A Vow of Love and Vengeance

“It’s pretty cold, sweetheart. The man who raised you…”

All those ugly emotions rattled against the confines of the fragile glass box I’d put them in. Waiting. Just waiting to sink their claws into me, to make me bleed all over again. His thumb swept over the side of my neck as though he could see me fracturing beneath his words and couldn’t help but try to soothe me, even though he was the cause.

“How long had you been planning it? Since he gave you to me?”

“Stop!”

“Or since he gave Chiara to Matteo?”

At the mention of my sister’s name, tears stung my eyes. No. I would not cry. Not even for Chiara. Was this what Gio wanted? To see me suffer. Did he hate me so?

“Tell me why, Emilia.”

“It wasn’t supposed to be him!”

His grip on my throat immediately softened, and the silence that fell between us was broken only by my ragged breaths and the running water.

“Sergio,” he said.

“Yes.” My gaze dropped to a slither of ink that peaked between the buttons of his shirt collar.

I waited for him to berate me; instead, his anger dissipated, his gaze softening as he stroked my cheek.

“Never again look at me like you want me to hurt you, piccola.” His lips pressed over mine, and for a second, he took every thought in my head and extinguished it.

The kiss was possessive, branding, and I lost myself in it. His lips dragged across my cheek to my ear. “And I haven’t forgotten that you put your life at risk. You will be punished…”

Just not today. Because today I was still the fragile little mafia princess.

Broken.

Wounded.

Weak.

Gripping my waist, he pulled me from the vanity and guided me into the shower. He remained for a few moments, watching me, before slipping from the room.

I missed the strength of his fingers at my throat, the distraction of his lips, all while hating him. Because I’d been so perfectly numb, and he’d pulled me from it.

My mind instantly began spiraling. Blood and guilt and self-hatred. My legs threatened to buckle under the weight of it all. Too much. It was too much.

I fumbled with the shower controls and cranked the temperature up as high as possible. Resting my head against the tile, I almost sighed in relief as the water scalded my skin. That pain was every bit as powerful as Gio’s kiss, as his bruising grip. My mind emptied once more, and the agony that ate away at me paused in place of the exterior pain.

I knew I was falling apart, that this wasn’t okay, but I didn’t know how to be okay or if I ever could be again. And so I resigned myself to my own destruction.

3

GIO

Tommy peered into the paper bag with a scowl. “Three bullets and you couldn’t even bring me one cheeseburger.”

I never thought I’d be so happy to hear the ungrateful bastard bitch and moan about his beloved junk food. He looked like absolute shit, but he was alive. “You’re healing. You need—”

“I’ve stayed plenty healthy on a steady diet of fat and sugar.” He tugged at the pale-blue hospital gown that hung off one shoulder. “I had multiple gunshot wounds, Gio, not a heart attack.”

I shook my head and fell into the chair beside his bed. The fact that he’d pulled through was the only bright point in a shower of shit right now. Roberto’s head had been sent to Patrick O’Hara. I was banking on the mob boss being every bit as irritated at being set up as I was.

Roberto’s unexpected demise had set things into motion faster than I would have liked, but now I would control the narrative. I’d sent Sergio his own special message. This would appear as a strategic move on my part.

Revenge.

I was braced for a bloody response, but Sergio had gone ominously quiet. Neither he nor Matteo Romano had been seen by any of my sources in The Outfit for days. I didn’t like it.

Sergio should have been rampaging through my streets right now, killing my men. The man who bides his time is always the most dangerous. Impulsive emotion exposed weakness.

“How is Emilia?” Tommy asked.

The same as yesterday and the day before when he’d first woken up and asked about her.

“No different.” Still didn’t leave my room, barely left the bed, and only ate if I sat there and made her.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help her; I couldn’t understand what it was like to ever be innocent enough to regret killing someone. Couldn’t understand her grief over a man she hated enough to kill. But, he was her father. My father and I were estranged when he had died, but I still mourned him, or perhaps just the relationship we’d never actually had.