Chapter Fourteen
Vito
‘Leave us,’ I ordered the guards as I stepped into the dank cell where Dante had been chained.
He’d arrived on the island that morning only a few hours before me, but I could see my men had not been idle in the hours while I had stewed in my office at the villa, cursing Mia, before crossing the island to finish this.
My stomach contracted, the riot of emotions Mia had caused no longer something I could control as I stared at the man I had loved as a boy.
His shirt was torn and bloody, the welts on his back and shoulders visible even in the shadows.
He was slumped against the wall, his forehead resting against the cold stone, his wrists manacled, and his arms chained above his head in an uncomfortable position.
Some of the injuries might have been caused when he was taken in a café in Avellino, a small town near Naples—because the bastard was just that audacious. But not all of them.
I had not sanctioned the beating, but neither had I forbidden it, and I could not blame my men for wanting revenge. While no one had died during the attack in Naples, several of them had sustained injuries, some of them severe, mine included.
He didn’t turn to look at me as I stepped into the cell, but his shoulders tensed. I was glad he was not unconscious. He deserved to know why he would die, I told myself, even as the pit in my stomach—the pit I had struggled to close ever since listening to Mia’s pleas—continued to widen.
Do not listen to her. She has no place in your heart. No one does. No one can.
‘Give me the keys,’ I murmured as the last guard walked past me to exit the cell.
The guard hesitated before handing them over. ‘Be careful of him, padrino. He is strong, and he does not know when he is beaten.’
‘So nothing has changed then,’ I muttered.
The wry comment echoed in the airless room, the scent of blood and dirt suffocating.
I could not deny the swell of admiration that Dante had fought like hell to defy his fate.
But then the pride mixed with the anger and resentment which had driven me to this point, but also the fear and regret Mia had stirred that morning when she had begged me to reconsider ending Dante’s life.
Emotions which had infuriated me then, but pushed against my chest now like a heavy weight I could not lift.
‘Please, Vito, don’t do this. For me. For us. The feud might never end. And it will hurt you, too.’
Damn it, why couldn’t I get those words out of my head?
The gun I had holstered under my arm felt so much heavier than usual.
But instead of drawing it and taking the shot I had been envisioning for months now, I found myself lifting a chair and slamming it down beside my brother’s slumped body.
The thought of Mia’s pleas and the deep compassion in her eyes started to crush my ribs and made it hard for me to breathe.
I sat down, folding my arms over the back of the chair as the emotions I had been afraid of, the emotions she had stirred, drained the last of the anger I had felt towards this man for so long…
Again, Dante didn’t raise his head, but I saw tension ripple down his spine, his back a mass of purpling bruises.
Suddenly I was drawn back to the day when I had seen him last…
not a man then but just a child, fierce and loyal and confused.
I could hear the sound of that boy’s angry tears, the squeal of the mongrel puppy he had nurtured.
The brutal crack of my father’s hand across his face as Dante had tried to defend his treasured pet.
And the hollow pop of the gun my father had used to kill it.
I huffed out a breath. And let the emotion claim me this time.
I didn’t just want Mia. I needed her. I loved her. But I was terrified of admitting it to myself because of everything that had happened on that terrible day, when I had let my father do something unforgiveable to Dante, to his dog, and had done nothing to help him.
Could I save him now, save us both, by finding another way? The weight eased, the heavy burden of guilt I hadn’t even realised had been crushing me for a very long time lifting at last.
Fuck it. Mia had been right.
I needed Mia. I wanted her. Why shouldn’t I have her? If I showed Dante mercy, would it make me worthy of her, would it prove I deserved her? All of her. Not just her body. Not just her loyalty, but also her love?
‘If you’re going to fucking kill me, just do it.’ Dante’s slurred voice pulled me out of my thoughts. Defiant, insolent and full of the same rage which had once filled me.
‘Look at me, you coward,’ I snarled, letting my anger towards him show. I was damned if I was going to make this easy for him.
But when he raised his head, and I saw his face up close for the first time in twenty years, the compassion I’d tried so hard to deny welled up inside me.
One eye was swollen shut, but the other was the same sky blue as my own. Would my son inherit that colour too? If he did, and I murdered Dante now, how would I look at my son and not see Dante again?
His face was swollen, fresh blood smeared across his lips, and new bruises were purpling on his jaw.
But beneath the swelling, I could see so much of what I saw in the mirror each morning—and also so much of that boy who had followed me around on this island, chatting away aimlessly about anything and everything, that mongrel puppy trailing behind him, until I hadn’t been able to stop myself from bonding with him. From loving him like a brother.
Funny to think we had always looked more like full brothers than half brothers, the only real difference being his darker skin—a result of his mother’s Moroccan grandfather, I suspected.
‘What the fuck are you looking at?’ he sneered, goading me now.
Yeah, he was still a hothead, still a threat. But I’d be damned if I’d allow him to destroy what I had with Mia.
I sighed.
I could not be soft on Dante. He had done something unforgiveable, and he deserved to be punished. And if I was not going to kill him, I also knew I could not set him free. Until I knew he would no longer be a threat, because now I had so much more to protect.
So I would have to find another way to end this blood feud my father had started. The man who had chosen to discard one son while saving another.
I got off the chair, kicked it away, and then knelt beside him and gripped his hair.
He hissed, his swollen jaw clenching as I yanked his head back to glare into his eyes.
‘If you were anyone but my brother, you would be dead already,’ I said, and meant it.
But something flickered in his eyes, something that looked like shock before he could mask it… And suddenly I wondered, had he really meant to kill me that night?
No one had died. Why had no one died? I’d thought at the time it was because our firepower was greater, but what the guard had said came back to me now.
‘He does not know when he is beaten.’
And I could still remember the eight-year-old boy who had kept punching, kept fighting, even as my father had slapped him down over and over again before killing his dog.
Dante would have fought to the death to kill me that night if that had been his intention.
‘So, we’re brothers again, are we?’ he sneered, but I heard the weariness and pain he was trying so hard to hide, as well as the anger.
‘We never stopped being brothers, idiota,’ I murmured.
I let go of his hair, satisfied I had got my point across when his head hit the wall with a solid thunk.
He was cursing me, telling me to kill him and get it over with, as I walked out of the cell without looking back and locked the door.
Figuring out what to do with that dumb bastard was a problem for another day. He could rot in this hole for a long while for all I cared. It would give him time to consider his actions. But I had something much bigger and more important to figure out first.
I bounded up the stairs, suddenly desperate to see Mia, to hold her, to take the devastated look out of her eyes, the terrible hope making my heart pound and my ribs hurt.
I was a bad man, a bad person, and I would still do bad things, but tonight I had to find a way to prove to her she would always be an oasis of good in me. That I wanted the lightness she had brought into my life. That I loved it—and her.
And I had a bad feeling that meant, for the first time in my life, I was going to have to beg.
When I got to our bedroom, though, and she wasn’t waiting for me as I had demanded, I had to clamp down on the swift surge of fury…and panic.
As I searched the villa’s rooms unable to find her, the panic turned to fear. But as I raced back through the house, ready to initiate a search of the island, I spotted a moonlit figure in the cove below.
Mia.
I choked down the panic, but the fear remained as I watched her step into the water. Visceral dread washed through me. And for a moment I was rooted to the stone terrace, unable to move, unable to think.
Was she intending to kill herself to escape me? The way my mother had, to escape him…?
Had I done that to her? Had I caused this by my actions? Of course I had. Because I had made her feel she was worthless, that she meant nothing to me, in order to protect myself.
Adrenaline coursed through my body on a wave of pain, propelling me to the steps to stop her. But as I charged down them two at a time, a wave of terror and regret rose up my throat to choke me.
Mia
‘Fermati, Mia!’
I swung round to see Vito running across the sand towards me. The way he had so many weeks ago now.
I’d come to the cove to feel the sea on my body, to cool the burning pain in my heart and to figure out how to go on from here. I had watched Vito leave the villa an hour ago from our bedroom window on a motorbike, a gun holstered under his arm.
But when he reached me this time, instead of the fury from weeks ago or the cold resentment from this morning, all I saw was fear.
He sank to his knees in front of me and wrapped his arms around my legs, rubbing his cheek against my belly, holding me so tightly I could feel his stubble through the cotton negligée.
‘Do not do it. Do not leave me. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t.’
‘Vito!’ I thrust shaking fingers into his hair to pull his head back, hearing the anguish in his voice even as my heart lifted and rammed my chest wall.
His blue eyes looked pale in the moonlight, and wild with grief.
‘Y-you didn’t kill your brother?’
He shook his head. ‘The men have beaten him, which is what he deserves,’ he said with venom.
But then he grasped my bottom to press his face even harder into my belly, his voice muffled when he added, ‘And he will remain a prisoner here—until I decide what to do with him. But no, I did not kill him.’
I stroked his hair, the short, silky spikes damp with sweat, my heart so light it felt as if it might fly off into the starry night above us. The night which had seemed so dark and forbidding only moments before.
‘I’m glad,’ I murmured, then swallowed down the searing hope, not wanting to let it overwhelm me too soon. ‘But why did you spare him?’
He let out a heavy sigh, then drew his head back so he could look into my eyes.
‘Because you were right,’ he said, his voice a growl of regret.
‘Dante was the only person I ever truly cared for, until I met you… He was my brother, and I made myself hate him. I thought this made me strong, invincible. But then you came into my life and made me want things I did not understand.’ He blinked, his own eyes shimmering with tears now too, tears I knew he would never shed for anyone but me.
‘I thought if I had feelings for you, they would make me weak. I thought I could control them if I controlled you. But then I fell in love with you anyway… And I could not control any of it.’
I jolted, shocked by the pain in his voice and the joy surging into my heart.
‘And it terrified you?’ I murmured, but I already knew the answer to that. Because our love had terrified me too.
He nodded, then climbed to his feet to draw me against him, to press his lips to my hair. He held me so tightly, I could feel his voice reverberating in his sternum as he spoke.
‘Yes, it did. You terrify me, Mia. Your bravery, your trust, your passion. I have been scared to feel anything for so long. I never wanted to feel this way about anyone. But with you, I did not ever have a choice. This is ironic, no?’ He huffed.
‘When you once accused me of taking your choices away from you.’
I laughed. I couldn’t help it, he sounded so annoyed and dumbfounded.
He clasped my cheeks to tilt my head back and push my hair away from my face. He brushed his thumbs over my tear-streaked cheeks as the emotion of his declaration blindsided me again.
‘Don’t cry, Mia. It destroys me,’ he said, pressing his lips to my cheeks to kiss away the tears, even though they were happy tears now. ‘I’m so sorry for what I said, for what I did this morning. For treating you like a whore when you will always be a goddess to me. You must forgive me.’
I let out a jagged sigh, moved by the genuine agony in his voice—and the tenderness I knew he would only ever let me see.
I cradled his cheek, felt his jaw tense, and let my heart show in my eyes. ‘Okay, I’ll forgive you, but I think there has to be payback,’ I said, trying for flirtatious but getting overjoyed instead.
A sensual smile spread across his lips. Then he swung me into his arms to march towards the beach sofa he’d had installed weeks ago, after the first time we’d made love here on the sand.
‘Name it,’ he said. ‘Whatever penance you decide, I will pay it, and gladly.’
I grasped his cheek to draw his gaze to mine, giddy with love at the thought of this dominant, powerful man trusting our love enough to hand over his precious control to me.
‘I think perhaps you should be my sex slave for the rest of the night,’ I teased, my heart light with joy.
Especially when he frowned but said, ‘Consider it done.’
Several mind-blowing orgasms later, during which he had already forgotten his promise not to dominate, he told me again he had given me his heart…and begged me to forgive him.
As I lay draped over him in the moonlight, his arms around me, the afterglow shimmering through my body, both of us naked and exhausted, I listened to the lap of the water while the sweat dried on my skin.
And I knew, whatever happened next in the dangerous world in which I now lived, I would never want to be anywhere else, because my heart would always be safe with him.