The Italian: A Mountain Man Romance

by Hazel Parker

  No time like the present.

  With that, she swung open the door and forced herself to walk to the front door. One knock was sufficient – there was no doorbell, and the house wasn’t big enough for him to pretend he couldn’t hear her.

  He didn’t bother with formalities.

  “What do you want?”

  That stung, but she continued on, albeit with hesitation.

  “Hello, Domenico. I was hoping we could talk.”

  “We’re doing that now.”

  She winced. His tone, his guarded eyes, and his unsmiling face were too much like torture. What could she do to get the old him back?

  “I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” he said, leaning against the doorframe, intentionally not inviting her inside. “You wanted to say sorry, so go ahead.”

  “I am so sorry I abused your trust. I hope you can forgive me, and more importantly, I want to earn it back.”

  “How can I know that I can trust you?”

  She didn’t have an answer for that.

  “This was all just a misunderstanding.”

  It was more than a misunderstanding. It was a colossal fuck up of more epic proportions than she was willing to admit.

  “Oh? Is it?” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. What she would do to lay her head on his chest again.

  “If you would just listen.”

  She just had to get him to listen.

  “Okay. Fine then, explain it to me. What did I misunderstand?”

  There were two ways out of this, and one was to lie. Lying was what got her there in the first place. She gulped and opted for option one.

  The truth.

  “I wasn’t on a date. I was with a previous client just to collect the money he owed me.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me about him?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Because.” She hesitated. “I was embarrassed and scared.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, frustrated and upset. “I don’t know! I don’t like doing any of this. If I had it my way, I would have a great paying job by now, but I don’t. Instead, I have debts, loans and a sugar daddy who gives me a monthly allowance.”

  He didn’t say anything, so she continued.

  “I do all kinds of weird odds and end jobs. I was only there to collect my money.”

  “And what job did you do for him?”

  Silence fell between them as she weighed the pros and cons of honesty again.

  “He was a man who paid me to get to know you.”

  He didn’t say anything for so long, she didn’t know what to think. But finally he moved aside; without saying a word, he invited her into the house and she followed him to the couch.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I meant what I said.” She wrung her hands in her lap, too nervous to stay sitting. “Just a guy who contacted me through arrangements. He told me where I could meet you and that my job was to meet you.”

  “So the falling, hitting your head, me saving you, all that…was a lie?”

  “No! That wasn’t a lie. It was some sort of weird coincidence. I really was just in the area taking pictures. I was planning to go to your house and say I got lost or something, and ask for directions, but I fell and hit my head. I didn’t know that you would find me. I didn’t know that I would be found at all. I could have been eaten by a bear!”

  “And what? Liking me, making me fall for you? That was all made up, too?” The disbelief and fury were written all over his face.

  “I was just a job to you?” he hissed, stepping closer with each word until they were face to face.

  “No! None of that was planned. Honestly, Dom. I just fell for you.”

  He shrugged and went to the kitchen to fix himself a drink. His face was passive and blank as he poured. She hated that she put that look on his face. “I don’t believe you.”

  “I swear, Dom. It was nothing nefarious. All simple things. He only asked me to do three things. Meet this man. He had a picture of you. See if you can get him to trust you. I made sure you found my SB login from my browsing history so you'd have a way of contacting me again. And the last thing he had me do is find out if he’s Italian. Which you told me you are. Three questions. Three grand.”

  She kept talking, so worried about saving her own butt that she didn’t catch how obviously shaken up he was.

  He grabbed her arms, causing her to yelp in surprise. “Who asked you to do that, Anna?”

  “Um?”

  “What did he look like?”

  “I thought you saw him,” she said dumbly.

  “No. I only saw the back of his head.”

  She stared at his face, as if memorizing it. “Well, he looked a lot like you, actually.’

  “What was his name?”

  She struggled to think, caught in emotion and the pressure Dom put on her arms. “Luca Roberto Costa.”

  This time the panic in his eyes was visible.

  “They’ve found me.”

  He dropped her arms and ran to his room. “I’ve got to go.”

  She followed him, watching from the doorway as he flung the little bit of clothes he cherished into a duffle bag.

  “Dom, what’s happening? Talk to me, please. We can work this out.”

  He paused, long enough to show her he was serious. “There is nothing for us to work out. I’m leaving, and you’re not coming with me. I’ve made enough bad decisions to last a lifetime.”

  Her mouth hung open as he continued muttering to himself.

  “Check the surveillance. Less than 24 hours. Send Gelato to Anita. “

  It was as if he truly believed what he said had been enough, and ten minutes later when he looked up to find her still standing there, he frowned.

  “Why are you still here?” His tone was enough to make her flinch… but not back down.

  “We need to talk about this.”

  “I told you to go home.”

  “I’m not going anywhere! Not until you tell me what’s going on.”

  His lips flattened into a straight line. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

  That was enough to push her over the age. “You talk about honesty and being straight-forward, but I’m not stupid. I can tell you’ve been keeping secrets of your own. What are you hiding from me, Dom? You promised me honesty, too. Or was that vow lip service?”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

  “Yes. I do! I want to be with you. I’m trying to work through this, and you’re not being helpful in the least bit.”

  “You want to fucking know?! The mafia is coming to kill me.” He spoke without emotion, as if it all drained from his body. “Finally.”

  Chapter 17

  She must have heard him incorrectly. She was almost sure of it. She didn’t hear him say the mafia was coming to kill him. Nope. She did not hear that because that would mean they were also probably coming for her.

  “Why do you think that?”

  He hadn’t said it like he was thinking it. He said it like a man sure of his own name.

  “I don’t know, maybe because I’ve been living here hiding out for a year and hadn’t seen a single Italian, and now since meeting you, you tell me not only do you see another Italian, but they’re asking about me.”

  Her eyed widened. Did she lead the mafia to him?

  But why was the mafia after him to begin with?

  She opened her mouth, almost afraid to ask, but he beat her to it.

  “Yes. I did a lot of bad things. I’ve done things. I have killed people, but I’m not a bad man. And that’s not why they want my head.”

  There was so much to process in those few sentences. Dom had killed people?! He was a murderer, and yet, somehow he wasn’t a bad man? AND someone wanted him dead. Her brain struggled to process that. What would she do with that information? What could she do? She decided to tackle that after
the issue at hand.

  “They want you dead?”

  “Yes, because I turned on them.”

  “Them?”

  He sighed and sat on the bed, beckoning her to sit beside him.

  “I joined the gang when I was barely thirteen. I didn’t have a choice. My father was murdered right before my eyes, and I had three younger siblings to look after. My mother, bless her heart, tried, but she couldn’t work hard enough to feed us and put a roof over our heads.”

  “So you joined the gang?”

  He nodded. “Easy money. They didn’t care that I was young. In fact, they loved it. My face made it easier for me to go unnoticed. They exported what we call dual-use industrial equipment, the kind the military and civilians can use, but without authorization from the Italian ministry.”

  He took a deep breath and then focused on something far away, a dot on the wall, barely blinking as he went on.

  “We got caught. We got caught with our hands dirty in a deal with a Siberian gang. I lost a lot of my brothers that night. I saw them go down one by one. The few that refused to run and get shot in their backs were arrested. Including me. The Italian government proposed a deal to me. In exchange for immunity for myself and my family, I had to bring down my own gang.” He turned to Anna, eyes haunted with heartbreak and betrayal. “It was never a choice. It was lose-lose from the beginning. I couldn’t sell my family down the river. They didn’t know what I did to put food on the table. They knew it probably wasn’t something legal. I never left the house until dark, but they didn’t know the details. None of what I did was their fault. But I couldn’t rat out my gang either. I had sworn an oath to them. They would have me killed for talking to the cops, or worse, skinned my family alive and let me live with the regret. But the government promised that without my cooperation, they would have me thrown in a cell to rot for life.” He hung his head, pulling the ends of his hair. “And that is not a life.”

  She wanted to comfort him, but wasn’t sure how when he was so vulnerable and possibly still upset with her.

  “They relocated my family. My mom, twin sisters, and my brother, all gone from me. I don’t know where they are and I tried the best I could to find out. When it became clear that I would never find out, I mourned, Anna. I mourned. Do you know what it feels like to believe someone you love is dead, but you can’t see their bodies to be sure?”

  She nodded.

  She did know.

  The car crash that had killed her parents had left two mangled bodies. Too mangled for a child to see. They had been identified by their dental records, and she had gone from loved to orphan in a day.

  “So you came here?”

  “I came here,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I did everything they said, put my life and my family’s lives at risk, and was placed here in British Columbia without a word of where my family was or if they were okay until the deal went through and whoever they were looking for was brought to justice.”

  “And I ruined it. You were laying low, and I blew up your spot.”

  He smiled sadly and caressed her cheek. “It appears you have.”

  “And that’s why you have to go.”

  “I have to. I am no coward, but I refuse to die here. If I must go, I will fall to my knees in my own country. I would prefer my blood be spilled in the land where I want my bones to settle.”

  It was so poetic and depressing; she teared up.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Again, he touched her cheek, almost checking to see if she was real. “It’s not your fault. You were just trying to make a living. I can understand that more than anyone.”

  He took a deep breath then stood. “Go pack. I will call a driver. He will take you home.”

  It sounded a lot like what he had said to her before, and she didn’t like it.

  “No.”

  Her defiance shocked him.

  “No?” His tone suggested he must have misheard her.

  “No. I won’t be going. I am not leaving you. No.”

  She had done it before, and it had felt like shit. She wasn’t going to do it again.

  “Anna. You must not have heard me correctly. I am not going camping. This is not a vacation to Vegas because I am tired of the cold weather. I will be running for my life.”

  “No. I heard you.”

  “Then what don’t you understand?”

  She could see the tension in his eyes, the worry, and the tiny sliver of fear and she knew he thought she would break.

  “What don’t you understand? I am going with you. I’ve made up my mind. Hurry up and finish packing; I don’t know how much time we have.”

  He couldn’t have been more shocked by her, and perhaps it was the stress, but he laughed. He actually laughed at her.

  Anna frowned, and he snatched her up too fast to stop him. They were face to face, and she could see the small flecks of gold in his eyes. “You are the most pleasant surprise.”

  She blushed.

  “Anna, please tell me there is nothing more between us. If you want to come with me, we must be honest with one another. I have never told a single soul what I just told you. I cannot take it back, but I can leave you behind if you are unsure how you feel about me or my past.”

  “I know how I feel Dom… wait. Is that even your real name?” Her eyebrows arched and he smirked.

  “I can tell you that I went to college. Dom was my nickname, and I used it for my alias, Domenico Moretti. My real name is Danilo Costa.” He shuddered. “I haven’t said my own name in years. Danilo Costa, son of Antonio Costa and Sofía Costa.”

  “Nice to meet you, Danilo. My name is Anna, but my friends call me Ann.”

  Then he was kissing her with long, drugging kisses, owning her tongue and mouth until she moaned against his lips. He pulled back and kissed her on the forehead before speaking.

  “Get your stuff. We have to go.”

  He was right. She grabbed her weekend bag, forgotten in the living room, and threw in her toiletries from the bathroom.

  “What are we going to do with Gelato?”

  “I have a friend who owns a dog grooming shop. I’ll be leaving him with her.”

  Anna wondered if this friend was more than an actual friend, but bit her tongue. Now was not the time, and she trusted Dom. For the past three months, he had been hers, and now she had zero intentions of letting him go, so if his friend had slept with Dom, all she had now were the memories.

  “I’m packed,” she said, tossing the bag to the front door. “What do we need to do now?”

  “Turn on the computer!” he yelled from the bathroom as she booted his computer on the living room table.

  “Password?”

  “Bergamo, Lombardy.” He spelled it out for her so she wouldn’t spell it wrong.

  “What’s that?”

  “The place where I was born,” he said, emerging from the bedroom with his own bags.

  “Now what?” She stared at the blank computer screen. It was very nondescript, with no shortcuts saved on the front and a very basic blue background picture.

  “Here,” he said, sitting beside her on the couch and putting the computer on his lap. “I need to check the surveillance feeds.”

  Anna was shocked to see views of everything surrounding the house and inside.

  “You have cameras everywhere?”

  “Yup. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  He ran through the feeds from the past week in fast-forward, making sure no one had been on his property or around it.

  “All clear,” he said, switching back to current day and running through the past hours. “No one was here,” he said with relief.

  “But someone is here now,” Anna gasped with horror as a truck from camera one pulled up to the house.

  “Shit. We’ve been found.”

  It was not the kind of declaration of a man planning to go down without fighting. She turned to see his face tight and his mind obviously calculating.

 
; “What are we going to do?”

  “We,” she liked the sound of that, “are getting out of here. Alive.” He paused, still thinking. “One way or another.”

  He ran to the room and came back carrying two guns.

  “Do you know how to shoot?”

  Her wide-eyed expression said it all. “Okay. I’ll take the shooting. You can run and keep up. Grab the bags and wait at the back door.”

  He tucked both guns into his waistband and carried the computer as he walked to the backdoor.

  “Gelato,” he called. The dog was already pacing in front of Dom, ready to fight and protect him. He was smart enough to discern something was wrong.

  “Sit boy,” Dom commanded, leaving Gelato where he was needed the most: with Anna.

  Dom typed quickly in the computer, splitting the screen between the camera feed and wide lines of code.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Deleting all my files and setting the system to self-destruct internally in two minutes.”

  Wow. It felt a lot like her life suddenly had become a suspense movie, not the kind of life a poor college girl would be living.

  She watched Dom’s fingers fly over the screen and the camera feed with bated breath. Three men exited a black sedan after it pulled up the dirt path instead of parking right at the front door even though there was room. In no rush and clearly armed, they descended slowly from the car. The split screen switched between cameras, showing that the sedan was alone. No one was surrounding the house or trying to sneak in from behind. Those men and whoever was in the black-tinted van had come alone.

  “That’s the guy that paid me,” Anna said, pointing to the screen as one of the men removed his shades.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” he said just before Luca called out Dom’s real name.

  Chapter 18

  “Danilo.” Not Dom or Domenico. Danilo. His true name, and the man said it with a familiarity that left Dom longing for more. He stared into the computer screen trying to place who the man was and how he knew who Dom really was. He didn’t have to think long.