Chapter 17
RAFAELLE
The air in Sicily bites at our lungs like it’s daring us to breathe. By late afternoon, the sun has scorched every stone to white-hot.
We pull off the narrow coastal road, our tyres grinding on loose gravel. Sofiya rides shotgun. Silent with expression unreadable behind dark shades.
I keep one hand on the wheel while the other flicks through the pages of my memories. My father disappearing into himself after Mama died, Nightowl’s clues, my mother’s ghost spinning me into this madness.
All the blood I’ve spilled to bring me to this point.
I glance at her, ask myself why I need two sets of eyes in this thing when I’ve needed none before. Sì, it’s more personal than ever.
But she’s no friend of the Salvatores.
She’s a sexy, deadly Mancinelli predator.
So every mile I drive towards the last moments El Topo has on this earth, I find myself watching her as much as the road. Tonight we may shred his life into cold ashes. I wonder how that feels to her: to hunt her own blood. Whether this level of threat and blackmail is about to backfire in my face.
Because when the time comes, what reassurance do I have that she’ll stand beside me against the blood who tried to kill her own sister?
Absolutely none.
So I could very well be stoking a repeat of what she did on the rooftop.
My hand finds the bruise on my chest. The pain is fading. I don’t… like that. Its loss feels greater than the mere recalibration of damaged cell and muscle.
By the time we crest the ridge overlooking the village, I’ve loosened my tie into a lariat around my neck. The cluster of whitewashed houses and terracotta roofs seems still, almost peaceful.
Another half mile and I pull over and stop.
Beneath us, the villa – my target – slinks among olive trees, walled in granite and secrets.
‘Tigra,’ I say over the drone of the engine as a despairing gust rattles the windows. ‘Is it worth asking how you’re doing?’ I drawl, unable to take my eyes off her in the sunlight reflected off the dashboard.
Fuck, she’s gorgeous. Not for the first time, I wonder if she was so named after the bombshell young Sophia Loren she grew into.
Those luminous eyes. Her distinctive nose. But above all… that luscious, sexy-as-fuck mouth I still feel wrapped around my cock as she sucked me off with a mixture of siren and ingénue. A virgin already stepping into her power, even before she’s given up her hymen.
She lowers her shades and exhales, as though she’s been holding her breath since dawn. ‘You can ask but I don’t know that this calm is what I deserve.’
The raw admission scratches at me. Which is laughable since I shed chunks of my conscience a long time ago, reserving the remaining for my family.
I grip the wheel tighter. ‘Don’t give me that. Deep down you know it was always going to come to this.’
She meets my gaze. For a moment, the world stutters as soft light flickers across her cheekbones, and I see that the pain behind her eyes is real.
That scratch deepens into clawing. I roll the car forward to a stop at the end of a dead-end lane.
‘You good to go?’ I press. Requiring – hoping for? – a resurgence of my baby assassin.
She just shrugs.
‘No, bedda. Answer me.’ In some tiny hole at the back of my mind, I sense I’m being unfair. That no matter what, blood is blood.
Is that going to stop me? Fuck no. For that to happen, I’ll need to abandon my vinnitta. To betray my graveside vow to Mama.
And that’s happening over my dead fucking body.
She swallows. ‘Even if I wanted to cut myself open and drag out my feelings, which I fucking don’t, it’s… complicated.’
We stare each other down for a minute and an age.
Then, accepting we’re at an impasse while time sprints away, I step out, the dry earth shuddering under my boots. ‘Let’s go.’
She follows, pulling her own boots from the floor mat. We weave through a small copse of trees and cross the dirt drive, sun baking our backs.
Ingrained stealth and training guides our movements, but I sense she’s not moving as quickly as she can. I can’t tell if she’s hesitating because she’s uncomfortable, or because she’s uncertain how to betray her own blood.
Standing in the shade of the villa’s cypress trees, I level my gaze at her. ‘On the scale of one to fucked up, tell me how much you agree that El Topo needs to die? If for nothing else, for what he’s done to your own siblings,’ I grate out under my breath.
She closes her eyes, as though the question is a blow. When she opens them, they’re red-rimmed. ‘I don’t know.’
I let that land. Around us, the cicadas hum a Judgment Day rhythm. ‘Don’t lie.’
She flinches. ‘He could already be dead. I saved his life once.’ Her voice cracks a little with that admission.
A slow swell of… something fills in my chest. ‘You what?’
She meets my eyes. ‘He was poisoned, four years ago. A blowfish in a restaurant that may or may not have been an accident – he nearly died. I saved him. Sometimes, like when he went after Maddie last year, I wish I’d let him die.’ The admission is brutally honest, cold with a sliver of a tremor.
I run a hand through my hair, tasting bile. ‘So you’d let him live.’
She shrugs, wincing as the truth wounds her.
‘He’s my family, even if it turned out he’s capable of trying to blow his own granddaughter’s head off.
And me… I’m a killer with a sometimes ill-timed conscience.
Besides, if I’d let him die, who would I be then?
He trained me to be more than a granddaughter. More than a soldier.’
She laughs, and it’s a nails-scraping-chalkboard of self-flagellation that scrapes something much too… aware inside me.
‘It was my chance to prove I wasn’t the failure they always warned me I’d become just because I’m a woman.’
My breath hitches. What I want to do to her warps my tongue, while her raw admission guts me sharper than a blade.
Because it hints that this Mancinelli has a soul, even for vermin she should hate. And right in this moment, I don’t know where to put that feeling.
So I dive into filth and threats. ‘Careful there, tigra. That’s an admission that makes me want to pin you against that tree and devour all your soft spots.’
She shakes her head. ‘Somehow I knew you’d say something like that.’
‘Are you calling me predictable, duci?’ I ask as I pivot towards the villa, gears shifting in my mind.
Again she follows, a hesitant step behind.
‘Predictable? Maybe, but I like knowing what to expect from you, Salvatore.’
I glance at her, reading her face. Or what she wants to show me. There are many hidden depths, ones I look forward to uncovering and ones I wonder if they’ll end me before I do. ‘Then let me predictably remind you. We’re here for blood. His blood. Don’t disappoint me.’
She does not move. ‘You think he killed your mother. I have no excuse.’
‘I don’t think. I know. And so do you. He may not have wielded the weapon that ended her, but he lit the fuse that day. He needs to pay. So for the last time, are you going to stand in my way?’
She reaches out – hesitant, trembling – and I flinch away from her and from the give inside my chest. I can’t… won’t be swayed in this.
She stands there, unsure whether to cross the distance.
Eventually, I ignore her and march forward. She trails behind, boots stirring gravel. I pause at the villa’s iron gate and test the padlock. It snaps open like dry bones.
We make it to the building and inside without incident, which tweaks all my alarms. Inside, hallways stretch into gloom.
I draw my Beretta, silenced and loaded, and sweep from room to room. Each doorway yawns emptily. The kitchen is pristinely abandoned but the stove is still warm. The trophy room’s glass cabinets hold rusted pistols and dried lilies – vestiges of another life.
I meet Sofiya at the top of the marble staircase. ‘Empty,’ I say, my voice between a curse and a groan.
She breathes in, nails biting into the butt of her own gun.
Her poker face is slipping, morphing into the viper Nightowl warmed me about. My alarm flares into klaxons.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
The bruise on my chest throbs and I don’t know whether to curse or celebrate the reminder of what this Mancinelli is capable of. The lengths she could go to to protect her undeserving own.
I glare down at her, fury rising. Knowing even before I ask the question.
‘You were stalling in the trees with that little speech.’ Of course she was.
I stopped for a chit-fucking-chat, giving her time she didn’t need to adjust to killing her own grandfather because he wasn’t here.
Giving her a chance to hang my rope around my neck. Fucking A, Rafa. ‘What did you do?’
She purses her lips, eyes bold and brazen. Sexy as fuck. Eyes I wouldn’t mind looking into as I strangled the fuck out of her.
‘Maddie begged me. She doesn’t want blood before the baby comes. And maybe when I was double-checking my intel on the plane, I wasn’t as… careful as I should’ve been.’
Rage claws at my throat. ‘You fucking betrayed me.’
She flinches at my words, knowing exactly how they cut.
‘Do you hear yourself? I betrayed you?’ Her voice is a lethal shard of glass.
‘He’s an eighty-year-old man who’s spent decades twisting lives.
Blood or not, you don’t think he’d kill me first – or any of his grandchildren – just to save face?
Do you not think I’m twisted up about this? ’
My hands tremble where they grip the banister. ‘I thought you were in this until we pulled the trigger in the same moment.’
She stands taller, anger flickering in her stunning eyes. ‘I’m only in this because you haven’t given me anything other than fucked-up choices that don’t end up with hundreds more people dying if you start another war.’
I lunge forward, my heart pounding. I grab her by the shoulders and push her into the wall, lips knocking against hers in a furious crush. Her breath hitches. She tastes of honey and defiance.