Page 65 of Broken Vows

“No. I opened my inbox wanting to see what’s been going on. I don’t even know if I should have done that? If he could track me?”

That depends on how good they are. We’ll see. “Don’t respond. Log out of everything. I know it hurts. I’m not going to make you any empty promises. You’ve got to let it go.”

“No!” she says as she stubbornly pushes away from me. “I’m not letting it go. I’ve worked hard for this, and I refuse to let Vincenzo or Franco rip my reputation apart?—”

“Gigi—”

“Don’t you get it? This was the only thing I had that was mine. Mine alone. Clean, untarnished. And they’ve now gone and sprayed Mafia sewage all over it. Nobody is going to trust me again.”

“Angel. I get it, but now is not the time. If these allegations are false, it will be easy to prove.”

She turns to me, so many emotions playing out on her face. “But when? I want to go home! I don’t want to be trapped here and watch from afar how they burn my world down. No response is an admission of guilt.”

“It’s going to have to wait, Gigi. You can go back once we’ve dealt with Franco. This whole farce will be over then.” She’s too distraught to see clearly, but her common sense will kick in. “Our priority is to keep you safe. You won’t prove any of those articles wrong if you’re dead.”

I can’t even stomach that thought.

“God.” She cups her hands to her face and shudders as she tries to suppress a sob.

“Here,” I say as I pull her close again. “One thing at a time.”

I bet she’s still in shock of sorts. She’s been good at pretending everything is fine. I bet she wouldn’t have had this outburst in front of Carla. She’ll even protect her sister from this.

“You showered,” she eventually mumbles against my chest. “Was it to wash off those wome?—”

“Don’t say it, angel,” I cut in, gentle but firm. “I went to the gym. As I do every day.”

She takes a minute to digest this, then pulls away to look up at me. She is a mess of smudged mascara and red eyes and broken dreams. I want to kiss it all away.

Instead, I say, “Now if you would stop jumping to conclusions, I can explain why I have our clubs’ exotic dancers come to my house on random weekday mornings.”

She shudders out a little breath. “Exotic dancers? Like instrippers?”

“Some of them do, some of them don’t. Depends on the club they’re working at. They make good money, Gigi. And this is what they choose to do. We offer a safe environment, and I do financial planning for them on the side.”

“Financial planning?” She stares at me in disbelief. “Like in investments?”

“Yes. Some of these women have kids, and they want to send them to college. Some hope to retire earlier. None of them want to be in the industry forever.” I squeeze her hips. “And none of them work for us as prostitutes. In fact, they’re regular employees on our payroll like anybody working in our offices.Il Consigliodoesn’t do that type of shit. Not since we started cleaning up our operations as Matteo took over more and more of the businesses as our father got older.”

“Okay. Whatever.” She peels away from me, and I let her go. “What are your businesses then, because all I know is they can’t be above board.”

“A lot of them are. Luca and I run the clubs, and we have some e-commerce things on the side. Dominic is in security.” I groan inwardly. Here it comes. “Matteo is in the import and export business. And Benedict is a hacker.” Amongst other shady online ventures.

“Import and exports. I see.” She gives a snarky laugh. “And hacking. Nice.”

“It’s rather clean in comparison to a lot of things. And very profitable, like real estate.Il Consiglioowns several buildings in the city. Don Scalera acquired them, riding the wave of the real estate market like a pro surfer, so…” I won’t lie, but she can read between the lines. Don Scalera might have started his real estate empire with laundered money, but decades down the line, it’s all legit.

She throws up her hands and slumps back into her chair, shaking her head as she presses her laptop’s start button until it switches off. She closes the screen slowly, but the tears are back. “The only thing I wanted for us was to get out. To get away and have a different life. I promised my mom I’ll look after Carla, and now this.”

I, too, made promises to my mom. To be the antidote to the poison. Gigi is my fulfillment of that promise. “We’ll figure it out, angel.”

For a moment, heavy silence hangs between us. It’s not only a promise, but also a future—our future. Something we’ll figure out.

“What’s all this?” she asks, and waves to the boxes I’ve dragged in.

“It’s for you.” I walk over and pick up a big rectangle. “I didn’t know what scale you work at, so I got a starter pack. There’s something of everything in here.” I rip the paper off to reveal a canvas. “There’s paint and turps and brushes. Uhm… Oils and acrylics and watercolors.” Basically,one of eachwas my instruction this morning. “I might have gone a bit overboard.”

I wanted to do something for her. Something that would make her happy. I don’t buy in to her not being a good artist. She has passion and an eye for art. What with being prepared to run at any given moment for the past ten years, the one thing she’s never had before was a quiet time and space to just paint and explore.

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