33. Stephano

33

STEPHANO

I've warmed up on the treadmill, and now I'm going at this punching bag as if it's his face. Sweat drips into my eyes and blinds me, but I don't stop. I hate how Gigi Trapani always thinks the worst of me. This is what it means to be born into a Mafia family. Nothing can scrub you clean.

Her choice of words baited me to retaliate, but seeing the spark of jealousy in her eyes was like seeing a lighthouse in the dark. She cares. She sees those other women as competition or a threat— as if —and I hate how it made her doubt me.

And then, I had to taunt her by not telling her how things stand between me and the women who work in our clubs. It's the first thing I'm going to tell her when I get home. In that moment where I really only wanted to fuck her on the kitchen counter, I had to leave to come beat out the age-old rage our conversations last night about Mom and Don Scalera unearthed. If it weren't for those standing appointments I had this morning, I would have been at the gym hours ago.

Everything from last night felt undeserved. From her feeling safe with me, to her holding me and pressing that kiss to my back. Actions speak for themselves. It's as if she knew what I needed more than I knew myself. In the night, when she stirred in anguish, I held her close. I bet she doesn't know she has nightmares and whispers Carla and Franco in her sleep, getting more agitated at the mention of his name.

"You're sparring today? With a human?"

The gym's general manager has been eyeing me from a distance ever since I stalked in here an hour ago, too pumped for human interaction.

"Not a good idea, don't you agree?" I huff back. When I'm in this mood, I'm dangerous. The flip. Fuck. Gigi even has a name for it.

"Two regulars are here, who've both been wanting your blood for days now. You've been a bit absent the past two weeks. You can fight both and walk out of here with a clear head."

And a clear conscience, for what it's worth. I wipe at my mouth with my gloved hand. "Fuck. Why not."

When people know you, they know you. This manager has overseen my gym since it opened seven years ago. He gets me. And the guys who sign up to fight me know what they're getting into. No holds barred.

——

Two hours later, I'm about to take the stairs to my apartment, my head clear. I'm aching all over, having pushed my limits today, but that's what happens when you fight the best. I'm going to have bruises, but it comes with the territory. The security detail we've installed to watch the street signals to me, and I nod. A package arrived, and it's been verified. Good.

It's not one package, but several in different sizes. As instructed, the delivery guy didn't ring the doorbell, and Gigi must be home, unaware. Tony must be there too; I did let him in earlier as I walked out. I wade through the boxes to the door and open it wide, then pull the packages in one by one. It's only when I look up that I notice Gigi sitting by the dining room table, her face buried in her hands, and Tony hovering by her side like a helicopter mom.

"Tried to phone you, boss," he says. "She's been like this since she opened her laptop."

Fuck. I haven't checked my phone since I stripped my suit jacket in the gym. "What's happened?"

Gigi sniffs and glances in my direction, then shakes her head as she sobs again into a fold of tissues.

As I walk over, I indicate to Tony, and he gets the message to see himself out.

"Angel." I touch her shoulder, and she sags back.

"They've come for me, Steph. They've come for my business." She faces her laptop screen to me, and I sink into a chair. "Read it. Shit. It's in Italian. Do you read Italian?"

"Sort of." I pull the laptop closer, glancing through the lines, trying to make out the gist of the situation even though my reading Italian is at the level of an eight-year-old. Once Mom died, we read it less and less at home.

"There're articles on several UK sites as well. Accusing my business of selling forgeries. It's all fabricated, but I'm done for. They've basically killed everything I've worked for overnight with a few choice articles. I can't fight this now. Not from here and not while I'm in hiding. You know I can't."

She shoots up and paces the room, caged. I toggle through the tabs she's got open on her laptop, and my heart sinks. Each article is damning and clearly an orchestrated attack designed to make her retaliate and reveal herself.

This is good. They still don't know where the Trapani women have fled to.

"God!" she cries out, her hands in her hair. At some point, she lost the ponytail because she's tugging at her loose strands as if she'd pull it all out. "I worked so hard to get out, to get away, and this is what this sick life does. It pulls you back in and destroys everything good and pure and honest, then it just fucks you over until you die."

I get up and pull her into my arms. She fights me, but as if she knows it's futile, she almost collapses against my chest and fists my shirt as she presses her face tight into me. There're so many words I can throw out there to appease her, but I say nothing because they're meaningless.

I cup her head and hold her close as she weeps for a life she must realize now is long gone. She left it behind the night she chose to flee with her sister, and there's no going back. In reality, it was ripped from her when Franco Fiore chose to make her his wife—she just didn't know it.

"My inbox is flooded with emails from clients who want to know if the accusations are true. A few even suggested they will get professional evaluations done to check that I haven't sold them fakes." She sobs into my chest. "I buy from Christie's, for fuck's sake! And all the other reputable auction houses in Europe. They're going at me as if I run my own bloody crime ring."

Not a bad idea, but I keep it to myself. Every word she says is true. This life sucks you in and spits out nothing but your bare bones at the end of it. If you're lucky enough to dodge the acid pit. Or the promession plant in Matteo's basement.

"Have you responded to anybody?"

"No. I opened my inbox wanting to see what's been going on. I don't even know if I should have done that? If he could track me?"

That depends on how good they are. We'll see. "Don't respond. Log out of everything. I know it hurts. I'm not going to make you any empty promises. You've got to let it go."

"No!" she says as she stubbornly pushes away from me. "I'm not letting it go. I've worked hard for this, and I refuse to let Vincenzo or Franco rip my reputation apart?—"

"Gigi—"

"Don't you get it? This was the only thing I had that was mine. Mine alone. Clean, untarnished. And they've now gone and sprayed Mafia sewage all over it. Nobody is going to trust me again."

"Angel. I get it, but now is not the time. If these allegations are false, it will be easy to prove."

She turns to me, so many emotions playing out on her face. "But when? I want to go home! I don't want to be trapped here and watch from afar how they burn my world down. No response is an admission of guilt."

"It's going to have to wait, Gigi. You can go back once we've dealt with Franco. This whole farce will be over then." She's too distraught to see clearly, but her common sense will kick in. "Our priority is to keep you safe. You won't prove any of those articles wrong if you're dead."

I can't even stomach that thought.

"God." She cups her hands to her face and shudders as she tries to suppress a sob.

"Here," I say as I pull her close again. "One thing at a time."

I bet she's still in shock of sorts. She's been good at pretending everything is fine. I bet she wouldn't have had this outburst in front of Carla. She'll even protect her sister from this.

"You showered," she eventually mumbles against my chest. "Was it to wash off those wome?—"

"Don't say it, angel," I cut in, gentle but firm. "I went to the gym. As I do every day."

She takes a minute to digest this, then pulls away to look up at me. She is a mess of smudged mascara and red eyes and broken dreams. I want to kiss it all away.

Instead, I say, "Now if you would stop jumping to conclusions, I can explain why I have our clubs' exotic dancers come to my house on random weekday mornings."

She shudders out a little breath. "Exotic dancers? Like in strippers ?"

"Some of them do, some of them don't. Depends on the club they're working at. They make good money, Gigi. And this is what they choose to do. We offer a safe environment, and I do financial planning for them on the side."

"Financial planning?" She stares at me in disbelief. "Like in investments?"

"Yes. Some of these women have kids, and they want to send them to college. Some hope to retire earlier. None of them want to be in the industry forever." I squeeze her hips. "And none of them work for us as prostitutes. In fact, they're regular employees on our payroll like anybody working in our offices. Il Consiglio doesn't do that type of shit. Not since we started cleaning up our operations as Matteo took over more and more of the businesses as our father got older."

"Okay. Whatever." She peels away from me, and I let her go. "What are your businesses then, because all I know is they can't be above board."

"A lot of them are. Luca and I run the clubs, and we have some e-commerce things on the side. Dominic is in security." I groan inwardly. Here it comes. "Matteo is in the import and export business. And Benedict is a hacker." Amongst other shady online ventures.

"Import and exports. I see." She gives a snarky laugh. "And hacking. Nice."

"It's rather clean in comparison to a lot of things. And very profitable, like real estate. Il Consiglio owns several buildings in the city. Don Scalera acquired them, riding the wave of the real estate market like a pro surfer, so…" I won't lie, but she can read between the lines. Don Scalera might have started his real estate empire with laundered money, but decades down the line, it's all legit.

She throws up her hands and slumps back into her chair, shaking her head as she presses her laptop's start button until it switches off. She closes the screen slowly, but the tears are back. "The only thing I wanted for us was to get out. To get away and have a different life. I promised my mom I'll look after Carla, and now this."

I, too, made promises to my mom. To be the antidote to the poison. Gigi is my fulfillment of that promise. "We'll figure it out, angel."

For a moment, heavy silence hangs between us. It's not only a promise, but also a future—our future. Something we'll figure out.

"What's all this?" she asks, and waves to the boxes I've dragged in.

"It's for you." I walk over and pick up a big rectangle. "I didn't know what scale you work at, so I got a starter pack. There's something of everything in here." I rip the paper off to reveal a canvas. "There's paint and turps and brushes. Uhm… Oils and acrylics and watercolors." Basically, one of each was my instruction this morning. "I might have gone a bit overboard."

I wanted to do something for her. Something that would make her happy. I don't buy in to her not being a good artist. She has passion and an eye for art. What with being prepared to run at any given moment for the past ten years, the one thing she's never had before was a quiet time and space to just paint and explore.

"Why on earth?" She slides a finger along the edge of the canvas.

"You need to find calm in the chaos, Gigi." This situation is either going to implode quickly, or it's going to drag on for months. Only time will tell, but with this forgery scandal, Franco showed his hand. He isn't shy about pulling out all the stops to get this woman and her money. "It's the only way to stay sane."