Page 95 of My Dark Ever After

“For a boy?” he stressed. “Your mother and I raised you better than that.”

“You did,” I agreed. “But I want to stay in Italy regardless of Raffa. For the first time in my life, I feel settled, like this is where I belong. You cannot deny that it had to be the hand of fate that threw me into Raffa’s path on my vacation. I know you never wanted me to discover this place, but in doing so, I discovered the true me. I’m not willing to give that up for any man. Even my dad.”

I had never seen heartbreak up close before, but it felt like a horror film played in slow motion. Each feature crumpled, his mouth downturned with the force of his grief, eyes squeezing shut like he could block out everything that had just happened, if only for a second.

“Damn it, Guinevere,” he said with a quiet croak. “You are all we have left.”

“I know, but I can’t live for you and Mom. I have to live for myself. I’m twenty-three years old, and I want the life I’ve started to make here.”

“With murders and mafiosi?” he asked, exasperated.

“With friends.”And my lover,I thought but didn’t say because there was still so much Raffa and I had to discuss. “Besides, you have to know we can’t just go back to Michigan. People here know that’s where I live, and even if I’m never with Raffa again”—I paused to breathe through the pain of that possibility—“I’m associated with him. I would much rather stay here with friends who can protect me and teach me to protect myself.”

“Even if you stay, you won’t marry him,” Dad declared, but there was a wild desperation in his gaze that begged me to agree with him.

“I won’t marry for Mafia politics,” I agreed. “And I won’t marry anyone who doesn’t ask me.”

It wasn’t a good enough response, I could see in his huff of frustration, but it would have to do for now.

“Let’s table that idea for the moment,” Renzo suggested. “And focus on some practicalities.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Raffa

Practicalities included what to do with Philippe Morrone, thebastardowho had turned on me and mine.

He was not at the Pietracastello, but two of my men found him heading east through San Bavello, probably en route to Venice.

They had him ready for us when we returned to Villa Romano.

He was suspended in the barn like a leg of pork hung to dry and mold slowly in the dank, cool dark.

But I would not leave him to die in such a way.

I was too impatient. The rage that had been cancerously building in my gut since the moment Guinevere was taken had infected every inch of my tissues. The only way to combat this sick fury was to take it out on Philippe.

He was not even a man to me anymore.

He was a slab of meat, a carcass I had to prepare like a butcher into ordered pieces I could make sense of.

Fortunately, Philippe had witnessed my methods of interrogation before, so he had a taste for exactly what I could do to him if he did not answer my questions clearly and promptly.

Unfortunately, whoever had convinced him to flip on me was a powerful enough influence that he refused to give up the identity of the Venetian even when I asked ... repeatedly.

“This is the last finger you have left on this hand,” I told him conversationally as I wiped sweat from my brow and adjusted the cigar cutter around his index finger. “Do you really want to lose it and be left with only a thumb?”

Philippe let out an animal groan like a heifer. “Per favore, capo, no. You must understand! If I tell you, many will die. You do not want their deaths on your head.”

“Do I not?” I mused, scratching at the stubble growing thick across my chin. “Should I not be the judge of that? You have proven a useless one yourself.”

“Lui è spietato,” he groaned as blood pulsed from the stubs of his lost fingers, dripping to the ground in a steady rainfall. “He is a savage. He has looked into your eyes, Raffa, and lied. He has watched you find love, and he wants nothing more than to rip it away. It is an envy that goes beyond hatred. He wants everything you have.”

“My Guinevere?” I asked darkly, the cigar cutter biting into his flesh in a neat circle.

His cry echoed through the barn. “No, no, not her. But your life. Everything you own.”

“Even if he had all the businesses, all my money and connections, he could not keep them. Do you know why,pezzo di merda?” I leaned close to smile in his face, the expression so cruel it hurt my face to make it. “Because the most important thing I own is the loyalty of my people.” I sighed. “People unlike you.”