Chapter 15 #2
‘Soon is horseshit,’ he snarls. ‘Vengeance grows mouldy if you store it too long. You want a reminder? I’ll take the next flight, put a bullet in every Mancinelli I find, starting with that pretty little race boy – what’s his name – Narciso?
I’ll cut his brakes and watch his guts paint the asphalt. ’
Heat flashes behind my eyes – a picture of a sniper reticle, my mother’s blood, Sofiya’s laugh. Confusion tastes like copper on my tongue because those two thoughts belong nowhere near each other, never mind intertwining.
‘Nonnu,’ I say, voice dropping into the tone that’s used to silence lieutenants. ‘You raised us. You know I don’t let debts slide. But I handle this my way. Trust that. Stay in Fallbrook.’
Silence. Then a low, grudging chuckle. ‘There’s my Enforcer. Fine. I’ll give you rope. Wrap it around the bastard’s neck quick, or I start yanking.’ He sucks in air, softer now. ‘Famigghia above all. Don’t forget the oath.’
‘I never do.’
‘And Rafa—’ He pauses, sudden weariness bleeding through. ‘Your mother would want his head, sì. But she’d want your soul whole. Make this quick. Don’t let the vinnitta eat what’s left of it.’
The line clicks dead.
I stare at the handset, jaw tight. Stunned as fuck. My fucking soul? Since when did he—
Cesare steps up, clasps my shoulder. ‘Same speech he gave me when I married Maddie,’ he mutters. ‘He’s fire – burns everything, including us.’
‘Fire keeps predators back,’ I answer, though my voice comes out hollow. Inside, two truths grind like bone: duty to blood, and the feral pull of a Mancinelli assassin who should be my enemy.
I hand Cesare the phone, walk towards the waiting SUV, and promise myself the same lie I’ve repeated for the last year – when a Mancinelli bleeds, everything will make sense again.
But the echo of Sofiya’s moan still rings in my ears, and for the first time, I’m not sure vengeance alone will quiet the ghosts.
Sofiya
03:15 – H?tel de Paris, Monte Carlo
‘Dammit, I need to pee again. brB,’ Maddie grumbles, before hefting herself to her feet and waddling away towards the bathroom.
It’s cute. And unsettling as fuck.
I feel as if my life has tracked a steady, near predictable course, only to speed up in the last twelve months.
And the only variable in there? The shattering of the previous never-the-twain-shall-meet-except-on-the-battlefield standards the Mancinellis and Salvatores lived by.
I lean against the suite’s balcony door now, listening to Mozart drift through the candle-lit sitting room and letting the past ten minutes replay in my head like slow-motion telemetry.
I’d barely raised my hand to knock before the door swung wide. Maddie – eight months pregnant and radiant in a koi-print kimono – hauled me into an iron-ribbed hug. Pregnancy, it turns out, hasn’t blunted her bone-crushing strength.
‘You smell like seawater and bad choices,’ she whispered against my ear, half scolding, half amused.
‘Busy night,’ I replied, slipping past her as she engaged the deadbolt.
Candlelight flickered over half-eaten tiramisu, a bodyguard by bullet-resistant glass, Mozart lilting in the background – domestic serenity, mafia edition.
Maddie lowered herself onto the sofa, one hand rubbing the small of her back.
‘Cesare told me you were in Rafa’s room,’ she said, pointing a dessert spoon at me like a gavel.
‘Apparently you and he had “business”. Translation: my husband is covering whatever debauchery his baby brother dragged you into.’ Her dark-lashed eyes narrowed.
‘Some secrets I let Cesare keep. The ones about my baby sister and the Salvatore Enforcer? Not so much. Spill.’
I’d sunk onto a cushion opposite, suddenly twelve again under that stare. ‘Nothing world-ending,’ I’d said, voice too careful. ‘Your bro-in-law is as safe as nitro-glycerine left out in the sun. It’s my job to make sure he doesn’t go bang and take us all down with him.’
She didn’t miss my emphasis on the ‘your’, and yeah, it was a touch bitchy and shade-throwing as fuck, but it was that or admit I’d let the second Salvatore grandson go down on me.
And fuck if I was admitting that to my big sister.
The same big sister I’d – in a moment of weakness – admitted to that I was a damned virgin last year.
God, I had a hard time admitting everything that had happened tonight to myself.
Understatement of the century, but I needed a shield, and espresso-soaked ladyfinger did the job. I took a slow bite, heat flickering in my cheeks.
‘And did you?’ She arched a brow. ‘Manage him, that is?’ There was a peculiar note to her tone, a teasing and a probing.
I’d shrugged. ‘We’re still here, no?’ I returned, trying my damnedest not to think of gaudy yachts, wetsuits, and Rafa’s tongue rewriting my moral code.
‘Interesting, I’ve never noticed this before.’
‘Noticed what?’
‘Your poker face sucks when you’re tired, Sof.’
Shit. She saw through the dodge.
‘Fine. Evade like you always do,’ she’d said, dredging up the perennial guilt of our not being BFFs.
As if there’s ever a good time to tell your sister that you were the family assassin.
And that while sometimes blood made you queasy, you actually didn’t mind watching the life drain out of the eyes of bad guys.
Or that you were quietly desperate to expand your horizons.
To become meaningful to more than just your family so you could hang onto a fracturing self-worth that didn’t entirely hinge on your gender.
‘Do you know where Nonno is?’ she’d demanded, eyes piercing in a way I suspected she’d picked up from her husband.
Ice had slid down my spine. ‘Would I be here if I did?’
‘I don’t know, would you—’
I tossed the spoon, sugar high souring. ‘Stop.’
Maddie blinked. ‘Sof—’
‘I said stop.’ I raised a hand. My nerves were frayed; Lupo’s death still clings to my skin, Rafa’s mouth still pulsing between my legs – too much. ‘If I had a location, you’d be the first to know. Until then, let’s not claw each other open.’
Silence. Then Maddie exhaled, guilt softening her features. ‘Okay.’ She patted the sofa. ‘Truce?’
‘Truce.’ I slid closer. She clasped my hands, thumb stroking the swell of callus on my trigger finger. No judgement – just knowledge even as she’d held my gaze, measuring.
After a beat, she’d sighed, scooped another bite of tiramisu, and let the subject hang unanswered.
Now, I turn away from the balcony after a minute, pause when I hear voices.
Maddie’s in the bedroom, talking to the baby in soft Sicilian – promising him or her another piece of tiramisu tomorrow.
I exhale, forehead against the cool glass.
Monaco’s harbour glitters below, but my reflection stares back. Flushed cheeks, bruise-dark circles and a mouth still swollen from Rafa’s kiss.
‘Busy night’ doesn’t begin to cover it.
And dawn promises worse.
I join Maddie in the bedroom, where apparently she roadblocked after going to the bathroom.
She grimaces when I enter. ‘Sorry. My energy needs careful allocation these days. I was just catching my breath, but since you’re here…’ She pats the bed.
I sit next to her.
And for the next half hour she chatters about nursery paint swatches, how Cesare hovers like an anxious hawk, and baby kicks that feel like ‘tiny mafia hits from the inside’.
Her laugh is bright, defiant, proof she refuses to let a simmering famigghia feud steal her joy.
I sip chamomile tea and listen, something warm swelling in my chest that feels inconveniently like envy.
Not jealousy of her, her husband, the devotion or the empire they’re building and adding to.
Just the audacity to rewrite her script. And fucking succeed at it.
So far, I’ve hit dead ends in my own audacity journey.
The whispered-about organisation I’d hoped to approach but was actively giving me the cold shoulder. The organisation I’m certain Rafa is a part of. A thought bounces through my brain but I don’t give it time to land, never mind find fertile soil. A few filter through nonetheless.
‘My next kill for your virginity’, he’d offer.
‘How about an introduction to the assassin agency you work for?’ I’d counter.
I grimace, more than a little disgusted with myself. Just because the Salvatore enforcer was a little feral about your cherry doesn’t mean he’ll want it that much.
Would you even respect him if he did?
Maddie catches my expression, nudges my knee, but thankfully misinterprets it. ‘You’ll get this too, you know.’
I snort. ‘Sure. Right after world peace.’
‘I mean it.’ She rests my hand on her belly; beneath the silk, a flutter answers. Life, stubborn and loud. ‘You can carve any future you want, Sof. Same way I did.’
Could I? Two hours ago Rafa tongue-worshipped me like a conquered country. The euphoria still thrums. But tomorrow – or the next night – he could line my brother in a rifle scope. Violence is bred into us; love is the inconvenient variable that ignited this, after all.
‘If I rebel,’ I whisper, ‘someone has to keep the balance. Father’s half-mad trying to step into shoes far bigger than he can grow. Narciso still thinks upheaval is solved by horsepower and tequila. I’d cut my arm off before I pull Jacinta or Mama deeper into this shit. That leaves me.’
Maddie squeezes. ‘Balance doesn’t mean martyrdom.’
‘Maybe it does.’
She studies me, then smiles sadly. ‘At least promise you’ll let yourself be happy sometimes.’
I make a sound that means nothing at all. Thankfully, she lets it go. Just before I’m saved by the ping of my phone.
I rise and rush much too quickly to the door. Tell myself I’m not running from unwanted advice or towards the next skirmish with a certain fuck-hot Enforcer.
‘Sofiya?’
I stop. Turn. She’s risen from the bed, waddling towards me.
Her eyes are anxious. ‘I know there’s no variable where we make things right with Nonno after what he did. But…’ She rubs her belly, her throat moving in a swallow. ‘I also don’t want to welcome my baby into the world knowing we had a hand in ending their great-grandfather. So…’
I reach out, and she clasps my hand. ‘I don’t know how all this will pan out, Maddie. And I can’t make promises I don’t know whether I’ll be able to keep.’
She blinks. Then nods. Presses my hand before she releases me. ‘I know. I love you. Stay safe, please?’
‘Don’t worry about me, sis. Worry about how much tiramisu you’re feeding that kid. And how you’re going to pop it out if it’s as big as a small cottage.’
She’s gasping in outrage when a knock interrupts – two quick, one long. Salvatore code. I open the suite door a crack.
Rafa stands there, freshly showered, black Henley clinging to muscle, eyes softer than they should be for a killer who just flew in from a gun deal.
‘Maddie,’ he calls over my shoulder, ‘your overprotective husband is on his way. But he wants you in bed. Underboss’s orders.’
‘Tell Cesare he can get his hot ass over here himself and talk to his not-fragile wife,’ Maddie shouts back – but she’s already approaching the door. She kisses my cheek, whispers, ‘Make happiness the goal, Sof. Remember that.’
She waddles to the bedroom. I close the door. Rafa’s gaze sweeps my face like he’s cataloguing bruises. ‘You good?’
‘Fine.’ I cross arms to hide the way his presence tightens everything low in my belly. ‘She interrogated me.’
‘Did she use waterboarding or more tiramisu?’
I huff. ‘Both.’
His grin is quick, then fades into something almost tender. ‘Let’s go.’
We head for the suite in silence. I’m not sure what to expect because he’s not acting like his last text suggested. The one that made me so hot, I’d had to step out onto the balcony to cool off.
Is this some trick to keep me on my toes? To—
‘Go sleep, tigra.’
I look around, clocking that we’ve arrived in the suite.
‘We’re racetrack bound in a little over four hours.’ He pauses. ‘You plan to be there, sì?’
I nod.
He turns but I catch his wrist.
The hallway lamp casts gold over his scars, the ink on his neck and throat, over the vein that jumps in his forearm. ‘Rafa.’ The name tastes bold on my tongue. ‘Don’t do anything stupid tonight.’
He steps closer, fingers brushing my pulse. ‘Define stupid.’
‘Turning that rifle back on my family.’
A flicker – pain, regret, something heavier – crosses his features. ‘Not tonight.’ He slides a thumb under my chin. ‘And if tomorrow I forget why I promised, remind me – preferably with that mouth.’
My breath snags. He kisses my forehead, soft and devastating – then strolls down the hall, danger in every line.
I press my back to the door, heart thundering.
Two days ago he was a nightmare on a rooftop; now his kiss feels like the only oath I trust.
What the hell have I let happen?