Devil’s Vows (Mafia Vows #4)

Chapter 1

GABI

I have rules for surviving in my world, and the first one is to never show them who I really am.

This has been circling my mind for days. Helpful but also a load of bullshit. On one side, I’m just a girl. In a convent. An orphan, saved by the grace of God. I could be anything really, just never the secret daughter of the most powerful Mafia Don in Italy.

Honestly, I have no clue who I am. All I know is I’ll be certifiable if I don’t get out of this make-shift safehouse soon.

From afar, the clang of metal sounds, and I jolt. Seriously? Get a grip.

Maybe it’s time.

Can’t be.

Maybe it is? My fingers start trembling, so I put the paintbrush down. I fist my hands to quiet them, refusing to be a victim of fictional fear.

When it’s real, it’s a different story. I’m not there yet. I stretch my fingers and reach for my small golden cross necklace. Just running my thumb over its patterned surface calms me.

I hate how these sounds still affect me years down the line, and this isn’t a cellar but it might as well be. At least, it isn’t a dank and moldy dungeon just yards from a pigsty, where the pigs’ putrid stench and squealing just above reminded me every second of someone being tortured.

For almost two months, I’ve been hiding out in this secret chamber in the Potenza Convent, accessible through a hidden passage from Mother Lucia’s office. She is the only one who has keys to this room, so I have no idea why I’m so jittery.

But I know why. Two months is a long time, and every day in here is a day closer to some monster finding me. Someone called earlier this week asking if a Gabriella Randazzo lives at this convent. Luckily for me, I’ve never been called by that name.

I force myself to take a deep breath and home in on the sounds. The gate clicks closed.

Footsteps. Rushed. Urgent.

My heart pounds louder with each creaky stair, and I stand up to lift the roof tile just two inches so I can peek out.

The gap provides a view over the church’s playground where kids’ laughter drifts up, music to my ears.

The church’s kindergarteners are out for one last outdoor play before it’s story time, and they are rowdy as they should be.

I quickly tally them as used to be my habit, and once all are accounted for, I sigh in relief.

Nothing would ever happen here, but it’s not every day little kids get to go back home to their parents.

My gaze jumps beyond the playground. No strange cars are parked in the narrow, cobbled street. No men in suits walk around looking menacing. No Russian voices drift over on the late afternoon’s heated breeze.

I take a deep breath, gently lower the tile, and wipe my hands down my pinafore as I listen again.

The footsteps are familiar.

It’s for sure Mother Lucia, but something in her gait puts me on guard. She’s always calm and in charge, and these aren’t the footsteps of a calm and in-charge devout Catholic.

A key gets shoved into the keyhole, and the twist sounds like a chicken’s breaking neck. My breath stalls in my chest. Mother Lucia is never aggressive like this. Something is wrong.

It’s been a long time now, but there are layers to things being wrong. For a while, I thought I was safe. Ensconced in the convent at Potenza, working as a teacher’s assistant in the kindergarten here. As insignificant and forgettable as white paint.

But ever since the news of Randazzo’s death reached this last outpost in a broken pearl-string of villages slowly dying out because of an aging population, everything has been a mess.

I’ve been a mess.

Do we run again? How long can we stay a few measly steps ahead of Franco Fiore, the swine who anointed himself as the new Don once the news of Randazzo’s death started floating around? When he learns about the deal Randazzo struck with that decrepit Russian, who knows what he’d do to me.

I shudder. I know what men are capable of.

I don’t know where Mother Lucia gets her information on Franco Fiore from.

All I know is I need to disappear forever, before Fiore can learn about me or the deal.

My biggest strength has always been being a secret.

A mere ghost living in the walls of convents, where drafty whispers about my existence have chased me around Italy for well over a decade.

The door shoves open, and Mother Lucia bursts into the small room. Her face is flushed, eyes wide, her chest heaving, and a droplet of sweat gathers and runs down the edge of her wimple like a misplaced tear.

What on earth is going on? She is never this rumpled, this affected.

“Gabriella…oh, Gabriella!”

I chill to my bones. She never calls me Gabriella. I’ve been everything else. Lately Terese, but also Maria, Gianna… Gosh, even I’ve lost track.

She reaches for my hands and clenches them tight.

“What’s wrong?” I croak, squeezing her hands back, my heart causing a racket in my chest.

“Cara, it’s time. It’s finally happened. They’re coming for you.”

My legs want to cave in. Surely not both of them? Franco Fiore and the Russian?

I should have run, not wasted time waiting for Mother Lucia to set things up for me.

Or thinking Chiara will hold to her promise to fetch me.

But I have no money, no clothes other than what the convent provides, no birth certificate, and therefore no passport.

The way I need to disappear demands, at minimum, one of those.

They’re coming for me.

If only she’d let me go, but Mother Lucia would never allow me to face the world outside. I’ve been in hiding for years, in the safest place, for what it’s worth: God’s hands, apparently. I know better, and now, it’s too late.

“Are you sure?” I ask, dreading her answer.

If the Russian with the tattoos on his hands is here—my groom—or Franco Fiore, stepping in as a fake Don, claiming to have the same right to me as Randazzo, I’m done for. I’d rather die—

Those devils have been looking for me, seeking through the slits between God’s fingers, waiting with bated breath for one gap to become just wide enough so they can find me.

Randazzo’s girl. His heiress. The last thing I ever want to be.

I want to vomit at the thought of Randazzo’s plans for me barreling toward their conclusion.

“Faith is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Mother Lucia whispers as she holds me at arm’s length, studying my face in the soft glow of the oil lamp as if she’ll never see me again.

“As soon as you feel tested to the extent that you almost freefall into denial, God sends you a sign, literally answers your prayers in the nick of time.”

I suppress a groan. Preaching has its place and time and now isn’t it. In fact, I lost all interest in what priests had to say when I turned thirteen. Hell is just the place for them. “Just tell me already. A sign? Nick of time?”

“God knows how I’ve prayed—”

“What’s happened?” I ask, too anxious to be polite. “Is this about Randazzo’s death?” And the contract he signed with that vile Russian, on my body no less, me the bargaining chip to be claimed when the time was right?

“Do you ever wonder how I knew you were the Gabriella I’ve been looking for?” Mother Lucia’s voice ruptures through my thoughts.

“No?” We never speak about any of this, and I don’t understand why she’s going there now. It doesn’t matter if we need to drop everything and run.

“For seven years, I waited for your arrival in Italy, and when I saw you, I just knew.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I knew you on sight because you look just like your mother. Just like my childhood friend who lived with me on the streets of Napoli.”

What is she on about? This is the first I hear of a friend. From Napoli. One who is a carbon copy of me? Now isn’t the time for either of us to lose our minds.

“Mother Lucia,” I start. For the love of God, if you please, stop stalling. “Tell me?”

She lets go of me and reaches into her pocket and pulls out a stack of letters.

Her hand is shaking so much, the whole lot quivers.

This close, the soft glow of the oil lamp highlights every wrinkle.

How time has aged her. It’s more than time.

It’s me. Looking after and hiding a notorious Mafioso’s only child would take its toll.

“Read this tonight, in preparation,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “Everything you need to know is in there.”

I take the letters from her, with a trembling hand. Whatever this is, it’s not dire, is it? If it had been, she would’ve gotten my small suitcase ready. No. The clue is here, in this stack.

A woman’s elegant handwriting. Stamps. From America. I stare up at her, stunned, but she’s already crossing the short distance to my small desk where I’ve been drawing and painting for the past months, working on a new set of illustrations to keep busy and sane while locked up.

She reaches for my completed book, my first fairy tale—the one she told me again and again to calm me as a child.

“The Princess and the Six Princes.” She bites her bottom lip, tears quietly streaming down her cheeks.

“This was never a fairy tale. I couldn’t tell you the outright truth, because it was simply too dangerous.

This is the story I told you to hide but reveal the truth at the same time, praying—waiting and begging—for fifteen long years for it to become real one day. ”

How weird. I always thought six princely brothers would be very welcome and very handy, too, to come and save me from this shattered life I’ve been living. A dream, a wish. A coin tossed over my shoulder into a fountain in Potenza.

Brothers would mean family. Safety. Protection. Love.

How could a fairy tale hold the key to my past? Then it dawns on me. This isn’t about Randazzo or Franco Fiore at all. This is about something else. These letters have postage stamps from America, where I was born. The story is about six brothers…

Mine?

I sink down on my narrow cot and stare up at her, clutching my golden cross.

I was never encouraged to think there was more to my story than just being a Mafioso girl stuck in the convent system, where I’d be ‘safe.’ A girl-child to use and sell to the highest bidder. But now—

“They’re coming for you. Your real blood brothers. From America,” Mother Lucia says, the tremor in her voice echoing the ripples through my body. “Your six princes. They’re finally coming to fetch you.”