Page 107 of My Dark Ever After

“Seven weeks and five days,” he corrected solemnly.

My heart expanded so large in my chest, it hurt to breathe. I dipped to press my forehead to his and whispered, “I love you no matter what comes, okay?Te lo prometto.”

I promise.

“Te lo prometto, cerbiatta mia,” he echoed.

“You keep teaching me about sex,” I said, leaning back to look him in the eye. “I think it’s time you taught me how to bela tua cacciatrice.”

The most beautiful smile I’d ever seen, full of love and laughter, claimed my kiss-swollen mouth. “Bene. The first lesson, Vera, is how to fire a gun so that the next time a man comes for you and you shoot him in the chest, it is not a fluke that puts the bullet there.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Guinevere

The woman standing by the edge of the vineyard just off the kitchen terrace looked so much like my sister Gemma, that for a moment I thought she was a ghost. Or worse, that she might still be alive, waiting for my touch to bring her back home.

She turned seconds later, sensing me, maybe, as I came up the path from the makeshift shooting range where Martina, Carmine, Raffa, and I had practiced shooting for the last two hours.

I was sweaty, still in the workout clothes Raffa had fucked me in hours earlier because he had taken me directly to the range to learn how to properly shoot pistols, rifles, and, just for fun, a vintage revolver that Tonio had once given him as a present.

This was how my mother saw me for the first time in my element: sweat-slicked, bruised at the neck by a love bite from my capo, walking with the men and woman who made up most of the family I’d found for myself in Italy.

It wasn’t the worst image.

In fact, I found myself wishing Mom had a camera so I could ask her to capture the new me.

“Hi, Mom,” I called instead, breaking into a jog when her response was to hold her arms open for me.

I threw myself into them, squeezing tight as I buried my face in her freesia-scented blond hair.

“Hi, sweetie,” she murmured as she clutched me right back.

Even though I had spent a few hours with my parents when we’d returned to the villa after the rescue, there was still so much to resolve between us. There had been long-awaited explanations, tears shed, and some shouting, but the conversation had been like lancing an infected wound. It had hurt just as much as it had been necessary to heal.

We held each other for a long moment, and when I tried to step away, she pulled me in even closer with a broken whisper of “When you left without a word, I thought we might not see you again, but when Raffa called your father and told him you were in trouble? I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things left unsaid between us. About how wrong we had been in keeping you from the truth. I wondered if losing you to this life was some kind of karma.”

My heart ached at the worry she must have felt, even though she’d been complicit in lying to me too.

“You could have told me everything,” I said when she finally loosened her hold enough to let me step back, even though she still held my hands. “You should have told Gemma and me all of it a long time ago.”

Mom sighed, dropping one of my hands to usher me into the vines. I looked over my shoulder for Raffa, who watched me from the terrace over a cup of water and inclined his head as I walked away.

He was the one who had encouraged me to talk things through with my parents.

“You have already lost too much,” he’d said. “All of you have.”

I wondered what Gemma would have thought of the mess Mom, Dad, and I found ourselves in, and decided she would have loved it. Chaos was her happy place, and truth was her comfort.

“I told Gemma about my own life somewhat,” Mom said as she trailed her fingers along the vines.

This section had already been harvested, so only leaves remained.

“I told her my people were winemakers,” she continued. “I have always been proud of that. Albania is one of the oldest producers of wine in the world, did you know that?”

I smiled slightly. “You may have told me once or twice when Dad got cocky about his wine knowledge.”

She laughed, and I realized I looked like her a bit when she did, in the lines beside her eyes and the scrunch of her nose. “It was much less dangerous for Gemma to go to Albania than it was for either of you to come here. My family did some work with the local Mafia when I was a girl, but we weren’t powerful or well known. Not like your father and his family.”