Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Giovanna
E xtending one arm, I felt the luxurious sheet beneath me, and shifted my body ever so slightly. Muscles that I’d never really known existed before ached and some sensitive parts on my body tingled. I smiled to myself as his cologne drifted up from the bedding beneath me and the realisation of where I was came flooding back to me.
‘Dante.’ I tried his name, loving the way it felt to be able to say it out loud, even though I’d said it quietly not wanting to disturb him.
Oh no! What’s the time?
I curbed the sudden panic building inside me, but unable to answer the question in my head, I focussed everything on what I could see and hear. It didn’t help that the glass inside the windows around his cabin had been turned opaque for our privacy. There was no clock that I could see, but I could hear at least one voice talking nearby.
It must be one of his guards.
Happy with that explanation, I moved my other arm out behind me, expecting to feel his warm body lying beside me. When I didn’t find him and could stretch my arm out no further, I listened again.
So quiet.
‘Dante?’ I spoke his name, louder this time and still received no response.
Awareness hit me; I was alone.
Suddenly, all of me was moving. Grasping the top sheet to me, I rolled myself over and sat up, before concentrating all my senses on my surroundings. In the muted light that encircled me, I could make out remnants of our night together. My dress was on the top of the chair I was certain he’d thrown it on. Moving, I looked over the edge of the bed, and after waiting for my eyes to adjust, I ran my eyes along the length of the floor until I found my engagement ring. Inhaling rapidly in response, I shelved the sudden wave of guilt I was hit with.
‘They’re all my things.’ Threatened with an impending anxiety attack, I sat up quickly and after placing a hand over my heart, I concentrated on my breathing until the threat began to die back down.
‘I didn’t imagine it,’ I stated in a low tone to only myself.
In the years we’d been apart, he had featured in many of my dreams and even in a few of my nightmares, the ones where I’d woken up with my eyes sore and my own tears dried on my cheeks. But even though I’d fought to hold on to his presence in the cold light of day, within seconds I had always managed to work out that he had only existed inside my head. Moving my fingers closer to my face, I could still smell his cologne on my hands, and I knew I hadn’t imagined him being here with me, touching me, loving me.
‘You’re ridiculous,’ I accused.
Running my hands over my bare skin, I could feel every place he’d touched, and even the exact area he’d sank his teeth into my shoulder as he marked me as his. Clenching my core muscles, I could still feel Dante inside me. And that was how I’d fallen asleep.
‘Where are you?’ Crawling on all fours, I made my way to the end of the bed and looked down to the floor. His clothes were gone, but looking around me I could see what I thought were his clothes from yesterday neatly folded on top of one of the cabinets.
‘So, you’re a neat freak, it must be the army training.’ I smiled at my newly gathered knowledge of the man.
The voice I’d heard before sounded again. It seemed to be coming from the corridor outside, and this time I recognised it.
Dante.
Grabbing the sheet tighter around me, I got off the bed and moved to where I’d just spotted my handbag. Reaching inside the large, leather bag, I found my phone and glanced at the screen. The time read as just after three in the morning. Relief captured me when I worked out that the guard I’d drugged shouldn’t yet have come around and that hopefully we still had time. I sat back down on the bed to wait for the only man I knew I would ever love to come back to me.
Dante
‘This better be right up there with really fucking important, mate,’ I growled into the phone, which I was holding between my shoulder and ear while I turned my family’s ring around my little finger several times, as I fought against being an even bigger arsehole to him. He’d rung my number again within seconds of me disconnecting his first call, and it was then I knew what he had to say was probably imperative.
‘Oh yeah, whatever you were doing… this has more importance I assure you.’ I could hear humour wrapped around Marco’s tone.
‘It fucking better,’ I warned, wanting to tell him just who was in my bed, but not wanting to share what had happened between me and Giovanna, not even with him.
‘Remember Grace?’
As a nauseating feeling rose up inside me, I scrunched my eyes shut as I thought about the young woman I’d last seen nervously leaving my office while I’d pointed my loaded gun at her.
‘You remember,’ he encouraged. ‘The one who gives excellent fucking head.’
‘Gives excellent fucking head,’ I repeated before leaning my forehead against the cool wall of the corridor. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well, she’s been working for us on the quiet.’
I rolled my head on the wooden panelled wall beneath it, as I attempted to follow what the actual fuck it was that he was calling to tell me about. When all I wanted to do was to return to where I’d left Giovanna, and sink myself balls deep inside her once again, while the rest of the world slept.
‘Yeah, and how’s that? I don’t recall employing her.’
‘It takes a lot to mop up your leftovers,’ he exhaled his frustration.
‘I’m sure.’ I cleared my throat thinking of all the women I’d used and discarded over the past few years.
‘After I’d blown my load down her throat, she told me a bit about herself.’
‘And there was me thinking you didn’t need my seconds,’ I added dryly and heard him laugh again.
‘Mostly, that’s true, but you know… occasionally.’
‘Right.’
‘Anyway, back to why I called. Grace is an experienced croupier who learnt her trade back home in London. She worked in Leighton Gentlemen’s Club.’
‘And. You. Believed. Her?’ I said each word individually to drive home my point.
‘There was no way she was a fucking plant, Dante.’
‘I wouldn’t know, as you never ran the facts past me.’ I was feeling pissed. Even though, every now and then, I let Marco have free rein and to follow his judgement. When you were juggling the number of eggs in the air I was, it was good business sense to have someone you could trust. And Marco, I trusted with my life, but I knew that whatever the fuck went down from now onwards, it wouldn’t just be my life in danger.
‘She knew far too much about it; people, places and even Trevor, the club pimp’s penchant for teenage boys.’
I pictured the disgusting, ugly, one-eyed bastard, and felt myself sneer.
‘I planted her in the casinos as a croupier—a croupier who gives extras.’
‘Extras? What the fuck did you promise her in return?’ I lifted my head, took the phone in my hand and stood up tall.
‘She’s being well paid… and I might have said that you’d look upon her favourably.’
‘Sure you did… Right, cut to the chase,’ I added impatiently. ‘What’s she come up with and can we trust it?’
‘Oh yeah, we can,’ he laughed. ‘Did you know Ricco is impotent?’
‘How the fuck would I know that?’ I shook my head, and the corners of my mouth twitched when I remembered the look on Ricco’s face as I’d led his wife away to their bedroom. It made even more sense now. Although he wasn’t to know at the time, I hadn’t fucked her, even when she’d got down on her knees and begged. I just put her down as some insatiable bitch. Like every other woman who had fallen to their knees for me since Giovanna.
‘Although, I’ve seen him with a couple of other interesting women over the past few days.’
‘So, it’s just Gerit he can’t fuck?’ I squeezed my eyes shut tight as I tried hard to concentrate on just what he was imparting.
‘Possible. But it’s surprising what Ricco spills when he’s watching his wife getting fucked with a strap on by another woman.’
‘And don’t tell me—the other woman was Grace?’
‘The one and only.’ I could literally hear the grin spreading over his face.
‘And?’ I questioned impatiently.
‘Firstly, she planted a tracker on him, something I’d not managed to do.’
‘Where?’
‘In those ill thought out, patent Brogues he loves so much.’
‘Good choice,’ I responded and then laughed thinking of his bad taste in footwear, and the din they always made when he walked.
‘And, Boss, even better than that is, in my hand I’m holding a recording of Ricco speaking to someone on the phone. Luckily, Gerit stops moaning just at the part when he says “I’m fucking them over from the inside out and taking back the money that’s rightfully ours. It’s time for you to apply pressure from your end…”’
‘Pressure? Any idea who the fuck he’s talking to?’
‘Nope, but I’ve had the call traced back to Calabria.’
‘Fuck! And you’ve spoken of this to…?’
‘No one, Dante. You know me better than that.’
‘I do—But I know questions will be asked… You’ve done well, Marco, thanks.’
‘Boss.’
‘Make sure Grace is well paid and get rid of her.’
‘Any preference as to where?’
‘Somewhere out of everyone’s reach. Somewhere she can’t be found for at least the next couple of months.’
‘And if she’s reluctant?’
‘You know the drill, Marco. If she refuses to go off grid for a while—then make her departure permanent.’
‘Consider it done. One more thing, Dante… Something else that intrigued me. Ricco also said about a main prize that had felt so very nearly out of reach in Rome had arrived in Malta, yesterday. Any ideas? I know no drugs have arrived.’
I opened my eyes wide and turned fast to stare at the door between us.
‘And Grace got this recording to you when?’ I hurriedly questioned.
‘An hour ago.’
Unconsciously, I touched the closed door between myself and Giovanna as fear swept through me.
‘No ideas, as yet,’ I lied, before taking a few seconds to think over the change in my circumstances. ‘Send copies of the falsified casino books to Salvatore and get a couple of the men to bring me over the recording you’ve got and get a few hours’ sleep. Shit is about to hit the fan.’
‘And you can get back to your virgin, Dante,’ he laughed at the standing joke between us.
‘It’s no fucking virgin, Marco.’
‘Boss,’ he laughed.
‘Ciao.’ I disconnected the call and dropped my arm down to my side.
Salvatore and I had more hatred between us than virtually any other men I knew. But, like it or not, I understood his absolute conviction for keeping our family safe, and I respected him for that. In years gone by, the ‘Ndrangheta had lived by a code of honour, ours was a business ran by the men of the families, women and children were to be untouched and unused. That remained true until about forty years before, when women and children started to go missing. Even Salvatore’s own mama had been taken. Now, it was no longer classed as an unwritten rule, and we trusted no other families other than our own, our ‘ndrine. I knew that a De Luca woman’s scalp was a prize like nothing else. With one of our Don’s family in their clutches, a rival family could and would demand anything of him.
Giovanna was the prize Ricco was after. I had no idea why and who else was in it with him, but I was going to find out.
Now, all I had to do was to let her go, even if it killed me, because deep down I was certain her life depended on it.