A Vow of Love and Vengeance

“How is she?” a low voice asked, a voice I recognized all too well—Gio.

In my periphery, I saw Renzo get up and shake his head. “No better.”

“Give me a moment.”

More footsteps before the door clicked shut again and tension descended over the room. It was the feeling I got when he was watching me, a shiver of awareness snaking down my spine.

“Emilia.” He rounded the bed and dropped to a crouch in front of me. His hair was damp from a shower, his usual black suit in place. A day’s worth of stubble covered his jaw, making him look even more dangerous than normal, and it was the only indicator that he was anything less than perfectly in control. That scrutinizing gaze swept over me like he could see the wounds I’d carved on my soul and was offended by them. “Get up.”

I hadn’t seen him in days, and that was all he had to say?

His lips twitched in a shadow of a smile when I glared at him. “Glad to see there’s still some fight left in you, princess.”

In the next breath, I was wrenched from the bed and into his arms. “What are you doing?” My voice was croaky from disuse. I would have struggled against him, but honestly, I didn’t have the energy.

“It’s been three days.” He marched me to the bathroom.

“I don’t want—”

“I don’t care what you want, Emilia. You aren’t responding to Renzo, so now you get me.” He put me down on the vanity, and I shivered when the cold marble met the bare skin of my thighs. “Your father is dead. You killed him.” His words were like a pickax to the raw wound in my chest.

All that festering ugliness rose from where it lingered just beneath the surface, breaking through my blissful numbness and drowning me, sucking me into its dark depths.

“Do not move.” He stepped back and cut on the water for the shower. Then came back and pushed between my legs. “I’m not going to let you break over that man.”

He couldn’t control this. I was breaking, and in a fucked up way, I was glad of it because if I didn’t… if I just carried on after what I had done, that would truly make me a monster, wouldn’t it? It would make me like them. Sergio and Matteo, and Gio… numb to death.

He gripped the hem of his oversized shirt I wore and pulled it over my head before tossing it onto the floor. Fingers trailed my cheek reverently, lifting my gaze to his. Right then, he looked at me like he’d burn the entire world around us if the flames would chase the darkness from my mind.

I felt like an exposed nerve under his scrutiny, like he could see every tainted inch of me, and I hated it. I needed to say something, anything, to stop him from looking at me like I was some broken little doll.

“I don’t regret it.” Lie, lie, lie.

I didn’t regret that my dad was dead. I regretted that I’d been the one to do it. I felt pity for the naïve little girl who had loved her father, who wanted to be loved, and then just wanted to be free and was now covered in mafia blood.

Gio touched his forehead to mine. His breath washed over my face, and I inhaled the mint-tinged scent of it as though he were breathing oxygen into my starved lungs. “Tell me why you did it, piccola.”

When I tried to pull away, he wouldn’t let me, his fingers knotting in my hair and pinning me in place. I didn’t want to talk about it.

He tugged my head back, and when he forced me to look at him, I almost flinched from the ice in his eyes. Gone was the man who had held me on so many nights, and in his place was a mafia boss who was done waiting for answers. “You will tell me why you slipped from my bed, shot one of my men, then left yourself unprotected while you crossed New York and walked into a hotel full of Outfit men. Alone.” Each word grew more strained, his anger a rolling wave he’d clearly gone to great efforts to conceal until now. His hand slipped from my hair to my throat, fingers flexing against my skin in warning.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” I whispered.

His grip tightened, and I relished in it. Wanted him to squeeze a little harder, to hurt me. To punish me. His gaze searched mine like he could see every deep, dark secret swimming through my head. “That’s where you’re at, huh? You want me to break you?” His lips twisted into a sinister smile. “Do you feel bad for murdering your father, Emilia?”

The figurative knife I’d buried in my own gut twisted, stealing the air from my lungs.