“You going to stay faithful to me for a hundred years?” I said to her. “When I’m locked behind bars and men like him are hovering around you constantly?”
“I will stay faithful to you until the day I die,” she said, squeezing my chin, coming down and giving me a kiss that was even more solidifying than a blood vow. “You have me forever, Corrado.”
“For every sunrise,” I said.
“For every sunset, too. You are my night, and I am your moon,” she said in Sicilian. “Something to live for. Something to die for. You are my body, and I am your heart. For as long as there is a breath in me.”
Epilogue
Alcina
Seven Years Later
“Orlando!” I screamed across the groves. “Bring me your bucket.”
“Let him go,” Rocco said, smiling at me as he passed. “He is just being a man.”
I pursed my lips, shaking my head. “He is not a man,” I said. “He is a boy.”
“Mamma,” Orlando said, coming to stand in front of me. “But I, ah—”
“Ah-ah!” I put my finger to his lips, trying not to laugh when he went cross-eyed at me for a second before his eyes looked up and focused on me. I ran my hand through his sweaty black hair. “No excuses. We do not hit with buckets.”
“He told me, ah, that, ah, I was moving too, ah, slow!”
He had a habit of punctuating his words with ah when he became upset.
“It does not matter, son,” I said. “We keep our buckets to ourselves. We can respond without using our hands.”
“Bucket,” he said.
“Bucket.” I nodded. “Tell him you are not moving too slow, he is moving too fast.”
He scrunched up his nose, like he wanted to growl. I told him to go play nice with the other children before he could see me laugh. I kept his bucket, though, because it was the second time he had used it as a weapon.
“Mamma mia,” I said, watching him run to his sisters like a freight train toward mountains. Ele was helping another smaller child put oranges in her bucket. Alessandra was next to her, watching, trying to direct.
A blood orange dropped in the bucket I’d taken from Orlando. I looked up into the eyes of my husband. The sun broke through the amber, making them turn almost gold. His hair was black, starting to streak with some silver. His skin was warm and tan from working in the groves all day.
“You leave me for one second, and the lions smell fresh meat,” he said, sliding his arms around my waist. He pulled me closer, kissing my neck.
“Tell me the truth,” I said, thinking back years ago to the day in his office. The day that almost destroyed me. “If Uncle Tito had not sent Rocco to grab the hat he left on purpose... ”
“The thought of him sniffing around my family after I was locked behind bars changed my mind. That’s why we’re here. Why I’m here. Prison wouldn’t have killed me. The thoughts would have. The things I would’ve missed.”
We turned together to look at the table full of people on our property. Family and friends gathered around our home to celebrate. Nothing in particular. Just life.
Laughter rose and echoed. Kids ran from one spot to another. A few of the men were drunk and started to sing. The sun was starting to set. Soon hundreds of lights would brighten our property in Catania.
It was the perfect distance to all of our family and friends. We were secluded, tucked away, our own little slice of the world where no one could find us—unless we allowed them to.
I sighed, taking my husband’s hands in mine, intertwining our fingers.
Every word I had spoken to him in his grandfather’s office was true. I was prepared to spend the rest of my life faithful to him, to our marriage. Not even bars could separate his life from mine. I had a code, too, and I was willing to sacrifice my entire life to see it through.
Though I had known Rocco was one deciding factor in my husband’s decision, there was more to it.
“Didn’t I choose you, too?” Corrado had said to me one night.
I hadn’t known what he meant until the next day. We got on a plane to Sicily and never looked back.
The four of us did not exist any longer, not the same way we did before. The plane that was supposed to bring us back to New York crashed over the ocean. We went down with a set of names and came up with a new set of identities.
A new life that came with its own sets of unique wins and struggles.
I rested my head against his chest, looking up at him. “You look tired, il mio amore.”
He only nodded.
Even though Alessandro Palermo lived for each new day in his groves, he wrestled different demons every night.
Instead of staying awake, he fought them off in his sleep. Tossing and turning. Saying things I could not understand. Waking up ringing wet with sweat, like he had been to war in his dreams.
His conscience had caught up to him, and the life he left behind never truly left him. It pulled at him like strings to a puppet, demanding that he claim his part again as the puppet master. And his conscience pulled him in a different direction—toward redemption.
“The moon will be full tonight.” I smiled up at him. “The grove will be ours.”
“I look forward to the madness,” he said, leaning down to kiss me. “When the witch comes out in you.”
I laughed in his arms and then sighed. “We will stay out until morning,” I said. “Until we have to leave. Then we will eat breakfast out on the terrace.”
“A new day,” he said. “The weather will be cooler.”
“Is this the ending you imagined?” I pulled his arms even closer, wishing we could walk around as one instead of two. Maybe Uncle Tito was right. We did walk around as one—his body and my heart. Each day I fell harder and deeper in love with him.
A thousand lifetimes wouldn’t be enough.
He took a minute to answer. “No,” he said.
“Papà! Mamma!”
We turned to look at our three children running toward us. Alessandro smiled, and his Ele returned it.
It took her a little time, but her smile was mostly reserved for her papà. She lived up to her name, light, when she smiled that way for him.
They circled us, showing us the blood orange they had found, how big it was. Alessandro wrapped his arm around Ele. I pulled Alessandra closer. Orlando stuck himself in between, trying to wrap his arms around all of us. He was grunting, trying to make his arms grow.
I laughed, the sound of it echoing around the groves, as a breeze rustled the trees.
My husband looked at me and grinned. “Now it is.”
Extended Epilogue
“You can’t get away from me!” Anna said, jumping in front of us with a camera. “On the count of three!”
“One!” Ele shouted.
“Two!” Alessandra held up two fingers.
“Tre!” Orlando said, reaching for the bucket, which I refused to let go of.
We all looked at the camera and smiled.
“Wait!” Mari said, coming to stand next to her brother, her entire family surrounding her. “Us, too!”
“Alla famiglia!” Anna said, bringing the camera up to her eye once more.
“Alla famiglia!” we shouted before she took the picture.
“Now, let’s eat!” Donatello “Lima Bean” said, passing us by. “I’m starving.”
The End
Yeah, I claimed the name.
Who gives a fuck?
After all, a name is just letters strung together to make a word.
I know who I am.
I’ll always be a Don—the boss of this thing we called our life.
A Word From Donatello (Adriano):
Shh…let me tell a little secret.
I’m not who I used to be.
The chubby chipmunk described in this book no longer exists.
After Adriano Lima went down and this new man was created from his ashes, I was born again, so to speak.
See, I was addicted to food.
I used it as a crutch. I lived to eat, not ate to live.
That life, it came with a lot of things that tore me up inside. Things I never thought I’d have to deal with.
Like my conscience.
I didn’t know how to deal with it.
So I ate.
And I ate.
And I ate.
I filled my stomach with food when my conscience felt empty and was growling at me.
It was fucked up—but in that life, it was what it was.
For example. I once ate a bowl of spaghetti while a man was lying on the floor at my feet, moaning in pain, his intestines hanging out of his stomach after I had caused them to.
You know what I did?
I offered him a bite. Then I described in detail to him how each bite tasted.
But that was then. This is now.
Now.
You wouldn’t recognize me if you saw me on the street.
I’m nothing but solid muscle—no more chipmunk cheeks to hide my food for later.
What else?
Oh, yeah, I fell for a woman. She’s older than me and hates my guts. (Can you guess who she is? I’ll give you a hint. Her name was the same as mine, except it ended in an ‘a’ instead of an ‘o’.) Hates the life I used to live. She still accuses me of being a part of it. She acts like I can’t be anything else. Like it’s in my blood and can’t be washed clean.
Adriano would have given up.
The new me? He finds her hate a challenge.
I found something that food could never fill.
Life beyond the life.
Afterword
I hope you enjoyed Mercenary, the last book in the Gangsters of New York series. What a wild ride this has been! Thank you so much for being a part of it!
I wanted to take a moment to point something out about this book. I knew right away that Corrado (the one in this book) and his father, Corrado Palermo, were a lot alike. The sins of the father were visited upon the son. In many ways, Corrado and his father’s story ran parallel to each other, but years apart.
Mari recognized the same downfall in her brother, and she knew that talking to him would only get her so far. The scene in the dining room at Emilio’s mansion on Staten Island speaks for itself. Actions over words. Corrado chose his wife (essentially his family) over the taste of vengeance—something his father couldn’t do.
So after reading Machiavellian, if you’ve ever wondered about Corrado Palermo and his wife Maria (Mari’s mamma), this story definitely echoes theirs. Even down to the time spent in Sicily.
The ending to Corrado and Maria Palermo’s story was not a happy one. I’m thankful that Corrado and Alcina’s ended on a different note.
I hope you enjoyed Mercenary as much as I did writing it. I know I’ll always think about the groves, the singing, even the candles and the moon, when I close my eyes and think about them.
Much love,
Bella
Acknowledgments
I truly have no idea where to begin. I have no idea how to truly express my gratitude and thankfulness for what has happened since Machiavellian was released. The amount of love I’ve received for the Gangsters of New York series has blown me away.
Before I truly get started, let’s go back a little, to the moments before I released Mac.
I wrote an acknowledgment in the back of Mac because I had no idea if I would continue on with the series, or stop there. My future in writing was uncertain. I’ve always been a writer, but I didn’t start sharing my stories until 2013 (under a different name). Then I wrote the Fausti Family, and I fell hard and deep for the criminal worlds in my mind. I knew it was something I wanted to keep writing about, and I would have, but maybe not published as often. After I finished writing the Fausti Family, I wanted to jump right back in to that world. I wanted to see if the story strolling around in my head would amount to something equally as great as the love I found between Brando and Scarlett Fausti.
That idea turned out to be Machiavellian—and from that book forward, what is now known as the Gangsters of New York.
I’m so proud to say that Mac truly resonated with readers, and that it has been described as “not just a mafia romance, but one of the most beautiful love stories.”
I could have never foreseen how much love Mac (and the Gangsters) would get. I could have never foreseen how it would change my life as a writer. It gave me a reason to go on. As Alcina would say, “It gave me my fire back.”
Writing is not only a passion for me, but a great love. And to receive this amount of love for a book that stole my heart from the very first page…it goes beyond what words can convey.
I have so many people to thank for that, because even though the act of writing is solitary, what comes with it is not.
First and foremost, I have a great amount of faith. Without it, I would have given up long before Mac was published. Being a writer isn’t easy. It takes long hours of being alone with the people inside of your head, getting to know them from the inside out—what they love and hate; what they would live and die for—and in a blink, it seems like the story is no longer yours alone. It belongs to the world. And that comes with its own set of challenges. I’m so thankful that my faith has brought me this far, kept me strong enough not to give up, and I’m looking forward to whatever the future holds. T.Y.G.F.A.T.Y.H.D.F.M. I. A. Y. E.F.E.V.
My family. La mia famiglia. The love and strength you find in these books comes directly from my own. I have truly been blessed with the most amazing people to share my life with. I couldn’t do this without you all. I love you all more, and I can’t thank ya’ll enough for loving me and supporting me as much as ya’ll do.
To my agent, Stephanie Phillips of SBR Media: Thank you so much for all that you do for my books and me. Thanks to you, not only will the Gangsters be in audio, but also in Poland! I can’t wait to share these stories with more of the world.
To my editor, Alisa Carter: BEFL! You’ve polished my diamonds in the rough since the beginning. I can’t thank you enough for not only being my editor, but a trusted part of my process.
To my PR team, Buoni Amici Press (Drue and Debra): Ya’ll are every author’s dream team. You help me with every aspect of this business, and I can’t thank you both enough for the support and friendship.
To my BETA readers: Anna, Lashell (who is also my author friend!), Malia, Pam, and Stephanie. You are not only my beta readers, but my friends. You are all immeasurable in worth to me, and I’m so thankful to have gotten to know each and every one of you. Thank you for being a part of this journey with me.
To Jenika Snow: Thank you for reading my books, for reaching out to me, and mostly, for all of the support. BAFFAE!
To the countless bloggers and Instagrammers who have reached out and shown me love and support: I wish I could list each and every one of you, but you know who you are. Thank you doesn’t even seem like enough, but…thank you! You have no idea how much I value your time, your creativity (the edits!), your passion for reading and your support. Keep doing what you’re doing. You keep the book world spinning.
Last but certainly not least: YOU! Yes, YOU! If you’re reading this, you cared enough to take this journey with me. YOU made the Gangsters into what they are—a series of books that I hope everyone will love for years to come. You’ve given me the opportunity to share these books with the world.
You message me.
You comment on my posts.
You show me so much love that I can’t even put into words how much it means to me.
YOU share your love of these books and of reading with the world—and for that, I’ll be forever thankful.
Alla famiglia!
Thank you so much for being such an amazing part of mine, and thank you for taking this incredible journey with me. I hope you’ll be with me for the long-haul, because we’re just getting started.
About the Author
Bella Di Corte has been writing romance for seven years, even longer if you count the
stories in her head that were never written down, but she didn’t realize how much she enjoyed writing alphas until recently. Tough guys who walk the line between irredeemable and savable, and the strong women who force them to feel, inspire her to keep putting words to the page.
Apart from writing, Bella loves to spend time with her husband, daughter, and family. She also loves to read, listen to music, cook meals that were passed down to her, and take photographs. She mostly takes pictures of her family (when they let her) and her three dogs.
Bella grew up in New Orleans, a place she considers a creative playground.
Also by Bella Di Corte
The Fausti Family:
Man of Honor
Queen of Thorns
Royals of Italy
Kingdom of Corruption
War of Monsters
Gangsters of New York:
Machiavellian, Book 1
Marauder, Book 2
Coming Soon:
The Fausti Family:
Ruler of Hearts
Law of Conduct
King of Roses
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ROSE ROOM
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Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3) Page 32
