9. Gio
GIO
“Ancora! Più veloce! Again, faster!”
Vampa swipes his blade through the air.
I duck, feinting one direction as he attacks. At the last second, I shift my weight, tucking one knife against my right side as I thrust at him with the other.
The fucker shifts just in time. My blade slices through his shirt, missing his skin by millimeters.
Panting, we both step back. Circle each other on the mat.
“That was a close one.” Vampa sounds mildly disgruntled. Which, for him, is an outpouring of emotion.
I feel a grin flicker across my face. He’s pissed that I sliced open his favorite shirt. “Not close enough,” I toss back. “You’re still in one piece.”
“Meno male. I’ve got too much to do today to be bleeding all over the place.”
I grunt, sheathing my knives just long enough to strip off my shirt. I’m the one who has work to do, but instead, here I am, in the middle of a knife fight with my number two because I can’t get my captive bride out of my head.
It’s been seven days since I locked her in her room.
I was expecting she’d clock a few escape attempts by now. Attack a guard or two, at least.
Fuck, she hasn’t even tried to seduce any of them.
A go-to tactic for any ’Ndrangheta female.
Get under a man’s skin, get into his pants, control his mind by pleasuring his body.
My guards are too well-trained to fall for that shit, and the idea of her touching any of them makes me want to break someone’s neck, but I thought she’d at least try.
She hasn’t. Not any of it.
Every day, twice a day, the reports come back the same.
She wakes up, bathes, eats her meals. Reads the books she’s requested from the library.
Writes in the journal she asked for. Sketches with the art supplies she asked the guards to track down.
Beach scenes, apparently. Recent reports state that one entire wall of her room is covered in sketch after sketch of beach scenes.
I haven’t gone to see for myself. Spending time in Viviana’s company isn’t part of the plan.
Out of sight, out of mind, until the day of the exchange arrives—that’s the plan. And it’s not fucking working.
Having her here—being one step closer to finishing this—should’ve freed up mental real estate. Instead, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.
About her expression when she realized she’d married the wrong man.
The look of devastation when I told her she’d never see her fiancé again.
The heartbreak she couldn’t conceal when I informed her she’s a prisoner here. On the island. In her room.
I think about her when I’m working. See her haunted expressions in my sleep.
She’s becoming a distraction. A dangerous one.
Case in point? I’m neck-deep in my mental clusterfuck when Vampa slams the hilt of his knife into my side.
I fold, groaning, just as he lands an uppercut to my jaw. I stumble back, brain momentarily scrambled. “Che cazzo!”
“Your father taught you better than that, Giovanni. So did I.” The older man dances on the balls of his feet, moving faster than anyone his age should.
“If you’re in a fight, you are in a fight.
Not in your head. Not anywhere else. Focus, Gio.
Whatever the fuck is going on in there”—he taps his blade to his skull—“set it aside and focus. Unless you have a death wish. In which case, keep doing what you’re doing. ”
I shake off Vampa’s hit and, with it, all thoughts of the woman locked upstairs. I’ve got to stay focused. I haven’t made it this far to get distracted now.
Circling my underboss, sweat dripping down my spine, my blades balanced in my hands, I force her out of my head.
Vampa mirrors my movements, flanking me before he lunges, his swing tight and precise.
I dart away at the last second, slamming an arm down on one of his, simultaneously catching a foot behind one of his knees. I spin, using my weight to throw him off balance, and we hit the mat with a thud, rolling once, twice. We stop, him on his back, me above, my blade against his throat.
“Much better, figliolo,” he says, catching his breath. “You can win every time, as long as you keep your head clear.”
“Whatever you say, old man.”
He grunts, wiping sweat from his brow. Sparring session over, we hit the showers in the villa’s basement gym. We’re dressed and heading up to the ground floor when Vamp’s phone beeps. He checks the message, tension tightening his shoulders.
He follows me inside my office, closing the doors. “There’s been a development.”
I take the seat behind my desk. The same desk my father used, his father before him. It doesn’t matter how many times the household staff polishes the Black Walnut surface, blade and burn marks will always be visible. Decades of violence impossible to wipe away. “What sort of development?”
“It’s Gennaro Pazzi. He’s not going to make the agreed meeting time.”
My entire system goes on high alert. “The handoff is still a week away. How the fuck does he know he isn’t going to make it?”
Vampa scans the message once more. “There was an accident. The old bastard got thrown from his horse. Cracked his head. Apparently, there’s brain damage.”
“Pretty sure it was damaged long before this.”
“Clearly. But not in a way that required a medically induced coma.”
My jaw ticks painfully. “And this injury does?”
Vampa nods. “The doctors don’t know how long he’ll be under. If he was younger and healthier, they’d be able to estimate a quicker recovery time but, as it is…”
“As it is, the bastard’s body is as fucked as his brain so now it’s anyone’s guess when he’s going to wake up.”
If he’s going to wake up.
Vaffanculo! I scrub my hand down my face, cursing the Pazzi name for what feels like the millionth time. “They are a fucking scourge on the planet, you know that? We’re a week from purging them from our lives forever and this fucking happens?”
All the frenetic energy I burned off during our sparring match is back. My fingers tap an erratic rhythm against my desk. “Right. We’re not going to let Pazzi fuck this up. We’ve come too far for that.”
Vampa is calm as always. “What are your orders, Signore?”
“We move ahead. You tell the motherfucking Pazzis to contact us the instant the old bastard is awake. This arrangement is not falling through, I don’t give a fuck what he’s done to his brain. He can be a vegetable for all I care, as long as he’s conscious enough to meet his side of the agreement.”
“And Aurora?”
My heart squeezes, sharp and sudden. I kill the rising sentimentality as fast as possible. “I’ll contact Valentin. Tell him we’ve hit a roadblock and that he needs to keep her a little longer.”
Vampa narrows his eyes. It’s infinitesimal, but I know him well enough to notice.
“I’m still not comfortable with the Russian being involved.
Are you sure we’re not putting Ro at risk by leaving her with him for longer?
He’s the pakhan now. The man has his own people to protect.
If he gets distracted, loosens the security protocol in any way?—”
“Basta. Stop.” I cut off Vampa’s concerns.
“I trust Alik Valentin implicitly. He vowed to help us protect Aurora, and he doesn’t make vows lightly.
Besides, he owes me. He and his new wife wouldn’t have lived long enough to get engaged if I hadn’t stepped in and helped.
Alik might be the new Valentin Pakhan, but he won’t let his new position get in the way of his promise.
We can trust him and Sera to keep Aurora safe for as long as is needed. ”
“Va bene, va bene.” Vampa pauses, his gaze drifting toward the ceiling, as if he can see through three floors of tile and beams. “And the Salviati woman?”
I have this inexplicable impulse to correct him, to remind him that she’s a Marchetti now. I don’t. “What about Viviana?”
“Obviously this delay applies to her too. She has to stay confined on the island longer than planned.”
Fuck. Just what I need.
“It’s fine,” I say. “We’ve survived with her on the island for a week already. A few more isn’t going to kill us.”
“Assuming she doesn’t murder us first.”
The comment stirs up a memory, destructive, deadly. The image of Viviana when I first saw her two years ago.
Before I can answer my sottocapo, a second memory takes its place. Viviana in the hotel’s bathroom, bleeding, shaken, the opposite of homicidal.
I can’t kick the feeling that something is still off. She’s been too docile. Too quiet. I issued the threat against her sister’s life to keep Viviana in line. I expected it to dull her bite, not muzzle her completely.
It doesn’t make sense. Where’s the fight? The yelling, the threats? The attempts to make us pay for what we’ve done to her?
Viviana’s behavior has me unsettled. It’s inconsistent and therefore unpredictable. I don’t like unpredictable.
“Just because she hasn’t tried anything yet doesn’t mean she won’t,” Vampa says, reading my thoughts.
“I know. Which is why we stick to the plan. She stays locked up until Pazzi is awake and everything is a go.”
Vampa looks at me.
“What?”
“I know you, Gio. Something is going on in that head of yours. You’re analyzing.”
“Of course I am. That’s my fucking job.” My purpose, the way I lead this family.
He shakes his head. “But you’re analyzing with the wrong organ. You’re using this”—he taps his heart—“but you should be using this”—he raps a knuckle against his skull. “It’s your plan, and it’s a good one. It’s gotten us this far. Don’t be tempted to deviate.”
I stand, head splitting. “I’m not. Clearly. I’m the one who just said that we stay the course.”
“Then explain that look you’ve got in your eyes.”
Fuck, the old bastard knows me too well. “What look?”
“The one that says you’re having second thoughts. That maybe the idea of subjecting the woman upstairs to a heinous creature like Gennaro Pazzi is more than even a cold-hearted bastard like you can stomach.”
Fuck. If only I were feeling cold-hearted. Heat curls up my spine, making my eyeballs throb.
I’m around the desk and in front of Vampa before I realize what I’m doing, my temper slipping its leash.
My fists are in his shirt, and I haul him so close our noses practically touch.
“Fuck second thoughts. Be careful, Silvio. My father trusted you with his life. I have, too. You’re more than just my sottocappo—you’re like my own flesh and blood.
But don’t for one second think that’ll keep you alive if you ever question my loyalty again.
I will always protect this family. The Family. No matter what it takes.”
“Mi scusi, Signore.” Vampa keeps his gaze level with mine. “I’d never question your integrity or commitment. You know that, Gio. I just want to make sure that having that woman here isn’t messing with your head.”
I let him go, painfully aware that my heated reaction has just proven Vampa’s point. Having Viviana here is fucking with my head. Shaking my self-control. But there’s no way I’m acknowledging it. “Why would having her here affect me in any way?”
“Because it means you’re one step closer to bringing this entire revenge plot to an end. One step closer to knowing there’s no room for error. To knowing that the Pazzis have hurt us before and it’ll break us if they do it again.”
Fuck.
It’s a low blow. And hits harder than anything he meted out during our sparring match.
Vampa knows it too; he heads to the door, not waiting for a reply. “You talk to the Russian. I’ll talk to the Pazzis. As soon as they send an update on the bastard’s status, I’ll let you know.” He pauses, hand on the doorknob. “And Giovanni?”
“What?”
“Whatever else you’re thinking about the Salviati woman, remember that she’s killed more than once.
Not just during her time at the convent, but before.
” His gaze is as stoic as ever. “We spent a lot of money to see the paperwork those nuns kept on her. We know exactly why that angelic-looking woman locked upstairs was sent to the convent in the first place.”