I Rescued the Mafia Boss’s Blind Cane Corso. I Never Expected Him to Say, “Be My Wife.”

Chapter 2

On the second night, Enzo Valenti asked her how the dog had been on the road. Not what shape he had been in — how he had been. Whether he had shivered when she lifted him. Whether he had let her touch his ears. Iris answered slowly, because she could feel him listening to the parts she was not saying.

He asked what she did for a living, and when she said rehabilitation, he asked what that actually meant on a bad day. And Iris heard herself telling him about Blue — a border collie she had loved and lost the year before, a dog she could not save, and how she had gone home afterward and sat on her kitchen floor for two hours because there was no one in the house she wanted to explain it to.

He did not tell her he was sorry. He said, “You should not have had to sit there alone.”

Then he did not say anything else for a long time, and neither did she. Somewhere inside that silence, Iris stopped being afraid of him. She realized much later that this was the most dangerous thing that happened to her all week.

By dawn of the first morning, Orion would eat only if her hand was on his shoulder while Enzo offered the food. By the second dawn, he would not eat unless they were both in the room. On the third morning, Enzo watched Orion refuse a bowl she had left with her technician, and he said, without turning to look at her, “I am going to ask you something you will want to refuse.”

“Then ask it slowly.”