62. Ariana
62
ARIANA
I’m stunned. Dominic just handed the phone back to me as he stood. He’s raking his hands through his hair and breathes into his palms as he paces the little space we have.
“My mom must have had some connection with her, whether through Randazzo or not, before the birth.”
“Yes.”
“We don’t have time to work through whatever that means now, sweetheart. Fuck, I’ll have to deal with my head later.” He’s already setting up his laptop at the small table in the room. “Bottom line, someone else is hunting Gabriella down, and we have one day to deal with Garlini.”
I can’t believe it. One Mafia princess, hidden away in a convent for years, protected at all cost—another one thrown to the wolves. I’ve lost track of who the bad guys and who the good guys are. I always thought I’ve aligned myself right, with the police force, fighting against everything I’ve witnessed in my time in Antonio Mancuso’s house, with what happened with Franco, and how Randazzo treated my mother, but even that world has been toppled on its head.
I watch Dominic as he gets busy logging in on his laptop, his phone still unlocked and ready. I can call the emergency number for agents and have people come fetch me within the hour. I can even sit here, quietly, and without a sound send out an SOS message with my location. Someone will come…and his instructions might be to kill me.
Pietro Garlini butchered my team.
By some miracle, I’m the last one standing.
He will pay.
I will break their ring. I had to pass on Franco, I had to pass on Randazzo, never knowing I had an enemy closer to home. There must be a whole line of corrupt police in the DIA. I can’t be sure who else is involved or what their ultimate plan is, but if I can make one dent in their numbers, I will.
A shudder runs through me as I weigh my options. This is the moment where I choose one last time. Align myself with the traditional bad guys—the Mafia—and kill a crooked cop, or oust the man who sparked me back to life, and live with the consequences. From what I’ve seen of Il Consiglio , I won’t live long.
I can’t hurt him. Dominic has his back to me, the ultimate position of trust. I’ll never have his physical strength, but as he sits now at the desk, it’s the best fighting chance I have. But he is showing me that he trusts me first.
I close my eyes and exhale some tension.
“You’re okay there, Ariana?” he asks, not even looking over his shoulder at me.
Trust.
I choose trust. In a man who has shown me nothing but compassion. Who had been through worse at his own father’s hand, and who has promised to protect me, whatever it takes. I’ve never had this before. I’ve never had what I had with him last night on the plane, either, and if there is one thing I want after years of isolation, it’s more of him .
I choose family, the other thing I’ve never had. The thing Randazzo stole from my mother when she got pregnant, and he refused for her to go back to Finland. My mom knew what she’d gotten into by then and chose to protect her own family, by staying put and disappearing from their lives. But now I have a half-brother, a sister via that connection, women married to men like Dominic and seemingly in love and happy. Gigi even told me we were sisters now at the clinic, after everything we’ve gone through with Franco.
A real family is something I thought I’d never have. But now?—
I’ll go and reclaim what Randazzo took from me, even if it is with people who I’ve vowed for years to hunt down. My blinkers have been torn off, exposing the corrupt underbelly of the DIA which I can’t fight alone.
“I’m fine,” I say softly, pulling all my strength together, my decision made. “What can I do to help? Give me something to do.”
He turns towards me and holds out a hand. I place my hand in his, and his warm, strong fingers wrap mine in a hug that tugs me towards him. I’m not sure where this will ultimately lead, but a foundation of trust and family is a start, and I have feelings for this man that I haven’t had time to analyze or even begin to comprehend yet.
“Make a list of things we’re going to need to disguise ourselves,” he says as he pulls me to his side. “All the make-up products and props, whatever you think best. I’ll get one of the guys to go shopping. We can’t walk around as ourselves when we go for this hit.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to use my phone, or shall I get one of the guys to hand over a laptop?”
“I can do it on your phone. I’ll find a location for them to go source what we need. Luckily, it is still early in the day.”
He nods, and we work together, side by side, setting things up for the ultimate takedown of Pietro Garlini.
As Dominic calls both Benedict and Stephano, he doesn’t shy away from letting me in on their conversations as he sets up a team to go keep an eye on the convent in Potenza. Benedict is front and central to arranging many things. Stephano will bring their mom’s journals over, and anything else that could be used to pinpoint Gabriella as their sister. Even Arturo and Portia are being called in to find some photos of her as a child and might come along to help Gabriella recognize an aged, if familiar, face.
I get swept up in making arrangements, giving input around my apartment, my neighbors, the area, and seeing how he goes about putting things in place has me in awe. What the DIA won’t give for this information. These brothers are a real team. No wonder we are always five steps behind the Mafia. Never mind the bad apples in the DIA, the Scaleras are on top of the latest technology where we’re always waiting for tested products, approvals, budgets. We’ll never win.
It hits me that the only way to probably stop Randazzo’s trafficking ring is from the inside out, and not from the outside in. I’ll have time to think that over once we’re done here.
At some point, Dominic gets food delivered through one of the bodyguards, and once my list of items arrives, and I’ve gone through our disguises, exhaustion hits me. It’s early to go to bed, but I feel like I can sleep for days.
When I stifle yet another yawn, Dominic puts his hand on my thigh where I’m sitting next to him.
“We should get an early night. We have an hour’s drive to Rome in the morning, and it would be best if we get going while it’s still dark. Go to bed, sweetheart.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, I’m almost done here. Just need to double-check a few things.”
I nod and get up, really taking in the room for the first time. We’ve been working non-stop for hours, and my shoulders are stiff with sitting. The room isn’t big, furnished with wooden antiques and faded printed landscapes on the wall, and a crocheted bedspread right out of the seventies. There’s something nostalgic about this place, stuck in time.
I take my suitcase and go to the bathroom, not sure what the arrangement is. I’ve just been following Dominic’s lead, and here we’re sharing a bedroom like a couple. I don’t want anything else, but my future hangs in the balance, and we haven’t spoken about anything.
I’d hate for him to break my heart, especially now I’ve found I actually have one…and it already belongs to him. I take a long time to shower, letting the water run course with my tears, still trying to come to grips with the reality of what Pietro has done. If all goes as planned, I’ll have the chance to ask him some questions, but maybe the moment might be too big for me.
By the time I’m in my pajamas and slip between the covers, Dominic is still at the table, still on his phone, his back towards me. Outside, the sun is setting in warm, golden hues, and now I’m awake again, my mind racing, my body anticipating, longing for him to come, hold me close and take my mind off things.
Last night on the plane, I was bold and asked for what I wanted, because I still had options. Now I’m shy, insecure, because the coin’s sides are both the same—whichever way it falls, it falls to this man. I don’t know how he feels about me, or the fact I’ve basically flooded his life with my problems, my mere existence.
“I’ll be there in a minute, sweetheart,” he says as he closes his laptop, shutting off the last of the artificial light in the room. “I’ll just take a quick shower.”
As he stands and turns to the bed, his full magnificent height towers over me, and my heart skips a beat. He knows exactly what I want, what I need.
“Please be quick,” I say, heat already gathering between my thighs at the way he looks at me.
He bends over and brushes my lips with his thumb. “In the shower, yes, but with you, I’ll take my time.”
I lie there, praying for him to hurry up, listening as he brushes his teeth and gets in the shower. I burn with the need to watch him, and one day, I’ll walk in on him, just as he walked in on me that night that feels like ages ago. I’m still contemplating doing so now when the faucet turns off. When he steps back into the bedroom, he’s drying himself, no towel around his body to hide his budding erection.
I blush as he stares at me, towel-drying his hair as he pads closer, his cock hardening with each step, the room seeming to shrink.
“Having a hard time falling asleep?” he asks as he hooks the towel over the back of the chair and drops some condoms onto the nightstand.
“So much has happened, but now I can’t think about anything else…but this. You. Me.”
He gets under the light summer covers, and the scent of him, shower-fresh with the guesthouse’s lemon-scented soap, makes my heart skip a beat. He is so close, I feel the moisture of his shower still radiating off him as he finds my hip, glides his hand over my stomach to the other hip, and nudges me closer.
“I hope they’re only pleasant thoughts.”
“Very pleasant…” I murmur as I cup his jaw, my leg hooking over his hip, his cock nestling against my sex. “If a bit uncertain.”
“Uncertain?” he murmurs as he nuzzles my ear and nibbles at my lobe, sending shivers down my body that harden my nipples and draw a moan from me.
“What’s going to happen, Dominic? After Pietro and after we pick up Gabriella?” I need to know. My future isn’t mapped out anymore as it’s always been.
“Well,” he says as he finds purchase on his elbow so he can look me in the eye. “I was thinking we’d go lie low in Lake Como for a few weeks. For Gabriella to get accustomed to the idea that she’s part of our family now. As long as it takes to get you a new passport and other legal documents that will free you from your past.”
I have no doubt he could arrange that. “Lake Como?”
“The Trapanis have a house there. You can get to know Gigi and Carla a bit better, since…you know…”
Since we’re all family now.
“And then?”
“And then… I have this burning need to show you my place in Boston.”
“Your place?”
“My house. I’d love you to see my house and see if you could live there…with me.”
My breathing stalls. “Live with you?”
“Yes. With the aim to eventually get married. I don’t want to force you into anything, sweetheart, but you know how it works. Matteo, as our Don, as your brother, will manage your life for you if you don’t take yourself off the chess board as a pawn first. If you’re mine, nobody touches you. I’ll protect you—with my life. I’ll care for you—with every means I have. And I’ll love you, Ariana, because I already do. Every day, I seem to fall in love with you a bit more. I don’t think it will ever stop. I don’t want it to stop.”
His beautiful words are so unexpected and pure, I press my face into his neck as I choke up. He hugs me even closer, and joy wells up in me. Nobody has ever held me this close, so protective, and spoken these beautiful things to me. They are vows, and each one of them speaks to the things I’ve been searching for my whole life.
“Hey, my sweetheart,” he murmurs as he presses warm and tender kisses along my hairline, to my temple and lower until he finds my lips. “Tell me those are happy tears and that you’re not petrified.”
“Of course they’re happy tears,” I say as I push closer to him, needing to be one with him. “I’d love that, to be with you, because I’ve somehow stumbled into love with you, too.”
He chuckles between kisses as he works to open the buttons on my pajama shirt. “Stumble is a good way to put it.”
His lips are on my chest, sliding down to my breasts, and when he sucks a puckered nipple into his mouth, I arch into him, my fingers raking into his hair, a desperate pulse picking up between my legs.
One last, desperate thought zaps through me. “What about Bruno?” I whisper.
Dominic pauses where he’s working his way down my stomach. "Bruno?"
“That dog needs you,” I whisper. “And he loved you first.”
“What a time to talk about Bruno.” He chuckles as he nudges my bottoms down, his fingertips hot pools of heat sinking into my skin and straight to my sex. “As long as we only feed him raw organic bison, Bruno is welcome. Now…no more talk about Bruno.”
I giggle as he nips at my hipbone and ever lower. When his tongue sweeps down to my pussy, I get lost in the love that’s Dominic Scalera.