by Bethany-Kris
And so did Mario’s voice as he told her.
Glancing over her shoulder, she found Mario waiting at the end of the walkway, near the statue of the angel that appeared to be protecting the plots of graves beneath her. To his benefit, he didn’t step off the walkway to come closer to Vanna. Mario never cared, really. Not that her dad died, or that she was left alone as an orphan, taken in by his mother and father, and she understood why, too. Because her father was the traitor. He proved his bloodline true.
The clan always said he would go against them. That, like his father before him, he would prove to be the bastard son of Gabriel Canali, and he did exactly that. But her? Well, she was just a girl, and that didn’t mean very much to them. She certainly couldn’t do anything to hurt them, or their organization. Well, that’s what they thought. God knew, during those first couple of months, revenge on the people who took her father from her was the only thing on her mind. She might be just a girl, but she was still one of them.
Born and raised in their way.
Still fucking Camorra.
An eye for an eye was bred as deep into her bones as it would get, and her need for revenge came from that, and little else.
Someone had to take her, though. They couldn’t find her mother. Vanna didn’t feel anything about that. The Detti family it was. Or rather, Mario’s parents. It was hard to want to hurt the people who also took her in and cared for her during one of the hardest times of her life.
Funny how that worked.
God had a good laugh at her expense.
“Are you almost done?” Mario asked.
Vanna nodded. “Almost.”
That might be a lie.
She really didn’t know.
It didn’t matter. He would wait for as long as she needed on this hot Sunday afternoon while the June sun beat down on their backs, and he wouldn’t say a thing about it. After all, some shit never changed, even if the world kept spinning while Vanna’s felt like it had come to a fucking standstill.
Things like Mario stayed exactly the same. He still chased her like a puppy who wanted the toy being kept away from it. His crazy idea that someday, she would want him just as much as he wanted her, kept him eating out of the palm of her hand.
She never even fucked him.
He was just … there.
Whatever.
Vanna went back to what she had been doing before Mario interrupted. To her far right, she could see the parking lot of the church starting to empty. Mario’s mother and father had likely already gone, along with the rest of the clan. Probably to their usual Sunday dinner, which she almost always attended. Other times, she just didn’t care to make the effort. They never said anything one way or another.
Staring at her father’s grave, the item she held at her side felt heavier. She didn’t glance down at the newspaper she clutched tightly, and even Mario hadn’t seemed to notice it as they walked to the grave for her to have a moment with her father.
She’d forgotten …
No, that was a lie.
Vanna never forgot.
She promised her father, after all.
The vendetta.
Guzzis.
The reason for all of this.
Even her father’s death, in a way. All those years ago, when Gian Guzzi murdered her grandfather, causing her half aunt’s suicide, and forcing her father to be a shamed man in the eyes of the Detti mafia … her father would never had needed to do what he did, to plan the way he had, and then to be killed at the end of it all.
She wouldn’t be alone.
She wouldn’t hurt.
If not for them …
No, Vanna never forgot the vendetta.
She simply had other things to focus on for a time. Wasn’t that life, though? Something else was always waiting in the wings to take a person away from what should be most important.
Well, not anymore.
Not for Vanna.
Her fingers flexed around the newspaper she held as she let her father’s words drift through her mind from all those years ago. She could still hear him clearly—his demands, and her promise to follow through, no matter what.
She didn’t need to look at the newspaper again—once as she passed it by where it sat forgotten on a back pew had been enough. The picture of a very happy man, and his five sons had been more than enough to burn the image into her brain. She wouldn’t soon forget Gian Guzzi’s smiling face, and his boys surrounding him.
Oh, and the woman.
In her wedding dress.
No, she certainly didn’t need to see the article about the wedding again, but she still lifted it to look at the picture once more. Gian stood in the middle, his arm around the groom on his left, and the bride on his right. He had two sets of twins, apparently. The groom had an identical twin, and two of the three men on the right were also identical. According to the article, Beni Guzzi was the third Guzzi son to settle down in the past couple of years.
Not that it mattered.
They were happy.
They had everything.
Vanna had nothing.
This—her life—was not theirs.
This wasn’t happiness.
She blamed them.
The vendetta that she had left to linger in the back of her mind, simmering but never boiling over as she focused on her grief and growing up, was now forefront and sharp in clarity. It’d been years since the Guzzi name even passed the lips of someone from the Detti clan. They had little to no interest in causing problems for the Guzzi mafia, and Vanna understood why when their organization was doing just fine on its own.
That changed nothing.
A vendetta was a vendetta.
Even if it was one woman’s vendetta.
It would mean going against the people who cared for her after the death of her father … it meant becoming what some people believed she would be. A traitor to the clan, just like her grandfather, and father before her.
That was fine.
The vendetta was on.
Vanna’s thoughts drifted to the newspaper burning a hole in her purse that she’d placed at her feet after getting in the passenger seat of Mario’s car. He chatted on as he navigated the mid-city streets, returning her to the penthouse she had bought shortly after she turned eighteen and had finally been given access to the trust fund left to her by her father.
It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was enough for her to live comfortably. To buy a Toronto penthouse, pay for her education when she finally settled on the fact she did want to be a chef, and she had a nice savings to dip into when she needed it.
The money also allowed her a sense of freedom because once it was in her hands, she no longer had to depend on Mario, or his family for anything. Not like she had for a couple of years after her father’s death, anyway. She didn’t have to ask them for anything, and while she was still considered a Camorra woman, and part of the clan, she came and went with little pushback from the boss, Mario’s father.
Thankfully.
“Are you even listening to me?” Mario asked.
She glanced over at him, saying, “Yes.”
But not really.
Her mind was on that fucking newspaper, and the picture on the front. She considered the men and things her father told her, and what she might be able to do with the information. She had to plan, didn’t she? Surely, she couldn’t just waltz into the Guzzis’ life, and tear it down piece by fucking piece. She would need time to work out exactly how she was going to ruin them … the same way they had ruined her.
Why should she care what Mario was saying?
“Anyway, about next week,” Mario said, pulling a sharp left to turn into the underground garage of her building, “are you good for it, or what?”
“Depends.”
“On?”
“What you need me to do.”
Mario rolled his eyes. “See, you weren’t listening.”
She didn’t bother to deny it that time.
“Dinner—I wanted
you to come with me. At my parents. Their anniversary.”
Vanna should refuse him. God knew these little dates—because that’s what he believed them to be—only served to make Mario think they were something, or eventually would be. Really, her perceived closeness to him simply allowed her to do what she wanted with her life. No one was choosing a husband for her, yet. No one cared that she was twenty-one today, and still unmarried, never mind attending college, and living on her own without a chaperone.
All things that were no-nos for Camorra women.
Vanna bent the rules.
And sometimes, outright broke them.
Expectations came along with those freedoms, however. And they all revolved around Mario, and what he and his family wanted for the two of them. Vanna couldn’t say she felt the same, but for now, she had what she wanted. Wasn’t that the most important thing? She thought so.
“Of course, I’ll go,” she told him.
Mario nodded as he parked the car. “Good. They love you.”
No.
They loved the idea of her.
They loved that Mario wanted her.
A prize to be won.
Very little else.
Vanna said nothing else, picking up her bag from the floor of the car, and opening the passenger door to step out. By the time she rounded the front of the car, Mario was standing there to walk into the building with her. Or so he fucking thought, anyway.
She had news for him.
“Tell your parents next week for dinner, okay,” she said, “I need a nap, I think. It’s been a long day.”
Mario arched a brow. “It’s one in the afternoon.”
“And it feels like five.”
“Not feeling well? You should let me walk you in, and—”
Nope.
Vanna smiled a blinding sight.
An angel with the devil’s intentions.
That’s what people liked to say about women who were exceptionally beautiful and could dazzle and distract with nothing more than a smile. Vanna was absolutely one of those women, and she held no shame about using it, either.
“Another day, okay?”
Mario shrugged, and nodded. “Sure, another day.”
He leaned in, and she let him press a quick kiss to the side of her cheek. His hand found her side to squeeze. Both touches lingered a beat too long, but the man wouldn’t take a fucking hint a long time ago, so he certainly wasn’t going to get it, now.
“You know,” he murmured, his lips still grazing her skin as his words whispered into her ear, “pretty soon, this game is going to get tiring.”
Vanna stiffened. “Pardon?”
“Don’t play coy. This thing, Van. This shit you do. Dangling yourself like a treat in front of me, and then pulling it away at the last minute. Someday, I’m just going to lean in and … take a bite.”
His hand flexed on her side.
She swallowed hard.
“But not today,” she replied.
Mario took a step back and winked.
Like it was all fun.
As though her heart didn’t race.
He thought she liked it.
She wanted none of it.
Vanna would do what she had to.
“Not today,” he echoed. “Enjoy your nap. Call me later, yeah?”
“I will.”
Or not.
The newspaper was still burning a hole in her purse, and she needed to start working out a plan for exactly how she wanted this vendetta to play out between her and the Guzzi family. That was the best part about it. Until they understood the vendetta, it was on her terms. She just had to make it work.
Vanna had her ways.
Contacts to use, if she could find the business card of a detective who had approached her a year ago when she visited her father’s grave on a Sunday afternoon just like she had done today. He, too, had his own axe to grind with the Guzzis, and knowing where she came from, thought his offer to help her if she would help him would be interesting for her to consider.
Then, she hadn’t cared.
Now, it sounded all too good.
“Call me,” Mario repeated as he headed for the driver’s side.
She didn’t bother to reply.
Vanna had better things to do.
What is that fucking banging?
Is that my phone?
Holy shit, I feel like death.
All those thoughts, and more, drifted through Bene’s head as he peeled open his eyes. The white ceiling stared back at him, saying he at least made it home the night before. A burst of memory flashed in front of his eyes—he’d climbed into the back of a cab, and then stumbled into the elevator when he got home.
So, he didn’t drive.
Great.
That knowledge did nothing to soothe the sudden swell of vomit he felt rising in the back of his throat. Squeezing his eyes shut again, the room stopped spinning. Visually, anyway. His whole body still felt like it was swaying back and forth, even though he couldn’t possibly be moving on the bed. However, the few seconds of darkness and calm was just enough for him to distinguish what those sounds had been which woke him up.
The banging?
The idiots in the penthouse above his renovating—what were they doing this week, the floors? It fucking sounded like it. Which meant it had to be at least eleven, if not closer to twelve, because they only worked at decent hours. It should have been a good thing, except Bene didn’t need to be woken up with that kind of noise while he was also hungover.
Except whose fault is that, asshole?
He ignored his inner voice.
The thing he thought was his phone … well, Bene rolled over, cracking his eyes open just enough to see a slit of his bedside table, the clock spelling out the time—yeah, it was a little after twelve, fuck—and his phone blinking with a missed call. He squinted harder. Several missed calls, if he was to trust the ribbons covering the screen.
Damn.
The faint tune of an indie rapper he enjoyed played in the background of his penthouse. The brief flash of a memory filled his mind of him turning his playlist on through the speakers, and then he fell into bed, passed out, and heard nothing until this morning.
He drank too much.
Way too fucking much, Bene.
Again.
It took him another twenty minutes of being prone on the bed, ignoring the raging headache, and occasionally opening his eyes to test the waters—he really didn’t want to puke—before he felt even close to well enough to get up. And it was then, just as he swung his legs over the bed with another bout of nausea washing through him, that his phone decided to start ringing again. He had a good mind to ignore it, but the name lighting up the screen had him reaching for the damn thing out of habit, and very little else.
Beni.
He should have known better than to take the call because his brother would know simply by the sound of his voice, and very little else, that Bene was fucked up. And yet, he was still too hungover to even realize that when he picked up the call with a, “What?”
“Bene?”
“Who else answers this number?”
His twin inhaled a sharp breath.
Fuck.
Did he sound as bad as he felt?
Probably.
Bene wished he cared.
That was part of the problem.
He’d sober up in a few hours—still feel like shit, though, undoubtedly—and wish he hadn’t went out the night before, in the middle of the goddamn week, when he knew the morning after would be like this. When he wasn’t acting crazy to keep his mind off everything else going wrong in his life, he could think clearly.
Right now, he wasn’t doing that at all.
Thinking, that was.
Hell.
He couldn’t see clearly.
Thinking was a joke.
Where had he partied last night?
The new club he liked?
Or the old bar down the street with pool t
ables?
“Are you listening to me?”
Bene blinked, coming back to the present, and realizing his phone was still on speakerphone, and resting in his hand. The emoji that he’d picked to represent his twin stared up at him from the contact with its funny face—something that used to make him laugh.
Now, he just … what was he even doing?
“Bene?”
“What?” he asked.
“Are you drunk?”
“Not anymore.”
Or … mostly.
Yeah, that worked.
Mentally, he patted himself on the back for the quick attention to detail. In reality, it probably did nothing for his brother’s concern.
“Where are you?”
“Why?” he asked.
Beni made a noise under his breath. “It’s afternoon there, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Were you drinking last night?”
“And?”
He didn’t mean to get defensive, but it was fucking hard not to, all things considered. This was his life right now, he had to work through some shit, and this was how he chose to do that. No one else needed to be sticking their nose into it, including his twin. He loved Beni, no doubt about it, but he wasn’t having this conversation when he was two seconds away from spilling whatever he drank from last night all over the shiny, hardwood floor of his bedroom.
That’s all.
Bene dragged a hand over his face, feeling the scuff growing on his cheeks and jaw. He needed a shave, and soon. Or someone would speak up soon, and tell him the usual trash. Made men don’t have facial hair, so get rid of it. It didn’t seem to matter that he wasn’t made yet, and he didn’t have his in to the family business. If he wanted to be part of the mafia, he needed to act like it, no excuses.
He loved this life.
He also hated it.
Sometimes.
“You’re not even listening to me again, are you?”
Bene blinked.
The call was still on?
Wow.
He needed to go back to bed.
Now.
Five minutes ago.
“Bene, are you okay?” he heard his twin ask.
“I’m fine.”
That was all he said before he hung up the call, tossed the phone to the bedside table, and crawled back under his sheets. Fuck his whole life. Yeah. At least for today, fuck it all. He would handle this another time. Maybe later … maybe never.