My Dark Ever After (My Dark Mafia Romance) By Giana Darling NovelM80052 My Dark Ever After (My Dark Mafia Romance) (Chapter - 6)

My Dark Ever After (My Dark Mafia Romance) By Giana Darling

To my surprise, Guinevere slept through the transfer from plane to car. She curled herself into my chest as I carried her down the stairs to the waiting vehicle on the tarmac at the private airport outside of Firenze, and when I tried to move her onto her own seat inside the SUV, she whimpered.

It was a good excuse not to let her go.

Carmine shot me a look in the rearview mirror as he drove us through the countryside to Villa Romano, but he did not say a word, turning the volume up on classical music instead. Affection pulsed in my chest like a second heartbeat. It was good of him to give me that moment without teasing—uncharacteristic too.

Clearly, I was not the only one who had missed the American girl.

The sun was setting when we finally pulled up to the wrought iron gates of the Romano estate. Rose-gold light spilled over the vines on the left side of the road and turned the grass to luminous metal sheaves on the right.

“Guinevere,” I said, gently rousing her because I knew she would love the view, and some part of me was eager—proud—to show her the beauty of my home. “Wake up. We have arrived.”

She stirred in my arms, mauve eyelids fluttering before they peeled back to squint up at me. The long rest had done wonders, adding some color to her cheeks. I held still as she groaned and stretched in my arms, a sleepy smile tugging that full mouth into a pink crescent I wanted to kiss open and plunder.

“Raffa,” she murmured, still asleep enough to forget herself. “I always dream about you.”

It was as if her small hand had reached into the cage of my ribs and wrenched out my heart.

“This is not a dream, cerbiatta mia,” I told her softly, taking advantage of the situation by running a calloused finger down the suede-soft edge of her jaw. “You are awake, you are safe, and I have finally brought you home to Villa Romano.”

Even though I knew it was coming, watching her warm, open expression ice over made my stomach clench.

I let her scrabble out of my lap onto the seat beside me, smoothing down her threadbare, oversized college tee as if she was insecure or somehow immodest.

“Look,” I encouraged her, pointing out the window. “I woke you to watch the sun settle.”

Her mouth dropped open, her eyes tight with anger before she instinctively shot a glance out the glass over her shoulder. She arrested, one hand lifting to gently touch the pane the way she had done those early days back in Firenze, when she was discovering its beauty for the first time.

“Wow,” she breathed, turning completely to face the window and the glimmering, deeply orange sun kissing the tops of the endless stretch of vines leading up and away from the top of the hill we were cresting. “It’s like something from a dream.”

I swallowed the urge to tell her this was my dream. Her in my home, meeting my family, seeing the sweet and sour memories that haunted this place for me.

“How many vines do you have?” she asked, forgetting her acrimony in the face of her undying curiosity.

“One hundred twenty-five acres of vineyard,” I told her. “Tenuta Romano is one of the oldest wineries in the country. My ancestors have lived here for over one thousand years. The tower by the gate is an Etruscan ruin, actually, and the main house on the hill is hundreds of years old.”

“So cool,” she whispered.

The tangerine light kissed her face as she turned it fully into the fading rays, limning her in a neon glow I wanted to trace with my fingertips.

“I thought you would like it here,” I confessed.

It was the wrong thing to say.

She slid me a sidelong look, shoulders tensed. “Yet you didn’t bring me here.”

“It would have been . . .” Unbearable. “Hard to introduce you to my family knowing you were leaving shortly.”

“And now? I’ll still leave, Raffa. After you take out whoever it is who is coming for you and, by proxy, me.”

I tilted my head at the tone of her voice, trying to decide if I was reading into it too much. Because there was something there. A reticence or a lack of conviction. Something that said she was attempting to convince herself as well as me.

Outside the window a dog swooped into view from between the vines, a segugio maremmano purebred my sister Stacci had named Aio. He ran beside the car as we ascended the circular road climbing up the hill, his dappled body glowing gold.

“What a beautiful baby,” Guinevere breathed, her hand clenched against the window.

There was yearning there, and awe.

“You like dogs?”

Her laugh was wistful. “Always. We didn’t have time to take care of one because I was always in and out of the hospital, and my parents felt it wasn’t fair to leave a dog alone so much. Gemma had a hamster for about two weeks before it escaped the cage and got stuck in a drawer. My dad decapitated it accidently when we were searching for it.” She winced. “Needless to say, we never got another one.”

I laughed, shocked that even when she was angry with me, she could still be sweet and funny.

“We have had dogs all my life. Stacci breeds segugio maremmano, a type of Italian scent hound. Her husband, Emiliano, is a hunter, and Aio there is good enough to take on a boar if he needs to.”

“Wow,” she said again, then laughed at herself, pushing a lock of hair out of her face as she turned to face me. “I’m sorry, I forgot, I guess.”

“Forgot?”

She shrugged, chewing on her lower lip for a moment before admitting, “How magical everything is here. How much it feels like a fairy tale.”

When she looked up, our eyes caught, and even though she jerked her chin as if to wrench her gaze away, it did not work. We stared at each other across mere inches, and yet it felt as if the entire Atlantic Ocean still separated us.

“A Grimms’ fairy tale,” she corrected. “The bloody kind.”

I inclined my head in agreement. “Let us hope this one ends happily.”

At least for one of us.

She pursed her lips, but the sound of screaming children drew her attention out the window again.

Maximo, Vitale, Zacheo, and Mattia all waited at the crest of the driveway, the latter two jumping up and down and waving their arms.

“Zio Raffa,” they cried, out of sync with each other.

Aio barked in agreement, racing up to them and dancing between their wriggling bodies.

I laughed despite the tense atmosphere in the car and lowered my window so I could call out in Italian, “Ciao, ragazzi! Sei stato buono con le tue madri?”

Hello, children! Have you been good for your mothers?

“No!” they all cried before dissolving into giggles, running alongside the car as it started to pass them.

I chuckled, grabbing at Maximo’s hand when he pushed it through the window, leaning forward to clutch him under the arms and pull him swiftly into the slow-moving car.

His laugh was a high-pitched squeal as I buried my face in his neck to blow a raspberry after he settled in my lap.

“And how is my favorite nephew today?” I asked in Italian.

He screwed up his face in irritation. “You call all of us your favorites, Uncle!”

“Why, yes, I do. But let me tell you something, I missed you very much.”

Truthfully, Stacci’s and Carlotta’s sons were one of the only reasons I came back to Villa Romano at all. Without them, it was too easy to live in the past. To see my sisters silent and subjugated when my father was present. To see my mother valiantly trying to raise her children when her husband was out sleeping with whomever he pleased, carousing and acting like a bigwig in Firenze.

The boys brought new life to the villa, swept away the ghosts with their laughter and silly games.

Before I had gone to Michigan to save Guinevere, I had only been home once in the two months following her departure. My mother and sisters had noticed my melancholy even though I had done my best to hide it, and I did not want to answer any more questions about “that American girl.”

So it was good to be home.

It was even better, in a bittersweet way, to have Guinevere there at my side.

When I looked over Maximo’s curly head at her, she was staring at me with wide eyes, holding her body so still she seemed almost afraid of me. When she noticed my gaze, she gave a shake of her head as if to rid herself of a bad memory, and then shot me a tight smile before turning toward the window and the house as it loomed ahead of us.

The pale-gold stone structure may have been old, but my family had always been wealthy, so it was in incredibly good repair. Cypress trees lined the last stretch of gravel driveway, and a stone fountain with a female statue pouring water from a basin had been erected centrally in the circular courtyard before the front door.

Angela, my mother, stood outside with Stacci—who was holding her youngest, Nico—and Carlotta, Delfina, Ludo, and Leo.

“They pull out the welcome committee,” Carmine murmured from the front seat.

“Carm!” Guinevere exclaimed, leaning forward to place a hand on his shoulder and grin at him in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t know you were driving. I’m sorry I was ignoring you.”

“You’ve had a rough day,” he allowed, eyes sparkling as he raised a hand to place it over hers before pulling to a stop in front of the house. “It is about to be more exhausting after you meet the Romano women. I was happy to let you rest.”

“Well, I am happy to see you,” she admitted, though a shadow crossed her expression, and she dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Even if we are more strangers than friends.”

Before he could respond, Guinevere was opening her door and slipping outside.

I looked at Carmine, who winced and shrugged. “It’s going to take time, boss.”

Fortunately, time was one thing I seemed to have, given we had no leads on who was provoking the Pietra and Greco clans into turning against us.

“What do you say, Maximo—should we enter the fray?” I asked my five-year-old nephew.

“No,” he declared imperiously. “I think Carmine, you, and me should go have a boys’ night. You can take me for gelato in the piazza.”

I laughed, swinging him into my arms as I got out of the car. “I promise we will have a boys’ night soon, but I think your mother and aunties would be very angry with me if I left without even saying hello.”

He pouted, but also shook his head. “They’re kind of demanding like that.”

I was still laughing when I stopped beside Guinevere where she was frozen at the side of the car, hugging herself as if it was cold. Without thinking, I placed an arm around her shoulders, balancing Maxi on my other hip as I led us toward my waiting family.

“Ciao, mamma.” I greeted my mother first, stepping away from Guinevere to kiss her on both cheeks and then doing the same down the line of sisters waiting for me. When I hit Leo and Ludo, I exchanged back-slapping hugs. “You saw fit to create a welcome committee, I see.”

“We were eager to meet your American friend,” Carlotta said with a sly smile. “I’ve been very jealous that Delfina got to meet her and we didn’t.”

“I told you, it was a coincidence,” Delfina said with a roll of her eyes before stepping up to Guinevere. She grabbed her by the shoulders and pressed a kiss to each cheek. “Hello again, friend. It is nice to see you.”

Whatever frostiness Guinevere had dredged up for me, she could not do the same for my sister. My fawn was a naturally warm, open woman with a big heart who had spent most of her life feeling lonely and shuttered away. It was no wonder she yearned for connection, and something in my chest ached at seeing the way she flushed and smiled shyly under Delfina’s attention.

“Ciao di nuovo,” she said in Italian.

My sister’s grin almost split her face in two. I knelt to deal with my swarm of nephews and an enthusiastically barking Aio, keeping an eye on them as she led Guinevere up to meet the family. Even though part of me yearned to do the introductions myself, I knew it would only make things more awkward. I had called ahead to tell my family I was bringing a female guest to visit, and Stacci, who had been the one to answer, had crowed with delight when I confirmed it was “my American girl.” There was no doubt they would treat her kindly, with the kind of overenthusiastic warmth characteristic of the female Romanos.

“Che bella,” my mother exclaimed, opening her arms wide for a hug. “Vieni.”

Guinevere hesitantly stepped into the circle of her embrace and then laughed breathlessly when Mamma squeezed her tight.

“Welcome to Villa Romano,” Mamma pronounced, punctuating the words with a kiss to each cheek. “We are very happy to have you.”

---

Dinner at the villa was always a production. Guinevere seemed almost in a daze as my mother and sisters press-ganged her into helping in the kitchen, placing her before a crate of melons and prosciutto to make the antipasti and then shuffling her to the other end of the kitchen to cut the homemade bread Mamma made each day.

A happy daze, though.

I watched through the archway in the dining room as Leo, Ludo, and Carmine updated me on developments in the last two days.

“The Grecos and Pietras aren’t really working together,” Carmine was telling me. “Apparently, they both have issues, but Alfonso Greco and Gaetano Pietra hate each other.”

“Who told you that?” Leo asked, updating his notes on his tablet.

Carmine glowered at Leo. A level of professional competitiveness would always exist between them. Leo was my oldest friend, and his father had been my father’s consigliere, but Carmine and Renzo had been with me in London. They knew the man I was now in ways Leo did not.

“Does it matter? It is from a reputable source.”

“It does not matter,” I agreed. “What does is finding out who sent the funeral chrysanthemums and the assassin. Tell me we have a lead on that.”

“I got something,” Ludo grunted, raising his hand like we were in a classroom. It was a gesture that would have endeared him to Guinevere even more. She had once told me that she found Ludo—the best hacker in the Italian Mafia—adorable. “You remember Angela Greco was married to a Tancredi? Well, Iacopone Basti, the assassin? He’s listed as going to school every year until graduation with Mario Tancredi.”

Tombola!

That was the connection we were looking for.

“So it was the Grecos who sent a man into my house,” I said darkly, fury moving hot and slow like lava beneath my skin. It was hard to harness that power until the right moment, until the right people were in my vicinity, so I could unleash all that volcanic rage to the ultimate consequence.

Leo frowned. “Are we really going to base our conclusions on something so tenuous? I want to eviscerate the people who threatened us just as much as you do, but going to school with someone is not exactly telling. Cazzo, Raffa, you and I went to school with two judges and one of the heads of the DIA. Doesn’t mean they are corrupt.”

One of them was. The money I had funneled to him had bought him a charming mansion in Mallorca last year.

But Leo had a point, as he usually did.

“Besides, we both know the Pietra family has a much better reason to want you dead than the Grecos do,” he added.

“Look into it further,” I told Ludo. “In the meantime, Carmine, set up a meeting with the Albanians. I want to talk to someone in the Shqiptarë inner circle about their dealings with the Grecos. See what they know.”

“On it,” he agreed. “Renzo and Martina are waiting for you at the palazzo. They have some more things to go over. Martina heard a rumor about the Pietras, but she said she wouldn’t tell anyone but you.”

“I’ll leave after dinner,” I said, then caught sight of Leo’s face. “What is it?”

“You just got here, fratello. Your family misses you. At least stay the night. If you need someone to go to Firenze tonight, let it be me. You are tired and much missed.”

A wan smile claimed my mouth as I stepped forward to a clap a hand to Leo’s shoulder. “You are a good man, Leo di Conte.”

“And you,” he told me. “Stay and see your woman settled and your family happy. I’ll go see Martina.”

I nodded my thanks, squeezing his shoulder. “Could you also be eager to leave to see that woman you are sleeping with?”

Leo blinked. “How the hell did you know?”

A shrug. “I recognize the look of a man in love, maybe. Tell me, what is her name? When do we meet her?”

His mouth twisted, but he rubbed his hand over it after to massage out the kink. “Not yet. Soon, though. We are still . . . figuring things out.”

“Tell me about it,” I said dryly, my own smile just as mangled.

From the kitchen, an explosion of laughter. Even amid the tangle of sound, I could parse out Guinevere’s lovely laugh.

It made me ache to hold her. To eat that happiness off her tongue.

I had missed the taste of it.

“Ragazzi,” Mamma called. “Dinner is served!”

---

If Guinevere was overwhelmed by the chaos of a Romano dinner, especially after running for her life yesterday, you could not tell. She laughed with Lando, Carlotta’s husband, about the first time she tried a tripe sandwich with me at the Mercato Centrale and asked Emiliano questions about how to hunt boar, given that we were eating a pasta sauce made from one of his successes. She fielded questions from my eager sisters as if she was used to holding court, evading the more invasive inquiries by offering an interesting story or asking her own questions. Luckily, the heavy sweep of her dark hair hid the bullet graze over her temple, or else I was sure we would have faced a furious barrage of questions about how I could have let Guinevere get hurt.

I already felt enough guilt and grief as it stood.

The candles lit amid the various platters of food on the table cast her in sepia tones that made her seem otherworldly, transcendent. My fingers itched to test her skin, feel if it was flushed and real against my own. I wanted to brush out that long, dark hair until it shone and braid it back away from her face before folding her into fresh sheets and tasting every inch of her to see if it was as ambrosial as I remembered.

I would have settled, though, for a single glance from those long-lashed doe eyes.

Instead, she spent the entire three-hour repast smiling and engaging with everyone who was not me.

She had cast a spell over the table, even Leo, who regarded her with solemn eyes, that odd quirk in his mouth that said he was reluctantly enchanted.

“She’s lovely,” Mamma told me when some of us started to clear away the dessert plates and empty glasses.

Leo was popping the cork on a dessert wine that he insisted Guinevere sample, and Zacheo was asleep in Carlotta’s lap, drooling on her dress. It was a tableau I had been a part of countless times, but never with Guinevere at its heart, shining brighter than any of the candles on the table or stars winking above us in the clear night sky.

“Yes,” I agreed as I carried the plates inside to the kitchen, where Stacci and Ludo were washing up.

“I can understand why Carmine says you were instantly infatuated. Un colpo di fulmine.”

A lightning bolt.

The Italian phrase for love at first sight.

“It was not that simple, Mamma,” I replied.

Guinevere had been hit with something the moment we met, but that something was my car.

At the sink, Ludo snorted.

“Perhaps that is when it started,” I admitted with a glare at my soldato. “But does a lightning strike alter your DNA? Does it carve out space for something so big in your chest that you cannot breathe around it?”

“Si,” Mamma said, reaching up to cup my cheek. “It does, ragazzo.”

I was not so certain. Surely an actual lightning strike would not hurt so much as the pain of Guinevere’s rejection.

“I’m heading up.” Guinevere’s voice came from over my shoulder. When I turned, she was in the archway, swaying slightly with obvious fatigue. “Leo insisted when I almost broke my jaw yawning,” she added bashfully. “It must be jet lag.”

Or running through a skyscraper trying to avoid two Italian thugs trying to murder you, I thought, but I did not distress my mother and sister by saying that aloud.

“Yes, bed for you,” Mamma declared. “Raffaele will show you to your room. Emiliano already put your suitcase there.”

I sighed, because my mother was incapable of not playing matchmaker, but I still went to Guinevere’s side.

“Do you need me to carry you?” I asked quietly, noting the drawn, pale cast of her face.

I wanted to carry her to my room and tuck her into my body so I could shield her from the world and bury myself in her scent.

“No,” she said simply, carefully moving away to avoid touching me.

I let her lead the way up the stairs even though she did not know where to go. When she hesitated at the second landing, I eased by her to walk down the left hall all the way to the last room on the right.

“Every room in this house has a name,” I told her, my hand on the knob, the shadows thick around us, only a shimmer of moonlight pooling in from the large window at the end of the hall. “I thought it was appropriate you have this one.”

I stepped aside so she could read the little ceramic plaque on the wooden door.

PAPAVERO.

Poppy.

She made a thin noise like air escaping a puncture wound, but followed me without objection into the dark, cool room.

I flipped a switch on the lamp beside the bed, illuminating the large space for her to study. There was a large bed with a carved wooden headboard and matching nightstands, a floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror propped against the wall between two windows, and an ornate chest of drawers and matching bureau. Everything was done in soft creams and reds—passionate, romantic colors that suited my cerbiatta.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted, stepping into the room timidly as if she was afraid to be alone with me.

I could not blame myself later, when I lay awake and unblinking in my own room, for what I did next. It was the wine, maybe, or the late hour and the fact that I officially had not slept in over two days.

Mostly, though, it was the sight of her in that old college tee with all that thick, dark hair spilling around her shoulders, the pale oval of her face exhausted but utterly, devastatingly beautiful. All of it amplified by having this woman, my wish on a shooting star, here in my house after a long, wonderful dinner with my family, who seemed to like her almost as much as I did.

Whatever magic it was that moved me beyond rational thought, I found myself stalking across the room toward her.

“R-Raffa,” she stuttered, stepping back against the partially open door so that it swung shut with a shudder.

Seconds later, I was on her, shoving her into the door with the full press of my body, my hands diving deep into those tousled locks to hold her head back for the kiss I bent to seal over her mouth.

She tasted divine.

Like something holy. Something that could absolve me of my sins and baptize me anew.

I understood suddenly what it must have been like for Dante’s fallen angels to have known heaven and to have been cast from its light forever.

Something like a sob lodged in my throat as I thought about never holding her like this again.

Only the fact that she kissed me back for one euphoric moment allowed me to swallow it down, chased by the heavenly taste of her mouth against mine.

“Raffa, no,” she said against my lips, even though it was her thigh hitched over mine and her fist caught up in the collar of my shirt.

“What do I have to do to earn your forgiveness?” I rasped against her neck as I pressed kisses like question marks into her skin. “Tell me, mia stella cadente, what I must do, and I will do it.”

The fist in my shirt flattened to push me away farther.

Only the heaviness of our breath punctuated the room. I could not take my eyes from her swollen mouth, slick from my kisses, sweet from that single taste of dessert wine.

“Space,” she said finally with a shiver as she pushed me away again. She waited until I reluctantly stepped back before saying, “Give me space, Raffa. Being back in Italy with you . . . it’s enough to make me lose my head, and I’m not willing to be your blind bambolina anymore.”

“You are not blind. You are here in my inner sanctum. In my home, with the people I care for the most, because I count you among them now.”

Do you not see? I wanted to shout. Do you not see how my love for you eclipses all else?

But I could not and would not say it.

She did not want to hear it, for one thing.

And for another, what did I expect? That she would forgive me and love me enough to make a life with me here in Italy as the Proserpina to my Pluto? That she could accept and love the dark in me just as she had been drawn into the light?

Even if she did, could I keep her safe from all the enemies forever at the gate, seeking to take the power and glory of my empire from me and mine?

Could I condemn her to the kind of lifestyle where she could be hurt or killed because of me?

Could I even bear to live with that responsibility and the shame of bringing danger to her door?

It was as hopeless a situation as I had found myself in nearly five years ago, when my father died.

Sometimes in life, you are shown the things you most desire just as a reminder that you do not deserve to have them.

“Space,” Guinevere repeated, canting her chin into the air, the dimple in her left cheek flaring as she pursed her lips. “And time.”

“Bene,” I said, rubbing a hand over my mouth as if I could erase the taste of her enough to willingly leave the room. “I will give you space and time, Guinevere.”

I stepped to the side so she could move deeper into the room and I could turn to leave. The knob was in my hand, my body already in the hall, when I hesitated, peering through the shadows into the golden-lit room.

The words were out of my mouth before I could rein them in with rationality.

“You may need time and space. You did not ask what I need, but I will tell you anyway because hope has been a hand around my throat, strangling me, every day we have been apart. Love is not something that recognizes just the good in someone. It sees the bad and ugly. It acknowledges the dark because it accepts every part of who a person is. I am not all good. I am not even divided wholly in half. But whatever good I am I would give to you. Whatever bad I have I would use to shield you from harm. All I ask for in return is that you love me for who I am. Not Prince Charming, but tuus Rex Infernus.”