Chapter Eight Guinevere #2
“A side effect, maybe, of being very enchanting yourself.” He was smiling at me, pale eyes bright, but there was an artifice to it that made me think he was trying too hard.
He was the last of Raffa’s friends I had to connect with, and I had the feeling he was making a sincere effort to be kind to me.
“If you want to see something truly worthy of wonder, you should climb the bell tower to watch the last of the sunset. Raffa mentioned you enjoyed watching the sunsets from Piazzale Michelangelo in Firenze, but watching one over the hills of Chianti is a true spectacle.”
“It’s open to the public?” I had noticed the old stone tower as soon as we’d walked into the piazza that afternoon. It was no doubt the best viewpoint in town.
“Yes, yes,” he assured me, distracted by his father leaning close to whisper something in his ear. “Let me show you the entrance before I leave.”
I agreed, pleasantly surprised by his overture of friendship. “Grazie, Leo.”
“I will leave you two youths to enjoy the festival,” Tonio suggested. “It’s time for this old man to go home to bed.”
We both said our goodbyes, and then Leo offered me his arm with a little bow as his father took off for the exit without us.
I smiled as I slid my hand over Leo’s forearm and let him lead me through the crowded entry, around the milling bodies in the street, and toward the bell tower.
A band had started to play in the square, the music amplified by the crowded buildings surrounding the open bowl of the piazza.
“I am sorry about before,” Leo said over his shoulder. “I was rude when we first met. It didn’t have anything to do with you. Not really.”
I waited for him to continue as we finally reached a closed wooden door that swung open easily under Leo’s big hand.
He was a handsome man, dark-gold hair and pale eyes contrasting nicely with olive-toned skin.
He had to be Northern Italian with coloring like that.
Gemma had ended up with similar looks, our Italian father’s skin and our Albanian mother’s flaxen locks.
The door closed behind me with a loud clanging, which startled me into yelping, hand flying up to cover my lurching heart.
Leo only peered at me through the dark. “I fell in love with a foreigner once too. She was charming and beautiful, and I thought at the time that I would give up anything for her.” He paused, one hand clenching tight at his side.
“It didn’t end well. I didn’t want to see a man I consider my brother go through the same thing. ”
I stepped closer to place a careful hand on his closed fist. “I’m sorry, Leo. Losing someone is never easy.”
“That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?” he asked.
Among the shadows, his face was hard, almost cruel.
His teeth were flat and square, not like Raffa’s pointed canines—they looked brutal enough to chew through bone.
I was seeing monsters in every man now that Raffa had pulled back the veil on his underworld, even kind and good-looking ones like Leo.
“You haven’t lost your love. Not really.
You’re making the choice to let him go. You wanted the truth, yet when he gave you honesty, you couldn’t handle it. ”
Before I could think of what to say, Leo’s phone started ringing, and he pulled it out of his pocket, frowning down at the screen.
“I’m sorry, Guinevere. This is important. Will you be okay to find your way to the top without me?”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, because there was real distress on his face as the phone continued to ring in his hand.
“It will be,” he stated firmly, like his belief alone could make it so. “Enjoy the view. I’ll make sure Ludo knows where you are.”
I nodded, turning away from him to the shadowy mouth of the stairwell.
“Follow the light to the top,” he instructed before closing the door and leaving me alone in the dark.
I listened to my own harsh breaths for a moment, willing my heart to slow and my equilibrium to balance. When I felt steady, I sucked in a deep breath and started up the narrow, winding stairs.
Leo’s words had touched on the questions that lay at the foundation of my tension with Raffa.
Was I brave enough to love him for who he was and courageous enough to stand beside him in the criminal underworld he reigned in?
And did I really know the whole truth?
Both Raffa and Leo had implied that I did, but knowing that Raffa was a mafioso was the tip of the iceberg.
Had he killed many men? Any women or children?
Did he have morals or rules of conduct when he was free to write them as he pleased?
What was the ethical tapestry of a made man?
What was the structure of that kind of business and organization?
There were considerably more questions than answers.
If I wanted to know Raffa, the real man and not the one I’d idealized, I would have to let my natural curiosity lead me into trouble once more.
Only this time my eyes would be wide open, fixed on the treacherous nature of the steps I took forward.
The first questions I had to ask were of myself.
I wasn’t a stupid woman.
College educated, bright enough to graduate top of my class, I had always been complimented for my intelligence and puzzle solving.
So had I really been so blind to the hints that Raffa was something darker than Prince Charming? Or had those very clues drawn me in even closer, a glittering lure leading me through murky waters?
I might have been the good sister and daughter, the A+ student and sheltered sick girl, but I was also the woman who fantasized about spankings and bondage.
The one who thought a necklace of love bites was just as pretty as one of jewels.
The one who watched violent movies because the action excited her, and the one who got aroused, sometimes, when she learned MMA and took an opponent to the mat.
There was something hungry in the heart of me, and Raffa had been the first person to see it. To feed it full.
So maybe I hadn’t acknowledged his darkness, but had I secretly known or willfully turned a blind eye to continue living out the fantasy of my Italian hero?
Maybe.
Pink light splashed across the stones at my feet, warming my ankles like tropical water as I reached the top of the stairwell and stepped out onto the small platform under the peaked tower roof.
The bell was almost as big as the space, a great big iron bulb.
Archways opened the enclosure at regular intervals, revealing a stunning view of the piazza filled with colorful, costumed revelers and the band playing away in one corner.
Beyond that, down the slope of the hills leading away from town, were countless rows of vines marking this as a part of the famous Chianti region.
Everything was covered in honeyed light dripping from a multihued sky that seemed to melt into itself, vivid pink to orange to softening yellow and blue.
It was breathtaking.
I followed my impulse to lean through an archway, elbows braced on the warm stone and chin propped on my hands so I could enjoy the rest of the sunset by myself, way above the teeming mass of Italians.
I don’t know what it was exactly that alerted me to the presence of someone in the stairwell, because they didn’t make a sound. It was just a vague sense, honed over months of paranoia and recent trauma, that tickled the back of my neck like a cool breath.
I was no longer alone.
Adjusting my stance casually, I moved so the entrance of the stairwell was in my peripheral vision and the blurred movement in the shadows of the lowering dusk light solidified into a human form.
I had nothing on my person except the cell phone in my cardigan. Carefully, so my arm hardly twitched, I dipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the phone. I thumbed the screen open and hit Raffa’s name in my Favorites.
Just as the faint whisper of a ring began, the person stalking me decided to pounce.
They lunged out of the darkness onto the small platform, intending to tackle me, maybe, or force me into the corner.
But I was already moving, twisting with the half wall at my back so I was no longer in the corner.
The man couldn’t stop himself mid-motion, so I could use his own momentum against him and shove him harder into the half wall.
His head cracked against the stone with a sickening sound, but he recovered quickly.
When he turned to face me, forehead split and bleeding heavily above one eye, his hands were lifted as if in surrender.
“I am not here to harm you,” he said in slow, careful Italian. “I am a friend.”
I could hear Raffa’s voice calling out from the phone in my pocket.
“I don’t know you, and usually when someone sneaks up and lunges at you, they don’t have friendly intentions,” I countered, shifting so I was closer to the stairs.
To my surprise, he grinned, and there was something genuinely warm in his expression that gave me pause. “True. I’m sorry for scaring you. I had hoped to take you quickly and quietly.”
“Where? And why?”
“The Venetian wants you,” he admitted. “That’s all I can say at the moment. But please, you must come with me.”
“No.” I had nothing to defend myself with, but I bent my knees and rolled slightly to my toes, grateful I had decided to wear practical flat sandals because of the Romano children. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I have something,” he said as I eyed the distance to the stairs. He kept one hand in the air as the other reached for his pocket, which was coincidently next to his holstered gun. “I was told to show you this.”
My breath arrested when he pulled a shiny gold chain from his pocket, unraveling it until the pendant swung into sight. It was a gold cross, something that adorned the necks of countless men and women in this country.
Only I knew who had worn that necklace.