Page 8 of Italian Mafia Boss's Virgin Lover

All I want is real loyalty. Real, gritty, blood-stained honor. So I’ll recruit the lowest houses in Italy. I’ll recruit rats from the alleys, so long as their sharp teeth bite only for me.

And when my army is formidable, I’ll strike. No mercy will be given to those who betrayed the Amata name—those who betrayed my brother. I won’t stop until I have an empire of my own, a patchwork of thieves and mercenaries. I won’t stop until Gregorio Romano’s head is on a pike at my gates.

Chapter 5

Dani

Iknow I should be terrified. I know I should be angry, or at least resentful. This trade will define my entire life, after all. In strokes of danger, bloodshed, and war. I know this.

But when I walk the estate and the land, when I draw, when I eat the rich food and drink the aged wine, I forget to be. I know I’m naïve to find any peace here, but somehow, I can’t help myself.

In the first few days after Santo’s departure, I explore the castle. Not all of it; not even a fraction. It’s the biggest estate I’ve ever set foot in, and it leaves me reeling with a fantastical sort of wonder: Will I ever know every secret hall, every hidden door, every walled garden? Or for every wing I discover, does another mysteriously build itself?

It's this wonder that first prompts me to call home. I made a pact with myself when I left the United States: I wouldn’t contact my father until I had the strength to do it with honor. I’m shocked at how quickly it comes. I know, when I’m shown the old landline with its winding cord and chipped green paint, that I can swallow my resentment. The glimmers of happiness are enough to float me along, for now. And I suppose I want to share that same sense of peace with my father.

He answers halfway through the first ring. “Yes?” His voice is laden with anticipation and thinly-veiled stress. Of course he won’t have the number marked—how could he? And yet, I can tell he suspects—or at least hopes—that it’s me.

“Daddy.”

His sigh is thick with relief. “You sound well,” he says, and I feel something crumble inside me. All at once I’m a little girl at his knee again, believing, truly, that he’d built the world and hung the moon. “Thank God you sound well, Dani.”

Tears prick my eyes. I sit on a stool beneath the phone in the calling room, grateful for the privacy. There’s no espionage to be done, no escape to be formulated. My fate is sealed, and in that knowledge there is a certain freedom.

“I’m OK,” I say, hearing the relief in my own voice. “I can admit now I was scared I wouldn’t be, Dad, but I am.”

He answers me with brittle silence. I can practically hear his shame. “Dani,” he finally begins. “I—”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” I can’t bear it. I won’t. “You and I both know there was no other way.”

Another silence, this one heavy with grief. “I know, Dani.” He’s helpless, feeling impotent. I know the feeling, and I know my father well enough to understand why he’s done what he has.

He can’t know that beyond my fear and apprehension, there’s a sort of pride. What daughter can say she saved her father, the man who raised her and cared for her and protected her, always? I think it’s beyond his understanding right now. He’s not ready to hear that, or believe it. So I tell him instead what I know he will.

“This place is full of art.” I hear my own unbridled glee, and can’t swallow a smile. “Tons of it. Sculptures and paintings—images I’ve never seen before.”

“Really?” His surprise is palpable.

“And I have access to it all. More than that—the whole castle, and the estate, and the town too.”

“He doesn’t…” A horrible silence as my father works through his anger, his self-loathing, and manages to come out the other side, if just to give me some sense of relief. “He lets you roam freely?”

“He’s not even here, most days.”

“Really?” And now there’s a prickle of joy in his voice, as he wipes away some conjured image of my torturer, his enemy, and replaces it with the man’s absence. “And you’re not afraid?”

“Not at all!” Not entirely true, but not entirely a lie either. “I’m OK. I find I’m even happy, much more than I thought I’d be.”

“And…”

I know what he’s struggling to ask. “He’s not a monster, Daddy. Not to me.”

My father’s sigh trembles. “Dani…”

“He’s good,” I say, though I’m not sure I believe this yet. “He treats me with respect.”

“Dani—”

I’d talk to him forever if I could, but the grief in his voice only brings out my own. And I want to cling to the light, to the good things. So I do what I never do to my father—I lie.