When she loves, p.25
When She Loves, page 25
My thoughts churn. I can’t seem to hold on to a single thread. My reliable friends—clarity, rationality, common sense—have abandoned me. Everything in my head is disorganized, impossible to piece together. It’s unnerving. As if I’m in a trance.
Finally, I get there. It’s another warehouse, smaller than the one I just left. I park by a car I recognize as Nero’s, leave the engine running, and jump out. Something desperate and terrified claws up my throat as I sprint toward the entrance.
If she’s been harmed, I’ll burn this city to the ground.
The scene inside the warehouse isn’t as bloody as the one I just left. Three bodies lie on the ground, none of the men mine, and I rush past them, my gaze desperately searching for Cleo. I spot Nero and Sandro. They’re arguing loudly with a guy I vaguely recognize as one of Ferraro’s. They hear me and turn.
“Where is she?” I shout.
Nero points to the left, and that’s when I find her.
Cleo’s huddled on the ground by a knocked over chair, someone’s jacket wrapped around her. She’s staring at the ground, eyes wide, like she’s in shock.
De Rossi’s guy, Giorgio, is kneeling beside her, saying something in a low tone.
My lungs expand.
She’s alive. She’s safe.
Slowly, she lifts her face, and her gaze meets mine. A fracture appears inside my chest at how vulnerable she looks. I rush over to her, fall to my knees beside her, and pull her into my arms.
She makes a low sob. “Rafe.”
“Tesoro. Are you hurt?” I can hardly recognize my own voice.
“No.” She shakes her head, holding me tightly to her. “I’m okay. Is my dad…”
“Dead.” Or he’s well on his way there. “He’ll never harm you again.”
She sobs again, and I rock her in my arms. My throat tightens, and everything feels so overwhelming and so fucking raw that a new wave of panic claws up my chest.
The memory of my mother’s pained screams pierce through my head. I squeeze my eyes shut for a long moment and then open them.
I can hear Sandro and the other guy still shouting at each other, but Nero is here now. He’s standing just a few feet away with Giorgio.
They’re both staring at me with strange expressions on their faces. Like they don’t know who they’re looking at. Like the Rafaele they know is gone, and in his place is another man. A man who’s allowed himself to be consumed with fear. A man who’s been brought to his knees. A man who’s weak.
A don must never look weak.
What’s happened to me?
What the fuck am I doing?
Throwing away my reputation, the one I’ve spent a lifetime building, right here on this dirty fucking warehouse floor?
I let go of Cleo and get to my feet. I am not that man. I cannot be that man, or everything I have will be lost.
“Are Garzolo’s men all dead?” I ask Nero.
“Yeah,” my consigliere says. He wipes his palm over his mouth. “But we have a problem.”
“What happened?”
The dark-haired Ferraro who was arguing with Sandro appears in front of me and shoves against my chest. “This fucking fool,” he shouts, pointing at Nero, “shot Michael. My cousin. The don’s nephew. Do you fucking idiots understand what you’ve done?”
Fucking fuck. “Nero, is that true?”
Nero gives me a guilt-ridden look. “It was an accident.”
The guy sneers. “You better pray he makes it.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down. What’s your name?”
“Emanuele.”
“Where is your cousin?”
He jerks his head in the direction of a man lying on the ground. Tiny and Sandro are beside him, pressing rags to what looks like a gunshot wound to his gut.
“I didn’t know they were coming,” Nero says, his voice hoarse. “I thought he was one of Garzolo’s men, and I just fucking shot him. It was chaos. I was trying to get to her.”
Fuck. It’s my fault. I never warned him the Ferraros were coming.
“We already called Doc,” Sandro says. “He’s on his way.”
I walk over to where the man is lying on the ground. The guy’s pulse is still there, but weak. He’s bleeding out.
Nero kneels beside me. “Rafe, what were the Ferraros doing here?”
“I called them. Asked them to help.”
“Why would you do that? I had enough men.”
I open my mouth and then shut it. There’s no good answer. I panicked and made a mistake. A big one. If Michael dies, there will be a war.
I stand up and take a step backward. Everything is falling apart. How is it possible that in less than an hour, I’ve lost control over everything? We didn’t even need Ferraro’s men. Nero had it covered. Why did I think it was a good idea to involve them in this?
No, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was desperate to save Cleo.
I didn’t even consider the potential consequences of my rash decision. I let my emotions take control of me.
Bile rises up my throat. Nero was right after all. She did manage to get under my skin.
She is my living, breathing weakness.
Tires screech outside. Everyone pulls out their guns, but it’s just Doc. He runs through the entrance of the warehouse, his medical bag in hand.
“Over here,” Nero shouts.
While the doc’s checking Michael out, I walk back to Cleo. She’s still on the ground, watching everything with wide tear-stained eyes, but she’s visibly calmer. I offer her a hand to help her up, but there’s this angry buzz beneath my skin.
“Tell me what happened. Start at the beginning.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “I got a text from Vale saying Gemma was hurt and that she’d pick me up from work.”
Giorgio clears his throat. “I took a look at her phone. Garzolo used Valentina’s old US phone.”
I want to laugh. So fucking obvious. Garzolo didn’t have to try very hard at all. He’d waited for the best opportunity, and it presented itself when Cleo’s sisters came to town.
How could she have fallen for it?
My gaze narrows on her. Fury throbs through my body, heating me from the inside out. “I told you to never go anywhere without your guards.”
She winces. “I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you ask Sandro about it?”
“I didn’t think—”
My fists clench. “That’s right, you never fucking think.”
She jerks like she’d been slapped. God, I want to slap her. I want to shake her for being so goddamn reckless. She bridges the distance between us, tries to reach for me, but I turn away.
Hurt flashes across her face. “Rafe?”
The heartbreak in her voice pierces through me. This can’t go on. I am a don first and foremost, and I cannot be with a woman like her.
A hurricane.
I was a fool to think I could tame a hurricane. A fool to let myself get attached to her. This is why there was never supposed to be anything but lust between us. There’s too much at stake.
“Get her out of here,” I say to Giorgio. “Take her to her sisters.”
Giorgio nods, but Cleo shakes her head. “No. I want to go home with you,” she pleads.
“I won’t be home for a while.” My voice is pure ice. “I have to clean up this mess. If you want to wait there for me alone, be my guest.”
Her eyes fill with tears, and I can’t fucking stand to see it.
I walk away from her, trusting Giorgio to get her home safely, and with each step, I shove my feelings for her down.
CHAPTER 37
RAFAEL
It takes three hours to bury the bodies and get the warehouses cleaned up. In the meantime, Nero, Doc, and Emanuele take Michael Ferraro to the hospital for treatment so he’ll have the best chance of making it out of this alive.
I’m nearly home when I get the call from Nero.
I pick up. “Speak.”
“He’s dead.”
My heart freezes mid-beat. Just our fucking luck. Why is it that some assholes are seemingly impossible to kill, but this kid goes down with one damn bullet? I rub my forehead with the heel of my palm. This is bad.
“Get out of there right now and go somewhere safe.”
“Doc is still with me.”
“Ask him if he’s willing to stay until Ferraro’s men come. I’ll call Ferraro and explain the situation.”
A beat passes. “Rafe, he’ll want me.”
I clench my jaw. Ferraro will demand vengeance. There’s no doubt about that. “I know. Let me talk to Gino. Where’s Emanuele?”
“With his cousin. Saying his goodbyes.”
“Leave now. Destroy your phone. Next time you call me, use a burner.”
Nero lets out a heavy sigh. “Will do.”
I park the car outside the house and go straight to my office, my mind running over my limited options.
Can I deny Nero shot him? Impossible. There’s a witness. We should have killed Emanuele earlier and claimed both of them died in the gunfire. I sink into my chair and drag my hand down my face. I might have thought of that on the spot if I’d been in control of myself instead of flailing like an idiot and losing my mind over my wife.
It’s too late now. Emanuele’s probably already told Gino what happened. The only thing I can do is fucking pray Gino will forgive Nero for making an honest mistake.
Gino picks up my call right away. “My nephew is dead, killed by your consigliere, after I went out on a limb and sent him over to help you.” The anger in his voice is palpable.
“Gino, it was an accident. Nero didn’t know your guys were coming. I didn’t have time to call.”
“Your incompetence is not my fucking problem.” His voice booms over the speaker. “If you weren’t in control of the situation, you shouldn’t have asked for my fucking help.”
He’s right. He’s fucking right. In retrospect, I can’t believe the reckless stupidity of my actions. It was pure desperation. Devoid of logic and reason.
“Truly, I’m sorry.”
“Fuck your sorry. You think that sorry is going to matter to Michael’s mother? And do you even realize how this makes me look? I agreed to help you as a gesture of good faith. I thought we really had a chance to put the feud between our families behind us once and for all. There’s only one way to make this right, and you fucking know it.”
My blood runs cold.
“I want to see Nero’s body by tomorrow morning. If you’re not man enough to kill him, I’ll do it myself.”
I get up and walk over to the bar. “Look, let’s not overreact. Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing left to talk about, Rafaele.”
I splash some whiskey into a glass. My hands are shaking. “Let me compensate you for your loss. How much would fix this?”
“I don’t need your money.”
“Territory then. I’ll give you my assets in Manhattan. You can run them as you wish.”
“This isn’t about that,” Gino snaps. “This is about you learning a lesson I would have thought you learned a long time ago. You don’t put another don’s men at risk like this. I won’t ever work with you if you don’t make this right, do you understand?”
The alcohol burns my throat. I want to roar in frustration. I can’t risk a war with the Ferraros when I’m still trying to get a handle on Garzolo’s family and trying to fight back the Bratva. My resources are spread thin. There’s a good chance they’d squash us. How the fuck did I allow this to happen?
“Nero’s gone,” I grind out. “It’ll take me longer than that to find him.”
“You can find him, or I will. And trust me when I say his death will be far quicker if you do it.”
“Gi—”
He hangs up.
I stare at the phone screen for a few seconds before I throw my glass across the room. It hits a bookshelf and shatters. Next goes the paperweight, straight through the mirror. Then I shove every piece of crap I’ve got on my desk onto the floor. Papers fly everywhere, but it doesn’t help. Nothing fucking helps.
“Fuck!”
Nero. He wants Nero.
My consigliere. My friend. The man who’s stood by my side since we were kids. The man who’s put his life on the line for me whenever I’ve asked him to do it, doing whatever I’ve fucking asked of him. The man who’s been unfailingly loyal to me. And in my moment of weakness, I set him up. I did him fucking dirty.
The door to my office opens, and Cleo appears.
“Get out,” I growl.
She pauses, her hand on the door handle, but then her lips firm into a line, and she steps inside. “No.”
I glare at her, feeling like all of my organs are shriveling up. “Not now, Cleo.”
She ignores my warning. She casts her gaze around the mess inside my office, her brows pinching in concern. “We need to talk.”
I don’t have time to talk. I’ve got the most powerful don in New York waiting for me to deliver the body of my consigliere to his doorstep.
This woman is my ruin. And she doesn’t even realize it.
She approaches the desk, her expression worried. “Rafe, I’m so sorry. I know what I did was stupid, but when I thought Gemma was in trouble… I just wasn’t thinking. I thought something had happened to her or the baby. I just…” Her eyes well up with tears. “I panicked.”
“Why didn’t you call me first?” I demand. This could have been avoided if she hadn’t taken her father’s bait. If she’d just fucking used her brain.
Funny how the exact same criticism can be thrown right back at me. I wasn’t thinking when I called Ferraro. And now my consigliere has to pay for my mistake. Rage pulses inside my chest. I’ve never hated myself more than I do right now.
She’s done this to me. Made me into someone not worth the responsibility I’ve been given. Made me into a weak, impulsive, emotional man.
This can’t go on.
I have to end this or everything I’ve worked for, everything I’ve bled for, will burn to the ground at her feet. My heart shreds apart inside my chest.
“I promise this will never happen again,” Cleo says brokenly.
“You’re right.” I look past her at the broken mirror hanging on the wall, at my fractured reflection. “It won’t, because we’re over.”
There’s a beat.
“What?” Her voice is a harsh whisper.
“You wanted a divorce.” I look down at my desk, unable to look at her, unable to be near her. “Congratulations. You’re getting it.”
“What are you talking about? That was months ago. Things have changed. You know that.”
“I’ll get my lawyers on it.”
“We can work through this,” she pleads. “Come on, it was one mistake. We can make this right again. Don’t tell me you’d throw all of this away over one damn mistake!”
She doesn’t get it. My life was fine before I met her. Everything was steady. I could control my reality, bend it to my will, enact anything I wanted. And now? There’s only mayhem. The reins are slipping out of my hands, and she’s the one pulling on them.
“I cannot be the don I need to be with you around.” I manage to keep my voice free of emotion. “You need to leave.”
She rushes to me, her footsteps loud against the hardwood floor. She takes my arm. “Rafe, stop. You’re acting crazy.”
“You made me fucking crazy!” I roar, shaking her off. Our gazes clash. “Do you know how badly I fucked up when I thought you were about to be killed by your father? When I thought you were in danger, I couldn’t fucking think straight. I still can’t think straight with you around me.”
A broken sob escapes her, and a tear runs down her cheek. “I love you.”
I force myself not to look away. To take in this moment. I know I won’t ever hear those words again. I don’t fucking deserve them.
“That’s unfortunate,” I say harshly.
She sucks in a breath. “I know you love me too, damn it.”
“I don’t love anyone.” I step away from her.
“I know about your father! That he made you watch while he beat your mother. She told me.”
My stomach hollows out. Mamma told her?
Not everything. She’d never tell her everything.
“He was a sick man,” Cleo whispers.
If only she knew how sick.
“And he was wrong. Emotions don’t make you weak. Love doesn’t make you weak.”
Oh, but it does. Its roots penetrate through cracks, destroy walls, crumble strong foundations. I don’t recognize myself anymore.
I need to undo this.
“Was he wrong? I don’t think so. The only thing that’s wrong here is me and you.”
Her eyes widen with disbelief, as if my words don’t make any sense.
“Rafe—”
“You’ll leave with your sisters today. I want you out of this house. It’ll take me a few days to clean up the mess you caused and get the papers in order. I’ll mail them to you in Italy.”
“You can’t do this.” Cleo reaches for me again.
I tear my arm out of her grasp and move toward the door. “I’ve said everything I have to say.”
“Where are you going?” Her voice cracks, and God, how that hurts me.
“To figure out some way that today doesn’t end with my consigliere dead.”
“Why would he die?”
I halt. Slowly, I turn around to face her. “Because I called Gino Ferraro for help when I knew you were in trouble, but I didn’t have time to warn Nero. Nero shot one of Ferraro’s men by accident. The don’s nephew. He’s dead. Now, Ferraro wants Nero dead.”
Blood drains out of her face. “No, no, he—”
“Ferraro expects me to deliver Nero’s body in the next twelve hours. All because of you and your recklessness.”
Shame floods through me as soon as that sentence leaves my mouth. The truth is, it’s as much my fault as hers. No, it’s more. I am the don. My people are my responsibility, not hers. But I need her to leave. I need her out of my house, out of my mind, out of my heart. I need her gone.
“No. No.” She covers her mouth with her hands, tears cascading down her cheeks. “You can’t do it. Nero can’t die because of me. Rafe, please. Please tell me—”
