Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

“Yeah, she’s also a dork,” she snorted. “I miss her, though. It’ll be nice to get home and see her again. She’s been calling me like crazy.”

Get home. Right. We were not in an alternate reality. We were in the version of reality we’d always been in, the one where Willow would be gone again in a few days if our date didn’t go well. I tried to ignore the emptying of my stomach at the thought.

Just get her to stay.

“Number two?” I pressed on.

“Number two would definitely be living in Los Angeles in general. I mean, you think Philly’s bustling. That city never shuts down. There’s always someone doing something. Most places don’t even have a closing time. You want burgers delivered to your door with margaritas on the side? L.A. can do that.”

“Sounds like my kind of city,” I responded.

She nodded cheerily. “You’d love it there. I live right by this place, it’s called a tech farm. I didn’t know those were things, but apparently, it’s where a lot of the city’s technical control centers are housed. I walked through there once, and it made my brain hurt. You’d probably have a field day, though.”

“Probably.” I could see in her eyes the tinge of hopefulness that things might fall the other way. That I would tell her I made a mistake not picking her all those years ago, and that I wanted to go back to L.A. with her. Knowing that she might immediately accept if I did made me want to do it.

“Three?” I had to get off the subject, or I was going to cave and go on the run.

“Three…” Willow was thinking long and hard. Her brows were knit together as she searched her brain for anything. Finally, she let out a strained chuckle. “I guess I don’t have a three. I pretty much only work, eat, and sleep.”

“You, too, huh?” I said. It felt like the realization was washing over Willow as she said it. Apparently, she hadn’t been living a life of glamour and excitement in L.A. She was only hiding there. “Are you happy there?”

Willow was slightly taken aback. “Of course I’m happy there. Why?”

“Philly misses you,” I responded. “I miss you.” Willow took a distracting drink of her wine, not responding. “Do you miss me?”

Willow set her glass down. “Of course I miss you.” I was kind of surprised by how she was immediately honest. “But we can’t, Sandro.”

“Why can’t we?” I asked. “We’re supposed to be together.”

“There was a time when I thought that, too, but you have this life that you’re committed to living, and I don’t want to be a part of it,” she explained with sadness in her eyes. “You don’t think there were literally hundreds of times I wanted to pick up the phone and call you in the last six years? To hear your voice?” My chest constricted. She really did feel the same as me. “I kept telling myself that, eventually, I would get over it. Eventually, you’d only be some guy I’d dated, and I could move on, but I couldn’t move on, Sandro.”

She looked on the brink of tears.

“Me neither.” I shook my head. “Some people move on while they’re still in relationships, Willow. If it’s so serious for us, we shouldn’t ignore that.”

“Come to L.A. with me.” Her expression was the same serious and pleading expression she’d given me when she said the same thing to me six years ago. “Move into my place. Ricky can come, too. I’ve got three bedrooms. I want to be with you, Alessandro.”

I closed my eyes and basked in the moment. That’s what I’d been waiting to hear. I wanted to hear those words more than anything every day since she’d left for California. My throat burned as I heard them because I knew what my response was going to be.

The same one that disappointed her six years ago.

I thought about Marco and his family being threatened, and I thought about Luca and Gabriel trying to hold down the fort on their own. I thought about the Binachis finding any excuse they could to hurt my family in every conceivable way possible, and as much as I wished I could, as much as I wanted to hang up my suits and go be some domestic husband in a suburb in L.A., my ties wouldn’t allow it.

“Yeah,” Willow said before I could respond. “I figured as much.” She shifted, and I almost thought she was going to get up and leave, but she took another drink of her wine, emptying the glass.

“I’m sorry,” I responded. “This time it’s different. I wish I could go with you back to Cali, Willow. There is literally not a single thing that I want more in my entire life.”

Willow’s eyes widened a little. “Really?”

“Really. If I didn’t think it would put you in danger, I would drop everything right now. I wouldn’t even have a second thought. I’d buy us some house right outside the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, you could keep working, I’d maybe go for an I.T. degree or something. Fuck,” I hissed, “that tech farm sounds like heaven right about now.”

Willow crossed her arms. “Are things really that bad?”

“Haven’t they always been? You were right to leave this shit behind. I don’t blame you for that. I never have. Back when you first hit me with that ultimatum, all I could think was, how could she ask me to choose like that? But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. This world isn’t for people who are happy and in love. This world is for miserable people with a death wish.” Suddenly I was venting when I didn’t mean to, all of my feelings about the life and Willow spilling out all at once. “Sorry.” When Willow didn’t say anything, I looked up to gauge her response, and there were tears bunched in the corners of her eyes and a small grin on her face. I reached across the table and flicked them away with my thumb. “What, baby?”

“I thought this world meant more to you than me,” she said at a near whisper. “I thought that’s why you couldn’t leave it behind.”

I pressed my palm to her cheek. “Nothing means more to me than you.”