The Mafia Boss Grinned When She Cursed Him in Sicilian and Then Told Her to Say It Again to His Face

Inside the office, the small electric heater was humming on the floor, casting an orange, flickering light across the dark wooden desk.

Gabriel had stripped off his wet navy coat, tossing it into a corner, and was sitting on the edge of her father’s desk.

Frankie sat in her leather chair, wrapped in a heavy gray wool blanket Sal kept in the closet for winter shifts, a warm mug of black tea clutched between her shaking hands.

Her hair was drying in damp, dark waves around her shoulders.

Gabriel sat silent, his white shirt sticking to his broad chest, his dark eyes fixed on the small electric heater.

"You shouldn't have come out here," Frankie said softly, her voice still raspy from the rain.

Gabriel didn't look up immediately. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small silver lighter, and turned it over and over in his long fingers, the metal clicking rhythmically in the quiet room.

"I was sitting in my apartment three miles away," he said, his voice flat and low. "And I couldn't stop looking at the rain."

He looked up at her then.

"I realized," he continued, his gray-black eyes locking onto hers, "that if anything happened to this shop... if anything happened to you... forty million dollars in shipping contracts wouldn't mean a damn thing to me."

Frankie set her mug down on the desk with a soft clink.

"Gabriel," she whispered.

He stood up from the desk.

He walked over to her chair, knelt down on one knee on the worn linoleum floor, bringing his face level with hers, his dark eyes burning with an ancient, honest fire that no court order or contract could ever match.

He reached up, his long, calloused fingers gently taking her chin, tilting her face up toward his.

"My grandfather lost his boats," Gabriel murmured, his thumb brushing over her lips. "He spent thirty years sitting on the pier watching other men sail his water. I swore when I came to this country that nobody would ever take anything from me again."

He leaned closer, his dark eyes softening into something extraordinarily tender.

"I came here to take your shop, Frankie," he whispered, his warm breath fanning across her cheek. "And instead, you took me."

Frankie looked into his face—at the sharp jaw, the dark stubble, the crooked nose, and the fierce, unyielding devotion shining in his gray pupils.

She didn't speak in English. She didn't speak in Sicilian.

She simply leaned forward, closed her eyes, and pressed her lips against his.

The kiss was slow, deep, and heavy with the weight of steel, oil, and five years of solitary fighting.

Gabriel’s hand slid into the damp hair at the back of her neck, pulling her tight against him, his other arm wrapping around her waist, blanket and all, lifting her slightly off the chair as if she weighed nothing at all.

His lips were warm, tasting of rain, coffee, and dark whiskey.

When he finally pulled back half an inch, his forehead resting against hers, both of them breathing in short, heavy gasps in the warm orange light of the heater, Gabriel let out a quiet, dark laugh.

"Say it again," he whispered into the space between their lips.

Frankie opened her eyes, a tiny, magnificent smile touching the corners of her mouth.