Page 5 of Mafia Boss's Fake Wife

I guess it healed us.

Elio offering to bring me back in is generous. It should make me feel...

something.

The fact that it does not creates a dissonance in my mind that feels like a buzzing beneath my skin.

I mentally shake. "Thank you, Elio. That would be... great," I manage to grit out.

I can tell Elio wants to ask more, but at that time a wail of despair comes from outside. Elio moves, automatically drawn to the doors to the patio, leaving me in the kitchen.

Alone.

When everyone is asleep, I choose to sneak back into the kitchen to fill my glass with Elio's expensive French cognac. Sipping the complex drink, I meander back into the room that I'm staying in.

I grimace.

Even now, looking at the walls in my brother-in-law and former best friend's house, safe and content and happy with my family, I feel that same itch under my skin as I had earlier.

Brought back into the family business.

As though Elio is the family. Elio is the business.

And I am on the outside.

I believe that is what bothers me, but there's another piece of it that feels... strange. Like a puzzle piece that I'm trying to jam into a space that looks like it should fit.

Even though it doesn't.

I wish to feel... at home.

Like I belong.

And not because of Elio's goodwill.

Unbidden, my mind drifts to the last time that I felt like that. When I felt so at home, I almost forgot that I wasn't.

Except...

I suppose I was.

It might be the fucking French alcohol, it might be the loneliness gnawing at me.

But regardless of the cause, I shut my eyes.

And I let myself remember.

A year and a half ago

"You said the water would be cold," I hiss through clenched teeth. "This isn't cold. This is fucking ice."

"Well, aren't you a big tough mafia man then, unable to handle a little Irish water?"

Her voice.

It's always her fucking voice that gets me first.

I've been holed up with Roisin Kennedy, Interpol agent and my handler, for a month and a half. I haven't been able to see my family, have no idea what's happening to Caterina, and I'm...