She stopped to hiccup. “But even if he could inspire an act of God, I don’t think it would be to resurrect a guinea pig. Or was it a hamster?”— Good lord, did she blurt out everything that came into her mind?—“I actually don’t know what the difference is. Either way, it was really cute. It had these tiny little whiskers, and it’d just eat anything I’d throw its way. That wasn’t much, by the way, because we had no food or money or anything really.”
She turned to face me. “What was I talking about? Oh, right. God. No, acts of God. I think the act of God he’d inspire is, like, unlimited beer or something. Not resurrecting a guinea pig. Why are we talking about guinea pigs?”
Good grief, I needed her to sober up and stop talking like Captain Jack Sparrow needed rehab and a colonic.
I turned to Lucy and nailed her with a fake smile. “We were talking about charcoal or carbon capsules. They’ve never failed me.” Not that I drank often. I changed the subject before she could give me a verbal essay on charcoal versus carbon. “Vincent was one of the best men I’ve ever known. I can’t imagine any other mafia figure garnering this crowd. Not even my own father.”
This had to be the worst redirect. I didn’t want to talk about my father, and I wanted to talk about Vincent even less. I pushed away the spasm of pain at the thought of Vincent’s death, trying my best to build some emotional distance.
And emotional distance included overcoming the torment of living in a world where Vincent Romano no longer existed. To be honest, that world scared me. He and Maman were the purest parts of my life in the mafia world.
Don’t be weak.
You’re a Vitali.
Vitalis don’t feel fear.
I could almost feel the phantom sting of my dad’s palm striking my face. A feeling which had always accompanied those words.
For the first time today, I focused on the feeling of Damian’s gaze on my back. It was better than the pain of losing Vincent. When I was younger, Maman used to take me into the city, and the two of us would have dinner with Vincent nearly every time. It hadn’t taken me long to become suspicious of why these dinners remained so secretive. Unmarked town cars with tinted windows. Car swaps. Obscure dinner locations. Private dining rooms.
If I had to bet on something, it’d be that Maman and Vincent had been in love. They may not have shared a physical affair, but it had been, without a doubt, an emotional one. That should have upset me. After all, Papà’s infidelities pissed me off.
But Maman was different. She was the parent who loved and protected me, and every piece of me needed to do the same for her. That was why, when Maman had asked me to represent the Vitali name at Vincent’s funeral, I agreed. She couldn’t come without raising suspicion, and Vincent had been my second father in every way short of marrying my mom. I was sure he would have, too, had my father not been a Vitali.
“Who’s your father?”
Wow, she really had no clue.
I ignored her question. My eyes shifted to Lucy, and I hoped she could see the sorrow in them. It was the truest thing I had to offer. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
She shook her head, her movements fervent and resolute for someone inebriated. “Don’t be. He lived and died on his own terms. It’s more than most of us can hope for.”
Her words cut me unexpectedly. Nothing about my life could be described as “on my own terms.” If that were the case, I would be standing beside Damian, not rows apart, my skin burning at the way his eyes stayed glued to my body. Itch. Scratch. Burn. I wanted to do all three the longer he looked at me.
How could he stand the sight of me after the way I had left him?
I could see this snowballing in the near future, and I unleashed an impulsive plan to stop it. I lifted my arm and pretended to scratch at an itch on my elbow, making sure the sun glimmered off the giant diamond on my wedding ring finger. It shone in a way that I knew reached two rows back.
From the corner of my eyes, I saw Damian glance away.
My heart tightened.
Unhappiness coursed through my veins.
And for the life of me, I couldn’t explain why I’d done what I’d just done.
Nothing about this felt like living on my own terms.
Don’t tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
Samuel Johnson
“Impetuous” had never been the word to describe me. I had dethroned my father with careful planning and only a dash of outside help. It had taken years and more patience than most possessed, but I’d done it, and I’d done it well.
So, my reaction to Ren’s presence bewildered me. I spent the church ceremony boring holes into the back of her head with my eyes when I should have focused on the mystery of Ariana De Luca.
The burial at the cemetery had been spent studying everything that had changed since Ren left. The developed curves. The provocative disposition. The all-knowing upward tilt of her lips. That goddamned ring on her finger.
By the time the Romanos laid Vincent to rest, bad decisions pushed themselves to the forefront of my mind. I stood at the peak of the hill, Ariana walking away to my right and Ren slipping into her car on my left.
The right decision—the obvious decision—would be to turn right. To pursue Ariana and elicit answers. To put the De Luca organization before my unyielding heart.
I didn’t make the right decision.
Swerving left, I took five long steps to Ren’s town car and slid into the back seat beside her. The divider rolled downward, and a gun pointed at my face. I ignored it, steadying my eyes on the siren that, somewhere along the line, had replaced the girl with the sweats and messy bun.
She kept her eyes on the row of headstones out the window. “Yes?”
“Call off your lapdog, Princess.”
Her driver cocked the gun.
Ren’s lips curved up. “Is this role reversal? Did you find a new kink? You’re playing the Vitali, and I’m the subservient De Luca?”
Bitterness undermined her classical beauty and did nothing for me. Her insult brushed past me as I considered the agitation hidden beneath her façade. I’d done nothing wrong. All those years ago, she’d been the one to overreact. She’d been the one to threaten me. She’d been the one to leave.
She didn’t deserve an ounce of my sympathy.
Yet, I was tempted to give it to her anyway.
I leaned forward, and her lapdog waved his gun. I turned my head and pressed it against the silencer’s muzzle. “If you’re going to point a gun at me, use it.” The front sight brushed against my forehead, and the smell of Cheetos dust wafted from his finger situated on the trigger.
He retreated a millimeter, and I dipped left into Ren’s side, seizing the opportunity to unarm him. The gun went off, and the bullet pierced the window beside me before I snatched it from his grip.
His eyes grew as I released the magazine, and it plopped onto my lap. “Miss Vitali—”
Miss?
“You’re fine, Samford.” She met my eyes as he faced forward. “This will only take a few minutes.” Her eyes shifted to the shattered window. “Seriously?”
“Untrained dogs are the worst, aren’t they?” My gaze never wavered from Samford’s through the rearview mirror, even as my peripheral caught Romano, Camerino, Andretti, and Rossi soldiers approaching the car with their guns drawn.
“I don’t have time for this.” Her words were ice, but she leaned into me without realizing it, and I knew she was still hot for me. At least that hadn’t changed. It reminded me of before. Before we’d fallen in love, even. Back when we hated one another but still felt the lust that would never leave us alone.
“Somewhere better to be?” I faced her and struggled to process the frost in her eyes. “Why are you here, Princess?”
“Knight. Or Renata. Never princess.”
I’d never figured out why that nickname bothered her so much. That, in turn, bothered me. Back then, I wanted to unravel the mysteries th
at were Renata Vitali. Nowadays, I’d settle for an apology because, fuck, I deserved one.
I bellowed a laugh. “Knights don’t run away when things get tough.”
“That’s not what I did.”
“Sure.” Dissociative amnesia affected… what? Five percent of the population? Ren had always been the type to be in the minority. “You left, and it made no sense, and now you’re mad at me. That’s what happened.”
The fuck am I doing?
Talking about our past stood at the back of the line on the list of things I should have asked her. At the very least, I could justify asking why she had come. It was a stretch, but that answer could maybe benefit the De Luca family name I’d risked everything to preserve.
“Damsel.”
The sanctity of the just-for-us nickname died as she said it in the presence of her driver. It bothered me to admit that part of me died, too. But fuck, that nickname had spent more than a decade staying just between us. Now, here she was, giving it away freely like it was candy and she was a creeper driving a white van.
She shifted at the look I speared her with before she sighed. “It’s been nearly a decade. Get over it.”
Solid advice, if I was being honest.
The rift between us was a canyon. Deep clefts too rocky to scale. I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to.
“When you’re done dodging my questions, I’ll allow you the opportunity to explain yourself.”
She arched a brow. “The opportunity?”
I opened the door, avoiding the litter of window glass that scattered on the floor like sheep with no shepherd. “It’s more than you deserve.”
I stepped out of the car and turned to face the crowd of soldiers that had surrounded us. One of them arched a brow.
I considered what would irritate Ren most before I spoke. “Sorry, guys. She’s on her period.”
The door slammed shut behind me.
It echoed like it had that night she’d run away.
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
You have to be here, I reminded myself as I strolled into L’Oscurità, a Romano bar in an expensive part of the city.
Few things in life were worth stressing over. Damiano De Luca happened to be one of them. My poor heart hadn’t dealt with the torment that was Damian in years and struggled to keep up. It scraped at my insides with each demanding beat as I perched myself on a barstool.
Normally, I was calm, collected, and cool—the three Cs my Vitali blood demanded of me. But in my little corner of the Romano bar, I wasn’t sure who was winning—my heart or my head.
I had left this world. Begged Papà to set me free. Done everything I could to live a normal life with a normal teaching job in a normal suburban Connecticut town, close enough to Maman’s place in the Hamptons that I could visit whenever she felt lonely.
I hated that I was here. I hated that, all these years later, I still felt something suspiciously close to love whenever I thought of Damian.
Upper-level mafia figures, attendees of Vincent’s funeral this morning, replaced the typical bougie, annual-income-north-of-eight-figures clientele. Their presence darkened the room. That, or the overtime my heart had put in was messing with my head.
“I’ll take a whiskey neat. Single malt Scotch.” I slid my sweater down my arms, placed it on the courtesy hook beneath the bar top, and met Ariana De Luca’s eyes. “Macallan if you have it, please.”
“I have a 35-year-old in the back…”
“That’ll do.”
I skimmed the bar as she left to retrieve my drink. Asher Black, Niccolaio Andretti, and Bastiano Romano sat in a corner booth, and I made a mental note to send my condolences their way. The senior Romanos—Frankie, Eli, and Gio—sat at the opposite end of the bar, surrounded by a sea of suck-ups. I made another note to avoid them. Representatives for the Camerino and Rossi families showed up, too. All that was missing was a De Luca in the mix. Well, an out-of-the-closet De Luca.
My eyes sought Damian, and when they didn’t find him, disappointment and relief filled me in equal measures. Ariana returned with the bottle of Macallan. Just in time, because Damian walked in.
Courtesy of the deep Vitali coffers, I slid six hundred-dollar bills Ariana’s way, took my drink, grabbed my things, and made my way down the bar. Blending in came easily to me, and as I used a particularly large enforcer to shield me from Damian’s line of sight, I knew I was in the clear but within hearing range.
I never cared enough about this world to be the eavesdropping type, but with Damian, it didn’t even occur to me not to. It was like opening a bag of chips and finishing it in one sitting. It happened before I even realized what I’d done.
“Ms. De Luca.” Damian used the voice he did when he pretended to act natural but was looking to stir up trouble. It always fooled everyone but me. “Penny for your thoughts?”
She ran a rag across the bar top and poured him a beer on tap, though he hadn’t ordered and I knew he didn’t drink often. “I like to think they’re worth more than that.”
Poor girl. I almost pitied her. Perks of being a Vitali included knowing things others didn’t. For instance, while Damian remained blissfully unaware that he spoke with his half-sister, I knew when she’d been born, who she had been born to, and just how naughty Angelo De Luca had been all those years ago when Damian’s mother still lived.
“A barter it is.” Damian’s voice dipped lower. “I’ve had one Hell of a month or two. Giovanni Romano has been asking about a girl poking around his territory. Imagine my surprise when my last name slipped past his lips.”
“It’s just a last name.”
“Cut the crap, De Luca.” I could picture the hard glint in his eyes. “You share my last name, yet I’ve never heard of you. Why is that?”
“Why would you give me a heads up about Giovanni?”
Skirting around Damian’s questions never accomplished anything except diminishing his respect for you. “Answer the question, or I’ll answer it for you, and you won’t like my answer.”
The enforcer that had been blocking me from Damian’s view shifted, and just like when we’d met all those years ago, our eyes connected, and we saw past each other’s façades. Damian had always been a closed book, one that only I could open and read. But of everyone in this world, he was the only one who could say the same of me.
I shifted my eyes, but I knew he’d approach. Hell, Ariana De Luca knew it, too, because she took the opportunity to slip away to the other end of the bar.
“Princess.”
“Damsel.”
“Are you going to tell me what you’re doing in New York City?”
I could feel his eyes on my face, but I didn’t dare meet them. “Representing the Vitali name.”
Really, my mom had sent me, but that didn’t sound any cooler aloud than it did in my head.
“No.” His arm brushed mine as he took the seat next to mine. “You’re not.”
I gripped the glass tighter between my palms. “Excuse me?”
What did he want me to say? That I was here to see him?
“I see past your lies.” He nodded toward everyone else at L’Oscurità. “Don’t treat me like I’m one of them.” His breath brushed against my cheek as he leaned closer. “Treat me like I’m Day, and you’re Knight.”
Presumptuous.
That was what he was.
How else could I explain the way he talked to me after almost ten years apart? But his words rekindled the flame I held for him, the flame that had never once flickered in the nine or so years we’d spent apart. It was a piece of me I’d never been able to explain, and I’d given up trying long ago.
I finally turned to face him and met his eyes, silencing any hesitation that threatened to escape my body. “But you’re not Day, and I’m not Knight. You’re not Damsel, and I’m not Princess. We’re strangers who knew each other once upon a time, and that’s all we’ll ever be.”
&nbs
p; Other than forcing myself to keep my distance, there was no reason to be this harsh. His dad was no longer a threat, and I was no longer a child whose decisions could be influenced by others. Yet, here I was, wearing a big chip on my shoulder that, sometime over the past ten years, I’d named “Bitch.”
If I were more honest, I would admit that fear played its hand here. I’d never open my heart again. Never.
He tilted so close to me, I knew others would think we were kissing. He smelled like he used to, and it took everything in me to not close my eyes and inhale. “You say I’m not the Day to your Knight, yet you lean into me like you’re gravitating toward me. Like you start where I end.”
“Stop this.”
“I never understood why you hated that nickname. Princess. It was never an insult.” He pried the glass from my grip and dumped the Macallan into his untouched beer.
My fingers tingled where his had brushed against them. “I was drinking that.”
He ignored me, moving the beer glass over the bar counter onto the bartender’s side before turning to face me. “I’ll say this once, and you won’t have a drop of liquor in your system when you’re in bed tonight, your hands are itching to pleasure yourself to the memory of me, and you’re looking for something but yourself to blame.”
Jesus.
Those tourmaline-black eyes never wavered from mine. “Princess isn’t and never has been an insult. I never saw you as someone who needed saving. It’s one thing to be a princess sitting on a throne of glass, but it’s a great deal more to be a princess that shatters glass ceilings while everyone looks the other way. People may overlook you, and maybe you’ve always wanted it that way, but I never did. I always saw you.”
He stood, his eyes never once drifting to the nearby table, where a fight seemed inevitable. “But you know what? You left me, so next time you find yourself reaching out for help and grasping empty air, ask yourself why you pushed me away. Because I sure as Hell don’t know.”
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 5