Page 16

C ontessa

As I fling three days-worth of clothes into a bag, I know I’ve stayed here too long. Trilby would have me move in permanently if she could, but as much as I thought I’d be able to handle seeing Bernadi occasionally, I can’t. Especially now I’ve told him the truth about why I can’t bear to be around him.

I open the Lyft app on my phone and watch the cab icon slowly making its way to the Di Santo residence. Ten minutes away .

I cast a final glance around the room, taking in the heavy raindrops as they splash off the sill, then someone knocks at the door and I freeze.

“Contessa…” It’s Bernadi.

“Go away.”

“Just give me one minute, then I’ll stay out of your way… for good.”

I stand facing the door but rooted to the spot. I feel a strange pull like I want to yank the door open and see his face, but I can also feel the touch of Federico’s fingers between my thighs—wanted, yet unwanted at the same time—and the resentment burns inside my chest.

“Then you’ll leave me alone?” I glance at my phone. Nine minutes away .

“I promise.”

My feet feel like lead weights as I walk to the door. I flick the lock, take a deep breath and open it. Bernadi has an arm leaned up against the door frame and his chest alone blocks out all the light from the landing. I dare not look up into his eyes so I skirt around them, taking in the taut shape of his mouth, the normally full lips pulled into an anguished line. His scar seems more prominent in shadow, dancing with each grind of his jaw.

He's completely drenched and my gaze drops to where water pools at his feet.

“What?” I’m aiming for a tone with bite but it sounds more weary than anything.

“Can I come in?” His deep timbre reaches into the room and fills it.

I turn my back to him and walk to the center of the room. The door closes behind me with a soft click.

“You’re right, Contessa. I am the reason the Falconis left. ”

A long, exhausted breath rolls out of my lungs.

“But I didn’t drive them away. They didn’t flee . I sent them away for their own good.”

I shake my head. “What does that even mean?”

Silence crawls around the walls uncomfortably.

“Enzo Falconi stole from us.”

“That’s not true.” I can’t keep the irritation out of my voice. “He missed one lease payment.”

“That’s probably what he told his son.”

I turn around to see Bernadi pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed. I feel safer looking at him when he isn’t looking back. If he wasn’t such an asshole, he’d be beautiful. His whole frame looks to be carved from granite—all lines and labyrinthine angles. His jacket has been discarded, the sleeves of his button-up are rolled to the elbows and delicate black lines and shapes trip in the light as his muscles tense. I follow them to the curve of his wrist and the thick, inked fingers. The skin is calloused, the nails sharp and neatly trimmed—not jagged and filled with dried blood as I’d expect from a gangster.

I feel lightheaded as I whisper, “What did he steal?”

Bernadi sighs and drops his hand. Before I can look away, his lids pop open and his eyes catch mine. A strange heat floods my chest.

“He stole systematically from us over two years, to the tune of sixteen million dollars.”

I gasp and fall a little deeper into the iron grip of his gaze.

“We gave him breaks on fuel, power, equipment; we funneled contracts away from other businesses for him. We thought he delivered the best. It was only after he left we discovered the extent of his neglect. There were firms his people hadn’t visited in months. They were too busy vacationing in the Florida Keys and driving around in brand new Maserati’s.”

I hang disbelievingly on to his words.

“He skimmed everything he owed us and we gave him repeated warnings. When he started gambling our money, we broke his fingers.”

A faint memory slides across my lids. I was sitting in the Falconis’ kitchen and Fed was helping me with my math project. I remember his papa entering the kitchen with an enormous bandage wrapped around his hand. When Fed asked about it, Mr. Falconi blamed it on some heavy equipment falling on him in the warehouse. At the time I found it odd that whatever landed on him only got his hand, but I didn’t give it any further thought.

“Finally, after failing to pay the lease for three months, we went to the house.”

Three months? Federico said it was only one. But if what Bernadi is saying is correct, there was clearly a lot Fed didn’t know.

“We came to close down his business. We planned to sell all his assets and make back the money he lost us. It wasn’t our intention to kill anyone. But then Mario walked in…”

He sighs and finally averts his eyes. I collapse as I’m released from steel clutches and land on the edge of the bed. My packed bag slides to the floor.

“He was the worst of all of them—he didn’t have just one new car, he had three, and to be quite honest, that was the first time I’d seen him in a year because he’d spent most of that time in his second home down on the Jersey shore. God knows, he probably had mistresses he was propping up with our money. He knew we were there to shut them down and clear them out and he panicked. The second that gun went to Augie’s head I grabbed Mario, but before I could calm him down, Augie shot him.”

I can feel the warm air of the room touch my eyeballs as I stare back at Bernadi wide-eyed.

“Oh God—” My gaze falls to the carpet.

“After Augie and Beppe had left the room, I hung back and told Enzo to get himself and his family as far away from New York as he could within the next twenty-four hours. If Gianni had found out exactly what Enzo Falconi had done, he’d have killed the entire family.”

My brain swims as I try to piece everything together. That’s why Federico was insistent on us sleeping together so quickly. It all makes sense now. There’s just one thing I can’t quite get my head around.

“If Enzo had betrayed the Di Santo’s so badly, why did you help them out by giving them a warning? They meant nothing to you.”

Bernadi rubs his right hand up and down his left bicep, inadvertently drawing my gaze to its firm swell. He looks… uncomfortable .

He sighs and turns his gaze to the pouring rain. “There was a time when Enzo made us a lot of money and took very little. We made him work for it. Then one of his senior managers was shot dead in a drive-by. It affected him badly. That’s when he started the skimming. And it escalated from there. Once he got a taste for cheating us and getting away with it, he couldn’t help himself.”

Bernadi turns his head, and once again, I’m ensnared in the grip of his gaze.

“I’m not condoning or excusing the stupid shit he’s done over the years, but… I don’t blame him for how it all started.”

I don’t know what unnerves me the most—the fact Federico paid for his father’s greed by having his life uprooted to start over several thousand miles away, or the fact Bernadi apparently has a heart.

I sigh heavily and frown at the carpet, my head buzzing with new information, rearranging everything I once thought I knew.

When I look up, Bernadi is crouching in front of me. His face is so close to mine I can see every inch of scar tissue down his left cheek, and wide pupils in burnt bronze eyes that are slightly narrowed as he searches my face for something.

A warm flare licks at my insides and I swallow.

“I’m sorry for what happened after that,” he says, softly. “I didn’t even know you and Enzo’s son were…” He trails off before licking his tongue over his bottom lip.

“We weren’t.” My dried-out voice cracks a little when I speak. “I didn’t know that was something… he wanted.”

I drop my gaze back to the floor. Four days ago, no one knew about that night or my loss of impurity. Now, two people do: the sister I felt most estranged from growing up, and the consigliere to New York’s biggest mafia family. Not a scenario I’d have conjured up in my wildest dreams.

He reaches up and takes my chin between his thumb and fingers so gently I have to fight the urge to give in to his touch. “What about what you wanted?”

I flick my gaze to his and swallow against a desert-dry throat as the truth silently alarms me. “I didn’t think that mattered.”

Seconds are consumed by uncomfortable silence, then something flips behind Bernadi’s eyes.

I watch his expression shift from gently concerned to confused.

“Wait… You don’t believe what you want in life matters ?”

The fact I don’t know how to answer that question renders me silent. I mean, of course I know what I want, right? I’m not just doing this whole dance thing because I went a few times as a kid and was pretty good at it, right? Not because Mama always said she loved to watch me dance… right ?

I used to want to travel to Asia, to work in France, to study in London… I harbored those dreams for as long as I can remember. But after Mama died, Papa’s propensity to worry about all of us reached new and unfathomable heights. He tried to hide the stress of raising four young daughters from us, but the evidence was there in the creases around his eyes, in the lines on his brow and the downward turn of his mouth.

We all watched Trilby’s mental health deteriorate even after moving into the apartment. We all knew she hardly slept. No one questioned why she dyed her hair platinum blond, but we all knew… She had her own way of coping with Mama’s death.

Sera threw herself into tarot cards, astrology books, placing all her faith and fortune in the stars above. She disappeared into a shell we were all so desperate to see her re-emerge from that Papa didn’t argue at all when she announced she wanted to do an internship away from home.

Bambi was only ten when Mama died. She didn’t understand it then and I’m not sure she even understands it now, but Allegra watches her like a hawk, knows her inside and out, and will do anything to shield our precious baby sister from the evils of the world.

As for me, I’m just Tess. As long I keep dancing, no one need worry about me. I don’t want anyone to worry about me. Like I tell myself every morning when I open my eyes and realize all over again that it’s not a very bad dream, I’m fine .

“You don’t, do you?” Bernadi’s eyes narrow and he sits back on his heels like the life has just been knocked out of him.

I can’t seem to do anything other than blink.

“Contessa…” He closes his eyes and shakes his head slowly, then lifts his lids, showering darkness and disappointment over me. “You told me to stay away from you,” he says in a low voice I’m sure only the devil can hear. “But do you think I’m going to leave you alone in a world that would take advantage of you without batting a fucking eyelid?”

I shift backward on the bed because the truth feels a sharp blade against sore skin.

“I mean it, Contessa. Someone has to protect you, because I don’t trust that you will.”

“I don’t need protection,” I say firmly.

He looks twice at me, like he can’t believe I just said that. “If I hadn’t shot that cretin, he’d have abducted you. You know that, don’t you?”

I straighten my spine and lower my lashes defiantly. “He followed me for three years and didn’t lay a finger on my body. Stop trying to scare me.”

He scrubs a hand down his face and stares out the window disbelievingly. “Oh my God, you’re so stubborn.”

“I resent that,” I say in a trembled whisper. “You don’t know me.”

He laughs darkly. “I don’t need to.” He lets those words linger as he shoves himself up to standing. His lip curls as though he’s disgusted with me. “I just need to keep you alive. ”

He turns and stalks back to the door while I shout after his departing back. “I’m not your responsibility, Bernadi.”

He turns slowly, and there’s a strange fire in his eyes accompanied by venom I can almost taste. “No, you’re not. You’re Cristiano’s. And he has more pressing things to deal with than protecting a woman who refuses to have a mind of her own. So… you’ve got me.”

And with that, he yanks open the door, walks through it, then slams it so hard the wall shudders.