My Dark Ever After (My Dark Mafia Romance) By Giana Darling NovelM80052 My Dark Ever After (My Dark Mafia Romance) (Chapter - 8)

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

The grape festival in Impruneta was incredible.

I was used to parades. We had them for Easter and Christmas, but this was something else entirely. There were floats shaped like wine bottles and stands for local wineries, dancers in wonderful costumes that were later judged for the prize of a terra-cotta wine cup. It was the last day of a monthlong celebration, the crowd large but jovial, kids running around while parents sipped wine and chatted in clusters.

Zacheo held my hand while we watched the parade and then demanded to be put on my shoulders. I wasn’t very tall, but I perched him there anyway, grateful when Emiliano asked the man in front of us to move to the side so his son could see the proceedings.

Carlotta’s mouth was stained red from wine, and Stacci was lured into dancing the traditional steps of a local jig with some friends of hers, who had us all clapping and laughing along with them.

It was idyllic.

So perfect I felt inexplicably like crying.

The last five days at Villa Romano had been their own kind of exquisite agony. The entire family was wonderful, if a little chaotic.

Angela Romano was clearly the matriarch, but she was made of sugar without an ounce of bitterness or vinegar to offset her sweetness. She happily enlisted me to cook before mealtimes in the kitchen, patiently teaching me how to hand roll orecchiette and cured lardo di Collonata, when to take a braised lamb out of the oven and how to bake schiacciata alla Fiorentina, the traditional dessert of Florence. She did not speak English as well as her children, but it gave me the opportunity to flex my Italian, and she delighted in teaching me obscure expressions and dialect from her youth in Naples, where she was born.

Stacci and Carlotta stopped apologizing for their sons on my second day in the house, when they caught us playing nascondino (hide-and-seek) swiftly followed by a rousing round of palla prigioniera (basically dodgeball) out by the small field beside the pool. Zacheo had become my little shadow, but the rest of the boys delighted in having an active adult to play in their games. I didn’t have much to do before the US market opened and I started my remote work, so I spent most of that time playing games.

It was hard to be confused and sad when I was surrounded by sweet, rambunctious children.

Delfina was busy preparing for the harvest, but when she rolled in at the end of dinner and grabbed a plate to eat standing up in the kitchen while the rest of us cleaned, she always made it a point to talk to me. I liked her perhaps even more than sassy Stacci and sweet Carlotta. Delfina was blunt in a way that reminded me of her brother, and she had a fascination with film that I could relate to. She had ducked into my room the last two nights after dinner to sit on my bed and watch Sebastian Lombardi movies with me. He was from Naples, but he was still Italian, and Delfina told me she’d had a crush on him since she was ten and he was the sole reason she was still single.

She made me laugh.

Emiliano and Lando were both kind, the former more gregarious than the latter, but they both worked long hours, so the only men I really spent time with were Carmine and Ludo.

I could not complain.

Even though I wasn’t allowed to leave the estate without an escort, Ludo took me for a jog every day down the hill, around the looping road, and back up. It was still warm enough that we were dripping with sweat by the time we returned, but my stamina was getting so much better. He also helped me with sparring, something he excelled at. Unlike my teacher at the dojo, Ludo had real-world fighting experience, and he taught me what a true fight for my life might look like. The first time I landed a punch, he gave me a fist bump that felt like a trophy.

When I had to work, Carmine shared his temporary office space with me. I tried not to eavesdrop, but it was impossible not to be drawn in by his phone calls and conversations with Ludo. The Romano business had interests in everything from green energy to agriculture to imports and exports. I learned that they owned a few genuine luxury brands and a number of factories that reproduced fake designer products, which seemed counterproductive, but Carmine only smirked at my expression and explained that they could corner both markets.

It was fascinating.

So much so, I found myself gravitating to Carmine’s desk when I was done with my own work. He didn’t say a word, only shifted a portfolio across the tabletop toward me; it contained a financial pitch from a wind turbine company near Turin.

“What do you expect me to do with this?” I asked, even though there was a pen between my fingers already, my eyes on a pad of paper beside Carmine’s elbow.

He handed it to me without looking away from his screen. “What do you think?”

What a powerful question for a curious mind.

An hour later, I’d written a summary of why I thought the company itself was a bad bet but that the idea had merit.

Another hour after that, Carmine casually pushed a folder across the desk at me; it contained five companies that could do the same work the original one had proposed. I found the right candidate in the time it took me to eat the panini Carlotta brought me for lunch.

I didn’t ask if the business they intended to conduct with the company was wholly legal because I already knew the answer and found I didn’t want to acknowledge it. Even watching Carmine work, overhearing conversations that were not always kind in tone, I tried to ignore what was right in front of my face.

It was considerably harder than it had been my first six weeks in Tuscany.

Five productive, fulfilling days in Italy, five days I never would have assumed I’d enjoy, given that I was technically there against my will.

And all five of them spent away from Raffa.

You shouldn’t miss him, I thought as I leaned against the stone wall of the bell tower in Impruneta with Ludo while the others socialized around us. I was tired, both from lingering jet lag and from chasing the kids through the square. The sun was dipping behind the red-roofed buildings, but there was no sign of the festivities halting anytime soon. It wasn’t very smart of me, but I’d had my share of wine with the sisters, sampling the local offerings and toasting to this, that, and the other. I wasn’t used to drinking, and my head was spinning like a top about to stop, wobbly and slow.

“I’m going to grab a coffee,” I told Ludo in Italian, and when he moved to join me, I shook my head and pointed to the café four yards across the crowded street from us. “I will be right back. Stay and have fun.”

His lips twisted in an eloquent way that said clearly, Yeah right.

I laughed as I walked away from him, swerving through the bodies to get to the busy coffee shop and the collection of people standing in the open doorway, drinking wine and espresso. The interior was just as busy, but I wedged myself into a small gap at the bar and fluently ordered myself an espresso when the server noticed me.

It felt good to taste Italian on my tongue again. To stretch the muscles I’d honed for weeks in Florence and know that I hadn’t lost any skill over the past two months.

I leaned against the counter, taking deep breaths to settle my spinning head, and hoped the coffee would cut through some of the haziness.

“Guinevere,” someone said in surprise over my shoulder.

It was Leo with an older man who looked vaguely like him, though his expression was blank where Leo’s was charming. I assumed this gentleman was Tonio, an uncle Stacci’s and Carlotta’s kids had named their pig after, and Leo’s father.

“I didn’t expect to see you.” Leo stepped around someone to put a hand on my shoulder and kiss me on both cheeks. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m with the family. The boys wanted to see the parade. I could say the same for you, though. I thought you were in Florence with Raffa.”

“Ah, of course. I returned just this afternoon, and I decided to have dinner with my father.” He indicated the man behind him. “Have you two met yet?”

Tonio stepped forward with a warm smile and clasped both my hands in one of his before he kissed the air beside both of my cheeks. “I am happy to meet the woman who has made Raffaele smile.”

I beamed back at him. “Thank you. I am happy to meet Leo’s dad and Raffa’s uncle.”

“I am not truly either,” Tonio explained. “Leo is my adopted nephew, and Raffa’s father was my best friend, so the title is merely an honorific.”

I didn’t know quite what to say to that, so I replied, “You have the same kind eyes.”

Tonio laughed, squeezing my hands sharply before dropping them to wipe at his eyes. “Grazie.”

Leo’s smile was thin. “Where are Ludo and Carmine? You shouldn’t be alone.”

“Relax. Ludo is just outside,” I explained, though it felt good to know Leo was concerned for my safety. He hadn’t taken to me like Raffa’s other friends had, and I still wasn’t entirely sure why.

“Bene, bene,” he said, staring somewhere over my shoulder like he was considering something before he nodded sharply, expression clearing. “Are you enjoying the festival?”

“Yes, it’s incredible. Then again, I’m very easily enchanted,” I said with a self-deprecatory laugh.

It used to be one of my better qualities, I thought. That innocent wonder and curiosity. Now I wondered if it wasn’t why I’d earned the nickname Jinx from my family. I never seemed to know when it was better not to follow trouble.

“A side effect, maybe, of being very enchanting yourself.” He was smiling at me, pale eyes bright, but there was an artifice to it that made me think he was trying too hard. He was the last of Raffa’s friends I had to connect with, and I had the feeling he was making a sincere effort to be kind to me. “If you want to see something truly worthy of wonder, you should climb the bell tower to watch the last of the sunset. Raffa mentioned you enjoyed watching the sunsets from Piazzale Michelangelo in Firenze, but watching one over the hills of Chianti is a true spectacle.”

“It’s open to the public?” I had noticed the old stone tower as soon as we’d walked into the piazza that afternoon. It was no doubt the best viewpoint in town.

“Yes, yes,” he assured me, distracted by his father leaning close to whisper something in his ear. “Let me show you the entrance before I leave.”

I agreed, pleasantly surprised by his overture of friendship. “Grazie, Leo.”

“I will leave you two youths to enjoy the festival,” Tonio suggested. “It’s time for this old man to go home to bed.”

We both said our goodbyes, and then Leo offered me his arm with a little bow as his father took off for the exit without us. I smiled as I slid my hand over Leo’s forearm and let him lead me through the crowded entry, around the milling bodies in the street, and toward the bell tower. A band had started to play in the square, the music amplified by the crowded buildings surrounding the open bowl of the piazza.

“I am sorry about before,” Leo said over his shoulder. “I was rude when we first met. It didn’t have anything to do with you. Not really.”

I waited for him to continue as we finally reached a closed wooden door that swung open easily under Leo’s big hand. He was a handsome man, dark-gold hair and pale eyes contrasting nicely with olive-toned skin. He had to be Northern Italian with coloring like that. Gemma had ended up with similar looks, our Italian father’s skin and our Albanian mother’s flaxen locks.

The door closed behind me with a loud clanging, which startled me into yelping, hand flying up to cover my lurching heart.

Leo only peered at me through the dark. “I fell in love with a foreigner once too. She was charming and beautiful, and I thought at the time that I would give up anything for her.” He paused, one hand clenching tight at his side. “It didn’t end well. I didn’t want to see a man I consider my brother go through the same thing.”

I stepped closer to place a careful hand on his closed fist. “I’m sorry, Leo. Losing someone is never easy.”

“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?” he asked. Among the shadows, his face was hard, almost cruel. His teeth were flat and square, not like Raffa’s pointed canines—they looked brutal enough to chew through bone. I was seeing monsters in every man now that Raffa had pulled back the veil on his underworld, even kind and good-looking ones like Leo. “You haven’t lost your love. Not really. You’re making the choice to let him go. You wanted the truth, yet when he gave you honesty, you couldn’t handle it.”

Before I could think of what to say, Leo’s phone started ringing, and he pulled it out of his pocket, frowning down at the screen.

“I’m sorry, Guinevere. This is important. Will you be okay to find your way to the top without me?”

“Is everything okay?” I asked, because there was real distress on his face as the phone continued to ring in his hand.

“It will be,” he stated firmly, like his belief alone could make it so. “Enjoy the view. I’ll make sure Ludo knows where you are.”

I nodded, turning away from him to the shadowy mouth of the stairwell.

“Follow the light to the top,” he instructed before closing the door and leaving me alone in the dark.

I listened to my own harsh breaths for a moment, willing my heart to slow and my equilibrium to balance. When I felt steady, I sucked in a deep breath and started up the narrow, winding stairs.

Leo’s words had touched on the questions that lay at the foundation of my tension with Raffa.

Was I brave enough to love him for who he was and courageous enough to stand beside him in the criminal underworld he reigned in?

And did I really know the whole truth?

Both Raffa and Leo had implied that I did, but knowing that Raffa was a mafioso was the tip of the iceberg. Had he killed many men? Any women or children? Did he have morals or rules of conduct when he was free to write them as he pleased? What was the ethical tapestry of a made man? What was the structure of that kind of business and organization?

There were considerably more questions than answers. If I wanted to know Raffa, the real man and not the one I’d idealized, I would have to let my natural curiosity lead me into trouble once more. Only this time my eyes would be wide open, fixed on the treacherous nature of the steps I took forward.

The first questions I had to ask were of myself.

I wasn’t a stupid woman.

College educated, bright enough to graduate top of my class, I had always been complimented for my intelligence and puzzle solving.

So had I really been so blind to the hints that Raffa was something darker than Prince Charming? Or had those very clues drawn me in even closer, a glittering lure leading me through murky waters?

I might have been the good sister and daughter, the A+ student and sheltered sick girl, but I was also the woman who fantasized about spankings and bondage. The one who thought a necklace of love bites was just as pretty as one of jewels. The one who watched violent movies because the action excited her, and the one who got aroused, sometimes, when she learned MMA and took an opponent to the mat. There was something hungry in the heart of me, and Raffa had been the first person to see it. To feed it full.

So maybe I hadn’t acknowledged his darkness, but had I secretly known or willfully turned a blind eye to continue living out the fantasy of my Italian hero?

Maybe.

Pink light splashed across the stones at my feet, warming my ankles like tropical water as I reached the top of the stairwell and stepped out onto the small platform under the peaked tower roof. The bell was almost as big as the space, a great big iron bulb. Archways opened the enclosure at regular intervals, revealing a stunning view of the piazza filled with colorful, costumed revelers and the band playing away in one corner. Beyond that, down the slope of the hills leading away from town, were countless rows of vines marking this as a part of the famous Chianti region. Everything was covered in honeyed light dripping from a multihued sky that seemed to melt into itself, vivid pink to orange to softening yellow and blue.

It was breathtaking.

I followed my impulse to lean through an archway, elbows braced on the warm stone and chin propped on my hands so I could enjoy the rest of the sunset by myself, way above the teeming mass of Italians.

I don’t know what it was exactly that alerted me to the presence of someone in the stairwell, because they didn’t make a sound. It was just a vague sense, honed over months of paranoia and recent trauma, that tickled the back of my neck like a cool breath.

I was no longer alone.

Adjusting my stance casually, I moved so the entrance of the stairwell was in my peripheral vision and the blurred movement in the shadows of the lowering dusk light solidified into a human form.

I had nothing on my person except the cell phone in my cardigan. Carefully, so my arm hardly twitched, I dipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the phone. I thumbed the screen open and hit Raffa’s name in my Favorites.

Just as the faint whisper of a ring began, the person stalking me decided to pounce.

They lunged out of the darkness onto the small platform, intending to tackle me, maybe, or force me into the corner.

But I was already moving, twisting with the half wall at my back so I was no longer in the corner. The man couldn’t stop himself mid-motion, so I could use his own momentum against him and shove him harder into the half wall. His head cracked against the stone with a sickening sound, but he recovered quickly.

When he turned to face me, forehead split and bleeding heavily above one eye, his hands were lifted as if in surrender.

“I am not here to harm you,” he said in slow, careful Italian. “I am a friend.”

I could hear Raffa’s voice calling out from the phone in my pocket.

“I don’t know you, and usually when someone sneaks up and lunges at you, they don’t have friendly intentions,” I countered, shifting so I was closer to the stairs.

To my surprise, he grinned, and there was something genuinely warm in his expression that gave me pause. “True. I’m sorry for scaring you. I had hoped to take you quickly and quietly.”

“Where? And why?”

“The Venetian wants you,” he admitted. “That’s all I can say at the moment. But please, you must come with me.”

“No.” I had nothing to defend myself with, but I bent my knees and rolled slightly to my toes, grateful I had decided to wear practical flat sandals because of the Romano children. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I have something,” he said as I eyed the distance to the stairs. He kept one hand in the air as the other reached for his pocket, which was coincidently next to his holstered gun. “I was told to show you this.”

My breath arrested when he pulled a shiny gold chain from his pocket, unraveling it until the pendant swung into sight. It was a gold cross, something that adorned the necks of countless men and women in this country.

Only I knew who had worn that necklace.

The cross was the size of my palm, large but thin and made of delicately twisted filaments of metal, with a diamond the size of my pinky finger pressed into the apex.

“That was my sister’s,” I breathed, stepping forward as if by magnetic force.

“It was,” he agreed.

Before he could say more, the sound of footsteps echoed through the stairwell. We shared a look, just for a split second, but it conveyed his distress that we had been found and my own that this stranger couldn’t finish telling me why the hell he had Gemma’s necklace.

The next second, he was dropping the necklace back into his pocket and gripping his gun, training it at the mouth of the stairs. A shape appeared, rounding the curve, and he shot at it.

The sound of Ludo cursing in Italian reached my ears, and I knew if I did nothing, this stranger was going to hurt him. There was no way Ludo wouldn’t find a way to get me. I might not have trusted Raffa’s goodness, but I knew he wouldn’t let me be taken and that those orders meant something to the men in his inner sanctum. Not just because they were orders from their capo, but because I truly believed I meant something to them too.

Just as they meant something to me.

Raffa wasn’t the only person I’d missed in Italy.

There was no way for Ludo to get to me except by storming up the stairs onto the small landing, exposing himself to the gunman’s bullets.

But he seemed to have forgotten about me for the moment.

My mind worked so fast it ran into the idea headlong, making me wince.

Ludo fired a round of shots that didn’t connect and then was forced to duck around the curve as the man returned fire.

I sucked in a deep breath as I tried to gather every ounce of courage I possessed and transform it into kinetic energy.

When the man ceased firing to move slowly toward the staircase with his gun raised, I took my opportunity.

The landing was small enough that it only took me a single leaping bound to ram myself into the unknown gunman with the full weight of my charging 110 pounds. The force made him stagger sideways, his head hitting the bulbous iron bell with a dull knell that vibrated faintly through the tower. I almost winced in sympathy at the contact, but he was already reaching for me, probably trying to use me as a human shield against Ludo, who was charging up the stairs.

I evaded his reaching arm, but he raised his gun with the other and fired off a shot. It was poorly aimed, but that didn’t matter with Ludo racing up to the stairs toward us, caught between the narrow walls. The sound of Ludo’s pained grunt drew my attention momentarily away from our assailant, and I watched my friend fall to one knee at the top of the stairs, hand pressed to his side.

Before I’d come to Italy for the first time, I had never known violence. It had been as abstract as a staged fight scene on the television screen or a chapter in a spy thriller, something intangible enough that I had never had to think about how it would apply to me.

Did I have the capacity to be violent?

I would have laughed and said, unequivocally, even righteously, absolutely not.

I’d never even killed a spider.

Yet there I was, standing at the top of an ancient bell tower with shots ringing out around me, a wounded friend at my back and a strange shooter before me, and the only thing I could think about was protecting Ludo, protecting myself, at all costs.

So as the gunman righted himself against the wall and took a step forward with his weapon trained on Ludo, the small American girl completely forgotten, I rushed him again.

Throwing all my weight low into the side of his exposed torso, I pushed the stranger up against the half wall in the open archway, and then, when he tried to swing the gun my way, I planted both hands on his chest and shoved with all my might.

Our eyes locked for one unnaturally elongated moment, the previously pleasant mask he’d worn to convince me to go with him quietly eradicated by fury and disbelief.

I felt his weight give way under my hands, the rush of air as his body tipped over the ledge, legs kicking up to try to regain some semblance of balance. A foot kicked me hard in the shoulder, a parting blow before he was suddenly gone.

I lunged over the stone wall to watch, morbidly fixated and horrified by my own actions, as he went tumbling through the air to land with a sickening thud in the piazza. The wine revelers nearby screamed and scrambled away while one or two noble people ran to the fallen man’s side to see if they could help.

There was no help for him.

He was dead, and I had been the one to kill him.

When a hand clamped over my shoulder, I screamed before I remembered that Ludo was up here with me. I turned to find his face pale and sheened with sweat, one hand pressed to his side, blood bubbling between his fingers.

“Grazie,” he murmured, reeling me in for a hug against his uninjured side. “Grazie, amica mia. I am sorry I could not stop him before you had to.”

I curled into Ludo’s body, oxen-strong and steady even with a serious wound. He smelled like cypress trees and gun oil. It shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was because it reminded me of Raffa.

“I killed him,” I whispered into his chest. “I killed someone, Ludo.”

“Si, Guinevere,” he agreed in as soothing a voice as I had ever heard from him. He led me toward the stairs with one arm around my shoulders, as if I was the injured one. Even though my shoulder ached and I felt close to vomiting, I wrapped my arm around Ludo’s waist in an effort to support him too as we started down the spiral stairs.

“I’m a killer,” I breathed as the dead man’s face flashed in my mind like a strobe light at a disco, something epilepsy inducing that jerked through my entire system.

“No, sei colei che mi ha difeso,” Ludo grunted over the chaos of the door at the base of the tower slamming open against the opposite wall and multiple footsteps thundering up the steps toward us.

“It doesn’t matter why I killed him,” I murmured, knowing that taking a life had shifted something fundamental, tectonic, inside me, revealing dangerous cracks in the foundation of my soul for something hot and hazardous to seep through. “Only that I did.”