Page 112 of My Dark Fairy Tale
I hated that the sound of my name in his mouth could cut through anything, even shock. My head snapped up, and I was looking into his eyes before I remembered why I shouldn’t.
They were absolutely wrecked.
The emotion I had been looking for after he pulled the trigger had surged back in, turning the flat black to warm copper again. I had never noticed the lines beside his eyes so much, heavy folds that made him look tired and pained. For the first time, he looked every inch of his thirty-four years, every one of those eleven years older than me.
“I wouldneverlet anything hurt you,” he said slowly, as if he was afraid I would not understand my own language. “I would kill athousand men who tried, and I would sleep like a fucking baby knowing I did the right thing every time.”
I shivered so violently, my tooth tore across my bottom lip and made it bleed.
Raffa leaned over the table, hands flat to the top, face broken open with sincerity. “I know I am not the hero you thought I was, the hero I warned you I could never be. But I am not quite the villain either. I know that because you showed me all the goodness I had to offer. You shone your starlight on my fucking soul when I thought I had compromised that a long time ago, and you brought everything I have to offer to the surface again. You proved to us both I can be kind and generous.” He sucked in a sharp breath and wrenched his eyes from me to stare at a spot on the floor as he whispered fiercely, “You proved to me I am more man than metal when you reminded me I had a heart and I could love with every goddamn piece of it.”
“Don’t you dare,” I mouthed, breathless with rage. “Don’t you dare tell me you love me now when you couldn’t say it before!”
“I could not say it before because you did not know the truth,” he growled. “How could I tell you I loved you, ask you to stay, when you did not know?”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I shouted, slamming my hand against the wall. “Why the fuck did you spend six weeks making me fall in love with you if you were just playing games?”
To my horror, I started to cry. As if unleashing my fury was the key to unlocking the depths of my pain, I wept. Short, soft hiccuping sobs I tried to catch in my hands, dropping my head to hide the way tears sluiced down my face.
“Cerbiatta mia,” he murmured, voice thick with his own despair. “No, no. Please, do not cry.Porca puttana, I did not set out to hurt you like this. How could I ever have expected to meet the light of my fucking life after hitting her with my car? How could I have braced for the impact of knowing you and how it would crash through me, changing everything I thought I knew about my life? About myself?”
I couldn’t stop crying, and his words weren’t helping.
“Just.” I gulped down a sob. “Just tell me the truth. It’s the l-least you can do now.”
He sighed again, but the sound seemed torn out of him. “I think you know who I am, Vera. I think a part of you has wondered for a while now.”
“No,” I said, even though the truth was a heavy weight in my stomach. “I don’t.”
He looked at me for a long moment, and I let him, arrested in the spotlight of his gaze. The same gaze that used to make me feel invincible, like I could be any me and he would love her.
Something pinged behind my breastbone.
Hadn’t I thought I could love any iteration of Raffa the same?
But no. Not like this. Not this man who murdered and lied like some people drank coffee.
“No?” he asked finally, wearily. He dragged a hand over his face and let it drop with a thud to the table. “You do not remember the bloodstain on my shirt the day I danced with you in the trattoria? I had just finished in the basement with Galasso, thesacco di merdawho tried to rape you your first night in the country.”
I gasped, hands covering my mouth even though my tears had trickled to a stop. “What?”
Raffa nodded, and something dark curled the edge of his ruddy mouth. “Ludo found thefiglio di puttanaand brought him to the basement. Umberto’s is one of our restaurants, and we use it for business sometimes.”
“What did you do to him?” I asked, but I knew.
Of course I did.
I would never let anything hurt you. I would kill a thousand men who tried, and I would sleep like a fucking baby knowing I did the right thing every time.
“You killed him,” I whispered into my hands.
When Raffa didn’t respond, I looked up to see his grim smile of acknowledgment.
“I drugged him and then beat him to death with my own hands. Ludo took him into the countryside and made it look like a car accident. You can look it up if you want. The crash was in the local news.”
“The company you ‘invested’ in,” I said, the dots already connected, the image clearer than I’d ever wanted to see it. All I could do now was validate my findings. “How legal was your investment?”
“Very good, Vera,” he said smoothly, the same way he might have praised me for staying very still when he spanked me. Even now, it made my heart stutter. “A rival ... business was making a play for my company. They turned the deputy chief of the DIA, Sansone Pucci, on to me.”
