Page 15 of Runaway in the Mafia
A knock on the door and Mamma’s voice carried through. She’d already stepped into the room before I realised the loot I held palmed in my hand. She was halfway across the room, carrying towels in her arms before my lagging brain geared up, and I subtly dumped it into the bin underneath my desk.
She came to a halt three meters from my desk, and her nose perked up.
Fuck no.
“It smells like Ahana here.”
Fuck yes.
I rocked back in the chair and wrapped my hands around the back of my head. “Who’s that?”
She frowned. “My ward. I thought you met her.”
“Ah, yes, slipped my mind.”Yeah right.
Her gaze roamed the room like she’d find her hidden behind a dark corner. When her eyes met mine, a soft smile tilted her lips. “That fragrance of hers is so fascinating. I must be smelling it everywhere.”
Don’t I know it?
“Anyway,” she shook her head, “What’s this I hear from Antonio?”
The fucking leach.
“You’re getting married?” Hurt lined her next words. “I thought I would know this, Vitale?”
I sighed. I was fucking firing myconsigliere. “I haven’t signed anything yet, Mamma.”
“But you’re thinking of it. Another arranged marriage,figlio mio?”
My brow cocked. “This is a surprise, how?” Her lips tightened, but I went on. “Daria’s was, and that turned out well. Orietta…” I’d pretend that was an arranged marriage like my two-timing conniving sister hadn’t planned that. “Hell, yours was.”
“That was different.”
“Which one? Yours or your girls?”
She didn’t answer. Regret ticked in the room louder than the tick-tock of the clock on the wall. Words unsaid and actions unshown crawled out from the wallpaper. When she found her voice, it screamed fear, even though it fell quietly on the tensed air in between us. “I want something different for you,figlio mio. Only love will—”
“Love?” I scoffed. “Like how you loved Carlo? What’s love going to do now?”
Say it. Say you think I am cut from the same cloth as the man you fucking married.The man whore who fucked anything that moved. Fucked them in front of his wife and his children.Tell me I am no better than that.
But she didn’t. My mamma might have thought I was the devil, but she was kind. She might insinuate, but the line of uttering words to her thoughts she rarely crossed. And that was her doom. The reason why she never left her fucking husband. The downfall for her children.
She moved to my desk, her eyes earnest, her hands clutched around white towels. My gaze narrowed on them. One of them had a burnt cigar hole in it. There was only one person who smoked a cigar in this house, and he had only come into contact with a towel once while holding one. I bit back the memory of a certain chestnut beauty when my mamma’s gaze shifted to a frown and dropped to the bin.
“There it is.” She bent down and picked up the bottle. “She thought she had lost it, and it reminded her of her home. She was so upset…” her voice trailed off. “What’s it doing here?”
I glared at her. “I went into her shower, stole the damn bottle, and chucked it in my bin.”
She frowned and then gave her head a shake. “Must have been the maids.”
Bingo.She never could see the truth before her eyes.
Her hand wrapped tightly around the bottle. With her other hand, she stroked absentmindedly over the burnt hole. “I was just—”
“I have work to do, Mamma. Can we do it another time?”As in, never.
“Sì, naturalmente.”She hesitated. “You’re staying for dinner?”
