Page 41 of My Dark Ever After
“I am saying Ihavekilled for you,cacciatrice mia,” I corrected, cupping the entire side of her face in one big palm. “I would kill for you again until the streets of Florence ran red with the blood of your enemies. And when it was all over, I would pull you into our bed at night, slake my lingering bloodlust with your body, and fall asleep as easy as a babe with you in my arms.”
“That’s psychopathic,” she told me primly, but her eyes were dark and hungry, enormous black pools I could fall into for the rest of eternity.
“That is the reality of my life,” I argued. “To me, that is the highest form of love.”
She scoffed, biting her lip as she wrenched her gaze away from me.
“Tell me this,” I said with a soft hiss, hoping the words would slip through the crack in her armor against me. “If it had been you alone on the tower, would you have resorted to sacrificing yourself and going with thatbastardoto keep the family safe from him?” I paused to let the words register, to watch the way her shoulders tensed with wariness, sensing a trap. “It was only when Ludo had been shot, when it was no longer only yourself in danger, that you killed him. You did it because you love Ludo and you could not stand to see him die.”
Her silence was answer enough.
“Love.” I punctuated my point quietly but clearly. “In this life, violent delights often beget violent ends. To love so much is to do anything to keep your people safe.” I hesitated and then added, “You can say it is because I am a mafioso. That I was raised habituated to brutality, trained in the language of blood and death, that you are an American girl from Michigan with no such background, and you can deny it all you want, but Iseeyou, Guinevere. I see you, and I know you love just as savagely.”
She raised a shaking hand to scrub it over her face as if she could wake herself up from a nightmare. When her hand dropped, her expression had been rubbed raw, mouth sagging open like a puncture wound, eyes weary and ancient.
“I judged you for being a murderer,” she said softly. “Only to become one myself. It’s a horrible kind of karma, I guess.”
“You are twenty-three years old,” I allowed with a thin smile. “You have a lot of time left to learn about the kind of person you are. You just have to be brave enough—like you were tonight—to ask yourself the truly hard questions.”
“Like what?” Her lids were fluttering, too heavy to keep open. She was slumped back against the toilet now, a bruise blooming along one shoulder from her scuffle with the dead man, her face pale and clean and so young looking it made me ache inside.
“There are three types of people,” I said, sidestepping her question momentarily. “Those who run from danger, those who would give up their lives to save others from it, and those who would stand and fight against it.” Her gaze found mine, eyes filled with questions and yearning. “Most people never have to answer the question of which type they are except for in the abstract, in a philosophy or ethics course, maybe. In the life I lead, the one I led you into, you have to answer the question in a very real way. Even though I believe I know which woman you are, it is up to you to decide. When you are ready, you will tell me.”
“What if I don’t give you the answer you want?” The words were so quiet they were more breath than sound.
I could feel the awkward pull of the wry smile on my mouth. “Do you not understand yet,stella cadente? Whatever wish you make, I will see done.”
“Even if it’s not what you want for yourself?” There was desperation there, but I could not tell how she wanted me to respond, so I gave her only the truth.
“There will never be a day that I will stop loving you,” I confessed with a blasé shrug, as if that love did not dictate every beat of my heart. “So yes, even then. There is nothing I would not give you. Nothing I would not do for you.”
“Even murder,” she whispered, eyes drifting closed for a slow blink I was not sure she would wake from.
“Especially murder,” I agreed easily before standing to collect her into my arms.
As soon as her body pressed into mine, she curled into my chest, cheek over my heart, and promptly fell into a deep doze.
The sensation of pride her trust and comfortableness instilled in me was cataclysmic, a shifting of tectonic plates in the very foundation of my life.
“I love you,” I couldn’t help but tell her as I carried her into the cool bedroom and tenderly deposited her beneath the sheets. “Even if you are not brave enough to be Regina Inferna.”
Chapter Ten
Guinevere
I woke up the next morning with the echo of Raffa’s mouth between my thighs and the phantom sensation of hot, wet blood on my hands.
It was an alarming contrast, but oddly fitting for my current situation.
My shoulder ached from where the dead man’s boot had connected with it, but I rolled away the stiffness as I got ready for the day. My face was a pale oval in the mirror, bleached of color and hollow beneath the cheeks and eyes. I looked skeletal and vaguely frightening.
With a sigh, I opened my makeup bag and got to work making myself presentable, even though I felt like squirreling the whole day away locked in my room. There was no doubt in my mind that Raffa, or one of his well-meaning but interfering sisters, would have dragged me out of bed at some point.
Besides, it was the first day of the grape harvest, which meant that I had already slept too long and most of the family would be out in the field of vines extending all down the left slope and valley beside the house. I had been eager to participate in such a cultural phenomenon, questioning Delfina about the harvesting process and Angela, Stacci, and Carlotta about the community feast they hosted among the vines that first night to celebrate.
It was going to be glorious.
I could wallow in self-pity and flagellation another day, I decided, as I donned the most casual outfit in my closet, a white linen dress with straps that buttoned close on my chest, and slipped my feet into sturdy leather sandals. My hair was wavy from Raffa’s braid, and even though it was impractical, I left it down because I liked the way it made me feel to know his fingers had been in it, caring for it and for me in one of my lowest moments.
