Chapter Six Raffa
Chapter Six
Raffa
To my surprise, Guinevere slept through the transfer from plane to car. She curled herself into my chest as I carried her down the stairs to the waiting vehicle on the tarmac at the private airport outside of Firenze, and when I tried to move her onto her own seat inside the SUV, she whimpered.
It was a good excuse not to let her go.
Carmine shot me a look in the rearview mirror as he drove us through the countryside to Villa Romano, but he did not say a word, turning the volume up on classical music instead.
Affection pulsed in my chest like a second heartbeat.
It was good of him to give me that moment without teasing—uncharacteristic too.
Clearly, I was not the only one who had missed the American girl.
The sun was setting when we finally pulled up to the wrought iron gates of the Romano estate. Rose-gold light spilled over the vines on the left side of the road and turned the grass to luminous metal sheaves on the right.
“Guinevere,” I said, gently rousing her because I knew she would love the view, and some part of me was eager—proud—to show her the beauty of my home. “Wake up. We have arrived.”
She stirred in my arms, mauve eyelids fluttering before they peeled back to squint up at me.
The long rest had done wonders, adding some color to her cheeks.
I held still as she groaned and stretched in my arms, a sleepy smile tugging that full mouth into a pink crescent I wanted to kiss open and plunder.
“Raffa,” she murmured, still asleep enough to forget herself. “I always dream about you.”
It was as if her small hand had reached into the cage of my ribs and wrenched out my heart.
“This is not a dream, cerbiatta mia,” I told her softly, taking advantage of the situation by running a calloused finger down the suede-soft edge of her jaw. “You are awake, you are safe, and I have finally brought you home to Villa Romano.”
Even though I knew it was coming, watching her warm, open expression ice over made my stomach clench.
I let her scrabble out of my lap onto the seat beside me, smoothing down her threadbare, oversized college tee as if she was insecure or somehow immodest.
“Look,” I encouraged her, pointing out the window. “I woke you to watch the sun settle.”
Her mouth dropped open, her eyes tight with anger before she instinctively shot a glance out the glass over her shoulder. She arrested, one hand lifting to gently touch the pane the way she had done those early days back in Firenze, when she was discovering its beauty for the first time.
“Wow,” she breathed, turning completely to face the window and the glimmering, deeply orange sun kissing the tops of the endless stretch of vines leading up and away from the top of the hill we were cresting. “It’s like something from a dream.”
I swallowed the urge to tell her this was my dream. Her in my home, meeting my family, seeing the sweet and sour memories that haunted this place for me.
“How many vines do you have?” she asked, forgetting her acrimony in the face of her undying curiosity.
“One hundred twenty-five acres of vineyard,” I told her. “Tenuta Romano is one of the oldest wineries in the country. My ancestors have lived here for over one thousand years. The tower by the gate is an Etruscan ruin, actually, and the main house on the hill is hundreds of years old.”
“So cool,” she whispered.
The tangerine light kissed her face as she turned it fully into the fading rays, limning her in a neon glow I wanted to trace with my fingertips.
“I thought you would like it here,” I confessed.
It was the wrong thing to say.
She slid me a sidelong look, shoulders tensed. “Yet you didn’t bring me here.”
“It would have been . . .” Unbearable. “Hard to introduce you to my family knowing you were leaving shortly.”
“And now? I’ll still leave, Raffa. After you take out whoever it is who is coming for you and, by proxy, me.”
I tilted my head at the tone of her voice, trying to decide if I was reading into it too much. Because there was something there. A reticence or a lack of conviction. Something that said she was attempting to convince herself as well as me.
Outside the window a dog swooped into view from between the vines, a segugio maremmano purebred my sister Stacci had named Aio. He ran beside the car as we ascended the circular road climbing up the hill, his dappled body glowing gold.
“What a beautiful baby,” Guinevere breathed, her hand clenched against the window.
There was yearning there, and awe.
“You like dogs?”
Her laugh was wistful. “Always. We didn’t have time to take care of one because I was always in and out of the hospital, and my parents felt it wasn’t fair to leave a dog alone so much.
Gemma had a hamster for about two weeks before it escaped the cage and got stuck in a drawer.
My dad decapitated it accidently when we were searching for it.
” She winced. “Needless to say, we never got another one.”
I laughed, shocked that even when she was angry with me, she could still be sweet and funny.
“We have had dogs all my life. Stacci breeds segugio maremmano, a type of Italian scent hound. Her husband, Emiliano, is a hunter, and Aio there is good enough to take on a boar if he needs to.”
“Wow,” she said again, then laughed at herself, pushing a lock of hair out of her face as she turned to face me. “I’m sorry, I forgot, I guess.”
“Forgot?”
She shrugged, chewing on her lower lip for a moment before admitting, “How magical everything is here. How much it feels like a fairy tale.”
When she looked up, our eyes caught, and even though she jerked her chin as if to wrench her gaze away, it did not work. We stared at each other across mere inches, and yet it felt as if the entire Atlantic Ocean still separated us.
“A Grimms’ fairy tale,” she corrected. “The bloody kind.”
I inclined my head in agreement. “Let us hope this one ends happily.”
At least for one of us.
She pursed her lips, but the sound of screaming children drew her attention out the window again.
Maximo, Vitale, Zacheo, and Mattia all waited at the crest of the driveway, the latter two jumping up and down and waving their arms.
“Zio Raffa,” they cried, out of sync with each other.
Aio barked in agreement, racing up to them and dancing between their wriggling bodies.
I laughed despite the tense atmosphere in the car and lowered my window so I could call out in Italian, “Ciao, ragazzi! Sei stato buono con le tue madri?”
Hello, children! Have you been good for your mothers?
“No!” they all cried before dissolving into giggles, running alongside the car as it started to pass them.
I chuckled, grabbing at Maximo’s hand when he pushed it through the window, leaning forward to clutch him under the arms and pull him swiftly into the slow-moving car.
His laugh was a high-pitched squeal as I buried my face in his neck to blow a raspberry after he settled in my lap.
“And how is my favorite nephew today?” I asked in Italian.
He screwed up his face in irritation. “You call all of us your favorites, Uncle!”
“Why, yes, I do. But let me tell you something, I missed you very much.”
Truthfully, Stacci’s and Carlotta’s sons were one of the only reasons I came back to Villa Romano at all.
Without them, it was too easy to live in the past. To see my sisters silent and subjugated when my father was present.
To see my mother valiantly trying to raise her children when her husband was out sleeping with whomever he pleased, carousing and acting like a bigwig in Firenze.
The boys brought new life to the villa, swept away the ghosts with their laughter and silly games.
Before I had gone to Michigan to save Guinevere, I had only been home once in the two months following her departure. My mother and sisters had noticed my melancholy even though I had done my best to hide it, and I did not want to answer any more questions about “that American girl.”
So it was good to be home.
It was even better, in a bittersweet way, to have Guinevere there at my side.
When I looked over Maximo’s curly head at her, she was staring at me with wide eyes, holding her body so still she seemed almost afraid of me.
When she noticed my gaze, she gave a shake of her head as if to rid herself of a bad memory, and then shot me a tight smile before turning toward the window and the house as it loomed ahead of us.
The pale-gold stone structure may have been old, but my family had always been wealthy, so it was in incredibly good repair.
Cypress trees lined the last stretch of gravel driveway, and a stone fountain with a female statue pouring water from a basin had been erected centrally in the circular courtyard before the front door.
Angela, my mother, stood outside with Stacci—who was holding her youngest, Nico—and Carlotta, Delfina, Ludo, and Leo.
“They pull out the welcome committee,” Carmine murmured from the front seat.
“Carm!” Guinevere exclaimed, leaning forward to place a hand on his shoulder and grin at him in the rearview mirror. “I didn’t know you were driving. I’m sorry I was ignoring you.”
“You’ve had a rough day,” he allowed, eyes sparkling as he raised a hand to place it over hers before pulling to a stop in front of the house. “It is about to be more exhausting after you meet the Romano women. I was happy to let you rest.”
“Well, I am happy to see you,” she admitted, though a shadow crossed her expression, and she dropped her hand from his shoulder. “Even if we are more strangers than friends.”
Before he could respond, Guinevere was opening her door and slipping outside.
I looked at Carmine, who winced and shrugged. “It’s going to take time, boss.”
Fortunately, time was one thing I seemed to have, given we had no leads on who was provoking the Pietra and Greco clans into turning against us.
“What do you say, Maximo—should we enter the fray?” I asked my five-year-old nephew.