Chapter 19
Valentina Luciano
I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans as Mario pulls the car up to the valet.
“Are you sure we shouldn’t have worn something fancier?” I ask.
“We don’t need to impress anyone. We’re here for us, paperotta ,” Mario says as he shifts into park.
“What if we run into—”
“Fuck everyone else, amore mio . I don’t care what they think and neither should you. We have more power and money than everyone except a select few in New York—the state, not the city—and I’ll happily crush anyone who upsets you. Capisci ?”
I nod.
The pep talk helps. His arm wrapped around my shoulders is even better.
We walk into the upscale jewelry store dressed in jeans and t-shirts. Being dressed for comfort instead of to impress others goes against everything my father taught me. Everything he drilled into my head. Everything he forced me to learn so he could use me for his own gain.
I straighten my spine and glide around the store as though I have every right.
Mario is right. With the portfolio he gave me, I could outspend everyone except the founding mafia families and a few business tycoons and still live comfortably for the rest of my life. That’s not including all the properties and business assets now in my name.
The changes in my life over the last few days have been wild.
None of the rings in the store hold my interest.
“We could order one-of-a-kind designs,” Mario suggests.
The ladies working the counters give us skeptical looks. My skin crawls, but my husband tucks his finger under my chin and directs my attention to his face.
He quirks a brow.
I sigh.
“Are we in a hurry? Do we have to decide today?” I ask.
“No we’re not and we don’t,” Mario says.
I sigh again and wrap my arms around him.
“I kind of want to try the one-of-a-kind design experience, just not for rings,” I say.
He chuckles and runs his hands through my hair.
The other patrons look at us like we have extra heads. Ignoring them is easy with the amusement and adoration shining from Mario’s gaze.
“We can do that. In fact, we can do it at every jewelry store in the city. Make it our calling card. All these chumps will bow when we walk in the door. We’ll be the couple obsessed with collecting all the best diamonds from all the top designers in the world.”
A giggle escapes me.
Memories from my childhood rise. We had such a strong bond from the beginning. Our love was innocent and pure back then. A mafia princess and her protective uncle. My father stole ten years from us. We hated and cursed each other.
Now I can’t go a day without him. He’s my best friend. Mio marito . My lover.
Mine.
I rise onto tiptoe and kiss his chin. He grins and spans his long fingers around my waist.
“Be careful with those eyes, amore mio , or I’ll toss you over my shoulder and fuck you in the car,” he growls.
Liquid desire pools in my core.
He proposed last night. I stopped bleeding yesterday afternoon, but we didn’t have sex. We pleasured each other in other ways. It was intimate and intense, but the pounding in my clit and the wetness in my panties says my body yearns for his claiming.
He snarls and ravages my mouth. We both pant when he lifts his head.
“Fuck this. We’ll come back another day,” he growls.
I squeak when he scoops me off my feet and stalks through the exit. My handbag bops against my butt as he walks, so I pull it into my lap and lean against Mario. The valet looks flustered when he notices us approaching.
Dread sours my stomach, but I push it away because it isn’t very often normal people see a muscular, tatted mafia boss in jeans and carrying his wife across the sidewalk.
“Um, sir,” the valet stutters.
Although always aware of potential threats while in public, my husband’s attention sharpens at the unexpected greeting.
“What?” he snarls.
The poor man blanches and looks ready to pass out.
“I’m sorry. It’s my first day on the job, and I pulled into the parking spot too far and bumped into the building. I don’t see any visual damage, but I submitted a report and now can’t move it until my supervisor—”
“Where is it?”
“Around the corner. Sir, you can’t—”
“Don’t be an idiot. I’m not walking down an alley with you. We’ll wait in the bistro on the corner. Call my cell when my car is ready. My wife is hungry,” Mario says.
He walks to the far side of the jewelry store doors before lowering my feet to the ground. The valet glares before turning away. The hairs on my nape rise. Mario tucks me against his side.
I open my mouth to tell him of my premonition, but he squeezes my hip and gives me a pointed glance before sauntering down the sidewalk. His lazy prowl doesn’t fool me. He’s alert and ready to face any threat to protect me.
We don’t visit the corner bistro. I hook my fingers into his belt loop near the small of his back and tuck my other thumb into my jeans pocket, placing both my hands near a weapon while securing my hold on him and appearing relaxed.
Mario knows there’s something wrong. I follow his lead, trusting him to keep me safe.
“Use your phone to call Noah,” he says a few blocks away.
He jaywalks us across the road several car lengths away from the intersection, but I focus on wiggling my phone out of my handbag.
By the time I find Noah’s name in my contacts, we’re on a side street out of sight of the jewelers.
I start the call.
A group of men steps out of the alley in front of us. More than four, less than ten. My brain refuses to count. Their expressions curdle my stomach.
Mario pushes me behind him and inches backward as the men move closer.
“Run, paperotta ,” he snarls.
I can’t. I can’t leave him. He won’t survive against so many men.
“Keep that phone in your hand and run ,” he demands.
He grips my wrist and peels my fingers off his beltloop.
“Go to the store across the street and wait for me at the counter. Buy me something,” he commands.
Common sense snaps into focus.
He wants me out of the strike zone so he can focus on the threats.
I can’t leave him, but I can run into a convenience store ahead of him.
The men try to box us in against the brick building.
I dart between the parking meter and trash can as a cab passes. The back bumper almost takes out my shin, but I lunge out into traffic and play real life Frogger.
I survive. I don’t know how. Adrenaline pumps through me, heightening my reflexes and giving me extra speed.
The moment I step onto the sidewalk, gunshots sound behind me.
A woman screams and shoves me in her haste to escape.
Pain lances through my hip and palms as I hit the ground.
The crowd stampedes. Someone steps on my hand.
I scream and fight my way to my feet. A glance behind me reveals Mario dropping another man with his rapid aim.
Bodies lie strewn over the concrete around him.
Two men dart through traffic toward me.
I weave through the panicked crowd.
With my arm outstretched and my hand less than a foot away from the door to the convenience store, arms close around me from behind. A needle pricks into my side and everything goes dark.
I wake in a shabby apartment tied to a chair in the middle of the chipped linoleum floor. My head pounds and eyes refuse to focus, but I take in my surroundings as best I can.
A stained, ripped couch, cheap coffee table, and tiny TV sit on one side while a disgusting kitchen takes up the other half. I sit facing the front door. I crane my neck and see a hall with a bathroom and two bedrooms.
The toilet flushes. Broad shoulders fill the doorway, and for a moment my heart leaps, but he’s not my husband.
He’s my husband’s brother. My father’s most brutal soldier. My ex-best-friend’s father. Alessio Luciano.
The front door opens. My head spins when I turn to look.
Dark brown orbs glare at me as my father slams the door behind him.
“You betrayed me, Valentina,” he says.
He locks the handle, deadbolt, and slider.
My heart cries out for Mario to rescue me.
“Did I tell you what happens to those who betray me? I don’t think I did,” Pietro murmurs.
He drops a grocery bag on the counter and saunters to the cabinet.
My purse and knife sit on the counter.
Pietro scoffs when he sees the direction of my eyes.
“He won’t find you. I destroyed the trackers in your purse and dropped your phone in the street. You’re all mine, baby.”
Horror settles over me. I test my restraints, but the chair is sturdy and the ropes are well tied. My fingers and toes tingle from lack of circulation.
I close my eyes. The tears welling behind my lids are real, but my father always says I’m pretty when I cry, so I try to use them to my advantage.
I wait until the first few trail down my cheeks before I lift my lashes.
“Thank you, Daddy.”
I want to scrub my tongue raw, but I push through my disgust.
“You saved me. I didn’t want to go with him or say those things, but he made me. I—”
“Ha! See, I told you she’d say that. Don’t fall for her tricks, Pietro,” Alessio says as he stomps into the living room.
He picks up a pack of cigarettes off the coffee table and pushes the garbage around until he finds his lighter.
I’d rather burn the entire place down than suffer the wrath in my father’s eyes.
“You’re right. She has her mother’s blood,” Pietro says as he shrugs off his suit coat and hangs it on the hook by the door.
“She can’t help it.” When he turns toward me and begins rolling his sleeves, bile climbs up my throat.
I know what he’s going to say, since he’s said it before. “But I can. I can help you, Valentina.”
I shake my head.
“No, Daddy. Please don’t hurt me.”
Alessio lights his cigarette.
“Damn, she’s pathetic. I was looking forward to a bit of a fight. Where’s the fire her mother had?” he asks.
My blood curdles.
“My mother is a traitor, just like Mario,” I force myself to say.
Pietro laughs with manic glee and unbuttons the top of his shirt before leaning over me and bracing a hand on the back of my chair.
“You’re so pathetic you believe that shit about your mother leaving you,” he snarls.
I flinch when he leans down and grabs my chin. The twisted amusement in his eyes fills me with ice.
“Your mother adored you. She loved you. She would rather have died than leave you,” he hisses.
I clamp my jaw shut and breathe through my nose as he squeezes my face so hard my teeth hurt and tears gather on my lashes.
“So I killed her.”
I freeze, certain I misheard him. He scoffs and runs the flat of his blade down my cheek.
“She wanted to steal you away from me and never come back. I had to kill her.”
He sounds proud, like he’s gloating over some lofty achievement. My brain trips over itself, denying his words, but horror rips through me.
The screams. My nightmares. His footsteps in the hall.
I slept soundly in my bed while my father murdered my mother in the hallway. She died a brutal, violent death mere feet away from me, but I believed she’d abandoned me.
She loved me so much she sacrificed her life trying to get me away from my father.
He always had a violent side, but Mario kept him in check. The night he came home announcing Mario a traitor was probably the night my mother knew she had to rescue me.
With the horrible truth drowning me, I see the past in high definition.
I didn’t have words for the changes in my mother’s behavior, but children sense the moods of those around them, and there were definite changes. She jumped at loud, sudden noises and constantly watched the doors for my father, but not with devotion. She feared him.
Her long sleeves and flowy skirts weren’t to cover her from the sun but to hide her bruises.
My father beat my mother, so she started planning our escape. He caught her and murdered her.
My father murdered my mother and then lied and made me believe my mother had abandoned me.
Red hazes my vision.