Chapter Twelve Guinevere #3
Honestly, the idea of Raffa renouncing the Camorra had never even occurred to me.
It didn’t seem likely the capo dei capi would up and leave his organization for some pretty, young American or that the camorristi would let him just walk away.
He knew too much. In books and movies, people like Raffa who tried to leave the life were always killed before they could touch their toes to the white sand beach of their happily ever after.
“I’ll have to disagree with you on that,” I said finally, happy that my voice gave nothing of my inner turmoil away.
Because now that he’d planted the seed, I couldn’t help but think of a different reality where Raffa moved to the States with me.
Maybe he took over Dad’s firm with me eventually, the two of us expanding it and making it into something of our own.
Maybe we started fresh somewhere away from my parents, in California or North Carolina, somewhere warm enough to appeal to my Italian boyfriend.
Boyfriend.
That thought alone burst the fragile bubble of fantasy.
Raffa was not my boyfriend. He could be no one’s boyfriend.
He was a thirty-four-year-old mafioso. To think he could be something so .
. . trite and juvenile as my boyfriend was ridiculous.
To think that he could just uproot his life from Tuscany, with his family, friends, and entire underworld empire, was absolutely idiotic.
And despite what Tonio obviously thought of me, I was not an idiota.
“Raffa would no sooner leave his family behind than he would cut off his own hand,” I replied dryly, shooting Tonio an unimpressed look. “Clearly, you do not know him well if you think he would give all that up for someone he met a few months ago.”
He stared down at me with those narrow, watery blue eyes, and I wondered how old he was, because he seemed ancient and omnipotent in that moment, something peering out at me from the dark with knowledge I’d never have.
“Clearly, you do not know his heart as well as you should, given it is in your possession,” he countered softly, a disappointed twist to his mouth as he dropped my hands abruptly and stepped away from me.
“If you asked, he would give up everything for you. Raffa never wanted this life, and now that he has a tangible reason to leave it, you are too cowardly to give it to him.”
He walked away from me without another word.
I decided then and there I did not like the di Conte family very much.
“What did you say to upset Uncle Tonio?” Raffa asked, appearing between swirling bodies at my side.
Before I could respond, he was taking me into his arms, flattening me against his torso with a hand pressed firmly at the base of my spine while the other took my hand and started to swirl me around the terrace.
I laughed breathlessly as he pushed me out under his arm in a twirl and then hauled me back into his side.
“He seems to think you’re in love with me,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Your whole family seems to have an opinion on our relationship.”
“They are Italian,” he said with a shrug.
“It is our way to be nosy about each other’s love lives.
We invented the soap opera, you know.” He smiled slightly as I laughed.
“Besides, Uncle Tonio has a soft heart. He adopted Leo legally, but he also fostered half a dozen of our soldati when they were boys, Michele and Philippe among them. He was also the one who encouraged me to go to school in England, even though Aldo forbade it.” He paused, dipping closer to run his nose along my hairline.
“And Guinevere, you must know, because I have said so in both English and Italian, I do love you.”
The words dropped through the center of my chest like a stone in a pond, sending ripples throughout my body to the ends of my fingers and my toes.
“It is you who does not love me,” he murmured quietly, ducking his head to nip at my ear. “Because you fear only a monster could love another monster.”
“True monsters aren’t capable of love at all,” I retorted before I could think of how he might take my words.
His flinch was imperceptible, but I felt it against my body and ached for him.
“No,” I said, the word harsh between us. “I meant you cannot be a monster when I so clearly see how much you love your friends and family.”
And me, I thought but didn’t have the courage to say.
“Your uncle was implying that if I asked you to give it all up for me, you would,” I confessed, because I didn’t want to have a secret with the older man and because I wanted to see how he might react to the possibility.
Raffa’s brows lifted, a lock of dark hair curving over his forehead as he stared down at me. “Mmm, I had not thought about that.”
I was startled into laughing. “You know, I thought the same thing. It doesn’t seem like a practical solution.”
“Practical? No. Not at all. But something I would have to seriously think about if you asked it of me,” he mused as if I’d asked him something casual, whether he wanted sugar in his coffee.
“Are you kidding?”
He blinked slowly as he puzzled through something and then shook his head as he looked into my eyes again. “No, I do not kid. Are you asking me?”
Adrenaline sluiced through me like acid, chewing up my bones and muscles until I felt like I might dissolve into nothing.
“No,” I said, more breath than voice. “I’m not asking.”
“And I am not saying it would be possible,” he returned easily. “But when I told you that whatever wish you made I would see done, I meant it.”
“This is real life, and you are not a genie,” I rebutted, an edge to my voice even I didn’t understand. “You couldn’t just . . . leave easy as you please from this life.”
“You are right. It would take violence and planning. You would have to live with knowing I would kill many people who would try to come for us. Whatever happily ever after you might have imagined for yourself will never happen with me, Guinevere. Even in America, even living another life, I will always have a dark heart, and therefore we will always have a dark ever after. We will never be truly safe—no matter which life you think is best for yourself—as long as you are with me.”
Suddenly exhausted, I stopped dancing and tugged my hand from Raffa’s.
“Why is violence always the first answer with you?” I asked before turning on my heel and heading into the house.
There were people in the kitchen cleaning up and laughing, a couple in the room by the stairs making out heavily on the sofa, but I ignored them all to climb the stairs to my bedroom.
Behind me the clack of dress shoes followed.
I entered my room and tossed the door shut behind me only to have Raffa catch it in his hand and throw it closed once he entered after me.
“Why do you insist on being naive?” he demanded, his expression as fierce as that of a gladiator facing down three adversaries and a lion in the Colosseum.
“You think your father escaped whatever hell he was running from in Italy without bloodshed? You do not think he was running away from his own sins?”
He stalked toward me. Automatically, I backed up until my knees hit the end of the bed and my momentum forced me to sit down. He kept a foot of space between us, but it felt superheated, the earth between us about to split apart.
“Do you think I dreamt as a boy of being some gangster with a gun and chains? Do you think this was what I aspired to when I went to Oxford? Sometimes life is cruel and we must be cruel in order to survive it, Guinevere. How can you, a survivor of your own kind of hell, condemn me for that?”
“I am not condemning you, Raffa,” I said, surging to my feet so that we were pressed torso to torso and I had to drop my head back between my shoulders to snarl up at him. “I am just saying, if you wanted to, you could stop it. The killing, the lies, the criminality. You could come clean.”
His laugh was harsh, like something put through a meat grinder.
“I have told you, I will never be clean. Even if I left it all behind and went with you to America, I would still have lived the life I did as a mafioso. The hands that touched you at night would never be unsoiled, and the soul you’d claim to love would never be without the darkness it needed to do what had to be done to protect my loved ones. ”
“You like it, then,” I pressed, already knowing the truth but needing to hear it again anyway. My hand slapped over his heart. “The killing. The lies. Going against the law.”
“I love it,” he seethed, leering down at me with a snarl on his mouth that should have been terrifying but was instead bizarrely beautiful.
“I love watching those who would hurt me and mine be snuffed out like a light. I go to bed easily each night knowing they won’t come for any one of us ever again.
I love being cleverer than the police and the government, sneering in their faces when they sniff around looking for tells they’ll never find. ”
He lifted me in his arms so abruptly, I let out a cry. Suddenly, we were at eye level, his arm banded under my ass to keep me high enough to look into that seething, cold gaze, straight to the ninth circle of Dante’s hell, where Satan himself reigned from his throne.
“I did not want this life, but there was a part of me born to thrive in it, and I am not capable of turning it off. I might be tempted to give up everything for you, stella cadente, but not when I am not sure if you love the real me. Dante spent his entire life worshipping a woman he did not really know, projecting onto her all the things he desired most in a partner because it was safe to do so. I will not be just an ideal to you.”
He took my lower lip between his teeth in a savage bite that rent the skin and made blood pool between us. With his eyes open and locked to mine, he licked up the metallic tang and then slicked his tongue over mine to share the taste.
“I do not want a meek lover or a girl who is happy to turn a blind eye. I want someone brave and bold enough to take my hand even when it is blood soaked, even when what I do is wrong. If you cannot do that, Guinevere, I will go to the palazzo in Florence and stay away until I can be sure you are safe, and then I will send you home.”
“I told you,” I said with an edge of desperation, hands sinking into his hair when he tried to pull away. “I do not think you are a monster. I see the tenderness in you.”
“But what if I am? A beautiful monster. And Guinevere,” he whispered against my mouth. “What if you are too?”
His kiss tasted of blood and ash, something dark dredged up from the deep. I felt like Proserpina kissing Pluto, tasting life and death, riches and devastation, all in one set of beautifully formed lips.
Just as I was losing myself to the embrace, he tore his mouth from mine, sat me on the mattress, and planted one hand on my chest to push me down onto the bed.
By the time I landed, the door was closing firmly behind him, and I was left alone with the taste of blood and Raffa on my lips.