I should know…he’s been thrusting from that midsection and holding me in his hands with my feet off the ground for days claiming me.
He pulls a phone I haven’t seen before out of his pocket and pulls up what appears to be the last number contacted. He sends a message and it’s then I realize this is what he took from Luca’s body.
“Let’s go,” he says, and we exit the bathroom as if we’re just some horny couple who slid in during the performance for a quickie.
“This is going to be quick,” he says.
But what, exactly, is this?
CHAPTER 27
Stefano
I tap my foot, rub the back of my neck, and twist my watch.
Yeah, I’m anxious, but not about what’s about to go down. I’m just anxious to get this over with.
I rock back and forth on my heels and shake my head, knowing someone’s going to get what they deserve…no matter how hard that will be to explain to my family.
The sound of Gucci oxfords on the cobblestones below announces the arrival of my ‘guest’. Sloane is tucked behind the side of the alley, out of harm’s way.
“What is it, Luc—?
He doesn’t even finish the word as he freezes. “Oh shit.”
“Bad language and bad choice of who you decided to fuck with…Giorgio.”
“What are you going to do now, Stefano? You can’t kill me. I’m engaged to your sister.”
After I took down Luca I removed his phone and texted the last known number with “It’s done. Meet me outside and around the corner for payment.”
So whoever sent someone here tonight to kill me, and supposedly finish off my family, as old Alessandro is no match for anyone these days, would arrive.
And as expected it’s Giorgio.
“So…you wanted to wait to propose to my sister until after you killed our parents. That way everyone would see just how strong your family was becoming. If my sister, from my family, ran to you…well, that would say everything. You thought it would weaken us even more and take you to the top. You thought you’d take my gambling empire and combine it with your disgusting drugs and then it would only be a matter of time before you took over the other families. See, you forgot one thing. You’re just an actor. You play a role and in this case you’re playing the wrong role, one you weren’t cut out for. That’s why you went into acting in the first place, remember? You weren’t cut out for this life, but oh no. You wanted to show your family that you didn’t need the favors and handouts they’d given you to become an actor. You wanted to be a big boy and flex your muscles, show your power. But see, you have no muscles or power, which is why you picked on my unarmed parents.”
The thought of Machiavelli’s words run through my head again…The unarmed rich man is the prize of the poor soldier.
And Giorgio is nothing more than a poor soldier.
But it’s another Machiavelli quote that will set the tone for the next generation of the Italian mafia. “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
And I will never be loved, would never want to, by anyone other than Sloane.
But I will be feared, and I will remind everyone here of that tonight when I finish the war they tried to start.
“It doesn’t matter now, Stefano. Like I said, you can’t kill me, and you know it.”
“You had it all but you didn’t know it, Giorgio. Well, in my life, I have it all right now, finally, and I do know it. And I’m not going to let anyone take it from me. Not you, not anyone. Not now. Not ever. You would have killed my sister eventually and my grandfather too. That’s not happening, and now you will pay for your sins.”
I step toward him, but like the chickenshit that he is he takes off running.
I pull the pistol from my waistband, but it’s not necessary.
Sloane steps out from the alley and whacks Giorgio with a board across the shins.
“Oww! You fucking bitch!” he screams as he rolls on the cold, cobblestone street in the middle of the night.
I make my way toward him and place my hands around his neck.
“You might want to look away,” I tell Sloane, as I begin to apply pressure which will be the beginning of the end.
“No,” she says.
“No?”
“I’ll always be myself, but something about you…something draws me to understand you in moments like these. And I know this man, had he taken your gambling business, wouldn’t have been so kind to my father. He would have killed him, and others like him, for the money they owed.”
She’s right, but I say nothing.
“I want to watch him get what he deserves, for what he did to your parents…and one day they would have been—”
“Our child’s grandparents,” I say, finishing our sentence.
She nods.
And a few seconds later Giorgio’s takes his last breath in this world.
I take his money and his phone, and toss him in the dumpster…where he belongs.
CHAPTER 28
Sloane
One month later
“I think the killings have finally stopped,” Stefano says at breakfast.
“Not just a break this time?”
“No, because there’s no one left to kill.”
“Except us,” I say, taking a bite of cereal.
“So we win. We’re on top,” Stefano says.
“Always.”
That last night in Palermo, after Stefano and I did what we had to do, we grabbed Alessandro, his caretaker Monica, and Stefano’s sister Julia and her son, and headed back to the States. The all-out mafia war that ensued was bloody and made international front-page headlines.
I’d suggested that we shouldn’t run, but Stefano said it wasn’t about running. It was about regrouping and focusing on the new life we had…here, not just back in his home.
He told me his home was no longer Italy, his home was where I was.
It was beyond weird to board the plane that night with a fake Italian passport and then enter the States on a private landing strip without any kind of customs. It was like I never even left in the U.S.’s mind.
I think back to how Stefano had kept me by his side that night when he could have sent me home early. He’d refused. He told me that the safest place was by his side. He was right. It was and always will be, which is why I know he’s going to make a great father one day.
And speaking of fathers, he’s spent even more time with my dad since we got back. He’s been helping him to avoid gambling and to focus on playing sports and getting into shape, not just watching them and getting an adrenaline rush from placing a mortgage payment on them.
What my dad doesn’t know is…well, us.
And that’s what tonight is all about.
We’ve been back an entire month and have been kind of sneaking around. I think my little sister has her suspicions, but she hasn’t said anything yet.
I place the Fettuccine Alfredo on the table and take a seat next to Stefano.
Over the next few hours we eat, we talk, we even drink wine. I love that my dad’s not making a big deal about anything…then again he doesn’t even know I was in Italy and that I’m technically legal to drink there. The idea that we’ve been keeping this a secret the entire time is beyond crazy. He still just thinks I took a summer course in college, and technically I did get an education…just not the kind you can get in a classroom, but a real life kind.
I love these long meals, this European way of enjoying the end of the day as a family. I can’t wait until I have a family of my own one day, and we do this for…well, forever. I don’t even have my own kids and I’m imagining my grandkids and great-grandkids all around the table, and not just for holidays either.
Finally after we’ve stuffed as much food as we can down our gullets, Stefano places his wine glass down, spreads his hands out on the table and says, “I have something to say.”
I swallow hard, knowing what’s coming next.
“
But, as with everything in life, actions speak louder than words.”
Stefano abruptly stands from his chair, walks over to mine and takes a knee.
“I knew it!” my little sister Sonoma says.
And I don’t know what to say…at all.
My eyes widen and my mouth slacks, as my jaw quivers.
I suck in a quick breath as one hand comes up to cover my mouth as Stefano takes hold of the other.
My posture stiffens and I gulp.
Suddenly I can’t stop blinking and it only gets worse when he pops the top off of a tiny black box in his hand.
Sonoma comes running around the side of the table with her cell phone held out and the light on recording this moment in my life…our lives.
My lips part and a wide smile crosses my face as I make eye contact with my dad.
He nods, giving me his approval.
How did he know?
There are so many questions in my mind right now, but the biggest question is the one Stefano asks me…
“Beautiful, you belong to me and me alone, and I to you. Wear this ring, my gift to you, to show you and the world, the promise we’ve made to become one. I want the whole world to know you’re mine forever. From Italy to Ithaca and all the way to Iceland…I already know you’re mine. Now let’s make it official. Marry me.”
It’s a statement and not a question, but it’s exactly what I would have expected from a hardened Italian mafia man.
My Italian mafia man.
And I don’t want him to ever change.
I want that dangerous side which keeps the wrong people out and the right people in, close to his heart which he’s given to me and me alone.
My hands quiver and a spontaneous laughter comes out of me for no reason except that I’m so amazed this is happening that I’m left speechless.
Good thing I only need to say one word.
“Yes,” I say, and Sonoma pumps her fists as Stefano slides the ring on my finger and then scoops me up in his arms, kissing me possessively, as he always does.
I bury my head in his chest, smelling the fresh, just washed white cotton of his button down shirt and seeing that tattoo of Julius Caesar on his pec muscle.
Cesar may have ruled Rome, but I know that wherever we may roam Stefano will always be my king…and me his queen.
EPILOGUE
Sloane
Five years later
“Thank you so, so, so much,” Anastasia, one of our guests says to me. “You’ve…given me my husband back. Our family back.”
“It’s my pleasure,” I say and Stefano nods.
Giovanni opens the car door for Anastasia and her family and they get in the car headed for Palermo where they’ll fly to Milan and then back to America.
It’s another rewarding and fulfilling moment, and thanks to Stefano I get so many of these now…although he says they’re all because of me.
After Stefano proposed to me we sat down and planned out our best life…but not before he explained to me that he’d already sat down with my dad a couple days before our engagement and told him everything. And more importantly he told him of a concept he wanted to try and how he thought he could maybe even help my dad, and others like him.
My dad could see that not only did he truly love me, but that he wanted to change the world with me…to make it a better place for people with troubles just like my dad had. And that’s when my dad went all in and gave him his blessing.
And here we are, five years later living the dream, and making dreams come true too.
The mafia wars ended almost exactly five years ago and they pretty much killed each other off, leaving just Stefano’s family as the top dogs. The thing was, that Stefano’s only family at the time was me, and together we decided it was the perfect time to return to Italy and start a big ‘ol Italian family of our own.
It seems that little town Stefano had taken me to five years ago, Gangi in Sicily, was ‘giving away’ homes for free. It had been tried in places like Gary, Indiana although technically you had to pay a dollar.
Here it was ‘free’ with the stipulation that the local government would give you a vacant home under the promise that you’d spruce it up and turn it into a hotel or a proper home. Many of the residents have been leaving for years and most of the houses were abandoned. Beautiful and falling apart, but still abandoned.
The bevy of fixer-uppers here required that new owners present a plan for renovation within a year of purchase and those renovations had to be completed within three years.
As with most things, Stefano’s plan didn’t call for wasting any time.
He proposed to take over all the inventory the town had left, converting it into a sort of get-away retreat for those with gambling problems. He even paid for their tickets over and let them stay entirely for free. He said with all the money he makes from online gambling, the profits from the responsible gamblers should help some of the less responsible ones, and more importantly those that had actual addictions.
I’d always respected him but when he told me this my love for him somehow found another level…mostly because I knew it was my love for him that he was sharing, in his own way.
Okay, not sharing. He would never do that and his gruff, rough, and tough exterior was still very much present. But he gave back more and became more empathetic and community minded. The world didn’t just revolve around him anymore, and as a matter of fact, he made sure it revolves around me and the kids more than anyone else.
And with three kids already and a fourth on the way, it’s amazing that I was able to complete my psychology degree in four years. I guess it helps when Stefano has enough money to pay the professors for private lessons when the time called for it. But he never allowed them to give me a break, nor did I ask for one. I wanted an education in a field that excites me more than any other…okay, nothing can excite me more than the ‘field’ of homemaker, but that’s not something you choose to do…that’s something that chose me.
My kids and my man are the biggest blessings of my life, and I don’t know what I’d do without them. It’s crazy to think how this all started.
“We need to arrange to get the girls to soccer practice,” I remind him as the sun starts to set.
“Remember what happened the last time we made an arrangement,” he teases.
“This,” I say, spinning around in a circle with my arms out wide. I close my eyes and fall to the side, feeling his hands knowing he’s always there to catch. The man can read my mind, even knowing when I’m about to fall.
But I never fall from the pedestal he’s erected for me. And speaking of erecting…let’s just say his need for me, his lust, is just as strong as the day we met.
“Sorry, I must be heavy,” I say, flopping in his arms trying to get myself back upright. But before I can he just swoops me up in his arms.
“Nope. Light as a feather.”
“How can you say that? I’m six months pregnant and to be honest I shouldn’t have been pulling that falling stunt just now. I can’t believe how irresponsible that was of me.” My hormones really have the best of me right now.
“You can fall whenever you want because you have the knowledge that I’m always here for you…but yes,” he says, leaning in and kissing my stomach. “Let’s be careful with this one. She’s going to be special.”
“You say that about all our kids.”
“Because they all are. Each and every one.”
“Why is that?” I want to hear it even though I know the answer.
“Because they came from…you.”
The man melts my heart every time. I hate fishing for compliments, and lord knows I don’t need to with all the beautiful words he gives me each and every day, but sometimes I can’t resist.
“And you still find me beautiful?” I’m doubling down now.
“Knowing all our special children start off in this amazing body of yours. You know how that makes me feel,” he says, and I can feel his erection pressin
g into my backside already.
“Even though these days my body’s a bit—“
“You’re a lil’ bit, small and mine. And the only thing your body was, is, or ever will be is perfect.” He pauses. “Well, and one other thing.”
“Oh?”
“Mine,” he growls as he leans in for a kiss.
Dad's Italian Mafia Friend (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 109) Page 10
