“Don’t believe you can fool me into thinking you don’t want to rule there by my side.”
“I never should have fallen for your manipulations,” I rushed to say, needing to fount the anger before it ebbed into lust under the hot touch of his hand on my pulse. “You’ve always been the villain in my story, and you always will be. If you really care for me at fucking all, you’ll leave me alone to live my new life without you.”
People were circling too closely to us, aware of the animosity sparking in the air around us, drawn to the chaos of our reunion. I could see Mason powering through the couples, his face set to stone after witnessing my anger.
“Think of this as a courtesy call,” he said dispassionately, completely unaffected by my vibrating anger or the growing unease of the people around us. “You are my wife, for better or worse, and I’m coming for you, Cosima, to inaugurate you at my side where you belong. You can run,” he taunted, angling his nose along the line of my throat before sinking his teeth into my neck on either side of my jugular. “But I think we’ve proven that I’ll always find you.”
Abruptly, he stepped away from me, releasing his hold so that I stumbled slightly on my high heels and instinctively reached out to grasp his arm to steady myself.
His smile was a weapon thrust into my chest. “Oh, and topolina? If you let that man touch you, I’ll kill him with my bare hands and make you watch.”
Cosima
I listened to Verdi.
He was the favourite composer of both my fathers, Seamus Moore and Amadeo Salvatore. I grew up listening to the dramatic strains of his operas played over the tinny old radio in our tiny yellow house in our tiny life in Napoli, and then I learned lessons I should have been taught as a child from my birth father in his olive grove while Verdi played over the speakers set up at the terracotta patio at the back of his house.
His music was the soundtrack to my operatic life, and it soothed me as I cooked breakfast before dawn the morning after the charity event and hours before I had to leave on a plane bound for England.
I sang along softly with Violetta as she spoke of sempre libera, being forever free, even as she wondered if she was in love.
I had spent the last three years trying to teach myself how to be free, to no avail.
At first, I’d wondered if the ties that bound me to my past were just too strong, that I was weak in the face of my trauma.
But as time moved slowly on like the drip of cold molasses into a cup, I realized just how wrong that assumption was.
It wasn’t that I was weak and traumatized.
It was that, sick as it might be, I was enamoured with the sins of my past.
Yes, I’d been sold and hunted like a fox destined for death. But Alexander had been there to save me, to claim me with his body in the dirt and the stamp of his ownership bruised into my skin.
After the revelations of last night, I knew that it was his machinations that had brought my “good luck” into fruition after running away from him three years ago.
How could I possibly reconcile the unbiased fact that Alexander Davenport was a cold-hearted villain with the irrevocable knowledge that to me and for me alone, he was also the world’s most unlikely saviour.
I hated him for his interference. I’d wanted, no needed so badly to make my life my own.
But I knew it would have been nearly impossible without him.
As the clerk at that horrible fast food restaurant had said, I was deeply unqualified for even basic work.
Still, Alexander may have given me the means to make a name for myself in the world, but I was the one who had put those advantages to good use.
My life was my own, vibrant and fully drawn even if it existed in a frame of Alexander’s making.
Strangely, I was okay with that.
“A bit early for Verdi, isn’t it?” Giselle asked from behind me.
I spun to face her with a genuine smile despite my inner turmoil. There was no one who made me feel as at peace as she did. I could feel the noose I’d been wearing around my neck since Ashcroft reappeared in my life, the one that had tightened inexorably when Alexander showed up last night, fall lax around my collarbones at the sight of my pretty Giselle wrapped up in grey and cashmere in preparation for the cold autumn morning.
“It is never too early for il maestro! Although, I would argue it is way too early to be looking so cute.” I cocked my head to the side as I watched her cheeks stain with a blush. “Where are you off to?”
She smiled softly; the expression so intimate that it panged somewhere in my heart. I’d never seen her with such a secret wealth of contentment, such a secret pasted to her lips.
To my knowledge, she had always shared everything with me. Giselle was the only one of us Lombardi’s with an open heart and innocent past.
“Sinclair,” she said before clearing her throat as she dispensed ice into a glass the fridge. “Daniel invited me fishing. I told him the other day at lunch that I had enjoyed it when I was in Mexico, and he got pretty excited about taking me.” She rolled her eyes, but they danced with amusement. “Who would have guessed such a buttoned-up guy would be a fishing geek?”
I tried to temper my grin as I turned back to my stewed tomatoes. It was now almost painfully obvious that my sister and Sinclair were having an affair. I wanted to be furious with them, but I’d seen Sinclair when he returned from Mexico and the very air around him had been luminous with newly found contentment. To look at Giselle now as she spoke about him, it was obvious she felt the same.
My heart twisted as I thought of my beautiful, misunderstood Elena and what this would mean to her even as I knew I wouldn’t get involved.
Everyone has their own dramas to play out, and this was their own, for better or for worse.
Finally, I said, “Massive fishing geek. He enters the Bassmaster Elite Series on Oneida lake every August, and I’m pretty sure he takes his executives on their annual business retreat in Mexico just so he can get in some fishing.”
Sinclair had tried to take me fishing dozens of times over the years, to varying degrees of success. I laughed lightly as I told her, “He’s taken me out before. Let’s just say I’m more comfortable on land. I’d take horseback riding over fishing any day.”
I thought about Helios, the gorgeous Golden Akhal Teke mare Alexander had gifted me toward the end of my stay at Pearl Hall. She crossed my mind frequently because I hoped beyond reason that she was still stabled at the manor, taken care of like a princess by their able groomsmen and waiting, impossibly, for my return home.
I hadn’t ridden since leaving her. It felt like a betrayal the same way practicing BDSM felt like a betrayal of my relationship with Alexander.
“Why are you up so early?” Giselle asked, pulling me out of my reverie.
I scooped some shaksuka—a Middle Eastern stewed tomato and egg dish I’d learned from Douglas during my days at Pearl Hall—into a bowl and handed it to her with a kiss on the cheek.
“A model dropped out of a Ralph Lauren shoot in England,” I fibbed, keeping my eyes averted as she took a seat at the kitchen island. There was no reason to lie. Giselle didn’t know enough about St. Aubyn or Alexander Davenport to know their connection to each other, let alone to me, but I was wary after a lifetime of coincidences that had always turned out to be too good to be true. “I have to be in Cornwall tomorrow.”
“You don’t seem too enthused, and that doesn’t really explain the early start.”
I shrugged as if I didn’t feel the siren’s call of England like a lullaby luring me to my future death. “I hate England. I leave later today, but I couldn’t sleep thinking about it.”
“That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it?” she asked with a light laugh. “I mean, the entire country? What did the Brits ever do to you?”
My answering smile was sharper than I would have liked, but happily, Giselle was distracted by the ping of her phone. I watched as a stunning expression of excitement and joy broke across he
r face like sun piercing through clouds.
“I have to go,” she told me without looking up from the text glowing on her screen.
She shoveled the last forkfuls of food into her mouth, then raced to her green gumboots to tug them on. I watched bemused as she finally spun to me and granted me a brief squeeze.
“If I don’t see you before you leave, I’ll miss you,” she murmured into my hair.
“I will be back in three days. If it was any other brand, I wouldn’t be going at all.” I kissed her soundly on the cheek, then pushed her away. “Now, be safe and enjoy your day. Sinclair can be a charming bastard when he wants to, so I’m sure you’ll have a grand adventure.”
She smiled tremulously at me, then quickly ducked out the door.
I stood frowning after her for a long moment, trying to pinpoint why her expression had bothered me so much.
It was only hours later, after I’d showered, packed for England, and was reading curled up on my couch with Hades that I realized why her smile had resonated with me.
It was the same one I recognized from my own face whenever I thought about Alexander.
I tried to dismiss it as my own bias spilling into my perceptions, but I knew Giselle would never continue to pursue a taken man unless she was very much in love with him.
Which meant Elena’s future was looking decidedly grim. I resolved to spend more quality time with my eldest sister when I returned, as if somehow my love would buffer the blow of her upcoming heartbreak.
I was still distracted when a raucous knock sounded on my door, and someone cursed loudly in Italian from the other side.
My heart jumped into my throat as I pulled the door open and saw Dante leaning in the frame, his big body bowed with pain and his teeth gritted and gleaming from his sweat soaked face.
“Madonna santa! Dante, what happened?” I demanded as he dropped his bunched-up jacket to the side table.
I stepped under one of his heavy arms to begin the process of dragging him into the house. He was over six feet five inches and quilted with dense muscle from his hands to his toes. It felt as if I was lugging a car behind me as I led him into the kitchen and propped him up on a stool at the island.
“Start talking, capo,” I ordered harshly as I took his white shirt between my teeth and ripped it cleanly in two.
“So eager to see me shirtless that you couldn’t wait to grab the scissors?” he asked drily, only a slight edge to his voice giving away the pain he was in.
I hissed as I saw the oozing wound in his left abdomen. “Cazzo, a bullet wound?”
He shrugged one shoulder, then groaned at the pain. “I’m an easy target.”
“Because you’re a fucking idiot?” I snapped.
“Because there’s so much of me to aim at,” he countered with a lopsided smirk.
I rolled my eyes at him as I snagged a clean dishtowel from the drawer and pressed it a little too hard against his wound. “Hold that tightly while I get some more supplies. You’re lucky I’m always prepared. Seamus taught me nothing if not how to stitch up a broken man.”
“My heart’s been broken for ages, and you haven’t seen to fixing that,” he muttered petulantly.
I lightly slapped his shoulder as I moved out of the room into my bedroom to grab the comprehensive first-aid kit I hid there.
“Cazzo, Dante, I don’t know why you don’t just—” I froze in my journey back to his side when I caught the look on his face.
“Cosima,” he purred, his Italian accent thick as mink pelt. “We have a visitor.”
My eyes shot to Giselle who stood in blatant shock at the entry to the kitchen. The tin kit dropped from my suddenly listless hands to the kitchen counter.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, too startled and defensive to curtail my tone.
“Um, I live here. What is a man doing in our kitchen with a bleeding wound?” she countered with a previously unheard-of amount of sass.
Dante settled farther back on the stool, leaning his back against the wall as he made himself comfortable enough to enjoy watching our show.
I shot him a dirty look, then sighed as ran my hands through my hair agitatedly. “I…Listen, Giselle, I need you to leave. Right now.”
Both Dante and Giselle seemed bewildered by my demand.
“Are you kidding me right now? I’m not leaving here like this!” she cried out, her hand flying forward to indicate the wounded, highly amused mafioso sitting at our kitchen island.
“You are,” I said, channelling Alexander so that my voice brooked no argument. There was no way in hell I was making Giselle privy to Dante’s life and Made Man drama. We’d had more than enough of that growing up in the armpit of Napoli. “You are going to go out for the afternoon and enjoy the city, think about your show, and see friends. You will absolutely not say anything about this to anyone, and I will text you when you can return to the apartment.”
Giselle’s mouth opened and closed, useless with anger, before she finally found her voice and her forgotten Italian instincts. “Cosima!”
I crossed my arms, braced my feet apart like a general impatient with his given orders being flagrantly disobeyed, and waited for Giselle to yield.
It took longer than I thought it would, but finally, with one last wounded, confused look, she whispered, “Cosima…”
It was an entreaty to know more, to trust her with the weight of my secret so I could share the load.
She had no idea how heavy the weight of my many secrets was, and there was no way, if I had any say in it at all, that she ever would.
“Parta,” I ordered. “Go.”
I hated the wrinkle between her red brows as she backed away so much that I turned before she could, focusing on sorting through the med kit so I wouldn’t have to watch.
“So strong, tesoro,” Dante said quietly, his voice tender as the hand he swept down my back. “Do you ever wonder if one day, you’ll break?”
“Stai zitto,” I muttered at him, telling him to shut up.
His chuckle fanned softly over my face as I bent down to clean the wound with alcohol and antiseptic.
He didn’t move an inch when the burning liquid encountered his ragged flesh because this was not his first bullet, and it wouldn’t be his last.
“Call Salvatore,” he gritted out between clenched teeth as I pressed fresh gauze to the wound and efficiently wrapped it around the sloping v of his torso.
I nodded, moving into the bedroom to grab my phone so Dante wouldn’t hear me tell his pseudo father what a fucking idiot he was. Vaguely, I was aware of Dante moving past the view through my open bedroom door, but then the phone connected, and Salvatore’s rough Italian accent came through the phone.
“Cosima, mia ragazza. To what do I owe this pleasure?”
I let myself close my eyes for a moment to feel the gravel of his voice in my ears. He lived outside the city on a vineyard in upstate New York where he led a quiet life under the name Deo Tore, so I didn’t see him as much as I would have liked. He visited infrequently because he was smarter and more diligent than most. Being dead in the eyes of the Order and the law was important to him and to whatever plans he had with Dante, so even though I knew he would rather live in the city, if only to see me and pester Mama until she took him back, he stayed away.
It seemed silly to say I missed him. I really barely knew the man whose DNA I shared and wore so proudly in my features, but I did miss him with an acuteness that didn’t slacken even in his presence.
Perhaps, I still ached for the loss of him in my early years, and I didn’t think that would ever change.
“Dante got himself shot,” I tattled, somewhat joyfully because I always felt like a child around him.
He huffed out a chuckle. “Not badly, I’m sure. For such a big buffoon, he is a hard one to target and kill.”
“Tocca ferro,” I muttered, the Italian equivalent of knocking on wood to avoid tempting fate.
Tore laughed. “He can’t be too b
ad if you’re speaking to me so calmly. What happened?”
I moved into the kitchen again, frowning as Dante walked through the living room from the front door with a gun in his hands.
“Don’t you think you should put the gun down? I’m still not convinced you didn’t accidentally shoot yourself,” I told him solemnly.
He flipped me the finger and then winced as he settled himself on the stool again. “Give me the phone. I’ve had enough of your sass. Can’t you see I’m injured? Why don’t you try healing it with some sugar instead of this vinegar?”
“Raggazzi,” Salvatore’s voice sounded loudly through the phone, and we both grinned as I put it on speaker between us.
“What happened, capo?”
Dante’s humour evaporated, and the air went hot with rage.
“di Carlo’s boys,” Dante sneered at the name of the Cosa Nostra capo. “They’re becoming fucking bold. Walked right into the Bronx warehouse and demanded they be cut in on the Basante Colombian deal.”
Salvatore laughed, a rough exclamation of incredulity. “Guiseppe di Carlo was always a stronzo. How did they get to you, huh? Are you losing your edge out here in cushy America?”
“Vaffanculo, vecchio,” Dante cursed light-heartedly as he called Tore an old man.
“Listen, boys,” I cut them off before their banter could escalate further. If left to their own devices, I’d known the two of them to continue insulting each other for hours. “Yes, Giuseppe di Carlo is a prick, but he’s also the leader of the biggest crime family in New York.”
Both men snorted indignantly at my assertion, but I powered on. “Is there no way to make nice with him and his? As much as you both love power, you can’t want a mob war right now. Not with everything else going on.”
“Everything else?” my father barked out, suddenly furious that anything could be happening in my life that he wasn’t made aware of. He might have only been my acting father for the past four years, but he took the job extremely seriously, especially because we’d both agreed not to tell Sebastian about their connection yet.
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