Defying Her Mafioso

by Terri Anne Browning

  “Get my son,” Nona commanded in a shaky voice. “Hurry.”

  “I need to check her levels,” I told Allegra. “Papa keeps a kit in the drawer of the coffee table.”

  She hurried over to the table and found the kit and was back within a few seconds. I would never get used to this happening. It scared the living hell out of me. As I prepped her finger so I could check her blood sugar levels, my hands shook. It took ten more seconds for the tester to give me the information I needed once I got a drop of Victoria’s blood on the little strip.

  Too high. Too high. Way too fucking high. There was a bottle of insulin and a syringe already in the kit, because Papa had always been worried about emergencies like this from the day we’d found out Victoria was a diabetic. She should have had an insulin pump, but Victoria had never liked dealing with them. Too stubborn. Too hardheaded. Too maddening. I wanted to wring her little neck, but I would miss her too much if I killed her. I filled the syringe with the insulin and then stabbed it into her thigh.

  My heart was beating so fast and hard that I felt like I was going to throw up. I wanted to strangle my sister for letting her health go while she struggled with her feelings for a man who didn’t deserve her. I wanted to stab Cristiano and Dante and even Anya who had been with her over the last week and obviously hadn’t been taking care of her like they should have been.

  We waited for nearly a minute, barely breathing as we waited to see if the insulin would help. I checked her pulse. It was weak, but slowly starting to grow stronger. I was ready to call for an ambulance when Victoria moaned and lifted fingers that shook to her head. “Scarlett?” she whispered.

  “Grazie a Dio,” Nona cried as she fell onto the couch. “That girl will be the death of me one day.”

  Allegra crouched down on the other side of her. “Don’t try to move. Just let yourself recover for a little longer.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Damn it. I should’ve known this was going to happen.”

  I couldn’t speak. I was too upset. Too scared. Too pissed. I wanted to shake some sense into her, yell at her for putting herself at risk like she was doing. I wanted to cry because when she passed out like she just had I was terrified I would lose her. That she wouldn’t ever wake up again. I wanted to scream and throw things and punch the people who had promised me they would watch out for my twin.

  Papa ran into the room with Gio, Ciro and Cristiano. “Should we call an ambulance? Does she need to go to the hospital?” Nothing scared my father more than when Victoria had one of these episodes. His face was gray and there was sweat beaded on his forehead.

  I was surprised to see Dante when he followed the other men into the living room. He hadn’t come back to New York since Papa had sent him to Chicago over three years before. His darkly handsome face didn’t show an ounce of emotion as his dark eyes took in everything happing around the room all at once.

  I didn’t spare him a second glance as I jumped to my feet and punched my brother in the face. His head snapped back because I’d caught him off guard. I was so mad I barely felt the pain that had shot through my fist and all the way up my arm to my shoulder.

  Ciro caught me around the waist, pulling me away from his friend before I could hit him again. He didn’t have to worry; I was done hitting him. Physical pain didn’t do anything to Cristiano. He was a total freak when it came to pain. It was words that cut him deeper than anything else. “What the hell have you been doing? Huh? Do you know how high her blood sugar was, Cristiano? Do you? It was over five hundred,” I screamed at him. “Do you not care that she could die? Is your head so far up your own ass that you can’t take five minutes to make sure our sister is okay?”

  My brother rubbed at his jaw, but the look on his face suggested he was just as upset as I was. There was no way he could be that upset. No way he could understand that the mere thought of losing my twin was my worst nightmare. “She checked it when she got on the plane this morning, Scarlett. She was fine. I swear to you I’ve been making sure that she checks her blood sugar levels.”

  “Scarlett,” Victoria’s weak voice called to me.

  I pulled away from Ciro and went back to kneel beside her. Her fingers were cold and still trembling but her coloring was slowly coming back. I felt her pulse, relieved when it felt stronger than it had only a few minutes before.

  “Don’t be mad at anyone, Scarlett,” she pleaded. “I was fine this morning. I started feeling bad on the ride from the airport and I should’ve checked my sugar then.”

  “Yes, you fucking should have,” I scolded as I lost the hold on my tears and let them fall. “Stop doing this shit to me, Tor.”

  Her smile was weak but I saw a spark of her normally happy self in there. “Sorry. I’ll do better.” She turned her head, looking up at our father, who was slowly calming down. “Tell them to let me up, Papa. I’m fine now.”

  “Maybe you should see the doctor, Victoria,” Allegra suggested in her soft voice.

  “I’m fine, really.”

  I scrubbed a hand over my face, wiping away my tears. “You can get up, but you’re going to bed.”

  Her eyes narrowed on me. “I can’t go to bed. Mary has plans for us. We have to find you a dress, and Allegra and I need one too. I swear to you, I’m fine. Damn it, Scarlett. Don’t baby me now when we have so much to do.”

  Everyone was going to drive me crazy over this damn wedding. I shot Ciro a glance, saw that he was watching me closely, and shook my head at him. “There has to be an easier way. Can’t you just kidnap your mother and tie her up until we’re married?”

  His chuckle helped ease some of the tension that was making every muscle in my body ache. “I have a better idea.”

  “A better idea than eloping?” I muttered.

  “Definitely.” He offered me his hand and helped me to my feet. “Come on. You’ll like it.”

  Papa helped Victoria to her feet, but his arm stayed around her waist as he guided her over to the couch where she sat down beside Nona. Whatever Ciro’s plan was, it had better not involve us having to leave the house. My sister needed to rest and I was too nervous to leave her. Screw a dress.

  Three hours later we were still in the living room. Mary had joined us and for some reason so had Anya. The guys had disappeared back into my father’s office when Benito had arrived with Mary. I figured they were all hiding from the woman since she had brought an entire book of things for us to talk about before the wedding could take place, in her eyes.

  In one corner of the room, one of New York’s most sought-after wedding dress designers was setting up shop with sample dresses that two models were supposed to show us. They were already showing off two different designs for bridesmaid dresses. If I hadn’t loved Ciro before, I would have fallen for him when he’d made a few phone calls and had the designer and her models delivered to the front door. He was doing everything he possibly could to make this easier on me and I could never show him how much his thoughtfulness meant to me.

  In the kitchen two caterers had set up sample platters for us to try. One was doing the actual food while the other was going to make the cake. A florist did a Skype chat with us, showing off different bouquet ideas that Mary had emailed her about the night before.

  Victoria was looking better. She wasn’t nearly as pale as she had been. She was even eating a few of the sample hor d’oeuvres. I wouldn’t have asked her to come home myself, not when I’d known she was trying to sort out everything concerning Adrian in her head, but I was glad she was there nonetheless. It would have felt wrong to have a big wedding without my twin—the other half of myself—there to share the day with me.

  It was nearly five hours after the designer had arrived before we were actually done. I’d picked out my dress with the help of all the women in my life, picked out what we were going to eat at the reception and even gotten Ciro out of Papa’s office to help me decide what flavor the cake should be. The bouquets were already being made and
the measurements taken so an entire team of seamstresses could work on altering the dresses.

  Everything had been sorted in less than a day and I hadn’t even had to leave the house. Ciro had pulled off a small miracle and I wondered if maybe he’d wanted a big wedding all along. The way he had made everything available so readily told me that our wedding was more important to him than he had originally let me think.

  Chapter 24

  Ciro

  “So you’re telling me that Jr is back in my city?”

  I tossed back the last of my coffee, trying to get the taste of cake out of my mouth. I’d tasted six different cake samples to make Scarlett happy and one of them had been butterscotch. That little minx knew I hated the taste of butterscotch, but her giggles as I’d put that damn little square of cake in my mouth was worth the bad taste that still lingered on my tongue.

  While the women were busy sorting out wedding plans, I’d been in Vito’s office catching up on all the shit I’d missed the day before. A day didn’t mean anything to some people, but for me it was the difference between five things needing my attention and two hundred.

  Dante De Stefano scratched at his beard, his eyes hooded as always. I’d known the man just as long as I had Cristiano. The three of us had been friends all our lives, but Dante kept a part of himself guarded even more than I did. “He left Chicago about two days ago, but I didn’t know until last night. Senior sent him back when he found out about Fontana disappearing.”

  “We all know that Fontana was the brains behind Jr’s businesses.” Vito lifted his glass of scotch and took a large swallow. “With him out of the picture, what little ground Jr has gained here will quickly fall apart. That means he will send someone else to take over for him and try to keep Jr in line. My gut tells me it will be Fontana’s brother.”

  “If that’s the case then we need to keep our eyes open. Enzo is a sick sonofabitch,” Cristiano muttered, touching his fingers gingerly to his bruised cheek where Scarlett had hit him earlier.

  He didn’t have to tell any of us that. Enzo was worse than Jr with how much fun he liked to have with unwilling women—hell, unwilling anything. And he would be after answers to who had been behind his brother’s disappearance. Ultimately, that was my doing but I wasn’t worried about Enzo. I could handle that prick if he wanted to dish out a little revenge for his brother.

  It was Scarlett I worried about. It was one of the major reasons I’d been so hesitant to get involved with her in the first place. My job required me to do certain things for the good of the Cosa Nostra, and that put a target not only on my back, but on anyone who was close to me.

  She would be safer if I’d never told her I loved her. No one would touch her if she didn’t become my wife. I should just tell her that everything was off, send her back to Sicily with her grandmother and Gio and pretend I’d never met her.

  Just thinking those things made my heart stop. I was a selfish bastard because now that I’d had a taste of what it felt like when Scarlett told me she loved me, how she fell apart in my arms when I was deep inside her, waking up to her beside me in bed—I couldn’t let her go. I would make sure she was protected, even if that meant locking her in our apartment and never letting her out of the house without me.

  Fuck, she would kick my ass for even trying to send her away at this point. And I would let her.

  “We’ll worry about Enzo later. First, I want Jr found. Take care of him once and for all.” Vito shot me a dirty look, letting me know loud and clear he thought I was the reason why Scarlett had turned down his offer of dealing with Jr herself. I didn’t care why she’d done it; I was just thankful she had. “Dante, I want you to stick around and help these boys out. I want the bastard taken out before the wedding.”

  “I’ll be sticking around for a little while. I wouldn’t miss Scarlett’s wedding for anything, and you know that I want Jr’s head just as much as anyone else here.” Dante sat forward in his chair, his hooded eyes darkening even more than normal. “But when I leave, I don’t want to go back to Chicago alone.”

  Every eye but mine turned on him in curiosity. Mine were on Vito, who looked almost gleeful, as if he suspected what his underboss was talking about. “And who would you be taking with you?” Vito’s voice didn’t betray his pleasure at what he thought the man was going to say next.

  “Allegra.”

  Gio shot to his feet, cursing in rapid-fire Italian so furiously there was spittle flying out of his mouth. Vito’s eyes darkened. I was sure he—like the others in the room—where expecting him to say Victoria. It had always been something Vito had been vocal about. Wanting Dante to marry one of his daughters.

  I’d already suspected it would be Allegra, though. Scarlett had told me some interesting things about Dante the day before. Things I never would have suspected of the man I’d grown up with. She knew him a lot better than I obviously did, and if I hadn’t known she was mine, I might have been jealous of how close she was with him.

  Fuck. There was no might about it. I was jealous despite knowing she was mine. No man wanted his woman to be close to any man who wasn’t related to her by blood. Especially when that man looked like Dante.

  “She’s going home with me,” Gio said, finally calmed down enough to speak English, but his accent was thick and almost unintelligible. “You will not get your hands on my daughter, De Stefano. I will not allow it.”

  I hadn’t needed Scarlett to tell me that her uncle was not a fan of Dante’s. I’d always known it. Even when we were kids, I’d felt the animosity Vito’s brother held for Dante and his father. I’d never asked why and I’d never cared enough to find out. Scarlett probably knew, though, and now that I was seeing the animosity pouring off of Gio, my curiosity was piqued.

  Dante didn’t betray his emotions by so much as a flick of his lashes. Even in the face of Gio’s rage he was completely calm. Keeping his eyes on Vito, he spoke with an almost detachedness. “You asked me something a few days ago, Vito. I told you I couldn’t because it wouldn’t be fair to either Victoria or myself. She’s like a sister to me and marrying her would be wrong. I want Allegra. She’s your niece, your blood. If she were mine, you would have your connection. Isn’t that what you wanted all along?”

  Gio started raging again in Italian, throwing his hands in the air and calling the younger man names that, had it been me he was yelling at, I would have already knocked his teeth down his throat. Dante didn’t defend himself, but I saw him turn to cold stone before my eyes as he continued to look at nothing but Vito.

  Vito let his brother continue to yell for several minutes, his eyes blank as he thought over what Dante had just said. When he spoke, however, it wasn’t to Dante but to my father. “How would you handle this, Ben?”

  My father shifted in his chair, shooting Gio a disapproving glare before turning to his best friend. “I would want to know how Allegra felt. This isn’t the Dark Ages, Vito. Handing the girl over into a relationship she might not want is a little barbaric, if you ask me.”

  He nodded. “I agree.”

  Gio turned wild eyes on his brother, a snarl twisting his lips. I hadn’t noticed until then that the two men didn’t look much alike. I could see Scarlett’s grandmother in the older brother, but Gio must have looked like their father. “What do you agree with? What the hell could you possibly agree to where this piece of shit and my daughter are concerned?”

  Vito held up a hand, calm in the face of Gio’s rage and effortlessly stopping the younger Vitucci in his tracks. “Allegra should be given the chance to decide for herself if she wants to be with Dante. If she accepts him, then I’ll let her go with him when he decides to return to Chicago.”

  “The fuck you will. This is my daughter you’re just handing over to him. Mine, not yours. You don’t have the right to allow my child to do shit.”

  Vito’s eyes lost the blank look and a cold anger settled over his features. “Let go of the past, fratello. Let it go before it
destroys you. Allegra is a grown woman, not a child any longer. Remember that, Gio. She can make her own choices and if she chooses Dante, I will agree to the marriage. It will make us stronger. Even you cannot deny that.”

  There was a sharp tap on the door, forcing the two brothers to shut up. Gio marched over to the window, staring out at the scenery. His shoulders were stiff, anger rolling off him in waves. Cristiano stood and moved to open the door, showing us that Scarlett stood on the other side. My heart kicked painfully in my chest, and I ached to pull her onto my lap and just hold her. The look on her face told me she’d heard at least a little of what her father had said, but she didn’t mention it as she stepped inside.

  “Whatever business you’re all talking in here, I think it can be concluded. You’ve spent hours in this stuffy old office.” She moved across the room and stopped behind Dante’s chair. She put her hands on his shoulders, effortlessly letting us all know that she was on his side regardless of why the two older Vituccis were yelling over him. I had the strongest urge to shoot the other man in the back of the head. Even though she was mine, even though she was wearing my ring, I couldn’t stand the thought of her touching someone else even as innocently as she was.

  Then her eyes fell on me and I saw the blaze of love and need in her brown eyes, and my jealousy turned to ashes instantly.

  “I’m ready to go home, Ciro.” The way she said my name had every fine hair on my body standing at attention along with my dick. Her voice was a caress that soothed every tense muscle and brought my heart back to life after spending so many hours talking business.

  Home, she said. I’d never really thought of my apartment as that before, but now it was exactly how I saw it. Because of her. I jumped to my feet, itching to throw her over my shoulder like a damn caveman and carry her back to my apartment—our home.