Chapter Eleven #2
The moment the dessert plates were cleared, Raphael stood up.
"If you will excuse me, Lorenzo," Raphael said to the Maroni patriarch, his tone leaving absolutely no room for argument. "I have pressing matters regarding the southern ports to attend to. My mother will see to your comfort for the remainder of the evening."
Without waiting for a response, Raphael turned and strode out of the dining hall.
Ten minutes later, as Raphael stood in his private study pouring a glass of scotch, the door clicked open. Contessa Vittoria stepped inside, her face set in lines of aristocratic displeasure.
"That was incredibly rude, Raphael," Vittoria reprimanded smoothly, closing the door behind her. "Lorenzo Maroni is an important ally. His daughters were merely trying to make conversation. You treated them as if they were carrying a disease."
Raphael did not turn around. He took a slow sip of the liquor, the burn doing nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.
"I am not interested in their conversation, Mother," Raphael said, his voice a low, vibrating rumble of warning.
Vittoria stepped further into the room, her eyes calculating.
"They are beautiful girls, from a flawless bloodline.
The elder, Caterina, has a remarkable temperament.
You are thirty-six, Raphael. The empire requires stability.
I was not going to suggest a formal arrangement tonight, but surely you must begin looking at the board. "
Raphael slowly lowered his glass to the desk. The glass hit the mahogany with a sharp thud.
When he turned to face his mother, Vittoria actually took a physical step backward. The look in her son’s eyes was apocalyptic. It was the same feral, unholy wrath he had worn when he ordered the total annihilation of the Caruso syndicate.
"Listen to me very carefully," Raphael commanded, his voice dropping into a demonic whisper that commanded obedience.
"If you ever parade another woman in front of me—if you ever invite another family into this house with the intention of placing a bride in my bed—I will view it as an act of treason against my own sanity. "
Vittoria stared at him, genuinely shocked. "Raphael, be reasonable. You cannot let the tragedy with the Ferros destroy the future of the bloodline. You are grieving Odessa. You are carrying the guilt of the ambush. But you must eventually marry."
"It is not guilt!" Raphael suddenly roared, the explosive sound rattling the glass panes of the study windows.
He closed the distance between them, towering over his mother, his chest heaving with the sheer force of his suppressed agony. The polished, controlled facade of the Don shattered, revealing the desperate, bleeding man beneath.
"Do you understand nothing of what has happened in this house?
" Raphael demanded, his voice thick with tearing grief.
"You think I am avoiding alliances because I am guilty over Laila?
I don't give a damn about Laila! I don't give a damn about the Maroni girls!
I don't care if their bloodlines are forged in solid gold! "
Vittoria’s eyes widened, her aristocratic mask slipping.
"Raphael... what are you planning to do?
Have you realized you have fallen in love with the analyst?
" Her voice carried a tone of incredulous disbelief, as if she could not fathom a Don harboring such sentiments for a staff member.
"Raphael, she is not going to give you another chance. She will not even look at you."
"I know she won't!" Raphael gritted out, the truth of it twisting like a knife in his gut.
He stepped back, running a trembling hand through his hair, abandoning his pride.
"I know she will never forgive me. I know she crosses off the days on her calendar until she can be rid of my face. I know I have lost her."
He looked back at Vittoria, his obsidian eyes burning with finality.
"Then so be it," Raphael said, his voice dropping back to a quiet register.
"If she never speaks to me again, then I will spend the next twenty-one months watching her from a distance.
And when she leaves, I will remain alone in this house until I am put in the ground.
I will never marry. I will never take a queen.
It is Azar, or it is no one. Is that clear, Mother? "
Vittoria was stunned into silence. She stared at the towering man she had raised.
She tried to search his face for the strategic calculator, for the ruthless pragmatist who always put the syndicate first. She found nothing but the crushing weight of a man hopelessly, irretrievably possessed by love.
She had thought it was just guilt over the false accusation. She thought he was merely processing the shame of his catastrophic misjudgment. She had never, in her wildest dreams, imagined that the Iron Saint had surrendered his soul to the housekeeper's granddaughter.
"It is clear," Vittoria whispered, her voice trembling slightly.
Raphael turned away from her, picking up his glass of scotch and staring back out the window into the rainy night. He was the most powerful man in the country, and he was hopelessly trapped in a hell of his own making.
He took a sip of the burning liquor, his eyes fixed on the distant, invisible tree line where the stone cottage sat.
The twenty-one months stretched out before him like a desert of glass, and the inability to touch her, to speak to her, to simply be near her vibrant, brilliant fire, was driving him irrevocably insane.