"I just can't understand why I'm not coming with you!" I say, throwing my hands in the air and pacing around the bedroom.

It's a chilly morning in Napoli and Enzo has the silly idea that I mustn't get out in the cold weather for something he can handle.

"Eve, it's going to take me less than ten minutes. You don't need to come. Besides..." he tries to reason, pulling his shirt collar up so I can fix his tie.

My heart clenches and I feel tears forming in my eyes, but I don't give in. I suck them back and walk towards him.

"Give me that," I say, grabbing the tie from his hand with a nervous pull and shoving it on his head, lifting myself on the toes to reach properly and fix it around his neck while his hungry eyes glued to my face with a smile plastered on his face, irises staring and rolling with each of my moves.

"You're cute when you're angry," he compliments, and I roll my eyes with an irritated look but a giddy heart while working on his tie.

He's so sweet when he's saying that.

He grabs my head with his hands and bends over, capturing my lips in a soft, long, toe-curling kiss.

"Thank you, love," he says when I'm done with his tie, looking deeply into my eyes with such love that it almost cuts my knees weak but doesn't make me give up my stubborn request.

"I want to come," I pout again, all melted in that sexy kiss while my hormones jump around like popcorns.

"I know you want to, but you don't need to..." he replies in a hoarse voice, which doesn't help at all my gradual arousal.

His words are brought to a halt by the door opening and a cheerful Emillia showing up, right hand holding her lollipop and the left arm lifted, hardly reaching the doorknob.

She doesn't grace her father with any look, but instead, she walks straight to me, curling her free arm around my leg.

"Sono pronto, Papi," she says, and those few words hit the drums of my ear like hammers, pushing my tears out while I bend and lift her in my arms, trying to hide my tearful eyes from her. (I'm ready, Daddy).

"Eve, non sei pronta?" she asks, searching for my eyes and pushing my face towards hers with her little sticking palm with the lollipop sugar. (Eve, aren't you ready?)

"Eve cannot come, principessa," Enzo replies leisurely putting on his suit jacket and looking mouthwatering sexy. Like always. (Princess)

"I want Eve to come," she replies in the same snappy manner.

"But she can't come," Enzo replies, in a voice one tone higher.

"No! I want Eve to come," she insists, and Enzo rolls his eyes while my tearing ones are wiggling their eyebrows at him.

"Mio Dio, dammi pazienza! Adesso ne ho due," Enzo mumbles, gracing God with his look lifted to the ceiling as if waiting for showers of blessings. (Dear God, give me patience! Now I have two of them.)

"Okay," he puffs defeated, wiggling his hands in the air.

I need nothing more, putting Emillia down from my arms, taking my quick leave to the walk-in closet with the little princess on my heels, a hand fisted on the fabric of my nightgown.

I get ready in only ten minutes and five minutes later the three of us get in Enzo's car, driving to Camilla's apartment to drop Emillia at her mother's.

We are going to travel back to NY in a few days and Enzo has decided to personally take his daughter back to her mother.

He has a plan set with Camilla that she would come in a couple of months to NY to bring Emillia to us for good, and I couldn't understand why we can't take her with us now.

As a matter of fact, I don't want to understand. I don't even want to hear the plan. It's silly, useless, and I'm not willing to accept it.

We kept having back-and-forth talks about taking her with us. I didn't want to leave her behind.

We were inseparable and she was always on my heels, never an inch further unless she was sleeping.

She is a huge part of my life now, and the way she has of staying glued to me all the time has become my everyday addiction.

I'm doing the best I can to hold back my tears, but my sniffs are piercing the heavy silence around us while Enzo is driving us on the streets of Napoli.

He has been holding my hand with his from the moment we've left home, giving me a light squeeze each time my sniffs reach his ears.

I know he doesn't want me to come because I'm too emotional about leaving Emillia here, and while I'm completely on his side about the importance of a child to live and be raised by its mother, Emillia has no place next to Camilla.

The style of life that the woman is living is not even a mile close to a healthy environment I believe is proper for a child and yes, she's visiting Feli often, but she's still living in that apartment where Camilla is existing only to sleep off the booze and drugs she consumes during the night.

Enzo opens the door for me to get out once we're in the suburbs of Napoli where Camilla's apartment is, and holding Emillia's little hand with one of his while holding her bag with the other, we walk into the sorrowful, dirty flat building and up the stairs to the first floor.

Enzo knocks twice before a consumed Camilla opens the door. She looks awful with her eyes sucked in the orbs and black circles, earthy color on her face but with an honest smile on her lips.

"Ciao," she says and moves away, allowing us to get in. (Hi).

Enzo places Emillia on the floor and like every single time, without an exception, she walks toward me, wrapping her arm around my right leg.

"Hello, Camilla. Have you thought about letting Emillia come with us?" I ask, unable to hold back my words.

If it was up to me and I was in the place of Enzo, I would have taken Emillia without a word or maybe just a note delivered to her mother by my lawyers.

But I'm not Enzo. He's reluctant on pushing Camilla to give up on her daughter.

He's worried that later on his daughter will hold resentment towards him for taking her away from her mother.

It seems like the bitch has something on him and it's impossible for me to understand how the big Don of Italy, who can have anything, who has taken bullets and pulled teeth with his own hand bends in front of a woman like her.

"Camilla, have you thought about letting Emilia come with us?" I hear Eve saying before anybody has the chance to say anything else.

"I'll be back in two months, Camilla, to pick up Emillia. We've spoken about it, remember?" I say trying to cut short the argument Eve is ready to start, grabbing her hand and pulling her behind me. But at the same time, I feel the need to reinforce what Camilla and I have agreed on related to our daughter. She looks visibly phased off.

"Yes. We did speak about it. We've spoken that Emillia will leave with you only through a court decision," Camilla spits, lightening a cigarette, the smile she has plastered on her face earlier, which I've known to be so much fake, fading away, as it has never existed.

"Mia, sweetie, will you go to your room for a moment, please?" Eve intervenes, walking around me with Emillia stuck to her leg.

With no word, the little brat untangles herself from Eve's leg and walks to her room, sucking her lollipop, having no argument with us, as she usually does. I swear, Eve is magical with this little girl.

I see my beautiful future wife straightening her back and raising a proud, pointed, beautiful nose, staring at Camilla almost without blinking.

"Camilla, this is not a home for a child," my sweetheart says.

"What do you know about a home for a child? You don't have yours yet," Camilla replies, chewing loudly and puffing her cigarette, her eyes half-awake from surely the joints she's usually having at the club.

She walks to the two-seat sofa, covered with plenty of colorful pillows where she sits, one leg bent under her butt and grabbing her right-hand elbow with the left one, looking back at my Eve who I can tell is doing her best to keep her nerves at bay, clenching her fists.

Well, this is why I didn't want her to come. I don't want her to go through these emotions, I know what Emillia means to her.

But I've promised. I have promised her to bring Emilia home, to NY. I only need a couple of months. And most importantly, I want to be alone here when I'm going to do it because I'm really convinced to go to any extent, no matter the risk.

"What? What else do you want?" Camilla spits in such a fucking dirty way that it instantly boils my blood, growing anger crawling under my skin, going up to my temples. "She is staying, got me? Now go, both of you. Oh, and Enzo, amore, don't forget the money," she spits.

"This is all it is about? Money? That's all?" Eve shouts.

'My sweet, innocent baby love, it's not money, I mentally reply, thinking back to the times when I've offered Camilla millions just to let me take my girl and the bitch would always come to take her back.

"Not at all. But is not cheap to raise a kid, you know?" Camilla replies lips curled up in a mocking smile.

I choose to keep silent. Fucking shit, I've never hurt a woman in my life before, this bitch and her sister have crossed my way, and nothing will make me happier right now but my gun in my hand and a bullet right between her eyes.

"Come on, Eve. Come on, let's go," I tell her and wrap an arm around her waist, forcing her to walk with me to the door, while she sniffs and wipes her tears away.

God, how much I wished I wasn't such a fucking pussy when it comes to Eve or Emilia and I didn't give in so easily.

She hardly moves her legs walking to the door as if her feet are glued to the ground and I push her forward with my right hand laid flat on her smaller back.

I squeeze her tighter to my chest and plant a kiss on her head, but before we reach the door, she lifts her eyes to mine and mouths, "I'm sorry".

A millisecond is all she needs to jerk out from my hold and walk back to Camilla, so angry, so determined as I have never seen my girl before.

She gets impossibly close to Camilla's face, their noses inches far and the anger which is holding in her eyes freezes the pile of insignificant existence sitting on the sofa.

"You are going to go to your daughter's room right now, nicely pack the rest of her things, dress her in a nice, cute dress and tell her she'll leave with her father for a while," Eve speaks to Camilla's face, each word just perfect pitched that even the dumbest of the dumbest idiots would understand.

"What are you..." the woman on the sofa tries to mumble while I watch the best version of my baby love, the woman that has me on my toes, the mother of our unborn baby that knows exactly how to fight like a mother already.

"You will never talk about taking Emillia again, you won't even think it unless you give up on your club job, have a rehab, and get clean of the fucking dirty shit you suck in all day long." Eve continues.

I lean against the door frame, crossing my arms on my chest, and watching the scene unfolding in front of me, adoring my fiancé.

She straightens her back, eyes still boring holes in Camilla's stare.

"You'll have your monthly income doubled. You can come and see your daughter whenever you wish, all expenses covered. You'll see her only in my presence or her father's," Eve completes her orders to a stunned Camilla, mute and shaking, unable to utter a word.

Eve pulls out a piece of paper from her purse that she unfolds and brings out a pen as well, stretching her arms to hand them to Camilla.

"And this is our agreement. You sign you'll not have to worry about money from now on. You don't sign, I will, personally, take care that your life will be a fucking hell from today till your last breath!"

I'm shocked at the scene I have in front of my eyes and at the same time, I'm falling madly in love with her all over again.

I think there is still a thing or two to discover about the woman I'm marrying, it seems. One of them being the very soon the husband of the wonderful, strong woman Eve is, a woman I've never thought to find.

Camilla takes the pen with shaking hands and scrabbles her signature on the piece of paper.

"Clever, Camilla," Eve says and takes the paper away, folding it back and shoving it in her purse. "Mia!" she calls my daughter who shows up seconds after. "Come on, sweetie pie," Eve says and reaches a hand to the little bundle of joy who grabs it immediately and they both walk towards me.

I wrap my arms around my beautiful Eve and plant a kiss on her temple.

She is shaking from all her bones, and I know she has been scared and melted on the inside just as hard as she appears to be on the outside.

"Come on, my princesses. Let's go home," I tell my two treasures I have in my arms right now, holding my daughter with one arm and wrapping protectively my future wife with the other.

*****
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