14. Francesca
FRANCESCA
Days passed, and nothing got done.
I still needed time to process the tumultuous loss of my father. The men seemed anxious to get to work, but no one dared to put pressure on me. It was hard to carry on as if nothing happened, to resume business as usual when the man in charge was buried in the ground.
I sat in the armchair in my father’s office and looked out the window behind his desk. I never sat in his chair. Not once while he was alive. I couldn’t imagine doing it while he was gone either.
Wolfe appeared in the doorway, and he stared at me for a moment before he took the seat across from me. “I was looking for you.”
“Here I am.”
He relaxed in the chair and examined me, but he didn’t say another word.
“I know we need to get to work, but I’m just not there.”
“It’s okay.”
“You should take over. That way, we can catch up.”
“I’m not the boss. You are.”
“I’m not even sure if I want to be in charge.”
He grinned. “But you are.”
“I—I don’t know…”
“This is what your dad wanted. And it’s what you want too.”
“I never said I wanted it.”
“You wanted to take back this vineyard yourself because you said it was yours. You stormed into this house and blew Warren’s head off because this place is yours.
And there’s nothing wrong with wanting that.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting power and money and respect. It’s fucking hot in my opinion.”
I looked out the window again.
But his stare was still on my face.
“I don’t know if I have what it takes.”
“You absolutely fucking do.”
My eyes moved back to his.
“I would tell you the truth if I didn’t believe that.”
“You would?” I asked.
“Always the truth and nothing but the truth, so help me god,” he said with a smirk. “As those Americans say.”
“I don’t know. It was pretty weak of me to let Leo come back.”
“Really?” he asked. “I thought the opposite.”
I propped my chin on my closed knuckles as I continued to look at him.
“You have earned the unwavering loyalty of all the men here, Francesca. They’re all ready to serve you—and they’re happy to do so.”
“They want to serve you.”
“And I serve you and only you,” he said before he cocked his head. “Boss.”
I nearly rolled my eyes at the title.
His smirk widened. “I love calling you that. So hot.”
“You don’t have to call me that.”
“During business hours, I do. And after hours, I can call you whatever I damn well please.” He continued to stare at me with that signature smile, looking so handsome and playful and also irritating.
“Come on, I want to show you something.” He left the chair and walked up to me, looming over me like a tower.
He extended his hand and waited for me to take it.
I took it and let him pull me up. “What?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he took my hand and walked me outside, down the three flights of stairs, and then across the field to the oak tree where my father rested in eternal peace.
It was sunset, the light illuminating all the branches and the trees one last time before the sun disappeared over the hills.
He stopped in front of the tree and pulled out his tanto knife before he held it out to me.
I took it by the hilt.
“You know what this is?” He planted his palm against the trunk, on top of someone’s name that had been carved in the wood.
I looked at the sea of names, seeing my brother’s first and then eventually my father’s. “Yes.”
“Your name isn’t on here.”
“No.”
“Well, I think it’s time you add it.” He moved to an empty part of the bark, between names of people who had long since passed away, maybe even generations ago. My grandfather’s name was here, and his grandfather's. “Come on.”
I moved to the spot he’d designated for me and stared at the untouched bark.
“Go ahead, boss.”
I turned to look at him, a slight smirk on my lips because he continued to call me that, and I knew he would always call me that.
He gave my ass a gentle pat of encouragement.
I gripped the knife and started to slice my name into the wood.
Francesca was too long, so I stuck with Frankie.
I carved my first name and then my last name, going over it several times with the tip of the knife to make sure it was distinct and would weather the seasons of time, as long as this tree lived.
“Perfect,” Wolfe said as he admired it and traced his fingers over the cuts.
I stepped back and examined the rest of the tree, searching for the place where Wolfe had carved his name when he’d been initiated into the syndicate, but I didn’t see it. “Where’s yours?”
The smile on his lips quickly faded as he continued to look at the tree. He crossed his arms as he stared at it.
I knew something was off because he should know exactly where it was. The tree wasn’t that big, and Wolfe’s memory was flawless.
He finally moved forward again and pointed his finger into the bark. “Here.”
I read the name engraved there, which was completely different from the name I knew him by.
“Cesare Barsetti.” I stared at it for a moment longer before I turned to look at him.
He kept his eyes on the tree and avoided my gaze for a bit before he finally faced me. There was a little smile on his lips, but it was ghostly and distant, like there was a lot of pain behind his former identity. “Yep…that’s me.”
I stared at the desk with my arms crossed over my chest. Stared at the grain of the wood that was highlighted by the sunshine coming through the window.
Some of my father’s things had been moved by Warren, like his favorite flask, his sunglasses, a stress ball that he used to grip when I was little and I drove him up the wall.
I put it all back on the desk, so it felt like he was still there with me every day.
“I rounded up the troops, boss.” Wolfe’s voice came from behind me.
I turned around and leaned against the desk just as my father had. I wore black jeans and boots, a brown leather holster hooked over my shoulder with my pistol inside. My jeans were too tight to have a gun sticking out of my ass all the time.
Wolfe walked in first, followed by the others, and he unabashedly dragged his hungry gaze up and down my body before he dropped into the armchair.
Elio, Andre, and Salvatore took their seats.
Leo was the last one to enter, and like a rat that didn’t want to be caught, he quietly walked into the room and took the chair farthest away from me. His hands fell into his lap, and he studied his fingers like he didn’t want to look at me—or bear my angry sight.
I started with a heavy sigh. “This isn’t how I wanted this to go. My father wanted me to run the business, but not today. Someday…somewhere far into the future.” I gave another sigh. “But here we are, and we’ve got a lot of shit to do.”
“We’ve got it, boss,” Andre said. “Nothing we can’t handle.”
It was so weird to hear them address me like my father.
To have the obedience of men who should try to usurp me, not follow my orders so easily.
“We have a lot of shipments at the docks because we’ve been behind.
I called down to our contacts there and told them to hold everything in the meantime, and now they want us to pay interest on top of our late fees. ”
Wolfe chuckled. “I’ll handle it, Donna Mancini.”
My eyes immediately turned to him because I’d never been addressed that way, with the term for the female version of a don.
Wolfe grinned widely, as if he intended to call me that all the time.
“We need to grab the guns, get them to the warehouse, and immediately fulfill our orders. I spoke to some of our partners. Despite my father’s death at the hands of Warren, they’re impatient for their product because a deposit has already been paid.
The demand for arms is higher now that Icarus is running around everywhere.
I offered them a discount because of the hiccup, but we need to get these delivered as quickly as possible. ”
“You think they deserve a discount?” Elio asked.
“What do we do when our partners don’t pay their deposits on time?”
They all stared at me.
“Break their noses,” I said. “Set their cars on fire. Shoot out all their windows. If we aren’t very forgiving toward them, then why should they be forgiving to us? I think a one-time discount is a reasonable gesture to those who’ve been ordering from us consistently.”
No one raised a question after that. “We’re also behind on the wine. Production halted, some of the harvest went bad, we’ve had some losses. We’ve got to pick up that timeline. Leo, you can take care of that.”
Leo nodded. “Yes, boss,” he said immediately.
“We also need to get those damn carpenters out here again.” Because this place was fucking destroyed once more. “And we need a new gate.”
“We’re on it, Donna Mancini,” Andre said as he got up.
The rest of the men rose to their feet and walked out of the room.
Wolfe also stood, but he stayed. He moved in front of me and stared at me with the biggest grin on his face.
It was hard to hold that stare when it was full of so much affection and love and lust, the foundation of this beautiful relationship.
He loved me at my worst and loved me at my best. He was happy to let me take the lead and didn’t struggle to take orders from a woman.
He was so secure in who he was that my power actually turned him on.
There weren’t a lot of men like that.
He continued his stare, indescribable joy in his eyes. I expected him to stare me down with a possessive expression then bend me over the desk and take me right then and there, but that wasn’t his mood.
No, this was something else. “What?”
He took a step closer to me. “This is exactly what he wanted.”
My eyes softened at the mention of my father, who wasn’t here in the flesh, but deep in my heart.
“And he’d be so fucking proud.” His grin widened, and his eyes dazzled like the nighttime sky.
I inhaled a hard breath because the thought immediately made me emotional.
“But there’s one thing missing. Something that he wanted.”
My eyes took him in with greater interest, unsure what he meant by that.
His grin remained. “A husband to protect you.”
A shock went through my heart instantly. Bumps formed on my arms. I knew my life was about to change irrevocably. I automatically inhaled a breath, knowing it would probably be my last for a minute or so.
“A bloodthirsty, unhinged psychopath no one would be dumb enough to fuck with. A husband to watch your back and your front, a man who will shield you from bullets and knives, a man who would die for you with a fucking smile on his face.”
I knew what was coming, and I felt a little tremble in my arms. I suddenly felt ice-cold and blazing hot at the same time. The breath I’d held released, and I sucked in a deeper one as I felt my eyes smart with moisture.
“I would like that to be me—if you will have me.” The smile remained on his face as his eyes flicked back and forth between mine, already knowing exactly what my answer would be. “Donna Mancini.”
My eyes watered further because his proposal was so simple…
and so perfect. It wasn’t a fancy dinner over candlelight or on an expensive trip to Paris.
It was in the room where we met for the first time.
That was when this story began, and it’d been a lifetime commitment from the start.
We didn’t even date. We immediately moved in together and had a marriage before we called each other husband and wife. “Yes.”
He smiled even bigger as he yanked down the front of his shirt and reached for a chain around his neck.
Hanging from it was a beautiful diamond ring, diamonds through the band with a princess cut stone in the center.
He grabbed the ring and tugged on the chain until it broke, because unclasping it would apparently take too long.
He let the chain drop to the floor between us as he presented the ring to me. He took hold of my left hand and slid the ring onto my finger, a perfect fit over my knuckle. The band was platinum, and the entire piece was stunning and flawless…and a little flashy. “I love it.”
He cupped my face in his hands and kissed me against the desk.
I immediately melted into him at his touch, my hands landing on his big arms, feeling the coolness of the band against his flesh.
His tongue danced with mine and he sucked my bottom lip, but then when the passion ignited, he pulled away and looked at me instead.
The smile was gone, and his stare had deepened into one I’d never seen before.
“I will protect you. I will fight for you. And I will die for you.”