Page 81 of My Dark Ever After

A cacophony outside the closed door prompted all of us to reach for the weapons we had been wearing since Guinevere was taken. When the door swung open and hit the opposite wall with a bang, it revealed Ludovico, panting hard and wincing, with a hand pressed to his healing side.

“Ludo.” I dropped my gun back into its shoulder holster and stalked toward him. “What takes you from Villa Romano? Who is watching the family?”

“Leo,” he promised, sucking a breath in through his clenched teeth. “I had to come. This should not be said over the phone.”

“What is it?”

He lumbered over to the desk, and Renzo stood so he could take his seat. Once settled, he checked his white shirt to see blood coming through the bandage. Martina got up to fetch the medical kit from the cupboard along the wall behind me.

“You asked me to find out who Mariano Giovanni was,” Ludo said finally, pulling his leather satchel from his shoulder gingerly to retrieve his computer. “Well, I finally found him.”

Renzo and Martina crowded behind me at the desk to peer over my shoulder at the screen Ludo swiveled my way.

It showed a photo of a young man with thick dark hair and large eyes framed with almost feminine lashes.

I would have recognized those eyes anywhere, in any face.

They wereocchi di cerbiatta.

Guinevere’s doe eyes.

It was a photocopy of an old driver’s license from 1989 that read “Mariano Giovanni Pietra.”

Pietra.

“Dio mio,” Renzo breathed, struck dumb for the first time in his life.

I echoed the feeling.

Could this be possible?

That Guinevere was the granddaughter of Gaetano Pietra, the man who had feuded first with my father and now with me?

It seemed so wildly implausible, so absolutely absurd, that a small part of me felt like laughing.

But then my brain kicked in, puzzling the pieces together that I’d had all along.

Guinevere’s father had fled Tuscany before her birth and forbade her from entering the country. Such an extreme aversion for him to have merely disliked what Italy stood for or its governmental policies. No, this was much more personal, obviously diabolical.

It was for her safety, he had said on the phone with her that day in the bathroom with me when he had discovered she was in Florence. She had to leave at once for her safety and never return.

Because if the Pietras discovered who she was, they would never let her go.

The family had been growing weaker for years. Even before they killed my father and I went after their two eldest sons, they had lost a son to a drunken bar fight.

Mariano Giovanni.

Only, he had not died.

He had relocated to the US and changed his identity.

Given birth to Gemma and Guinevere Stone, who’d spent their entire lives not knowing that their bloodline was one of the oldest in Mafia history.

“I am a friend,” the man from Impruneta had told her when he tried to take her away.

Somehow the Pietras had found out exactly who was living in my house. Not just a tool to use against me, but one they felt they were owed.

A granddaughter returned home.