Page 40 of Broken Vows

I won’t let anybody hurt you ever again.

And that’s the truth. Gigi might have insulted me and hit the one raw nerve that always triggers me, and I have reciprocated, but the vow I made to my mother is the one I actively live by.

I don’t know how long we stand like this, but I let her cry. Eventually, a knock sounds on the bedroom door, and she quiets in my arms. I’m so tempted to press a kiss to her head, but instead, I let go as she shifts.

“Gigi? Stephano?” Tasha calls.

“I don’t want her to see—to know?—”

“Nobody’s going to know, angel. Just you and me.” I squeeze her shoulder. “You’ll be fine by yourself?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be back with something for you to wear.” I leave her there and close the door, feeling crap about her having to washherself without help, but she needs privacy, and I need to intercept Tasha.

Our gazes lock across the room. Tasha has a stack of clothes in her hands and a medical kit. “Rosalia is with Carla. I think she’s in shock.”

“I can imagine. Gigi’s taking a shower.”

“I’ve brought her some clean clothes. T-shirts and shorts, a dress if she feels like it, some PJs,” she says as she puts the pile down on the bed. “She’ll manage by herself?”

“Yes. You’ve called the doctor?”

“She needs meds for that wound. Doc will be here in the next hour.”

“Good. When’s Matteo back from his meeting?”

“Late this afternoon.”

The faucet turns on in the bathroom, and I wish I had the right to walk back in there and help her.

This can’t wait. I told MatteoIl Consigliooverstepped the boundary when his contact blew up Randazzo’s compound, and now, we have proof of the consequences. But that’s not what triggered this mess. Murdering Randazzo triggered it.

“I’ll check in on her later, but for now, I’ll be in Matteo’s office.”

I need to start digging. If Matteo could walk into Randazzo’s compound and kill him, I don’t see why I can’t do the same with Franco Fiore. Only one problem: I have no intel on this guy, but I know how to dig.

Half an hour later, I’ve come up with nothing, and I’m frustrated as fuck. The guy is so deep underground, I’ll have to rope Benedict in to get any information.

21

GIGI

I step in under the tepid water and shudder. I don’t want it warmer, not with my raw skin. Bile rises in me as the water runs down my body and finds the grooves of those lines as if they’re aqueducts. I inch a finger closer and feel the cut with the tip. I jerk away, too grossed out.

If I don’t think about it, if I don’t look at it, if the pain subsides which it will, this scar won’t exist anywhere except in my memory. There, it will fade like all bad memories. I sag against the shower’s cold marble wall and sob. With every heave of my chest, my ribcage protests.

A death sentence.

Stephano is like a flipped coin, and I don’t know which side I’m dealing with. This isn’t the cold and calculated man from Cannes who refused to touch me and stuck to his word. This is a man who had me from the moment I collapsed against his chest at the airport, holding me gently, carrying me, touching me with such care as if I would break. Telling me Franco Fiore signed his own death warrant on my skin.

Same coin, same man, and my body’s same treacherous reaction. Why is it that most men are walking red flags, and thenthere’s this one man who only needs to touch me, to tell me to behave, and to promise to murder my fiancé, who makes me want to curl up in his lap and beg him to—to?—

God knows I’ve been fighting the memories of us in Cannes, but now that I’ve seen a different side of him, I’ll never be able to shed them.

Stephano Scalera is a dangerous man, and not because he is Mafia, but because he’s drilling a little hole in the walls of my rock-cold heart. I have vowed to never be involved with a man in the Mafia, never mind marrying one, and have steered clear of any serious relationships, because I don’t trust men. They are all coins, and when most of them flip, it’s to a side you don’t want to know or experience.

I wash my hair and body, ridding myself of travel grime and spots of caked blood where I care to reach for it. Eventually, I feel as clean as I ever will, what with this degrading mark on my skin that will never wash off. At least Franco didn’t rape me or claim me in any way beyond this.

---