Page 10 of Runaway in the Mafia (The shadows of Cosa Nostra Chronicles #3)

CHAPTER SEVEN

VITALE

“ S he knows enough.”

What the fuck did that mean?

The scent of books lining the wall did nothing to soothe me. I was a ball of agitation. Coiled inside me. Seeping at my edges. I strummed my fingers on my thigh, hidden from view. My other hand rested on my desk as I lounged back. A facade of nonchalance. Lazy and relaxed.

My days seemed to be full of shit I shouldn’t do or say.

Shouldn’t have fucking cornered her, stepped into her space and seen that little nerve pulsing in the dip of her collarbone.

I certainly shouldn’t have inhaled her scent because now it was all over me.

No matter how many times I washed my hands, the scent followed me everywhere.

It was demonic. A fucking distraction. During my meetings, when I held my Glock, or in between my sheets at night.

I wasn’t proud of it. I had jerked off to that scent.

Not her, though. She was nothing I hadn’t seen before. Nothing.

Antonio stared at me with his laser beam eyes. “Why’d you want to know?”

And I certainly shouldn’t have asked him if his wife knew anything about the runaway girl. I wasn’t calling her by her name. She was just a runaway girl.

I stared at him. My face void of emotion.

Antonio was my cousin on Mamma’s side. His father, Mamma’s brother, was a contradiction to my paternal uncles.

He had been a saint because the man had stayed faithful until he was six feet under, even if his wife had been a bitch.

I weighed my words before I let them fall from my mouth.

“She’s under my roof.”

“Thought this wasn’t your house?”

The perceptive jerk. “It’s mine alright.”

“Since when?”

“Since… always.”

He picked up on the slight hesitation. Of course he did.

This was the reason that he had been made consigliere by Carlo.

Everyone thought it was because his father had been on his deathbed.

Some were under the illusion that Carlo wanted young blood.

But the truth was that Carlo never missed an opportunity.

And in Antonio, my cousin with exemplary negotiation skills and the patience of a monk, was an opportunity.

As was his ability to keep his thoughts to himself.

Which he proved by sealing them behind his lips because Antonio was nothing but a diplomat.

The whole fucking reason I continued to have him as my consigliere .

He put out the fires I triggered. So the last thing I should have done was keep secrets from him.

Especially a secret dark enough to destroy our friendship.

“You going to bring your wife here, then?”

I scowled at him. “Did I miss something?”

He nodded to the envelope lying on the desk between us. Size, A4. Colour, brown. Impact, deadly. I’d carried it around like a death sentence, but lately it felt more like reason. The one thing that grounded me.

“You know you’ll have to sign it one day.”

For a hot second, I hated the man seated across from me. His fucking Amaros, his non-smoking addiction and his perfect life. Most times, I envied the close relationship he had had with his father. On a rare occasion, I envied his courage. To do what he wanted.

“I’ll get to it. Not like you’d know—”

His eyebrow cocked.

“What? You don’t seriously think I ever believed your lame excuse to marry your nanny, did you? Custody battle, my ass. Like you couldn’t pay the judge off under the table.” The jackass had wanted his British/Indian nanny, so he’d married her.

He pushed his chair back, got up, and settled his glass on the table. His movements slow. Steady. That kind of controlled calmness one could only dream of. “One, I was in Boston where I didn’t own the law, and two, are we forgetting my ex fucking wife?”

Oh yeah. That one. That was a mess. The whole reason he’d fake married his nanny to get custody of his daughter. At least, according to him.

“Three, let’s not forget that we wouldn’t need to form alliances with Andrea if you hadn’t been a lunatic and torched the right hand of the Albanian Mafia. For fuck’s sake, Vitale, couldn’t you have gone and called me first so I could have doused this fire before you went and burned it down?”

Well… no. Then he would have known.

I suspected he already did. That was the only fucking reason for this tension strumming between us.

Well, the biggest reason. The others were that I hated his calmness, his diplomacy, his angel of a father for not being mine, his close relationship with Carlo, and lately, that he could marry any woman he liked.

He didn’t have to think about alliances, and yeah, so he married his junky Russian ex for the alliances, but he got out of it, so that didn’t count.

“Can we get back to the point?”

“The point being that Kola wants payback and we need to form alliances to prepare?”

His lips thinned at my expression.

“What?” I asked.

“Stop fucking worrying about Ahana under your roof.” He stalked to the door and dropped his glare to the bomb on the table. “Man up and sign the damn thing.” He pulled the door open, “Or not. But make a damn decision.” The door slammed shut behind him.

I should have been annoyed that my consigliere demanded I man up. But the only words I remembered were or not .

Wise words to think about. The fucking contract was burning a hole in my desk.

I knew I should seriously give it some thought.

Research the good little Sicilian Catholic girl I was supposed to marry.

If I married one of Andrea’s daughters, it would send a signal to Kola and his men.

With New York and Boston on our sides, our empire was dominant.

But an additional ally from Sicily would send a powerful message.

‘Don’t fucking mess with us’ kind of message.

But there was an annoying distraction on my mind. I wanted to get rid of it first. Concentrate on the ulcer burning a hole in my stomach. The one with the cute Italian accent.

With a click on the space button, I brought my screen back to life. All the open tabs brought me back to something about Ahana. Purely for security reasons, to know more about the runaway girl.

Her name pronounced A-haa-na meant ‘inner light’ or ‘sunrise’ in Sanskrit.

If that was even her real name. Fuck it.

I was calling her that, anyway. Couldn’t imagine that temptation with any other name.

If it wasn’t, I was changing it for her.

Once I discovered her real name. Which no amount of sweet talking Lia had produced.

Either she didn’t know, or she refused to divulge.

It was most likely the former. Lia was an open book for me.

I clicked on another tab. Ahana had other interpretations. The first rays of the sun, morning glory, angel… well, fuck me… it was also another name for some Goddess.

I pulled the drawer next to me open to take out the bottle.

I’d swiped it from her shower. I should have felt remorse, at the very least, bad for her.

I didn’t. The scent was driving me fucking insane and for my sanity’s sake, it was safer in my drawer than on her.

It was an ingredient from a flower. Plumeira, also known as Frangipani .

It pumped out its fragrance at night and attracted insects. I grimaced.

Am I a fucking insect?

The next line made me feel better. It equally works well on members of the opposite sex.

That’s more like it. Exactly what I thought. It wasn’t me; it was her and her fucking frangipani scent. Take the scent away. You take the addiction away.

My thumb smoothed over the bottle. It was black with gold lettering.

Velvety to the touch. Innocent in my hands.

It was chic and polished. My internet search told me it wasn’t cheap.

I knew she came from a family of wealth even before this.

You didn’t get that British accent by living your entire life in India unless you had gone to an international school.

I would know because somehow I had found myself shadowed in a corner, more times than I cared to count, listening to her talk to one of my cousins or Lia.

If that wasn’t enough, the way she walked, the way she held herself, should have told me.

Posture always gave one away. Hers screamed wealth and a strict upbringing.

The way she subtly pulled the neckline of her blouse up when one of my cousins stepped closer, the eagerness for approval from Mamma.

This girl was used to following the thick lines edged around her life.

Then the question was, why was she on the run, or who was she running from?

A knock on the door and Mamma’s voice carried through. She’d already stepped into the room before I realised the loot I held palmed in my hand. She was halfway across the room, carrying towels in her arms before my lagging brain geared up, and I subtly dumped it into the bin underneath my desk.

She came to a halt three meters from my desk, and her nose perked up.

Fuck no.

“It smells like Ahana here.”

Fuck yes.

I rocked back in the chair and wrapped my hands around the back of my head. “Who’s that?”

She frowned. “My ward. I thought you met her.”

“Ah, yes, slipped my mind.” Yeah right.

Her gaze roamed the room like she’d find her hidden behind a dark corner. When her eyes met mine, a soft smile tilted her lips. “That fragrance of hers is so fascinating. I must be smelling it everywhere.”

Don’t I know it?

“Anyway,” she shook her head, “What’s this I hear from Antonio?”

The fucking leach.

“You’re getting married?” Hurt lined her next words. “I thought I would know this, Vitale?”

I sighed. I was fucking firing my consigliere . “I haven’t signed anything yet, Mamma.”

“But you’re thinking of it. Another arranged marriage, figlio mio? ”

My brow cocked. “This is a surprise, how?” Her lips tightened, but I went on. “Daria’s was, and that turned out well. Orietta…” I’d pretend that was an arranged marriage like my two-timing conniving sister hadn’t planned that. “Hell, yours was.”

“That was different.”

“Which one? Yours or your girls?”

She didn’t answer. Regret ticked in the room louder than the tick-tock of the clock on the wall.

Words unsaid and actions unshown crawled out from the wallpaper.

When she found her voice, it screamed fear, even though it fell quietly on the tensed air in between us.

“I want something different for you, figlio mio . Only love will—”

“Love?” I scoffed. “Like how you loved Carlo? What’s love going to do now?”

Say it. Say you think I am cut from the same cloth as the man you fucking married. The man whore who fucked anything that moved. Fucked them in front of his wife and his children. Tell me I am no better than that.

But she didn’t. My mamma might have thought I was the devil, but she was kind. She might insinuate, but the line of uttering words to her thoughts she rarely crossed. And that was her doom. The reason why she never left her fucking husband. The downfall for her children.

She moved to my desk, her eyes earnest, her hands clutched around white towels.

My gaze narrowed on them. One of them had a burnt cigar hole in it.

There was only one person who smoked a cigar in this house, and he had only come into contact with a towel once while holding one.

I bit back the memory of a certain chestnut beauty when my mamma’s gaze shifted to a frown and dropped to the bin.

“There it is.” She bent down and picked up the bottle. “She thought she had lost it, and it reminded her of her home. She was so upset…” her voice trailed off. “What’s it doing here?”

I glared at her. “I went into her shower, stole the damn bottle, and chucked it in my bin.”

She frowned and then gave her head a shake. “Must have been the maids.”

Bingo. She never could see the truth before her eyes.

Her hand wrapped tightly around the bottle. With her other hand, she stroked absentmindedly over the burnt hole. “I was just—”

“I have work to do, Mamma. Can we do it another time?” As in, never.

“ Sì, naturalmente.” She hesitated. “You’re staying for dinner?”

“Sì.”

Her smile lit up her face. “I’m happy you’re spending more time here.”

She wouldn’t be if she knew why.

It took me an entire minute after the door clicked shut to release my breath.

Fuck.

Why the hell was I still smelling her when she’d taken the fragrance away?