Chapter Six Raffa
Chapter Six
Raffa
Shopping was not an aphrodisiac.
Nor was visiting the police station and the American consulate, where I pulled strings to get Guinevere seen to immediately while I waited outside, working from my phone.
Yet by the end of our errands, my blood felt like it had been boiling on low heat for hours.
Impulse control had always been one of my greatest assets.
I was not besieged by lust, avarice, gluttony, or envy like so many other capos and soldati whose hunger was never sated.
Being a criminal was not something I would have chosen for myself, but now that I was firmly entrenched on the wrong side of the law, I found I relished the mental challenge of it.
How to bend the rules into angles that worked for me without breaking them completely.
How to rule the underworld of the north without drawing attention from the wrong people as capo dei capi .
It was about checks and balances, problems reduced to easy mathematical equations I could solve with simple logic.
I had been top of my class at Oxford in math and economics and gone on to work on Lombard Street, in the heart of London’s financial district, for years before I was called by duty and honor to come home.
Emotion and hedonism did not factor into my life.
Blasphemy for an Italian, but it was one of the reasons I’d always been drawn to Britain and to finance.
My father had made excuses all my life for his behavior.
I am a man. I have needs.
She was so beautiful, I had to have her.
Yes, the palazzo was too expensive, but we need to show others we are rich and powerful.
He dared to speak to me like that, so I was forced to cut out his tongue.
Pathetic, I had always thought, to be so ruled by his baser instincts.
Yet I found myself oddly incapable of refraining from touching Guinevere when she emerged from the changing room wearing my favorite color just because I’d asked her to.
There was an ethereal quality about her beauty, something in the large, luminous eyes and the small, full red mouth, the sharp chin and all that thick dark hair swinging in waves to her waist. She was delicate, almost dreamy, but also elfin, and everyone knew never to underestimate the dangerous appeal of the fey.
In that dress the color of freshly oxidized blood, Guinevere would have looked as perfect in a Tuscan field of poppies, twirling like she was doing under Maria Lucia’s arm, as she would have spinning to slip a blade neatly between the ribs of some hapless victim.
The duality of the fantasy—of her—wrote itself into my bones. Soft and sharp, naive and witty, untried but strong.
For the first time in a very long time, I gave in to my reckless impulses and undid the bow at her shoulder just to watch that dress dip dangerously low over one pale breast. I thought of biting that white skin until it was the same color as the fabric, until that sweet mound was ringed in teeth marks.
I could have too. Her desire was obvious in the stain of her cheeks and the hitch of her breath.
She wanted me, and she wasn’t afraid of it.
Her chest pushed slightly into my hand, and when I bent to kiss each of her suede-soft cheeks, I caught the pucker of her mouth ready to meet my own, and I was charmed by it.
What I could teach her, I thought, and was almost scared of my own desire to do so. To take her in hand and show her how to please me exactly as I wished. To introduce her to pleasures her sweet, shielded brain had never even thought to dream of.
I had stepped away from the temptation, but it had taken a surprising strength of will to do it.
And even then, throughout the mundane, frankly irritating errands we accomplished the rest of the day, I found myself struck by the contours of her bow-shaped mouth, wondering if that incredibly soft skin extended to the tender curve of her inner thigh.
When the police officer took her into a room to speak with her alone and they came out laughing softly together, I made sure to remember his name—Riccardo Grassi—and had to fight the urge to stop her from giving him her phone number.
When we went to the consulate and my friend, Giuseppe Diati, told me in a congratulatory way that she was very beautiful, I did not fight the urge to tell him to keep his eyes to himself.
She seemed to awaken an oddly intoxicating mix of protectiveness and arousal in me that I hadn’t felt before in any of my thirty-four years, despite having countless partners.
So it irritated me that Guinevere Stone, this slip of an American girl who looked unfairly like a princess from a medieval Italian romance, could set my regimented life on its head.
It had been my intention to take her for dinner at Trattoria Marione because I knew she would fucking delight over their Florentine ribollita , but by the time we finished at the consulate, I felt as if I were coming out of my skin with a mixture of desire and irritation.
So I set our course for home and turned up the volume on the jazz filtering through the Ferrari.
Despite my ignoring her, Guinevere’s presence was impossible to overlook.
She shone with her own light, even sitting in the tight confines of the sports car.
I watched the play of expressions over her face from my peripheral vision as we passed sights she had clearly read about and lusted over for years.
The way her fingers touched the window so reverently made me wonder how they would touch me.
Would that same worshipful light enter her eyes as she slowly undid my zipper, metal tooth by metal tooth?
Would that same shocky gasp leave her lips when I took the tip of one of her small breasts between my lips?
“ Madonna santa ,” I cursed under my breath as we finally pulled through the automatic gates to the courtyard of my palazzo on the south bank of the Arno River.
If I had to spend one more moment in a confined space with this siren, I was going to lose my infamous cool and do something we’d both regret.
Like press her reverently to the window and kiss her until she trembled.
“Servio will make you whatever you want for dinner,” I grunted as I unbuckled and opened the door. “I have to work the rest of the evening.”
Before she could respond, I was levering myself out of the Ferrari and stalking across the pavers to the side entrance.
The gym was on this lower level, and without skipping a beat, I tore off my suit jacket, kicked off my loafers, and rolled up my sleeves before stalking over to the punching bag hanging idle in the corner.
When I looked up countless minutes later, sweat was beading in my hairline and dripping from my jaw. Martina stood in the doorway, affecting my normal pose in silent mockery.
I blew a lock of wet hair out of my eyes and steadied the bag with my gloved hands so I could start my combinations again.
“So,” she said, when it became clear I would not indulge her. “Fun day?”
My answer was a jab-hook-uppercut combination that set the bag vibrating on its chain.
“I know men don’t enjoy shopping much, but I thought you would have at least enjoyed the company.”
Martina was like that, a bloodhound with the scent of vulnerability in her nose, ceaseless until she hunted it down and pinned it beneath her notice.
Her laugh filtered through the quiet room when I did not respond.
“Are you ready for me to call in your mother? Angela would love to take in a pretty stray. Your sisters would probably throw her a welcome party.”
The idea of Guinevere meeting my family was almost horrifying.
They were not cut from the same cloth, but there was a synchronicity that I inherently knew existed between them.
The big, boisterous family obsessed with living in each other’s pockets and knowing every single person’s business and a girl who was so clearly a little lost and lonely, and entirely too lovely.
They would stitch together beautifully. Mama would harness Guinevere’s enthusiasm for Italian culture and teach her how to cook every Tuscan dish.
Delfina would take her through the olive groves and vines, showing her how to test the fruits for readiness, educating her on Tuscany’s famous Sangiovese grapes, while Stacci and Carlotta would enfold her in family duties, pushing babies into her arms and laughing with her as she played with the young boys in the grass.
The vision was so vivid it took my breath away the way punching the merda out of the punching bag had failed to do.
“No,” I said curtly, but there was a wealth of reasons behind the syllable.
At the moment, I could convince myself this strange fascination I had with the American was lust. Heady. Dangerous. But acceptable. I was a red-blooded man faced with a gorgeous woman who needed my help. There were very few men who would not feel as I did in the same situation.
But if I saw her in my true home with the people I had given up my lifelong dreams for, I was aware that passionate intensity could morph into something entirely too heartbound.
“A hotel, then?” she offered sweetly, as if she was the kind of person who lived to be helpful. “She is so young —you’d want to make sure she was somewhere safe. As a concerned older guardian.”
I shot her a glare and caught the wide, shameless grin pinned to her face. “ Vai a quel paese. ”
Fuck off.
Her resulting laugh was bright and long. “Oh, Raffa, I only wish Leo was in town to see this.”
Cazzo , I was grateful he was at the villa with the family. Martina was pushy, but she had nothing on Leo, who would level me with one amusement-filled look and offer to be my best man at the wedding.
“Was there a reason you decided to bother me?” I demanded, and turned my focus back to the punching bag and the burn in my torso as I beat into it at a steady, punishing pace.
Jab, jab, right hook, uppercut, jab, jab.