Page 28 of My Dark Ever After

And I didn’t have an answer.

How long would it take Raffa and hissoldatito hunt down the enemy? How long could I be forced into his proximity and survive with my willpower intact?

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“Well, okay.” Her voice was velvet soft with sadness. “I expect you to check in every day, okay? Or else your father will worry.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Give us a minute, Elizabeth?” Dad asked, then waited until the door clicked shut to sigh heavily into the speaker. “Does Raffa Romano have any affiliation with Clan Romano? One of the biggest Mafia families in Italy?”

I blinked in surprise at the ceiling and then sat up as my heart kicked into a trot. “Um,no. Why would you even assume something like that?”

He grunted. “I read up on him some when I saw you pictured in the paper with him. There was an article about his father being associated with the Camorra. That’s dangerous stuff, Guinevere.”

“No kidding,” I said, shocked by how easy it was to funnel my past self’s woeful obliviousness. “You know I wouldn’t be with someone like that.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Lately, I’m not sure I know you as well as I thought I did.”

As he’d intended, the words hit the mark, puncturing something in my chest so I had to suck in a sharp breath or drown in my own blood. All my life I’d wanted to make my parents, especially my dad, happy. It seemed incredibly unfair that pursuing my own happiness directly countered his.

“That was your choice as much as my own,” I reminded him. “I’ve got to go, or I’ll miss breakfast.”

“Be safe.” The words were sudden, edged with desperation. “I wish I’d taught you more about protecting yourself ... but please, Jinx, stay out of trouble.”

“I always try,” I told him.

“And yet it always finds you,” he murmured before hanging up without another word.

It should have surprised me to find all the clothes I had left behind at Raffa’s Florentine palazzo in the walk-in closet of my new bedroom at Villa Romano, but it didn’t. It was just utterly like him to go overboard for me. I could admit that seeing the familiar designer clothes we’d bought together my first week in Florence warmed my heart, and I knew that had been his game plan.

After switching my pajamas for a long dress and cardigan, I walked downstairs to the cacophony of voices, startled into almost falling over when a toddler ran headlong into my legs.

“Oh,” I said with a little laugh as I caught the dark-haired boy around the shoulders. “Stai attento, piccolo.”

Watch out, little one.

He dropped his head back between his shoulders and smiled a gap-toothed smile at me. “I speak English good!” he practically shouted.

Carlotta swept into the room looking harried but gorgeous. All Raffa’s family was beautiful, which wasn’t surprising given how stunning he was, but still. It seemed vaguely unfair that they should have genes this good.

Carlotta dashed a stray lock of golden-brown hair escaping her ponytail behind one ear and shot me an exasperated look. “Zacheo, Maxi, and Nico are all too young for school. I am afraid you will have to put up with them all day every day, just like the rest of us.”

I chuckled, tentatively stroking a hand down the boy’s messy locks. “I don’t mind at all. I babysat all through my teens, and I ...” I cleared my throat. “I lost my sister over a year ago, so it’s nice to be around family.”

“You will regret saying that,” Carmine said as he came into the hall from the kitchen, chomping into an apple. “Now they’ll have you as the live-in nanny.”

Carlotta shoved him into the wall as he passed. “Ignore him. There is so much gel in his hair it makes him stupid.”

I laughed at their camaraderie, feeling, for the first time in two months, like I wasn’t alone.

“Come on, Zacheo,” Carlotta urged. “Let Guinevere go have some breakfast.”

“Do you like Nutella?” he asked me, still clinging to my legs. He had his mother’s wide-set dark-brown eyes.

“Everyone likes Nutella,” I replied.

If possible, his grin widened. “Me too,” he shrieked, twisting to grab my hand and tug me down the hallway out the open French doors to the flagstone patio off the kitchen.