, lingering on the boy for a beat too long.

I slap his arm. “Not yet, Daddy.” I whisper the last word since Donna and Vinny don’t need to hear that.

Domenico’s gaze swings back to me, those blue eyes sharp with surprise and something warmer underneath. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to.” I squeeze his hand tighter as we walk to the jet.

The DeLuca jet is exactly as obscene as I remember—all cream leather and walnut trim and windows that make the world outside look like it’s been gently airbrushed.

I’ve been on it half a dozen times in the past year, mostly for quick trips to New York or the occasional weekend in Montreal when Domenico decides I’ve been studying too hard and need to be forcibly removed from my textbooks.

But this feels different. The energy in the cabin is charged in a way that has nothing to do with turbulence and everything to do with the man currently buckling himself into the seat beside me, his thigh pressing against mine with deliberate weight.

Vinny and Donna settle near the front. The crew completes their safety briefing with the brisk professionalism of people who know nobody’s listening, and then we’re moving, the engines building to that particular roar that means we’re committed now, wherever we’re going.

The moment we’re airborne—the seatbelt sign dings off, the plane levels, and Boston shrinks to a gray-brown smudge beneath us—I turn to my husband with what I hope is my most persuasive expression.

“Tell me where we’re going.”

“No.”

“Domenico.”

“Kira.”

Tilting my head, I lick my lips. “Have you ever joined the mile-high club, Daddy?”

That gets his attention. His head turns toward me slowly, the way it does when I’ve surprised him, and the look in his eyes goes from amused to aroused in the space of a heartbeat.

“No,” he says. His voice has dropped half an octave. “I haven’t.”

“You could,” I say, leaning closer until my lips are inches from his ear. “Right now. If you tell me where we’re going.”

His hand finds the back of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair, and he pulls me into a kiss that makes it very clear he intends to collect. His mouth is hot, demanding, his tongue sliding against mine.

I moan into it because I can’t not moan when he kisses me like this—like he’s trying to climb inside me, like the fact that we’re on a plane with other people is nothing more than a minor logistical inconvenience.

When he breaks the kiss, my lips are swollen, and my breathing is uneven. His thumb traces my lower lip, and the look in his eyes is pure fucking possession.

“I need you to make good on that offer right now, Mrs. DeLuca,” he growls.

He stands, pulling me with him, and I eagerly follow.

The bedroom at the back of the jet is small but perfectly appointed. Domenico backs me against the wall the second the door closes behind us, his body caging mine, one hand braced beside my head.

I reach between us and palm his cock through his pants, feeling him hard and thick against my hand, and the sound he makes is low and rough and goes straight to my clit.

“Where,” I demand, squeezing him through the fabric. “Tell me where we’re going, Daddy.”

His free hand finds my jeans, popping the button and dragging the zipper down before he shoves the denim and my panties down my hips. His fingers slide inside me, two of them curling deep, making me moan.

“Bora Bora,” he says, his voice thick with want. “We’re going to Bora Bora.”