Page 16 of My Dark Ever After

The ache that opened up in my chest like a crater threatened to eat every last inch of my resolve. If I just leaned into his touch, I knew he would wrap me up in his arms and make everything okay.

At least for a moment.

I’d learned better than to think it could last.

“Let me say goodbye,” I whispered through the vise around my throat. “I promised my dad that if I was ever going to leave again I would say goodbye.”

His mouth flatlined, and his hands fell from my face. “No. You do understand that they could be hurt because of this? The less contact you have with them, the better.”

Fear pierced my breastbone, setting fire to my lungs. “I can’t just leave them here, then! What if they send more ... goons after them because they can’t find me?”

“I will keep someone here to monitor them.” Raffa waved my question out of the air with the back of his hand as if it was of no consequence. “They will be safe. But only if you are not here to put them in danger.”

My head thunked against the mirror behind me, making me wince. I closed my eyes to breathe deeply through the chaos of tangled emotions in my chest. It felt like drowning. Like I would die if I didn’t take Raffa’s offer, even though it felt safe to trust the hand he gave me.

“The last thing on earth I want to do is go back to that place with you,” I admitted, my mind racing as I thought of another alternative. “I could leave,” I said. “But I could go to London or Paris. Somewhere no one would think to look for me. My French is pretty bad, but they speak English in the city. I have a friend who lives there whom I could stay with.”

“No, Vera, you will not disappear from me, and you will not disappear from there. This isla mafia. There is no escaping to any part of the globe.”

“I could try,” I insisted, but I still didn’t open my eyes, unwilling to see Raffa in front of me, his resolute expression or, even worse, one of pity.

“No, you will be where you belong,” he said intractably, with the authority of an ancient Roman emperor no one would dare to defy. “With me.”

The pressure around one of my wrists as it lay in my lap was cold enough to shock me out of the shivering stasis.

“What the ...?” I gasped as I looked down to see the handcuff locked to one of my arms. “Raffa! What the hell is this?”

The grin on his face was pure wolf, sharp canines and red lips. He lifted his own hand between us, rattling the metal linking his cuffed hand to mine. “My insurance policy.”

“You are insane,” I shouted, wrenching my hand back even though there was no way I could break out of the cuffs. “My whole world isbeing turned upside down because of you. I-I hate you, Raffaele. I freaking hate you.”

“Fine,” he said flippantly. “Hate me in Tuscany.”

“This doesn’t mean anything for us,” I declared, everything in me shutting down like a house before a Category 5 hurricane. Shutters closing, doors locking, battening down every last hatch so that nothing more of him could get in. “We’re still done, Raffaele.”

The silence between us was flat and disquieting, the dense air before the storm hits when the animals are silent and the hairs on the back of your arm rise in alarm.

“I know,” he acknowledged finally, voice rough and deep as if the words cost him. “There is no happily ever after for a man like me. I have always known this. It is my fault that for a moment I considered ... Well. It is done now.”

“Good,” I said softly as I closed my eyes and turned back to the window, pressing myself to the cold mirror like I secretly yearned to press myself to the untrustworthy stranger I used to know beside me. “I’m glad,” I lied.

Chapter Five

Raffa

Seven weeks. Five days. Twenty hours.

The excruciating length of time I had lived through without seeing Guinevere.

As much as I had wanted to refuse to let her go back to America, and then as much as I had wanted to fly to her side to convince her to return every day after she had gone, I had managed to restrain myself.

At first, it was a simple matter of respecting her decision when I was made to acknowledge I had not respected her enough before to divulge my truths. If she did not want me, the rejected and aching part of my mind declared feebly, then I would not force myself upon her.

Especially when doing so could be dangerous.

And there came the rub.

A man had entered my home, somehow slipping past security, in order to come after not just me but also my woman.