Page 40 of Mafia Kings: Dario

I hated him all the more.

“Trust me, lust is theleastof my sins,” I snapped.

“Probably true, considering all the lies you tell.”

I stared at him. “What?!”

“You don’t want to go to church to confess anything. You want to contact your father like you attempted to do today on the phone.”

So he knew.

“All the phones in the house go to a central switchboard,” Niccolo explained gently. “The woman in charge of the system said that someone tried to make an outbound call this afternoon. When they didn’t answer her question, she just assumed it was you.”

I blushed hard.

I felt like a fool.

I had thought I’d been so stealthy –

And they all knew.

They werelaughingat me behind their backs.

The stupid little peasant girl…

I got up from the chair with as much dignity as I could muster. “Then I guess I’ll just go to the chapel… in order to get away from the asshole inhere.”

It was one of the few times in my life I had cursed.

I felt a certain pang of guilt –

But it was alsoohso satisfying.

Dario smiled coldly. “Careful, little girl. God may forgive you… but I forgivenothing.”

“I would expect nothing less from the devil,” I said, and turned and walked out of the room.

12

Ifumbled my way through the western wing of the mansion, tipsy and unsure of where I was, until I finally reached the chapel at the far end.

A lot of the house was new and updated – the bathrooms, the kitchen, the study. But other parts of the mansion were hundreds of years old: the stone walls, the arched ceilings, the marble stairs.

The chapel was part of the building that was a holdover from the distant past…

And it was more beautiful than I could have imagined.

The door was a massive slab of oak carved with scenes from the Bible: Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, the Crucifixion. It felt entirely possible that some Renaissance artist had made it 500 years ago.

As I placed my hand on the door and pushed, it creaked open, revealing a world lost in time.

The room itself was relatively small compared to the grand halls in the rest of the mansion, but as a result it felt snug and comfortable.

There were only two sources of illumination: the light from the hallway, and the moon filtering through a stained glass window at the far end of the room. Even in the dim light, the room struck me with its beauty. I promised to return the next day to see what it looked like with the sun streaming through the colored glass.

I felt along the wall for a light switch and found nothing.

I looked up at the ceiling and realized there were no light fixtures. However, therewereseveral candelabras at the far end of the room sitting atop a table.

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