Page 124 of My Dark Ever After

I snarled at her. “You should have told Raffa about this.”

She laughed. “I do not report on the sex lives of camorristi, nor would Raffaele want me to.”

“I hope you are willing to bet your life on that, because he is about to find out,” I snapped in vicious Italian before I gathered my skirt and ran through the cemetery in search of him.

“Raffa!” I called out.

“Guinevere?” He was not panicked, but his response was immediate.

I only had to round one more corner, and there he was, jogging toward me, arms open for me to throw myself into.

“It’s Leo,” I panted, my nails curling over his shoulders. “Leo was Gemma’s mysterious Italian boyfriend. Leo was the one doing businesswith the Albanians and, I think you’ll find, the Grecos and the Pietras. It was Leo all along.”

“How do you know this?” Raffa demanded, eyes flashing, already moving, with me tucked into his side, back into the fray ofsoldati.

“Donatella Verdi told me.”

“Renzo,” he bit out as soon as we approached his clutch of friends. “Bring me Donatella Verdi, and get Leo on the phone immediately.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Raffa

It was my worst fear.

The reason I had descended into hell and taken up the dark crown of my father.

My family meant everything to me, my heart beating outside my chest.

And now they were in jeopardy from the very man I had considered a part of my family since I was a boy.

Everyone was on lockdown. The capos and soldiers at the party were to remain there under Burette’s watch until I called in to say we had arrived at the villa safely. Their phones had been confiscated before they had entered the cemetery—a matter of protocol—and I did not want to risk anyone calling out to Leo to warn him of our arrival or our knowledge that he was ache schifoso voltafaccia, a filthy fucking traitor.

I simply could not believe it even as I sped toward Villa Romano with Guinevere beside me, the nightscape a streaky blur as I raced home through the Tuscan hills, praying to God or whoever might listen to an immoral man like me to keep them safe from harm.

Leo had been my best friend since the cradle.

I had taken my first steps with him, shared his first day of school and last, laughed when he got drunk for the first time on Aldo’s sambuca and threw up in the vines outside the kitchen terrace, and stood shoulder to shoulder with him when my father died.

What could I have done to deserve such faithlessness from a man I had believed was my steadfast friend? No, more than friend—brother.

Family, but chosen.

And somehow that was worse.

That my judgment was clearly so poor I had not seen the sheep through the wolf’s clothing.

The moment Guinevere had accused him, my thoughts had fallen like dominos toward the inevitable conclusion.

Leo was my liaison in the northeast with the Venetians. It had made sense, when I came to power, to keep him there because he and Donatella were distantly related. The di Contes were a prestigious family line in the region all the way back to Venetian aristocracy.

He was, as Guinevere had guessed, a crucial part of the Romano Group, seeking to shift his power back into the company the way my father had once done.

“Aldo spoke of adopting him,” I ground out as we took a hairpin turn and Guinevere veered into my shoulder, not complaining, just holding tight to her seat. “Could he have been so bitter about it that he would do this?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted immediately, and it was clear her brilliant mind was puzzling over it too. “Has he always been particularly power hungry?”

I checked the rearview mirror for Carmine, who was driving the Lamborghini behind me with Martina, Renzo, Ludo, and a few other trustedsoldatifrom the party.