Azalea
“Is this really you?” I whispered, still not believing what I was seeing. “Are you really Adriano?”
He laughed softly, but it made him wince from the pain in his chest. “Who else would I be?”
“But you’re so... different. You’re being nice to me. Gentle. The Adriano I knew before would never act like this.”
“The Adriano you knew before was an i***t,” he interrupted quietly. “A man so caught up in his pride and anger that he almost lost the most important thing in his life.”
He lifted his hand and gently touched my cheek, wiping away a tear I didn’t even know had fallen.
“When I saw that gun pointed at you,” he continued, his voice rough with emotion, “when I thought I might lose you forever, everything became clear. Nothing else matters, not my reputation, not my business, not
