Page 66 of My Dark Ever After

“Modera il linguaggio,” he barked out of habit, only this time the parental admonishment was said in rusty Italian.

“Dad, what the fuck?” I said, ignoring his warning to watch my mouth. “Were you a part of the Italian Mafia?”

It made so much sense I felt ill and dizzy with it. The metal edges of my phone cut into my fingers from how hard I was holding it.

His sigh seemed endless. “I left that behind when I was a much younger man.”

“So yes,” I surmised. “How ...? God, I have so many questions I don’t even know where to start.”

“Start with how you discovered this at all. Is it because ofthatman, Raffa Romano?” His words lashed at me through the phone.

“You are in absolutelynoposition to be high and mighty about Raffa when you were in the Camorra yourself, Dad,” I snapped back.

“So he did follow in his father’s footsteps, then.” He made a noise at the back of his throat like a dying animal. “Fuck, Guinevere. When I saw that photo of you in the paper with him in August, I did some asking around, and everyone said he was clean.”

Despite the circumstances, I grinned, a feral expression to match the wicked pride I felt that Raffa was so good at his job.

“This isn’t about Raffa. It’s about you having lied to me my entire life. No wonder you didn’t want me to come to Italy.”

“Yes, no wonder,” he shouted. “You do not know how dangerous it is for you to be there, Jinx. With your luck, someone could figureout who you are related to. Raffa Romano could find out! And you do know what he would do to the granddaughter of one of his rivals? Your mother and I would never see you again.”

“How could you let me exist in the world not knowing something this big?” I demanded. “Even if I had just been traveling through France and England, how could you have known I wouldn’t run into someone who might recognize me?”

“It was incredibly unlikely anyone would recognize you out of context and based on looks alone, even if you did bump into someone who once knew me. The odds were minuscule. I calculated them,” he said with a scoff.

Of course he had, just like I had tried to.

“Only, you betrayed my trust by doing the one thing I ever asked you not to, and you spent the summer in Italy. You met a fucking mafioso, for Christ’s sake, Guinevere. I thought I raised you better than that.”

“I didn’t know at the time,” I seethed. “Though if I’d had all the information about my family and my background, maybe I would have recognized the signs.”

My mind was reeling like I’d gone for a spin on a merry-go-round and couldn’t get off, the wheel just spinning faster and faster until all my thoughts swirled into a chaotic muddle.

“If Romano is in the Camorra, you need to leave him. Now,” Dad was saying, urgency vibrant in his tone. “I’ll buy you the next flight out of Florence. Come home, and we’ll figure out how to keep you safe. He obviously found you once before, but—”

“He saved me once before,” I corrected. “Raffa wouldn’t hurt me, even if it meant saving his own life.”

I knew as soon as I spoke the words that they were true. Raffa would move heaven and earth to keep me safe and happy, despite the fact that, recently, I hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of devotion.

God, I thought, I had judged him so harshly when my own father was just like him.

“How can you have raised me on this intense rhetoric about being good and kind in a world that is anything but? When you know its dangers and atrocities better than almost anyone? Instead of arming your daughter, you declawed her and left her vulnerable to predators.”

“Predators like Raffa Romano.”

“No. Never Raffa.” Dark, bad, and dangerous to know he might be, but Raffa would never hurt me, and more than that—more than my dad—hewantedme to be both hiscerbiattaand hiscacciatrice. His fawn and his huntress. “He is the only one who wants to help me make myself a weapon.”

“You don’t need to be a weapon, for fuck’s sake. You’re just a girl. Your life is in America as a financial adviser. You have a serious chronic illness, Guinevere! Come home, and I’ll protect you.”

“I am more than just my illness, Dad. How many times do I have to say that? I’m not some frail princess you can stuff away in a tower,” I argued, fury building inside me, turning the confusion and despair into something actionable. “I should have known the truth so that if anything came for me, I could defend myself. Now, you’ve left me in an impossible situation, and I’m playing catch-up. If anything happens to me, Dad, it will beyourfault for not trusting me with the truth.”

He made a sound like I’d run him through with a blade.

“I don’t know if I can forgive you for keeping this from me,” I whispered through the mass of emotion in my throat, which was clogging it like debris in a drain. “This is just ... too much.”

“We can speak about it when you get home. I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” he promised, and I could feel his desperation through the phone. “Just come home—now.”

“No. You can’t keep me safe there. They already got to me once before.”