Page 17 of Runaway in the Mafia (The shadows of Cosa Nostra Chronicles #3)

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

VITALE

“ S he’s fucking hot.”

My eyes darted to Endrigo and his phone screen. His pudgy fingers were stroking the image of a brunette. I squinted, trying to place her.

“I wouldn’t need to think twice about signing that contract.”

Right. The woman I was supposed to marry.

A soft laugh that I now associated with honey…

warm, thick and syrupy, pulled my gaze to the corner of the room.

It was Sara’s fucking engagement, and all I could think or hear was her.

She stood with Lia and Divya, using them like armour, shielding herself from me.

I was disappointed. She’d been avoiding me like the plague.

Given my last words, it was no surprise.

But I’d hoped she’d at least try to stand up to me.

It pissed me off when she was disobedient.

And it pissed me off when she wasn’t. She was a recipe for an early heart attack.

Hiding in plain sight and within arm’s reach, but always with an army of giggles around her. Never alone.

I only wanted a kiss. A taste to satisfy an itch.

To prove my imagination was way better than any reality.

But it was like being presented with the dessert when you still had to get through the antipasto.

She was all fucking sweet and just like a dessert, bad for my molars, which I had to grind when a shift in the room carried her scent through.

Jesus. This was bullshit. I’d had naked women throw themselves at me.

But a whiff of some ridiculous scent was enough for my cock to twitch. She was a fucking witch.

She was dressed entirely in tan. In yellow, she shone like gold, but in tan… my gaze dropped to the floor. She wasn’t handing out any favours to my dick. Picturing her naked in tan wasn’t too difficult. But then again… my eyes lifted up to hers… I’d pictured her too many times to not know.

Her eyes shifted from Divya’s and darted above her shoulders to mine. Coward, I mouthed. Her gaze was quick to zip away. The thrill of adrenaline shot through my body. I didn’t think I’d ever done the chasing, but Jesus , it was addictive. She was fucking addictive.

“What’s stopping you, anyway?”

Irritation buzzed in my ear. Why was Carlo’s idiot brother still glued to me? “From?”

“Signing the contract! Can you fucking give me the respect of listening when I am talking?”

No. “Earn it.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed down as he swallowed. “I am your father’s—”

“Have a hearing problem? I. Said. Earn. It. Being born into the family, isn’t it.”

We glared at each other. His brother, my uncle Remigio, shifted uncomfortably between us.

At least he was smart. Fucked his whores but kept his mouth shut.

Because he fucking knew the power shifted a long time ago to the next generation, and that happened even before Carlo was shot point blank in his forehead.

I liked that. The fact that he didn’t annoy me with his unbidden advice.

But I couldn’t say the same about his brother.

My relationship with Endrigo had always been a bother.

If you could even call it a relationship.

He was the annoying uncle I hoped wouldn’t show up for a dinner.

The problem was, he was an idiot, and he couldn’t see it. And he showed up every damn time.

He looked away first. Because I didn’t give a fuck about anything, but he did. He loved his status and the image, and he didn’t want to lose it by getting on my nerves.

“I’m just saying you shouldn’t delay. It’s not like you can’t fuck anyone—”

A heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and a drunken laugh next to me. “ Cugino , next wedding is yours.”

Remigio glared at Romeo, zio Marco’s second son. His stare said ‘read the room’. But I only shook his hand off. Romeo didn’t mean any harm and was too drunk to realise it.

“Fuck off.”

With a laugh and a can’t take a fucking joke , he zigzagged across the room. Jesus. How the fuck did he get so drunk? At his cousin’s engagement party at that.

My eyes crawled back to the temptress across the room.

A frown marred my forehead. She was surrounded by my cousins.

Male ones now. Antonio’s fucking brother, Angelo and Battista, were talking to her, standing too close, acting too familiar.

The thing about Angelo was, he could charm the panties off a nun.

I didn’t care for it. I’d pitied Battista.

The bastard of Endrigo and the official son of Marco. But now he just pissed me off.

“You’ve kept him hanging long enough.”

My annoyed gaze rolled back to the specimen next to me. “Who?” I growled.

“Andrea,” he exclaimed and caught himself at my death glare.

I was about to retort when movement around the magnet to my dick caught my attention. Fucking Romeo was all over her. I could only see his back and her front. But I imagined his beady eyes sliding across her glorious body. My hand fisted next to me. That just wouldn’t do.

“I’d keep my eyes off her if I were you.”

My head rolled to his in disbelief. “Did you just warn me?”

Remigio visually took a step back. Unfortunately, Endrigo was really that stupid. “I am just giving you advice, figlio mio . Fuck her if you must, but she’s not marriage material. She’s not one of us.”

Couldn’t say I didn't see it coming. Neither did Remigio. But the jackass didn’t, I guess. Because he dropped like a bag of cement when my fist met his face.

The sound in the room dropped. That’s what happened generally when a man was down.

All eyes darted to me, but I was only aware of the shock of one.

She looked like death had pinned her down.

Not a peep squeaked, not even from Mamma, who stood just behind Remigio.

Her expression was something I didn’t want to read.

But I knew she would have heard Endrigo’s words before I took him down.

I couldn’t bear to be in the room anymore.

Grabbing a champagne from a passing server, I stalked off.

I wasn’t going to cross the line of killing family.

In front of the family. But that line had blurred just a tad today.

I brought my scuffed fist up to blow lightly. I could get a taste for this.

AHANA

Divine intervention.

It was nothing but that. An omen warning me not to get involved with that man.

If there ever was a red flag, it was his fist on his uncle’s face.

The crack of his bones was all too familiar.

The figure on the ground, too chilling to forget.

Once you’d taken a punch, it never washed off your memories.

It wasn’t for a lack of will. I wanted it to be like a faded memory.

One that edged the tip of my tongue but was too deep to pull out from the hollow of my brain.

But if I slipped my tongue out and licked my lips, I could still feel the split cracking it like it was yesterday.

The memory of the taste of copper was too recent.

I knew the spectrum of a bruise like I had a Master’s in it.

Pinkish red to a dark green, to a dark yellow, until it finally mellowed down to a dull yellow, and a clean slate. Ready to be painted again.

Four months. Six different times. I took it the first time, and I thought it was all in my head.

The second time, I did it for my family.

But the third time, I did it for Pāpā and him alone.

Because when I had finally called Maa and sobbed out the whole truth, her only response had been to suck it up like a grown up.

She thought she knew what it was like. Even if Pāpā had never hit her, she thought she knew all about it.

Bullshit. She couldn’t lose face with a divorced daughter.

Wouldn’t. She put the blame on Pāpā’s health because she knew.

Of course, she knew I’d sacrifice anything for him.

Even myself. But I guessed she was wrong.

She had overestimated her eldest daughter.

I was selfish. Because the sixth time he called me a whore and his rage flew hard when his dick wasn’t and his fist painted my skin in a rainbow of colours, I decided no more.

Beyond all doubts and his expectations of me, I walked out.

Well, ran more like it, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Just before the sun went down and he came home from his million-dollar office, I grabbed my papers, crept out the lone laundry room window, and walked out.

Couldn’t afford bread, he had said. Who needed bread when I had a will?

With only that, the sneakers I had bought over from Delhi, and armed with the few rupees he’d never found, I took off.

He should never have underestimated a woman scorned.

I’d made a promise to myself then. I’d never let a man touch me like that. He may have called me a whore for trying to make something out of this marriage, and he may have tied me to the pillar in the cellar when a neighbour’s eyes fell on me, but I wasn’t taking it anymore.

Which is exactly why I should stay away from the man who punched his uncle and celebrated with champagne. I was rebuilding my life. I could count on only myself to do it.

The air stiffened around me with memories and a hot flush for a man I shouldn’t care about.

The room floated with fear and tension. Even if he’d stepped out, he’d left his nasty impression behind.

The vibrance of the party dimmed out with an awkward cough to highlight the silence.

Suffocation crawled up my throat. I grabbed the empty bowl, muttered something about getting more olives and ducked in search of the storeroom.