12. Wolfe
WOLFE
I pushed Leo down each flight of steps until we made it to the ground floor, and then I grabbed him by his t-shirt and dragged him out of the house, down the stone steps, and onto the dirt road. “Go. You heard the boss.”
The hottest boss I’d ever had.
Leo remained on the ground, dirt sticking to the wet blood on his face, his skin already darkening from the bruising caused by the shotgun. “Let me stay.”
“That’s not up to me.”
“I regret it all. Please let me stay. I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll clean the stables. I’ll be a bottom-feeder—”
“You’ll bide your time until you can try to overthrow your sister again?”
“No.” He actually had the audacity to look offended. “I have nothing else. This is my home. This is where I belong. I’ll scrub the toilets. I don’t care.”
“Even that job is above you.”
“Please talk to her. You know I’m sorry. You’re the sensible one.”
“Wow, you know hell has frozen over when I’m the voice of reason.
” I chuckled, flattered that my woman would be described as unhinged and authoritarian.
I’d gotten hard when she’d shot Warren in the face and broken her brother’s nose.
I didn’t realize violent women were my type, but Francesca was exactly what I was looking for.
“You should just be grateful she let you live. Honestly, I thought she was going to kill you.”
“Yeah, me too.” He winced as he got to his feet, as if something else in his body was broken.
“Show me where your father is, and then be on your way.”
His eyes immediately dropped back to the ground in shame, rightfully so. He took a breath before he gave a nod and then headed toward the back of the villa. He kept the lead, showing a slight limp from where Francesca had kicked him.
He walked past the garden to the field, where open land between the house and the vineyards stretched into the distance. He immediately pivoted away and stared at the house as if he couldn’t bear to look.
I stepped forward and saw the shallow grave with the bodies piled inside. They were already heavily decomposed, and the stench was so strong, I was amazed it didn’t drift toward the house. It looked like a trench of dead soldiers from World War II.
Leo continued to keep his gaze directed away.
I’d seen shit like this before, but it hit different knowing it was Francesca’s father. I knew which one was him based on his clothing and the watch on his wrist. Most of his flesh was already gone, and a lot of his bones had been revealed. “Alright, you can go.”
“I—I want to help.”
“You can’t even look.”
“Let…” He swallowed. “Let me help you dig the grave.”
I continued to stare at my dead boss, the man who was supposed to be my father-in-law someday. I’d told him he would live to regret his decision, and I felt no satisfaction at being right. I wished he’d believed me. “He doesn’t deserve this.”
“I know—”
“He was an honorable man and a good father. Instead of being a little bitch for not getting what you wanted, you should have worked to be better and proven your worth. Now he’s rotting on his land—all because you proved him right.”
His breathing grew shallow, as if he was about to burst into tears.
Nothing would bring Don Mancini back, but I wanted to twist the blade inside Leo’s rib cage as much as possible. He’d taken away my woman’s father. Someone she disagreed with but loved wholeheartedly.
“Grab some shovels. I’m going to need gloves for this.”
Leo and I dug a grave next to the tree where we’d carved our names into the bark. The rest of his family was buried at the cemetery down the road, but it seemed more fitting to place him here. He believed in family and legacy…and he died for it.
We had to navigate the roots and work tirelessly all day to make sure the grave was deep enough and wide enough for the coffin that Elio and Andre had gone to obtain from the village.
Francesca didn’t come out of the house. The last time I saw her, she was walking into her father’s office.
It seemed as if she needed a moment to process her victory and feel her father’s presence in the room he used to occupy every single day.
I let her be, knowing she needed to experience these emotions on her own.
I was glad she stayed inside because I didn’t want her to see this.
Elio returned with the coffin, a brilliant Sicilian blue, and carried it to the shallow grave behind the house. We all put on gloves before we moved his body into the coffin. Leo was the only one who didn’t help, keeping his back to us until he heard the lid close.
We acted as pallbearers and lifted his coffin. Together, we carried it to his final resting place under the tree where he’d initiated me into the family and had allowed me to carve my true name into the bark.
We had to use ropes we found in the warehouse to lower the coffin six feet below, treating his corpse gently even though he was almost exclusively bones after being exposed to the Mediterranean sun for so long.
The coffin hit the bottom of the grave, and then I hopped inside to remove the knots in the ropes so they would come free, before I climbed back out. Then we grabbed the shovels and started to return the dirt from where it’d been taken.
Leo didn’t help. He just stood there and watched, bloody and broken, tears glistening in his eyes as we buried his father. He would have to carry the guilt of his father’s death for the rest of his life.
I almost felt bad for him.
We packed the dirt into place and smoothed out the surface to make it flat once more.
When the job was done, we all stood there together, our arms resting on the shovels that had given us blisters and stared at the slightly raised mound.
Birds chirped in the trees, and a hawk cawed from its place high in the sky.
We stood together in a heavy moment of silence, saying goodbye to our leader who was gone too soon.
Then, one by one, they all turned to look at Leo.
Elio, Andre, and Salvatore, they all stared at Leo like they wanted to shoot him on sight.
It was silent and hostile, full of an unspoken promise of wrath.
It was an opportunity for the men to say their piece, to verbally eviscerate Leo for what he’d done to their friend and leader, but somehow the silence was worse.
With watery eyes, Leo sniffed before he stepped back. “I’m—I’m sorry.” He took another step and then turned around and walked off, heading down the dirt road toward the villa and the cars and the pile of dead bodies of Warren’s men.
With my arms resting on the shovel, I watched him walk out the gate and disappear.
Elio shifted his gaze to me.
I stared back, feeling my anger bubble to the surface.
Andre turned his attention to me as well.
Salvatore stared at the gate where Leo disappeared before he turned to me.
Elio gave a slight nod. “We were wrong—and we paid the price.”
By evening, the property was still a mess. We had dead bodies everywhere, cars piled up on the road, bullet holes in all the buildings. Just when it’d been put back together, another war had torn it apart.
Elio called and ordered a custom headstone for Don Mancini, a small cross that wouldn’t overwhelm the tree. Once that was in place, his grave would be completed, but it would take a day or so for the engraving to happen, even though he’d rushed it.
I headed back inside and saw the staff at work in the kitchen, like things were somewhat back to normal.
I climbed to the third floor, stepped into the office, and saw her seated in the armchair, her eyes on the desk and the window behind it.
No lights were on, so she was sitting in the dark… and had probably been that way all day.
When I stepped inside, my boots were audible, but she didn’t turn to look at me, either ignoring me or so lost in her thoughts she didn’t notice. There was a standing lamp near the wall, so I turned it on and flooded the room with a gentle light.
She stiffened slightly in surprise, confirming she really hadn’t heard me walk inside.
I walked to the end table next to the couch and turned on that lamp, bringing a glow to the other side of the office.
Her eyes moved to me, and she watched me take a seat in the armchair across from her.
She wasn’t the violent conqueror she’d been that afternoon, absolutely no fight left in her anymore. That murderous high had expired even quicker than I’d expected it to. Now she looked like a ghost, her eyes an endless well of sadness.
I sat slightly forward on the edge of my chair, my forearms resting on my knees as I stared at her.
She stared back, her face pale and her eyes so sad she looked like she was on the verge of tears.
I loved how she could be so badass when she was angry but then be so vulnerable when it was just the two of us. She didn’t pretend to be strong when she felt weak. Didn’t put on a show to hide her true emotions. She could blow off heads one moment and then succumb to tears the next.
“Is Leo gone?” she said quietly.
“Yeah.”
She nodded. “Good.”
“We’re still cleaning up the mess outside. Might be a couple days before we can put everything back the way it was.”
“It’ll never be the way it was.” Her arm was propped on the armrest, and her little body leaned into it. The blood was off her face as if she’d wiped it off with her shirt. “This was the last place I saw him…and it’s weird that I’ll never see him in here again.”
“You may not see him, but you’ll always feel him.”
She stared at the desk for a while before she looked at me again. “What did you do with Warren?”
“Threw him in a ditch.” I let him have Don Mancini’s old spot, but I didn’t specify that to Francesca. She couldn’t see the trench from here because it was hidden behind some trees, so she wouldn’t have to look at it. “Let the hawks feast on his eyes.”
She directed her gaze back to the desk again and stared.
“I wish I could make this better.”
Her eyes turned back to me.
“I can kill your enemies. I can reclaim your throne. But I can’t bring back the dead, and I’m sorry I can’t.”
Her eyes softened as she looked at me. “You’ve done enough, Wolfe. I thought killing Warren would make me feel better, but now that the rage is extinguished…there’s nothing left but this void I can’t fill.”
“I understand.” All too well.
“I’m not sure what to do now.”
“We clean up. Put this place back together. And then it’s back to business as usual—with you in charge.”
She turned back to the desk like she expected her father to be sitting there, a member of this late-night meeting. “It doesn’t feel right.”
“This is what he wanted.”
“What he wanted was to live.” Her eyes dropped. “To live to see his grandchildren. To live to see me take over and run it while he enjoyed his golden years. To see his legacy grow and change…and then even be passed down to the next generation. He was so young.”
He was young. That made this even more of a tragedy.
“He raised us on his own, and he did a damn good job.”
“He did,” I said in agreement. Except for Leo. Fucking idiot.
“Most men would have walked away.”
“Family meant everything to him.”
“Yeah, it did.”
I stared at her, seeing the despair and vulnerability in her beautiful eyes. “He wanted you in charge, and he wanted me to keep you safe. That’s what we’re going to do.”
She turned back to me.
“I know if he were alive, he would grant his blessing.” He would forgive me for concealing my affair with his daughter.
He would consider me family again. He would welcome me with open arms after everything I’d done.
And he would apologize for being wrong about me—and because I loved Francesca, I would accept that apology and move on. “So let’s do it.”
She continued to stare at me with hesitancy, emotion behind her eyes that I couldn’t decipher. She didn’t blink. Tears didn’t well in her eyes. But she had an expression in her gaze in a language I couldn’t read.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.” She blinked. “It’s nothing.”