Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
VAL
Stefano paced around the room like a caged lion waiting for his moment to pounce, and I couldn’t stop myself from staring at him as he walked back and forth in front of the couch.
He was no longer the same man I had known and loved ten years earlier, and not the man I believed he had probably become before the truth caught up to me.
No, the man now inside my café appeared to be even more dangerous than I could have imagined… and so full of rage. He’d completely transformed from being my Stefano Salvatore into Stefano Vignali, the ruthless mafia boss.
Though I knew it couldn’t be the case, he seemed taller.
And he was more put together. Gone were the jeans and sweaters he’d always worn, now replaced with an expensive three-piece suit, black on black, tailored perfectly to fit his tall frame, narrow waist, and broad shoulders.
The bitter taste of regret filled my mouth.
I hated to admit even to myself, but Stefano had become exactly the type of man I wanted.
Powerful, dangerous, someone who made me feel safe.
And yes, sexy as hell.
If only I could forget about the terrible things he did as head of his family, the crimes he committed, his sins, everything that made him what he was.
In another lifetime, if I were alone with him, I might have let this predator take me, take all of me, everything. I might have let him treat me the way I knew he could, let him protect me, worship me.
But I wasn’t alone, and men like Stefano Vignali came with too much risk. I no longer had the liberty to take those risks.
I had to think about my son first and always.
Of course, I knew why Stefano had come. I didn’t know how he’d found out about Enzo, but he had. He finally knew about his son. What he would do next, I couldn’t foresee. He made it crystal clear, though, that he intended to confirm his suspicions.
He continued pacing in front of us, his intense fury burning him from the inside out. His body heat reached out to me like the licking flames of a blazing fire.
And still, all he’d done was call me a liar and break a teacup.
Was that really going to be the extent of it?
He could have screamed at me. He could have had his men deal with me while he took my son away from me, all of which he probably thought fell within his rights.
A man like Stefano, well, the legal technicalities of breaking and entering or kidnapping wouldn’t bother him. He wouldn’t give it a second thought, not if he believed something or someone belonged to him.
He didn’t do any of that.
One brief explosion of anger, but the only victim turned out to be my teacup. He had even thrown the cup away from Enzo and me, so it would hit the wall instead of us.
When he pushed his hands into his hair and started pacing, breathing deeply and slowly, I understood what he was doing.
This man functioned on order and control. Thrived on it.
Now he needed to rein it back in, and I used those seconds during his loss of control as an opportunity to do whatever I could to protect my child.
I grabbed Enzo and pulled him behind me, so he wouldn’t have to face the full impact of Stefano’s outbursts, or worse, if it came to that.
But Enzo yanked his hand out of my grasp and stepped away from me, his steely gaze focused on the dangerous stranger pacing by the window.
Was Enzo angry at me too, for keeping him a secret from the man he had to know by now was his father?
Probably. A conversation for another time, though.
Right now, my child likely thought he was protecting me from the big man throwing tantrums in our home, proving himself to be the nine-year-old man of the house.
The sight of my boy that way became a moment of pride for me and breathtakingly terrifying all at once.
Then Stefano stopped moving and turned to Enzo.
His chest and shoulders rose and fell with his heavy breath.
I wanted to stop him before he said anything else, to intercede and keep this inevitable nightmare from playing out any further than it already had. But I froze, staring at the man I’d spent nearly every night thinking about for the past ten years.
At that moment, I even questioned myself.
Why had I done this?
How could I have truly believed he would never find out?
Nothing but pure luck had ensured it took Stefano so long in the first place. If I really wanted to keep Enzo from his father, I would have left Brooklyn and New York altogether.
If I had taken Enzo across the country as a baby, somewhere nondescript and boring, Stefano would never have known.
He would have never found us.
The window exploded.
Glass shards sprayed across the room.
I screamed, but I couldn't move.
Stefano grabbed my son and leaped over the couch as bullets pelted through the window, shattering more glass, and tearing massive chunks out of the walls.
Blood burst out of Stefano's arm and splattered all over Enzo's face.
Something burned my arm, but that couldn’t have been what a bullet felt like, could it?
The next thing I knew, a warm hand gripped mine, dragging me behind the couch for cover.
Time slowed as bullets crashed into my café. Mugs and porcelain teacups shattered. Wood splintered. My mismatched tables and chairs ripped to shreds of kindling. The couch thudded against my clammy skin as the onslaught continued.
Someone out there literally shot the life I’d built into oblivion.
Fear kept me from doing anything more than staring at the destruction around me from where we hid behind the sofa.
Was this really happening?
When Enzo grabbed my hand, I snapped out of the shock.
I snatched him up with what little strength I had and pulled him onto my lap, wrapping my arms—no, my entire body—around his. If I could be another layer of protection for him to keep the worst of the danger at bay, then I would be.
He buried his face against my shoulder, his trembling hands gripping the back of my dress as he held on for dear life.
Then again, I could have been the one shaking.
It was impossible to tell the difference between us.
I had never been so grateful for my decision not to replace that ancient leather couch. Its solid wood frame and metal coils might have been the only thing keeping us alive.
In the next moment, I remembered Stefano and finally noticed him there beside us. With his back against the couch, he sat on the floor, squeezing pressure down around his left arm where crimson oozed between his fingers.
“This!” I shouted. “This is exactly why I couldn't tell you.”
His upper lip curled into a snarl.
“It’s happening because you didn’t tell me,” he spat out.
I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just held my child and prayed. It was the only thing I had as the bastards opening fire on us from the street continued.
I prayed to the Virgin Mother, to my grandmothers, and begged them to protect Enzo.
When I squeezed my eyes shut, meaning to pray harder, I finally saw in my mind what Stefano had done. It occurred to me it could have been my brain trying to process what I’d witnessed but had yet to comprehend.
Not a trick of the mind.
An honest-to-God vision sent from heaven.
Stefano leaping in front of Enzo, his arm outstretched, to take the bullet meant for my son. If he hadn’t lunged at that exact moment, the shot would have buried itself in Enzo's head.
The thought, the very idea of such a horror, crushed the rest of my reserves, and I burst into tears.
Then the rest of it played itself out in my mind.
Stefano reacting even after being shot, hauling Enzo to safety first before literally doing anything else.
He had saved my son.
Even if I couldn’t admit it out loud, it wouldn’t matter.
I knew what I had seen.
Stefano undid his tie with one hand, then tightened it with his teeth around his arm above the bullet wound. He reached across his body into his pocket for his phone and shouted above the rain of gunfire crashing through my café.
“Tony? Bruce? Are you hit?”
He grunted, tapped the speaker button, then tossed it on his lap, so he could reapply pressure to his wound.
I had the urge to help him, to tighten the knot in his makeshift tourniquet, to make sure the bleeding at least slowed, but nothing in this world could make me let go of my son.
“No, boss,” his man said over the phone. “We went around back. Approaching your position now.”
The kitchen door squeaked open and then Man Bun and Baldy rushed in, guns drawn as they crouched to avoid catching a bullet of their own. They knocked down tables to use as cover while more chairs shattered into splinters and sawdust.
It had been less than five minutes since Stefano walked through my front door. And in time, my once peaceful little life had become his mafia war zone.
“Did you get a count on the shooters?” Stefano called out.
Baldy popped up from behind an overturned table and fired through the nonexistent window over our heads.
“Not yet, boss,” he shouted.
Enzo jumped with every shot. I tightened my arms around him as best I could.
“Val,” Stefano barked as he shook me.
The way he stared made me think he’d called my name a few times, but it was hard to hear anything other than the popping burst of gunfire and the high-pitched ringing in my ears.
“What?” I shouted.
“When I give the word, you take the boy and run to the brick wall over there. This couch won’t hold up much longer. I need you two out of the direct line of fire. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Good. On my signal, stay low and move quickly.”
I nodded again and shifted to bring my feet under me.
Then I secured Enzo on his feet as well, both of us crouching behind the couch. I maneuvered him to my other side, so my body would be between his and the window when it was time for us to run.
Stefano reached behind himself and pulled a pistol from the back of his waistband.
“Are you ready?” he shouted.
Nodding again, I stared at the brick wall.
Stefano crept to the other end of the couch and fired.
“Now, Val, move!”
With all the adrenaline surging through me, it wouldn’t have surprised me if I’d been able to throw Enzo over my shoulder and run with him that way. It wouldn’t have been necessary, though.
Enzo popped up out of his crouch the second I did, and together we raced across the room to our safety zone.
A crystal vase my nonna had bought at a flea market shattered above my head, raining shards of blue glass as we passed, half-running and half-crawling through the destruction.
So many shots fired.
I couldn't tell where they came from anymore.
I just had to keep moving.
By the time Enzo and I got to the brick wall, my entire body shook, and tears streamed nonstop down my face.
The sting of multiple cuts on my hands and knees bit through the shock, and when I looked down at myself, I hardly recognized my own hair hanging over my shoulders, as coated as it was with shards of glass.
Without bothering to brush it away, I grabbed Enzo by the shoulders and patted him down, searching for blood, scratches, wounds of any kind.
He trembled as violently as I did, his eyes so wide above his cheeks reddened with fear and adrenaline. Tears spilled from his eyes, but physically, he was unharmed.
Then the deafening cacophony of open gunfire stopped.
The instant silence was almost as loud as the previous chaos.
Sirens began then.
Those sirens were the only thing I could think of that could possibly make the situation any worse.
I had IDs for Enzo and me, of course, but they would only stand up to so much scrutiny. Getting the police involved threatened everything.
Baldy and Man Bun barreled through the open front door and raced outside with their weapons still drawn as they searched for the shooters, only to return a few seconds later.
The sirens drew closer.
“How many?” Stefano barked.
“Just one, boss. He started with a high-precision rifle before switching to a semi-automatic.”
“Then he’s still close. Find him now. And I want him brought to me alive, goddamn it.”
“On it.”
Both men were out the door again in a blur, the mundane jingle of the bell almost comical over the sound of their boots crunching across the debris of glass and wood and plaster now coating my café floors.
“Are you hurt?” Stefano asked, whirling on us. “Did they hit you or the boy?”
“N-no.” I couldn’t say anything else.
He nodded, grabbed his phone again, and barked orders at whoever had answered on the other end of the line.
Man Bun and Baldy stepped back inside.
“Boss?”
Stefano straightened and returned the pistol to his waistband.
“Where the fuck is he?”
“Gone, sir. We pinned down his previous location. Shooter had a car waiting. Couldn’t get a read on the license plate. The cops are close, they’ll be here any minute. And in this part of town, none of ’em is on your payroll.”
“Bruce, you stay. But keep out of sight. As soon as the cops leave, canvas the area. This is Brooklyn… someone will have seen something. Call for reinforcements, as many men as it takes. I want to know everything about this son of a bitch now.”
Without another word, his men marched out of the café to carry out their orders.
After taking a moment to collect himself with a deep breath and a short, violent sigh, Stefano headed over to Enzo and me. His every step crunched, grinding the shards of my life to dust beneath his designer shoes.
“Are you two all right?” he asked.
It seemed like the stupidest question anyone had ever asked me.
Shaking, I straightened fully to my feet but kept an arm outstretched in front of my son, holding him against the solid, tangible safety of that single brick wall. After a deep breath of my own, I faced the man who had done this to us.
The panic, the rage, my terror, everything I’d felt up to that moment coalesced into one blazing electrical pulse searing through my veins. There was nothing I could do but let it out, or risk going up in flames beneath the all-consuming heat of it.
“Are we all right?” I repeated. “Did you really just say that? You show up after ten years, no warning, and the next thing I know, someone’s shooting up my café. Shooting at my son! Look at him, Stefano. He’s covered in your blood, and he’s terrified. And that’s all you have to say? No! We are not all right.”
Stefano blinked, then rolled his eyes and turned away to look around the café again, or what was left of it.
“There’s nothing else to say, Val. So if you’re done with the hysterics, we can?—”
I didn’t make the conscious decision to lash out, but then my fist crunched into his nose the very second he turned back to me.
Pain throbbed in my hand and wrist.
“Fuck you!” I screamed, “You want to know why I decided not to tell you? For this reason. Wherever you go, this violence follows. Like a fucking plague it follows you, and now you’ve brought it to our doorstep.
“We never had any trouble until you walked through the door, and it only took five minutes before you turned everything to shit. So fuck you, Stefano. Get out!”
His face twisted into a sinister glower.
“Maybe you weren’t paying attention. Or maybe all these years of playing house by yourself has dulled your mind. But I just took a bullet for the boy, Valerie. I didn't have to do that.”
“Oh, fuck off. It's not like you did it on purpose. This isn’t about you. You’re not our savior. You’re not a hero. You’re the villain, Stefano Vignali.”
“Well, this villain’s life would have been much easier if I’d thought only about my own safety and let the two of you fend for yourselves, now wouldn’t it?”
He growled, tilting his head as he stepped closer to me, his nose bright red but no worse for wear than that.
“You think you were being smart, is that it, Valerie? Sitting in front of the window with him, right out in the open, practically begging for someone to find him and do exactly what they did tonight? If you can’t see your own part in this, then you’ve made an even worse mother than I expected.”
White hot rage erupted inside me, and I lashed out again.
But this time, I aimed my fist right for the gunshot wound on his arm.
“Goddamn it!” he roared, gripping his biceps.
A second later, gritting his teeth and seething through them with a heavy breath, Stefano drew his pistol again.
He aimed the barrel at the center of my forehead.