SWNOVELS Sold to the Italian Mafia Boss: Chapter 17
I stand at the window of the compound hospital, a pretty impressive affair complete with two fully-staffed operating rooms. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept in two nights since we left Italy. And more than my body is exhausted, my soul is. So much has happened over the last month. My entire life, my entire world, has changed.
Through the window, I watch Luca sleep. He doesn’t look peaceful. He looks fitful, as though he’s fighting the world, even unconscious. It’s been touch and go; Ariana’s shot nicked an artery. The surgeon told us after that it was the consistency of wet tissue melting in his hands, and I thought that Luca was going to die.
But here he is, standing by his promise. Here he is, fighting for his life. Please don’t stop, I beg him silently, touching my palm to the glass. I need you now. We need you now. Don’t make me need you, don’t make me love you, and then leave me.
Someone clears their throat, and I turn to find my father smiling faintly and leaning heavily on his cane. I go to his side, but he waves me off. “I’m fine, don’t fuss, don’t fuss, Kate.” But he lets me lead him over to a set of chairs in the hallway. He sits with the exhaustion of a much older man, and I would be lying if I said it didn’t break my heart. “Well. This was quite the turn of events.”
I blush. “Yes.”
“You’re lucky with how it turned out. But I know that you know that.” He sighs, leaning back in his chair, eying Luca through the window. “This is a sight I can safely say I never thought I’d see. Harboring my enemy’s son, keeping him alive instead of letting nature takes its course.”
“Dad…”
“I know,” he says, with a tone of musing. “Love is such a funny thing.”
“Oh, I don’t…” But why lie? Heat flows down the back of my neck, and sheepishly, I brush my hair behind my ear. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. Any of it. But you’re right; I did get lucky. All things considered, this could all have turned out much worse.”
“If he dies,” my father says, looking at me with cold, clear eyes, “we go on as we were. We go back to war. He tried to call in my debts the way he did to cripple me. He came here to kill me, Kate, you know that.”’
“That was before.”
“Love doesn’t change everything.”
“Dad.” I take a deep breath. “I am pregnant. Ariana wasn’t bluffing.”
He looks at me hard, and for a moment, I can’t read his expression. Is it anger? Fear? “You were intimate with him.”
“Voluntarily,” I say very clearly. “The marriage was…I was angry. He didn’t give me a choice.” I flush again, averting my eyes. “But everything else? I was OK with it. I was…well, if I’m honest, I couldn’t help myself. He’s not like I thought he would be. Not at all.”
My father is quiet for a long moment, looking back at the glass, at Luca, sleeping. Gone, in another world. One where I hope he’s resting and safe, at peace as much as he can be before he makes it back here.
“Perhaps you really do love him, then,” says my father, his voice softening. “What is he like, then?”
I hesitate, not sure how much to say. Things are shifting rapidly, and while Luca is unconscious, not much can be done in the way of moving forward. He is, at the end of the day, the head of his organization. And while we’ve called a truce with his men, the blood isn’t exactly good. His men killed dozens of my father’s. The Russians fled. There are messes to be cleaned up, and many of them are Luca’s and mine.
But what does it change to lie? I realized today, holding Luca in my arms as he bled out, that I can’t lose him. I need him. Those aren’t the feelings of a kidnapped woman. Those are feelings of love, and I know why; I know where they came from.
“As hard as he tried,” I say, after a moment of thought, “he never could stop treating me like an equal.”
“He locked you in a tower, Kate.”
“He gave me a gun. He gave me my computer. He kept me at least a little apprised of his agendas and ideas. I could just…even in the beginning, when I hated him, when I wanted to hate him, I could just sense that we were good together. Partners. And then…well, then we became lovers, too. And I felt safe with him. I felt protected.”
My father nods. “Good,” he says after a moment. “That’s how partners should feel.”
“You would approve of it? Me staying with him? Raising this child together?”
“Approve is a strong word.” He gives me a pointed look, and I can’t help but laugh. “And anyway, you’re an adult, Kate. You have been for a long time. Much longer than I would have liked.” He sighs and takes my hand. This is not the Irish mafia kingpin; this is my father. Warm. Caring. A shoulder for me to cry on. A safe harbor in the storm. “I wish I could have protected you better. You were so young when you were dragged into this.”
“I know. But I don’t hold it against you. I’m OK. And I like who I am.” I squeeze his hand, turning to look him in the eye. “I can protect myself. Today, when I shot Ari—that’s not the first time I’ve saved Luca. It’s probably not going to be the last. And the same goes for him. This life is dangerous. But I wouldn’t want anything else; it’s in my blood, Dad, like it’s in yours. It’s who I am. It’s what I’m good at.”
He smiles fondly, and my heart skips a beat at the pride winking so clear in his eye. “Spoken like a true expert.”
“I am, aren’t I? I’ve certainly put in my ten thousand hours.”
He laughs, and the laughter dissolves into a fit of coughing. My heart lurches. After a moment, he manages to calm down his breathing. He looks exhausted, with shadows under his eyes, his skin pale. “I am getting old,” he says, and though it’s true, his age isn’t what’s killing him. “Kate. If you mean to see this through, we need to speak. About who inherits all of this when I’m gone.”
I stare at him, startled and scared. “No, Dad, I don’t want to—”
He silences me with a gentle wave of his hand. “Listen to me, Kate. You’re right. It’s in you. This is your field. I won’t disrespect you by saying it’s too dangerous. You know that much. And if you have Luca by your side…I feel more confident that you’ll be well looked after.”
My pulse speeds. “Dad,” I say, looking away. “I fucked up. I fucked all of this up. Leaving the way I did, acting against orders, just—going rogue like I did. It was so irresponsible. And if anything had gone wrong, I’d…I wouldn’t be here. There were a dozen moments when I thought I was going to die. I don’t think I’m fit for it.”
He’s quiet awhile, looking at Luca again or maybe at his blurry reflection in the glass. “That girl, Ariana. She wasn’t raised in the world you and Luca were in. You are inheritors. You’re legacies. She wanted that so badly that she was willing to sell her soul for it, so badly that she was willing to die for it. And today, she did.”
I look down at my hands, still dark and stained with Luca’s blood. I’m not proud that I killed her. I didn’t want to. But I know I had no choice, and I’m happy that Luca is alive. That I was able to save him when a moment more would have taken him from me forever.
“What you have is special. Don’t cast it aside because you made a mistake, or two, or two hundred. I’m no saint. I’ve let men die. I’ve let my empire sink into destitution in the past; I’ve lost myself to debt. And, of course, I have failed, many times, to protect what is most precious to me.” He touches my hand and looks at me calmly. “You.”
I smile, trying and failing to suppress the wave of tears that wells up in my eyes. “I know. You’re what’s most precious to me, too.” I press my palm to my belly. And you, I think, to the life that is not yet a life; you are most precious to me, too. “I’m scared I’m not good enough.”
“You are, Kate. More than good enough.” He squeezes my hand. “You’re meant for it.”
I look at him. And I sense his tiredness; I sense the end of the world on its way. He’s been sick for a long time now. And while I regret how some of this happened, I don’t regret all of it. After all, it brought me Luca. It brought me the whisper of a future, of a family. It showed my dad what I think he already knew: that I really am his daughter; I really do want to make him proud. And I think this is how.
“OK,” I say. “When, in a million years, you finally pass on, happily, safe and warm in your own bed—” He laughs, and so do I. “I will take over for you. Luca and I.”
“You make an old, simple, tired man happy.” He leans in and kisses my cheek. “You smell like blood and smoke. Like your mother used to.”
I smile and squeeze his hand. “I’ll make you proud.” I don’t mean to say it; it’s more of a promise to myself, and I blush.
But my father looks at me then, with such presence and sincerity that it takes my breath away, and says, “You already have.”
***
Our daughter is born in September in Ireland. It’s a lush and balmy day that she comes into the world, with a soft wind that cuts right through the heat and promises fall is on the way. She’s tiny, with Luca’s big dark eyes and my honey-gold hair, and when Luca first sees her, he doesn’t say a thing. He kneels beside the hospital bed, wraps his arms around mine, and presses his forehead to his daughter’s, and he stays like that, right there, for an eternity. Somehow, it doesn’t feel like long enough.
My pregnancy was hard, and throughout it, I was haunted by the fear that my father would be gone before I gave birth. But summer brought him a second wind, and he’s been in high spirits ever since. He comes to the hospital and holds his only grandchild. And light fills his eyes, and he looks younger again, like the fiery, passionate man who raised me.
September falls into October, and autumn arrives in gilt earnest. My father is still managing much of the affairs, and he will until I’m ready to get back to work. Luca passes off the reins to Gio and some older members of the syndicate, men who worked side by side with his father, and then he comes to Ireland.
The house he buys for us is small, a cottage really, made of stone and set between three hills by the sea. It is perfectly rural, with a spice garden, a stone wall, and a fat chimney that chugs lazily on nights that get brisker as winter approaches. Most days, Luca doesn’t even look at his phone.
It’s mid-October, and I tell Luca when I wake up in the morning that today will be the last warm day of the season.
“How do you know?” He asks while we’re still in bed, naked, brushing a strand of hair back from my eyes. He presses close and touches his lips to the corner of my jaw. I trace the twin bullet scars on his chest, the two I witnessed him take. The two I witnessed him survive. “Is it some kind of superstition?”
“Yes, I’m a witch.”
He kisses me, smiling, his dark eyes luminous in the early sunlight. Burnt gold. “Tell me how you know.”
“I just have a sense for these things.”
“You have a sense for many things.” He says it with a kind of soft admiration I’ve become accustomed to. It’s an intense, quiet sincerity that makes my breath catch every time. I’m still learning so much about Luca, even after being together for almost a year and in such intense circumstances, yet there are things I know about him entirely. Like that sincerity, like certain looks. Like the fact that he loves our daughter and me more than anything, anything in the world. “What is your sense now?”
“My sense is that we should have a picnic. She loves the sun.” I look over at the bassinet. She’s such a good baby. She has the steel of Luca in her and almost never cries. She’s self-sufficient. I know she’s going to be a stubborn one, and I love her for it so much, so deeply that sometimes it hurts too. “My sense is also that you should kiss me right now.”
“That’s a good sense.” He lifts the duvet and slides closer, kissing my jaw so faintly I can barely feel his lips. He drags them softly to my ear, pressing them more firmly. Then my neck, my collarbone, and the space between my breasts. “Do you know that I love the sun, too?”
“That’s the Italian in you,” I say admiringly, and he props himself on his elbows above me, his body pressed flush to mine. Every inch of his skin is fever-hot, as always. Something I love on chilly nights, something I love now, or maybe just always. “We should go back there soon. She needs to see where else she comes from.”
He studies me, his expression mysterious, inscrutable. Then he kisses me very softly, just the way I hoped he would. His lips part mine, innocent and delicate, like I’m a fragile thing that might break, blown sugar or maybe glass. Then his tongue strokes my bottom lip and slowly slides into my mouth, and I shiver as his hands move like velvet over my sides and my hips.
“When I came here to get you,” he says, stroking circles with his thumbs on my stomach, “I felt something for Ireland that I never had before.”
“Oh?”
“It felt like home,” he says, and my heart clenches. With happiness and love and envy, almost the envy of myself that I have this, that this, he is mine. Sometimes it feels unfair to the rest of the world. “I knew it was your home. But I saw it for how it could be mine, too. I saw how the hills made you. The rain and the sea. I saw you in all of it.”
I’m not sure he’s ever said something quite so beautiful to me, and it has my eyes burning and my chest aching. It has me speechless.
“She’s like that,” he says, bending to kiss me again. This time, he lies back and pulls me possessively against him, sliding his arm beneath my head, his fingers moving to stroke my hair. “She’s Ireland.”
“She’s Italy, too,” I say, turning to look at him.
“Oh, yes. Of course. And she will know Italy, as well as her father.” He chuckles when I give him a dubious, competitive look. “But for now, she’s Irish. I’m learning to be Irish, too.”
I study him, blushing a little. Because sometimes it embarrasses me just how much I love him. Just how much I want to fall into him and do nothing else, forever. I trace his eyebrows with my fingertip and the line of his nose and his jaw, and I drink in his dark eyes, and I wonder how I got this, how I managed to deserve it.
But in moments like this, I can’t seem to care. I’ve wasted too much time trying to prove myself. And to who? Everyone I love seems to see me even better than I see myself.
“I’m not ready to go back to the real world yet,” I admit. I thought it would be monotonous, this little cottage, this little garden, this little marriage, and this little new baby; not a second has felt anything less than precious. Fairy tale, in its own perfect, mundane way. “I want to stay awhile longer.”
“Then we will. We’ll stay forever if that’s what you want.” His smile is wicked. The smile of the man who kidnapped me, married me and put a gun in my hand; the smile of a man who knows, damn well, that he made me fall in love with him. “But I know you. And I know it won’t always be enough, and when it’s not—that’s when we’ll go.”
“And we can always come back.”
“This is our home, Kate,” he says, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. “We will always come back.”
He kisses me again, then stands and tugs Agnes from her bassinet. She sleeps with her little fists furled, as though she has to do everything with determination and nothing less. Her father and mother’s daughter, I think, with the kind of love that feels like a stitch in the ribs. Luca climbs into bed, holding her against his bare chest. I press myself to them both so she’s between us like a warm, sweet little beating heart.
“A picnic would be good,” he murmurs, kissing his daughter’s hair. “She’ll enjoy the sun on the last warm day.” And when the rain comes, she’ll enjoy that, too, the snow, the ice, the storms, and all that life throws at her. We’ll teach her how, Luca and I, together.
I kiss her, too, and then him. And lying there, it feels like there was an order, after all, to all of the chaos. It feels like there were no mistakes made at all, even though that’s what they felt like at the time; it’s kismet, providence. Fate, maybe, or luck. Destiny, design. Whatever the hell it is, it feels good at this moment.
Whatever it is, it’s ours.