Page 54 of My Dark Ever After
Leo hadn’t liked me from the start, so there was no way I was opening up to him.
“Ludo was having trouble searching for information,” he continued conversationally. “He said you only knew your father’s birth name was Mariano Giovanni. I suggested he might have translated his Italian last name to the English equivalent.”
“Oh, that’s actually a good idea,” I said, brightening. “Sasso isn’t that common a last name either.”
“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t. But there are many ways to say ‘stone’ in Italian.Sasso, roccia, masso—”
“May I cut in?”
Raffa’s uncle and Leo’s adoptive father, Tonio, stood beside us with a pleasant smile on his creased face. The only resemblance he had to Leo was the same pale-blue eyes; otherwise, he was a blandly handsome man, with a tanned complexion and a thin mouth that became lovely when he smiled. He might once have shared Leo’s golden hair, but his pate was bald and shiny now, speckled with age spots.
We hadn’t spoken properly at all, so I was surprised by his request, but Leo seemed overly irritated by it. He tried to move me into dancing again as he shook his head at his dad.
“No, we were just in the middle of enjoying Angela.”
As if on cue, Raffa’s mother finished the song and bowed at the influx of applause before handing the microphone over to another woman.
“She’s finished, and I would love a dance with the woman who has stolen my nephew’s heart,” he insisted, stepping closer so that Leo had to let me go in order to move out of the way.
I let Tonio take my hand and touch my hip, keeping a respectable distance between us as a new song started, and he swept me deftly away from his son, who stood staring at us from the dance floor with his jaw ticking.
“You speak Italian, don’t you,cara?” he asked, and then shifted into the other language when I nodded. “Well, it is good to finally have a moment to get to know the woman who has taken Raffa by storm.”
I arched a brow in an imitation of Raffa’s haughty disbelief. “Hardly by storm. He helped me when I was down on my luck, and we became ... friends.”
“Friends do not look at one another the way he looks at you,” Tonio said with a sly smile and touch to the side of his nose.
When I opened my mouth to argue, he spun me purposefully so that I could see Raffa standing by the side of the dance floor with his arms crossed, ostensibly talking to a few young men from the village as his eyes tracked me darkly across the terrace.
He looked voracious, like a man who had not eaten in weeks, despite the fact that we’d just finished a Tuscan feast.
Even though he’d just filled me with cum an hour earlier, the remnants of which were still damp on the insides of my thighs beneath my dress.
“You are the first woman who has ever stood a chance of taking him away from it all,” Tonio continued, as if we were having a two-sided conversation.
I frowned, stumbling a bit so that I stepped on his foot. “I’m sorry.”
“Do not worry, dear,” he said with a big smile. “It can’t be surprising to hear what you must know. Raffa would give it all up for you, I’m sure.”
Honestly, the idea of Raffa renouncing the Camorra had never even occurred to me. It didn’t seem likely thecapo dei capiwould up and leave his organization for some pretty, young Americanorthat the camorristi would let him just walk away. He knew too much. In books and movies, people like Raffa who tried to leave the life were always killed before they could touch their toes to the white sand beach of their happily ever after.
“I’ll have to disagree with you on that,” I said finally, happy that my voice gave nothing of my inner turmoil away.
Because now that he’d planted the seed, I couldn’t help but think of a different reality where Raffa moved to the States with me. Maybe he took over Dad’s firm with me eventually, the two of us expanding it and making it into something of our own. Maybe we started fresh somewhere away from my parents, in California or North Carolina, somewhere warm enough to appeal to my Italian boyfriend.
Boyfriend.
That thought alone burst the fragile bubble of fantasy.
Raffa was not my boyfriend. He could be no one’s boyfriend. He was a thirty-four-year-old mafioso. To think he could be something so ...triteand juvenile as my boyfriend was ridiculous. To think that he could just uproot his life from Tuscany, with his family, friends, and entire underworld empire, was absolutely idiotic.
And despite what Tonio obviously thought of me, I was not anidiota.
“Raffa would no sooner leave his family behind than he would cut off his own hand,” I replied dryly, shooting Tonio an unimpressed look. “Clearly, you do not know him well if you think he would give all that up for someone he met a few months ago.”
He stared down at me with those narrow, watery blue eyes, and I wondered how old he was, because he seemed ancient and omnipotent in that moment, something peering out at me from the dark with knowledge I’d never have.
“Clearly, you do not know his heart as well as you should, given it is in your possession,” he countered softly, a disappointed twist to his mouth as he dropped my hands abruptly and stepped away from me. “If you asked, he would give up everything for you. Raffa never wanted this life, and now that he has a tangible reason to leave it, you are too cowardly to give it to him.”
