Chapter Twelve Guinevere
Chapter Twelve
Guinevere
We returned in time for dinner, but there was no way to get back to the house to tidy up without being seen, so we did our best to make each other presentable.
It must not have worked well, because there were a few low whistles and Italian catcalls when we emerged from the shadowy vines into the lights of the terrace, where five long tables had been placed end to end and filled with most of the community members who had helped out that day.
Raffa quelled the calls with one superior look, and placed a comforting hand on my low back to lead me to one end of the table, where the head chair remained empty, along with one to its left.
Martina winked at me as I took the seat beside her, and Renzo gave me an assessing stare from where he sat across from me on Raffa’s right.
Carmine, next to him, waggled his brows.
“You have a grape stain,” Ludo said in his monotone, face utterly expressionless as he motioned to his own chest. “Just there.”
I peered down at my white dress and noticed the vague mottled pink handprint over my dress.
As we were getting dressed, Raffa had collected a handful of grapes and crushed them in his palm, then made me laugh as he lifted his fist to let me drink the juice dripping down.
After, he had tugged me into a searing kiss that had left me with even fewer working brain cells than I had after two spectacular orgasms.
So I hadn’t really noted the way he’d used that grape-stained hand to fondle me through the fabric.
I cut a look toward the head of the Romano clan, who only smiled mildly at me as he reached for the glass of wine already set out for him and lifted it into the air.
“Attenzione, amici miei.” Raffa’s voice carried easily over the cacophony of diners dispersed over the extra-long table, and people immediately quieted.
“Thank you for being here with us today on the first day of the harvest. My family has worked this land and produced Tuscan wine for generations. Even in our darkest days, the vines have brought us solace.” His gaze dropped to mine, a slight tip to the edge of his firm mouth the only nod to what had just happened between us among those very vines.
“There is nothing more important to me in this life than protecting and nurturing my family.
Every single one of you is a part of the fabric of this family, and this family is the reason I am here today. Thank you for everything.
“Salute,” he called out, raising a chorus of the same as everyone lifted their wineglasses at the toast and then sipped from their Tenuta Romano wine.
Only, when I lifted the glass to my lips, it was sparkling grape juice instead of wine.
Something in my chest overinflated, making it ache.
Of course Raffa would remember I couldn’t really drink. Of course he would have taken the time to make Angela and the other organizers aware so that I wouldn’t have to sit awkwardly without a drink or stick to water when there was cause for celebration.
Raffa had told me from the beginning that he wasn’t the kind of man to play the hero, but his actions were almost always contrary to his words. He’d taken care of me since the beginning, and even when I’d run from him, he’d seen a way to take care of me all the way in Michigan.
Coaxing him away from the group this evening hadn’t been a well-thought-out plan.
I hadn’t even consciously decided to lure him away to seduce him.
When I’d watched him chatting with his sisters, interacting with his community, and laughing with his mother, something seismic had occurred in my chest. A tectonic shifting of morals and values I had clung to for years.
It wasn’t that I suddenly understood why Raffa lived life the way he did as the head of a criminal syndicate or that I was instantly okay with the myriads of decisions he’d made to get there and stay there.
It still disturbed me to think of the bodies that lay littered throughout his past, the blood that had seeped beneath the skin of his hands to stain even his bones red.
It was that I realized something fundamental about myself in relation to him.
I was willing to bury my morals alive in a deep grave for just one more kiss.
Eager to cut out the tongue of my conscience to hear him call me his cerbiatta or stella cadente just one more time.
Happy to blind myself to his flaws and failings completely if it meant feeling those calloused, wide-palmed hands on me just once more before I died.
This was my ugly truth. The one I’d been trying to hide from since the realization of who Raffa was the night after the San Lorenzo party.
I was willing to lower myself to the dark depths of his underworld if it meant I could keep the flame of this brilliant love alive inside my chest.
It was chilling, really, to acknowledge that about myself after a lifetime of being told to follow the rules, be a good girl, watch what I said and how I acted so no one would judge.
But it was also frighteningly freeing.
And empowering.
Walking through the vines and feeling the predatory eyes of Raffa stalking my every step had encouraged me to embrace the sizzle of wicked fantasy burning the edges of my brain.
I’d started running without thinking it through, my blood rushing loudly in my ears but not loud enough to cancel out the thud of his footsteps gaining ground behind me.
Being hunted like that was strangely erotic. Knowing he wanted to catch me because I was a cherished prize, that when he did he would undress me, devour me, give me what the French called the “little death.”
It felt like a death, coming under those grape-stained hands knowing they’d frequently been tainted by real blood, knowing as they parted my thighs gently that they had taken lives violently, knowing as he praised me for taking him inside me that he had threatened men more than twice my size into submission . . .
It was something out of my most depraved fantasies. Thoughts I only ever allowed myself at night without a stitch of light to lend them any kind of reality.
And there I was, hunted and fucked open beneath a clear sky, just a hillside away from a group of sixty people toiling away in the vines.
When I cried out, a small, wanton part of me hoped they would hear it.
“Did you have fun on your walk in the vineyard?” Martina’s voice pulled me from my revelry. I blushed at the look on her face, dark eyes sparkling, brows raised as she took a sip of wine.
“It was stimulating,” I responded in the blandest voice I could summon.
We stared at each other for a moment before we both burst into laughter.
“You are not so much the ingenua anymore, are you, Vera?”
“No,” I agreed. “Though I’m not sure exactly what I am anymore, to be honest.”
“You have time to find out,” she said, but the smile fell from her lips, and her eyes were matte black, the color of a gun. “You should take it. All the time you need. Because once you make a decision about this kind of thing, there is no going back. Trust me.”
“I know. The problem is, I feel like I made the decision before I knew exactly what I was agreeing to,” I admitted, sneaking a glance at Raffa, who had his head bent to Renzo, nodding at something intently.
Martina hummed, studying the quality of the wine by hovering it above a candle flame. It shone darkly, like stale blood.
“I was married before. Did you know this?”
“No, I had no idea.” It was hard to picture the strong, no-bullshit Martina with anyone but Renzo, even though I knew they weren’t really together.
“I fell in love when I was very young, just sixteen. Umberto hung around with some of the local crew, and he was beautiful, with hair that curled over his head.” Her voice had a distant quality, a voice-over playing over an old memory.
“I used to put my finger inside the curls and pull. We got married when I was eighteen, and I moved from my parents’ home into one he bought for us.
We both joined the forze armate italiane, him for the prestige he sought and me because I had always been drawn to combat.
“I realized quickly that I didn’t know Umberto like I thought. Seeing him after school for a few hours a handful of days in the week and on weekends was not a large snapshot into what he was really like. I had not seen him stressed or in pain or slept with him after a particularly bad day.”
She paused to take a long draft from her glass and then carefully set it down to show me her left ring finger. The shape of it was wrong, crooked like the gnarled trunk of a tree.
“It wasn’t until Raffa left for England that he started to get physical with me.
We had moved away from town to a military base in the south, and there was no one, now that Raffaele was gone, to check in on us.
Renzo and Carmine had gone with him. The first time he hurt me, it was because the butcher I went to every week called out hello to me when I went for dinner with my husband.
Umberto was livid. He thought I was having an affair.
He broke my finger so that the ring would never come off. ”
I hissed at the horror of the story, reaching out to run my own finger down hers. There was no ring at the base anymore, not even a tan line.
“The emotional and physical abuse started to get worse when I was promoted over him in the ranks. Umberto was mean and impatient, and you can be mean in the military, but impatience never goes over well. The second time I was promoted over him, he beat me so badly, I passed out and woke up in the bathtub with a broken arm, clavicle, and eye socket.”
“Martina,” I murmured, clasping her hand in both of mine.
It was almost impossible to comprehend someone as strong as Martina being abused, but I knew it happened to many women across the globe. I made myself stay still and silent for the rest of her story even though feminine rage surged like bile up my throat.