Chapter Twenty-One Raffa #2
The violence of the moment and the relief at having her back were a potent, dangerous cocktail roiling through me.
I wanted to throw her to the ground and fuck her in the dirt.
I wanted to carve my name into her flesh so everyone would know whom she belonged to and fear the repercussions if they tried to harm her or take her ever again.
I wanted to paint her in cum until she looked like mine, smelled like mine, wept my name with every breath from her lips.
She ignored me entirely, moving forward on bare feet across the cold, stained concrete floor, the hem of her silk nightgown shushing softly in the silence.
“What Philippe said is true. The Venetian tried to blackmail the Pietras into helping by telling them Raffa was holding me hostage,” she explained, stopping beside me so the tips of her bare toes touched the blood on the floor.
When she looked at me, her eyes were filled with shadows.
“That does not mean he was trying to help us,” I noted.
“No,” she agreed. “But I think it means he is conflicted. Aren’t you, Philippe?”
He blinked the sweat from his lashes as he looked at her, wary suddenly as if he sensed the same coiled, dark energy inside her that made my skin buzz with electricity.
“Yes,” he whispered, gaze darting to the table filled with my crew and then over to Leo. “I did not want to betray you, Raffa. We have been friends since we were boys. But I owed it to the Venetian to help him when he asked for aid.”
“Why?” I demanded, stepping forward before I reminded myself that Guinevere was beside me and she did not want to see more violence from me.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as if in answer, her fingers extending to brush against my fist. “I want to see what you would do if I wasn’t here. I’m not afraid.”
When I did not move, she pressed herself into my back.
“I am not afraid of you,” she confirmed.
I swallowed the tangle of emotions clogging my throat and nodded curtly, stepping forward as I had intended with the cigar cutter in hand.
“Please, don’t,” Philippe begged. “I cannot tell you more. You have to believe me. Someone you love will die if I tell you more.”
“The Venetian cannot hear you here,” I reminded him. “I am your only judge, your only jury, and your eventual executioner.”
His gaze darted to Renzo, who usually exacted such violence for me, but I grabbed his face to force him to look at me.
“No, no, I am the one who will end your life if you insist on keeping his secrets,” I said, and my voice came up like smoke from an active volcano.
“It was my woman you took, so I will be the one to watch the light go out in your eyes as the hope would have gone out of mine if something worse had happened to her.”
Behind me, Guinevere shifted, but I tried not to think of her.
Instead I focused on Philippe, cutting his finger down knuckle by knuckle as he cried and shouted his innocent intentions.
After another half hour, it was clear he would not give up the identity of the Venetian.
The only further thing of interest he admitted was that the Venetian was keeping an eye not just on my family in the villa but also on my companies, implying he had spies in both the Romano Group and Lupo Nero Investments.
I had long ago forgotten about Guinevere bearing witness to my interrogation, lost to the darkness that rushed up to meet me when I fell headlong into my birthright.
So I thought nothing of the intensity with which I beat into Philippe’s face after losing his fingers did not perturb him, slaking some of my rage on his body, and then nothing still of the knife I punched between his ribs and twisted until his body gave one last, pitiable sigh.
When I stepped back from the dead meat swinging from the ceiling, I was panting roughly, splattered in blood and limned in sweat.
“Take him down and feed him to the pigs,” I told Renzo.
“Literally or figuratively?”
I startled like a spooked horse at the sweet tones of Guinevere’s voice, snapping my head around to see her sitting at the table with Renzo, Carmine, and Ludo, holding a fingermark-fogged glass filled with Carm’s sambuca.
She sat so primly on the stool, back straight, legs crossed like a lady’s in the pristine white nightgown.
But there was cool, quiet rage in those black-velvet eyes and a tiny curl to her red-ribbon lips.
“Literally,” Ludo supplied. “We keep pigs a few fields over. Sheep, too, but for different reasons.” When Guinevere raised an eyebrow, he shrugged. “Angela and Carlotta make their own yarn to knit.”
“Of course,” she murmured, that sharp-edged smile deepening.
Renzo got up to do as I had asked, cranking the lever on the chains attaching Philippe to the ceiling so that he fell to the ground with a wet thump.
Guinevere’s gaze darted over before she looked back at me, utterly composed.
“Come sit,” she suggested, waiting for me to do so before she handed me the glass of sambuca. After I tipped it back in one swallow, she took my hands to lay them palms up on the table and methodically began to clean them as best she could with the already-stained handkerchief on the table.
“Have you considered that the mole might be in the Romano Group and not necessarily a man in your outfit?” she asked conversationally, the way one would inquire about the weather.
Small talk.
I blinked at her, too exhausted and wrung out emotionally to wonder if her composure was a good thing or bad.
“Not really,” I confessed, slumping slightly against the table.
At this point, I’d had about ten hours of sleep in the last four days.
“There is almost no way someone outside the life would know the inner workings of the Camorra the way they would have had to in order to strike at the heart of my operations.”
“Fair,” she acknowledged as she finished cleaning my hands as well as she could with the soiled fabric.
She tossed it aside to begin a slow massage of my palm that wrenched a low moan of relief from my throat.
“But I still think it is something to consider. You don’t have much to do with the Romano Group, right?
You even admitted that you don’t sit on the board.
It just seems like if there was going to be a mole, it would be a good place for them to hide. ”
“Philippe clearly is not the only one,” Renzo agreed. “And Guinevere has a point. Apart from Tonio and Leo, we do not have many men we trust overseeing operations there.”
“Because it isn’t affiliated with the criminal activities of the outfit anymore,” I said. “But I agree. It is the weak link.”
“Are you saying I don’t have a handle on things with the Romano Group?” Leo asked over my shoulder as he placed his stool beside Renzo at the table.
“I am saying everything in my life is unstable,” I admitted with a twisted grin. “It is not a reflection on you, but on me, amico mio.”
Guinevere made a noise in her throat and slid her fingers through mine. “I am afraid my bad luck has rubbed off on you.”
“No, it is not luck but the history Aldo sowed finally cropping up in my life,” I corrected.
“It isn’t your fault,” Leo said, but he seemed just as dejected as me, maybe even more exhausted, his shoulders slumped as he swayed to bump into me. “Sins of the father and all that.”
I laughed, but it was more an exhalation of breath. “I think that deserves a toast.” After pouring another finger of sambuca for myself and then refilling everyone’s glasses, I raised the drink in the air. “To the sins of our fathers and grinding them into dust.”
“Cin cin,” my men echoed.
Guinevere did not say a word, but then again, she did not have a drink to toast with. Instead, she squeezed my hand and watched with low-lidded eyes as I swallowed down the harsh alcohol.
“I think that’s enough for the night,” she said with cool authority. “Leave us, will you?”
Leo hesitated, gaze darting between Guinevere and me, but Carmine got up with a burp and helped Ludo collect his various tech, and Renzo clapped me on the back before going to lever the dead body into a wheelbarrow.
I stared at my American girl through the commotion, trying to understand the intent in those night-dark eyes. She seemed more grounded than she had been since returning to Italy, a confident atavism that was utterly beguiling.
What might she do if she got me alone as she wanted?
Kiss me or kill me, I thought, sure of either answer.
“Leo,” I said when he was the last one lingering. My voice was gruff, scraped raw by exhaustion and emotional rawness. “Vai via.”
Leave, now.
His sigh was loud in the cavernous barn, but he did as I asked, dragging himself off the stool and shutting the sliding door behind him with a bang.
We were alone at last.
“Guinevere,” I said to fill the silence, strangely unsure of myself and where we stood. “I am sorry—”
“No,” she said, pressing her entire palm over my mouth to stop me from speaking. “No, tonight neither of us is sorry for anything.”
She pushed out of her chair to climb into my lap, straddling my hips, hands digging into the sides of my hair so she could tip my head back to hold her intense gaze.
“Tonight, I want to fuck the man and the monster,” she whispered against my lips. “I want the devil’s hand on me, sending me straight to heaven.”
“Why, Guinevere,” I growled, nipping at her pouting lower lip as arousal burned away the edges of my fatigue. “That is blasphemous talk.”
“Yes,” she agreed, sliding her tongue over my upper lip. “I’ve discovered I like to sin when it’s done with you.”
Her mouth closed over mine, ending the conversation with an assertive kiss that demanded I cave to her impulses.
I was more than happy to.