Page 50 of Sins of the Orchid
I covered her hand with mine. “Forever. We stick together forever.”
She smiled. “And don’t you forget it, Adriano Russo.”
Slipping off the hood, she put her ice cream into the bag. “I better get some sleep,” she murmured, stepping into my arms once I was on my feet too. “I’m going to miss you.”
Hugging her tightly, I pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “I’ll be there to visit in a few months,” I murmured against her hair. She always smelled like strawberries. It suited her with that hair of hers. “We’ll talk every day, all day.”
“All day?” she choked out, laughing. “That’s a bit too much. We’ll both be busy all day. But we can touch base every day. Even if it’s a short message.”
I nodded my agreement. “Every day,” I uttered. “I promise.”
* * *
I was leaving the Bennetti residence when my cell chimed. I pulled out my phone and slid open the message.
NYU.
Got V.C.
The message was from my brother. It was cryptic but plenty clear to me. He had captured the Venezuelan Cartel at NYU. For some odd reason, they kept scouting the university as if searching for someone.
CHAPTER17
Amore
TWO YEARS LATER
Death.
It shattered you from the inside. It tore at your heart and left you bleeding slowly, crimson red soaking up your soul. Untimely death added a layer to it. It ate at you from the inside, a range of feelings from terror, fear, anger, all the way to sorrow, then repeating the cycle all over again. When I saw my mom die, the terror and fear became a permanent part of me. I’d often thought of Mom and George but never for too long. It hurt too much and led to a dark place.
But this death, Mr. Russo’s, hit me differently. For three reasons. He was murdered, but Santi had hunted those men down and killed them all. It felt good to know that. I was doing the same with my mother’s killers, and it gave me hope I’d feel even better when I made them pay.
Secondly, the grief on his sons’ faces made me hurt right along with them. I wished there was something I could do to ease their pain. Seven years ago, they changed my life in New York for the better. Mr. Russo and his sons, whether they admitted to it or not, helped me gain a father and brothers, a family, when I needed it the most.
Adriano was the added bonus, the cherry on top. I still wasn’t sure what Santi was.
My obsession. Or maybe my doom.
Thirdly, the burial felt like a definite closure. The gloomy weather of April and wet mist all around us was appropriate. It reflected the loss, allowed you to grieve so you could let the person you loved go. To a better place. I never had that with Mom and George. Their bodies were lost somewhere in the South American jungle. Their tombstones were just shells.
Shoving the dark thoughts aside, my eyes drifted over the flowers covering the casket that was about to be lowered into the ground. Mr. Russo’s final resting place.
Uncle Vincent and I stood to the side since we arrived late. The storm over the Atlantic delayed our flight, leaving us barely enough time to shower and change before Uncle Vincent drove us over to the cemetery for the burial. Lorenzo stayed behind in Italy.
It had been two years since I’d seen Santi and almost six months since I’d seen Adriano.
My best friend stood with his brother, and my heart ached for them. As the casket was slowly lowered into the ground, I saw Adriano discreetly wipe the corner of his eyes. Santi’s face, on the other hand, was an unmoving mask. He remained still as a statue, his dark hair glistening with the mist, his eyebrows scrunched together, his lips pressed in a thin line, and his jaw tight.
He was just as beautiful as I remembered, except harder somehow. And he wasn’t a soft man to start with.
My father stood behind them along with Luigi. Everyone wore black. I’d never seen so many people in one spot. A wide range of influential families of the Cosa Nostra gathered to see this man off. Everyone that was somehow connected to the Cosa Nostra in some way was here. Mr. Russo was a ruthless man during his lifetime, there was no mistaking that. He wouldn’t have been a made man if he wasn’t. But they respected him. I knew the same was true for his eldest son.
Me, on the other hand… I was one of those peculiar cases stuck between this world and the elite families of New York that didn’t get their hands dirty but were just as scrupulous as these men. They just hid behind fake smiles and bodyguards that did their dirty work for them.
Right now, I have one foot stuck in both worlds, but my activities over the last two years have been tipping the scales in favor of my father's world. Of course, nobody knew it except for DeAngelo and the men that worked for us, hunting down my mother’s killers. The men that tortured her for days. That broke her.
I wrapped my arms around myself, the chill seeping into my bones. I wasn’t sure whether it was the mist and cool April temperatures or this whole scene. Or maybe it was both.
