I THREW A BAG OF FLOUR AT THE MAFIA BOSS — THEN HIS NIECE CALLED ME HIS "FAMOUS GIRLFRIEND"

He wasn't wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit. He wore dark denim, heavy leather boots, and a black wool peacoat unbuttoned over a gray cashmere sweater. The silver at his temples seemed a little brighter, the lines around his eyes a little deeper, but when his gaze found mine across the warm, flour-dusted air of the bakery, the rest of the world dissolved into pure, static silence.

Carmela took Sofia by the hand. "Come, little bird. Let’s go look at the flowers down the street."

"Don't throw flour this time, Emily," Sofia whispered with a mischievous grin as she slipped past her uncle. "He only brought one jacket."

The heavy door clicked shut behind them. The bell settled into stillness.

Matteo walked toward the counter slowly, his heavy boots sounding loud on the old fir floorboards. He stopped two feet away, his cold gray eyes searching my face with an intensity that made my knees tremble beneath my apron.

"You walked out without your bonus," he said softly.

"The two million is in the bank," I replied, crossing my arms over my chest to keep from reaching out to touch him. "The deed is on the wall. We’re even, Mr. Vescari."

"We aren't even," he said, taking another step, eliminating the space between us until I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. "You left a mess in my kitchen."

"I baked you a cake."

"And you ruined my suit."

"You had fifty more in your closet."

"None of them smelled like you," he said.

The blunt, raw honesty of the words knocked the air straight out of my lungs. The arrogance was gone. The mob boss who had slammed Enzo Moretti against a marble pillar had vanished, leaving behind the man who had stayed up until four in the morning watching me teach a traumatized child how to roll lemons.

"Why are you here, Matteo?" I whispered, my defenses crumbling like dry shortbread.

"Because the house is too quiet," he said, his voice dropping into that dark, velvety vibration that lived beneath my skin. "Because Sofia asks for you every morning at breakfast. Because my mother told me that if I let Antonio Rossi’s granddaughter slip through my fingers, I was a bigger fool than the men I put in the ground."

He reached into his peacoat pocket and pulled out a small, worn piece of silver.

It was the fifth pearl from the spire of my grandfather’s silver sugar tin—the one piece that had broken off sixty years ago during the journey across the Atlantic.

"My grandfather kept this in his pocket until the day he died," Matteo murmured, holding the tiny silver sphere between his calloused fingers. "He told me that if you find something worth walking away from an empire for, you don't negotiate. You don't make contracts. You surrender."

He set the silver pearl on the wooden counter beside my register.

"I can't change what I am, Emily," he said, his voice laced with a vulnerability that tore straight through my heart. "I have blood on my past, and I have enemies who will always test my walls. But I swear on Sofia’s life, on my mother’s grave, that no shadow from my world will ever cross your threshold again. I don't want a fake fiancee to appease a room full of hyenas."

He stepped closer, his warm hands coming up to gently cup my jaw, his calloused thumbs brushing away the white streak of flour from my temple with infinite tenderness.

"I want the girl who threw flour at my chest and told me I didn't have time for breakfast."

Tears spilled over my lower lashes, warm and silent, cutting tracks through the dusting on my cheeks. I looked into those stormy river-water eyes and realized with absolute, terrifying certainty that I had fallen in love with the monster long before he ever proved he had a heart.

"You brought two hundred tons of Sicilian flour to Brooklyn?" I asked, a wet laugh breaking through my tears.

"Two hundred and ten," he murmured, his thumb catching a falling tear on my lip. "The harbor master was very cooperative."

"You're completely out of your mind."

"Completely," he agreed, leaning down until his lips hovered a fraction of an inch above mine. "Marry me, Emily. For real. Not for three hours. For seventy years."

I didn't answer with words.

I reached up, wrapped my flour-coated arms around his neck, and pulled him down into a kiss that answered every question that had kept me awake in the dark for three long weeks. He tasted of rain, cold wind, and a promise that was heavier and stronger than iron.

His arms wrapped around my waist, lifting me off my feet, pulling me against his broad chest as if he would never let me touch the ground again.

When we finally parted, breathless and laughing against each other's mouths, Matteo looked down at his black wool peacoat.

Two bright white handprints were stamped dead-center across his broad shoulders, flour settling into the dark weave like snow falling on a long-abandoned city.

Matteo looked down at the mess, then back up at me, his eyes blazing with a brilliant, triumphant light.