Page 37 of My Dark Ever After

Finally, someone did.

“Raffa?” Carmine asked, panting heavily.

“What the fuck is going on over there?” Even though I had never been a creative person, my mind was imagining all the dire ways Guinevere had been maimed or killed. “Is Guinevere okay?”

“She’s okay,” he said immediately, but there was an edge to his voice like he didn’t want to confess what came next. “I mean, she is healthybut for some bruising. It’s Ludo who took a bullet to his side. He’s on his way to the hospital now.”

“Put Guinevere on the phone.” I needed to hear her voice before my insides could unclench.

“Um, I don’t think that is the best idea right now, boss,” he admitted. “She’s hysterical.”

Hysterical?

I flashed back to the look of abject terror on her face, bits of bone and brain matter flecking her nightgown and skin in the aftermath of the assassin’s death.

“Do not let her run,” I ordered through gritted teeth, adrenaline like acid in my veins as I sat caged in the car with nothing todo. “Carmine, do you hear me? Whatever happens, do not let her run again.”

“It’s not you or us she wants to run from,” he explained. “If she could, I think she’d be running from herself.”

“What the fuck happened? Stop being cryptic with me. I need to know how to help her,” I bit out.

“He’s dead.” His words were heavy enough to land like blows against my ear. “The man who shot Ludo and tried to take Guinevere? She killed him.”

The family had been put to bed by the time I reached the villa, but warm light greeted me as I stormed inside and found Leo sitting with his head in his hands at the kitchen table. A sweating glass of amber liquor—his preferred whiskey, probably—sat untouched by his right elbow. He looked up at me as if I was the Grim Reaper come to deliver his death.

I was not far off from doing exactly that.

Ludo had already briefed me that Leo was the one to suggest Guinevere take in the sight of Impruneta and the surrounding valleys of grapes from the bell tower, and though he had gone straight to Ludoto tell him where Guinevere was, those few minutes when she was on her own had been enough to endanger her life.

Such carelessness with the woman I loved and breathed for made my very bones quake with suppressed fury.

“I am so sorry, Raffa.” Leo’s heavy voice punctured my thoughts and drew my attention back to his hangdog expression. “Honestly, I was trying to bond with her, not endanger her, when I offered up the suggestion. I feel ... I feel absolutely sick that I was the one to put her in harm’s way.”

“You should.” My voice was a death knell, hollow and dark.

Behind me Martina hovered, perhaps waiting to see if this conversation would end in bloodshed.

“I already apologized to Guinevere,” he continued, eyes glassy as he looked out the dark window and then back to me. A thin smile flickered at the end of his mouth. “She told me what she saw of the view was lovely.”

Warmth cut through the cold anger burning up my gut.

“She is the most resilient woman I have ever known,” I agreed.

Leo’s mouth pressed into a firm line as he looked down at his palms. “A woman must be if she wants to live this life with us.”

It was true, of course. A reality I had been wrestling like a giant beast for almost the full length of time I had known Guinevere. Now that my worst fears had come true, both in Michigan and now closer to home in Impruneta, it settled something in me to know that mycerbiattacould hold her own until help arrived.

This did not mean I was willing to forgive Leo, not when he had been rude to her since the beginning. Perhaps if it had been Carmine, Renzo, or Ludo who had put Guinevere in that position, I would have forgiven one of them more easily.

“I have not been fair to her,” Leo said, reading my thoughts as only a lifelong friend could. “It wasn’t about her so much as the woman I loved and lost. She ... she reminds me of her. The courage in the face of new horizons. Even her laugh ...” He lost himself to memories, anda part of me that had loved Leo my whole life ached for the loss of this woman I had never known.

Their brief affair had only lasted a handful of months a year or two ago, but it had left an indelible mark on him, a measured, melancholy kind of maturity he had not possessed before.

“I am sorry for your loss. You know I am. But I will not tolerate anyone treating Guinevere with hostility. I will not even tolerate her being treated as anything less than the most precious creature in this house,” I admitted, crossing my arms to level him with a declarative glare.

Leo blinked. “I guess I hadn’t realized how much you cared for her. To say that ... when your mother and sisters and nephews live here? Well, I’m shocked.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Martina finally chimed in, stepping up beside me to press her shoulder into mine in a show of solidarity that soothed some of my agitation. “When have you known Raffa to take risks? When have you known him to allow himself to be vulnerable? If I did not love Guinevere myself for the woman she is, I would love her for his sake alone.”