CHAPTER 29 JARED
Present day
I’ve been driving for maybe two hours, and I feel worse and worse, my fingers clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip.
What the fuck is happening to me?
Why is it so hard for me to get farther away… from?
From what?
Apparently, from wherever Mauro is!
There are moments when I stop and my brain just freezes.
Then I pick up my phone and, sniffling, scroll through the news about the Ferro family.
The Ferros!
Fucking Ferros!
Mauro’s one of them!
He didn’t say it himself, duh! No wonder. But Rocco called Renato Uncle, and it became obvious who they were.
I click and click, reading everything while swallowing back tears.
Photos of the two oldest brothers, Luca and Rocco, are easy to find online because they frequently attend various events, and their cousin Ennio is usually with them as well.
But photos of the two younger brothers are very, very rare. They clearly don’t like publicity.
I manage to find only pictures from their fights. Both of them are fighters in a barely legal underground fight club, so-called cage fighters.
That would certainly explain Mauro’s proficiency when sparring with Veyron.
But even those pictures are scarce because, given how hostile the law is toward this kind of underground club, the photos that make it to the surface are mostly posted on some obscure fan forums. There are probably more of them on the dark web, but I wouldn’t be able to access that from my phone.
Still, what I’ve found is more than enough. Mauro obviously isn’t a Santoro, just as Veyron rightly suspected. He’s a Ferro and is Rocco’s fucking biological brother!
So no, not just some ordinary soldati who went rogue. He’s basically fucking mafia royalty!
That’s because all of his brothers, along with Ennio, were adopted by the recently arrested capo, Anzo Ferro, making all five of them his sons…
According to the official news, Anzo adopted them after their parents were killed by the Russian Mafia, leaving the children orphaned.
But one news blog reveals a lot more, directly suggesting that Anzo was actually responsible for the deaths of not only his two older brothers, Tito and Paolo, but also their elderly father, who had been the previous capo!
Apparently Anzo shamelessly convinced the world he was innocent, then nobly raised his nephews as his more or less loyal successors…
The newspapers sympathetic to the mafia write admiringly about how he stepped up after the tragedy that had befallen these five boys, and how, concerned for their safety, he graciously took over the role of capo, becoming the first beta capo in the history of the mafia.
But there’s another version, one that tells a completely different story, and according to it, Anzo is a monster, another in a long line of brutal and depraved capos.
The whole family was full of psychos.
Anzo’s own brothers, Tito and Paolo, egged on by their depraved father, capo Angelo, abused and humiliated him, and Anzo eventually took his revenge years later, killing them all.
What a picture-perfect family!
For some reason, I’m keen to believe this version of events, mostly because Mauro mentioned seeing his parents die and then being given a drug to erase his memories. It strangely fits this picture.
Well. The mafia is a breeding ground for monsters: Angelo, Tito, Paolo, Anzo, Rocco.
Nothing gets settled amicably there. They shoot people in the head. When someone crosses them, the revenge is vicious.
I know that much myself. After all Rocco planned to kill me because he wanted revenge on the guys from the Ring. So that’s the mafia way.
Revenge, kill, eliminate.
Next one, please!
As I read through the articles, I also discover that Mauro is almost exactly my age. He’s precisely eight months older than me, which means he’s already twenty-six.
He is the third son of Paolo Ferro and Aldo Santoro, and he’s been fighting in underground cages since he was a teenager. For two years, he also held the title of champion in his weight class.
Well, what did I expect? Just another thing to add to the collection of just peachy facts about him.
Mauro spent years practicing a brutal sport. Apparently, he’s pretty deeply involved in that whole world, just like all his brothers, who either fight in cages too or have done so in the past. An entire family of people who make their living through violence…
I wipe my tears away with the back of my hand and stare blankly through the rain-soaked windows of the car.
In a way, I understand why Mauro didn’t tell me who he was.
I also understand why he sent me that letter, the one that expected nothing from me, because he would have had to be insane to expect me to react well after seeing the name "Mauro Ferro" at the bottom of the page.
At the time, dumping Mark for a guy who was Rocco’s brother would have been an absolute impossibility for me. I guess Mauro correctly sensed this.
I start the engine and drive another dozen or so kilometers, struggling with my emotions and—
On the one hand, I’m furious, but… if I want to be fair, I also have to give it to him: Mauro never came to me and said, "Hey, be with me!"
I’m the one who came to him!
I stop again and bury myself in the articles.
This is getting ridiculous, and I’m pretty sure I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I’m all over the place: hating him, missing him, being angry with him, and still fucking hungry for him.
The weather is getting better, but I’m still a long way from home, and at this pace, making constant stops, it’s going to take me a while to get back.
At the end of my search, I come across an article saying that the Ferro family went through a major crisis after Anzo was arrested three months ago. Things got even worse when Rocco took over as capo, especially since he was considered an unpopular choice.
He didn’t have an easy time with the transition, and on top of that, two of his brothers, Mauro and Eliano, vanished from the mafia, taking advantage of the weakened authority and the chaos following Anzo’s arrest.
The article strongly implies that such behavior amounts to outright betrayal of the family, and the journalist even dares to write that Mauro and Eliano’s days must be numbered.
I let out an angry huff.
So, as if I didn’t have enough problems of my own, I had to get involved with someone Rocco has a score to settle with.
The new capo is breathing down Mauro’s neck.
I’m probably just a side issue to him; his brother’s betrayal has to piss him off a hell of a lot more.
So I agree with the journalist, I doubt Rocco is going to let it go.
No matter how much I begged for Mauro during my heat, he should have stopped and told me, "Listen, being with me is dangerous…"
Mauro owed me the truth!
He should have taken the fucking phone and typed out the whole thing for me so I could decide what to do next. Mafia revenge is no fucking joke. And for me, it’s just one more fucking risk, and for Tommy too.
Tommy…
My heart clenches and bleeds at the thought of what kind of life my son might have…
He’s unlucky to have me as his dad. Keeping him safe will be unbelievably difficult… And what if I fail? I was just one step away from catastrophe. If not for Silvio's sacrifice, I might not have made it home at all.
And once again, tears roll down my cheeks because I’m simply devastated.
I… I really like Mauro. A lot. A fucking lot!
Even though we talked so little, but I felt some kind of sweet connection with him, some deep understanding that could have been the foundation for our relationship to grow. And now…
What happens now?
We are… True Mates!
I’m not an idiot. I realize that we had sex, and that means the Bond has already started forming between us.
Everyone knows that fated mates can’t separate permanently. After a few days, they start longing for each other, and after two weeks, it becomes so unbearable that they can even die without each other.
So is there any chance at all for me to untangle myself from this situation, any way out?
Or have I unknowingly doomed my son to ruin, and myself along with him?
Because if the Bond has formed, then if Rocco kills Mauro, I’ll die too. That’s simply how it works, and Mauro knows it!
And then I circle back to the same realization one more time.
Me.
It was me. I went to Storm in search of my True Mate. I begged him, pressed him, demanding that he find my fated mate. I started the whole domino effect.
Even though three months had passed since my instant divorce from Mark, Mauro was still in Rainbow Springs. Didn’t make his move. Maybe he knew how dangerous it was? Maybe he was protecting me that way, keeping his distance?
But… when faced with his True Mate in that forest, in heat, spreading my Allure, sweetly calling him… he lost all restraint and fell into my arms, having no strength to push me away.
My heart squeezes painfully.
What do I do, what do I do…?
Again, I pull over to the side of the road, rest my arms on the steering wheel, and stare blankly at the road ahead of me…
It’s already late, and I realize I’m not going to make it home tonight. I’ll have to stop at some motel somewhere. And that’s not a good situation.
I have NFC on my phone, so I could pay with it, but that would once again mean leaving a digital trail. Unfortunately, I’m afraid I won’t have any other choice.
Eventually, I type the word ‘motel’ into the search engine and look over the map as various nearby hotels and motels pop up.
I’m out of luck. The nearest decent hotel is dozens of miles away, while there’s a motel relatively close by, in a wooded little town, only seven miles from where I am.
I don’t like places like this because local motels are usually pretty low-end, and it’s not hard to find a cockroach under the bed, but I’m not about to be picky.
When I park in front of the motel, I even hesitate over whether I should get out at all.
The place looks pretty suspicious, downright run-down, and there aren’t many guests’ cars in the parking lot.