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"You'd really let me go," she says quietly.

"And it will be the hardest thing I've ever done." I hold her eyes. "Yes."

We look at each other across the room, and it feels like an eternity. I know this is what needs to be done, but each passing second takes another year off my life.

Finally, she stands, and I watch as she walks to the fireplace and feeds them into the flames.

The pages curl, blacken, and ignite, and she watches them burn with an expression of certainty I've never seen on her before.

"I'm staying." Her voice is resolute. "I'm staying because somewhere along the way I fell in love with the most annoyingly handsome man in this city, and I choose him. So consider our twelve-month contract null and void. I’m not leaving."

I almost knock over my chair as I stand, then cross the room in four strides. My hands find her face. Her cheeks are wet.

"Say it again," I tell her.

A sweet smile curves on her lips. "I choose you, you impossible, terrifying, beautiful man. Now stop looking like I just shot you and kiss your wife."

I kiss her.

And it isn't soft, and it isn't careful.

It’s all the pent-up emotion I feel because she chose me.

Nobody has ever chosen me.

"Then I'm going to spend the rest of my life," I say against her mouth, "making sure you never regret it."

Outside, the sun rises. In here, the papers that would have ended us are ash in the grate, and my wife is in my arms because she wants to be. I am crazy in love with her; I can feel it in every cell of my body.

I'm not afraid of it anymore.

My world is perfect as long as she stays.

56

SUNNY

Two weeks later, I'm standing in front of the refrigerator, trying to decide what meal I can murder before my husband gets home for dinner.

The past two weeks have gone by in a blur of tangled sheets, lost time, and a husband who has apparently made it his mission to defile every room in this house.

We christened the library first. Then his office, where he sat me on the edge of his desk, dropped to his knees in his fancy suit, and ruined me for at least an hour. Then the pool, his idea, which taught me that my husband can hold his breath for a genuinely alarming amount of time.

Yesterday, he took me against the kitchen counter while dinner scorched on the stove behind us, and I ruined another meal. Which, for the record, was totally his fault.

Dante no longer stays out late. He comes home early with his tie already loosened and that insatiable need written across his face.

But it's the other hours that do the real damage. The two a.m. hours, when he pulls me into his chest like he can’t bear to be far away from me, and murmurs soft words into my hair when he thinks I'm asleep. Words that promise a future and a life I never dreamed of.

Words that don’t give me a second of doubt about Dante or how I feel about him.

I’m crazy for him.

My phone buzzes while I'm making a list of groceries I will need for pasta carbonara.

I’m surprised to see it’s from Irina.

Solnyshko, I have something for you. A fabric just came in from my supplier. A rare hand-loomed silk organza with gold thread woven through it. Fit for the Di Zaro queen. Come see it before I change my mind and keep it for myself.