Chapter 28

CHIARA

‘ O livio Tirone was a shit. He used me to titillate his business partners, the freakish mobsters and gangster scum he worked with. He’d often drug and force me to do lap dances for his depraved friends for their pleasure.’

‘The fuck?’ Rio growled.

He reached for a hand for me, but I grasped his and pushed it back. ‘Allow me to finish,’ I whispered. ‘If you touch me before I do, I’ll lose it.’

He raised his palms in surrender, rage simmering in his pale blue eyes.

I canted my gaze away from him, knowing his righteous wrath, not at me but at my past, would undo me.

I sat in bed and wrapped my hands around my knees, going hard with the raw, unadulterated truth.

‘He never let them fuck me. No, I was to remain a virgin at all times. But he permitted them to do most anything else on me.’

Rio’s chest heaved, his limbs trembled, and his fists clenched so tight I saw the veins on his forearms enlarge before me.

A tic developed in his jaw, and his nostrils flared.

Still, I plowed on. ‘I became an addict because of him. He was my supplier. He had the audacity to hand me a baggie soon after my mother’s funeral, daring me to snort it to handle the pain. I did it to spite him. He didn’t think I would follow through.’

I spat the words in defiance, aware of the periphery of Rio’s harsh intake of breath.

‘He also got my mother onto heroin and used her to make deals and move money for him. She died in prison because of him. That is the reason why I don’t hate you for killing him because he destroyed my mother and my soul long ago. You did what I could not find the balls to do myself.’

Silence fell between them as I took ragged breaths in.

Somehow, I found the strength in me to continue. ‘Our shitshow didn’t start in my teens. It began when I was just a little girl. By eight, I helping stash rifles and drugs in our basement. By ten years of age, I counted the cash while Claudio and Aldo, eight and six, respectively, were drug-running with the Tirone dealers to distribute. I got warned on an almost daily basis that if the police wanted to talk to me on the street, I was not to say a single word. Except to ask for my dad or our Uncle Pepe, his lawyer, who’d handle it.’

‘Did the cops ever come for you?’

‘A couple of times when they searched my father’s properties, they found us. One time, they took Claudio and me in. However, the carabinieri who brought me in paid for it with the lives a few months later.’

‘ Fotto !’ Rio growled, gritting his teeth.

‘As I was about to start high school, father dispatched us to England. My brothers and I got on a private plane and were sent to Brighton College, a co-educational boarding school in Brighton and Hove, England, UK.’

‘Which explains your excellent English,’ Rio murmured.

‘ Si ,’ I shrugged. ‘When I questioned why we’d been stashed away, Olivio told me a bullshit story about our house needing a major renovation. As it turned out, a rival gang had robbed one of our warehouses, shooting and wounding a guard in the process, leading to a mob war. I liked school because it was peaceful, away from all the madness in my father’s domain. But every holiday back in Naples was a shitshow, always at Olivio’s mercy. ’

‘ Impossibile ,’ Rio groused. ‘No children should live like this. It’s not the Mafia way.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not the Calibrese way or the way of the more genteel families in the crime world. Remember, we Tirones are scum, bottom feeders, a world removed from the standards you grew up with.’

Rio exhaled through his nose. ‘Still doesn’t make it fucking acceptable.’

‘I didn’t know any different. I didn’t have friends, neither would they come and play with me. No one was allowed to know where I lived. We were always afraid that my father was a target as a result of his mob deals and also his loan shark business. People were always looking to rob or dismember him. When I got older, I realized how fucked up our world was and how scared I was living in it. At 17, I asked Olivio for a bodyguard. What freaked me out was he stood back for a second and contemplated the idea before saying, ‘No, you should be OK.’ My guess is we didn’t have the money for one. My dad and uncle shared one, a massive guy with one eye. What I remember the most was the constant fear. Anxiety that my father or brothers would be killed or put in prison. Dread that I’d be kidnapped. Terror for my life after my mother died. It drove me to take more drugs until I had a reputation for being Naples’ foremost desperate junkie.’

‘What made you quit?’

I took a deep inhale and braced.

‘A young man, someone I saved one night.’

‘ Dimmi ,’ he pushed.

‘It was one night when I was needy for a hit. I had no money, so I went to my father’s office to beg for it. I found him in the middle of a beatdown of some guy. The man was injured and bleeding hard, tied up in a chair.’

At my words, Rio jolted.

His face hardened, eyes iced over.

He knifed from the bed and crossed his arms over his bare, muscled chest, heaving.

‘What is it? Rio? Cos’hai ?’ I asked, kneeling and reaching to touch his arm.

This time, he was the one who flinched and pulled away.

‘Keep going, tell me everything,’ he growled, eyes flicking to me.

The despair within, the emotion threw me.

‘Why does this mean more, now?’ I asked.

He gave me no answer, only his hand whirling through the air, urging me to continue.

So I did.

Sinking back to sit on my legs, I went on.

‘For some reason, when I left the warehouse, I couldn’t erase him from my mind. He was defiant, although his family was about to be killed, which was plain to see, but also profoundly desperate. So I hung around to see what would happen. I followed my father’s capos in my shit auto as they drove him away. They dumped him in a rough, isolated neighborhood. When I was sure he was alone, I checked on him. He was bleeding bad and wouldn’t have made it alive til morning.’

Rio made a noise, a guttural grunt in his throat. A vein had appeared on his temple, and it throbbed as he stared at me with an intensity that scared the shit out of me. His arms crossed over his chest, muscles bulging. ‘Go on,’ he rasped.

‘I somehow shoved him into my car and transported him to a private clinic. Dumping him at emergency and pinning the money my father had given me on him so he’d have a way to pay for his care. I left him because I was high and didn’t want to want the cops to find me. I never learned who he was, never got a name, and never found out what happened to him. But I was forced to clean my filth up because I had no cash to buy new drugs. Seeing a man almost losing his life in front of me jolted me outta my shit.’

Rio’s eyes closed for an instant, and his broad chest heaved. He threw his head back, revealing the ink on his throat as he cursed.

I fell silent until he thrust his eyes back on me. ‘ Bella , I need all of it.’

His hoarse, impatient command allowed for no disobedience.

So I went on. ‘I humbled myself, went back to Olivio, and asked him to put me in rehab. When he refused, I told him I’d share all the sordid fucked up mess he’d done to me with our community and family. He relented because his reputation was freakin’ important to him. I enrolled in a facility in Switzerland and cleaned up. I rediscovered art and used it to keep my mind in check and, in time, set up the gallery in my mother’s name. The rest, you know.’

I stopped speaking, deep breathing from the effort of baring myself.

That’s when I tagged Rio, eyes on me, fixed, the expression on his face unlike any I’d ever seen.

‘ Dolce metà ,’ I called. ‘What’s wrong?’

He raised a hand to stay me.

VALERIO

I stood frozen, my thoughts racing to catch up with what I’d heard.

Chiara saved my life all those years ago.

The words kept repeating in my head, echoing on repeat until they became too immense to contain. I stared at her, my heart pounding, trying to understand everything.

I swallowed hard, the memory from years past rushing back with more clarity than I expected.

It hit me—the significance of what she’d done, the sacrifice, the effort. She’d gone out of her way, risking herself to get me to that private clinic to ensure I had the best care.

I fuckin’ never knew.

All these years, I’d lived my life without realizing that she had been present, keeping me alive when I was too weak to look after myself.

Hearing that she had pulled me from the brink, it was like the ground had been ripped from under me.

I owed her more than I could ever repay—not only for saving my life.

But for all the years we’d lost, for all the time I’d been living in the dark about who she was to me.

It wasn’t limited to fate or coincidence that had brought us together now. It had started years ago when she’d seen me broken, bleeding, on the edge of death and had refused to let me slip away.

Whether we realized it then or not, our destinies were linked from that moment. Now, standing in front of her, everything inside me shifted.

My feelings for her, the love growing steadily since we’d been attached, deepened into something more profound.

It was as though my heart had been waiting for this occasion—for the truth to come out—to understand what she meant to me.

‘Chiara,’ I rasped, shaking my head, still in disbelief. ‘The man you saved—.’

I stopped to find the right words, but they were tangled in my windpipe until they burst out in a hoarse cry. ‘That man was me.’

CHIARA

The room closed in around me when understanding dawned on me.

My soul stuttered, my breath caught in my throat, and I couldn’t move for an instant. I couldn’t think.

The man I dumped at the hospital entrance all those years ago—the one whose life I had fought so hard to keep from slipping away—was Rio ?

My mind whirled as I tried to piece it all together.

I inhaled as a rush of images washed over my cognition.

The young man in Olivio’s office .

The broken, wounded, bleeding man with a wild, lost, and rage-filled look in his eyes.

It had been him all along.

The memory had always been present, tucked away in the farthest corners of my memory bank.

Rio? Wounded and shattered, brought to me on a night when hope seemed forfeited?

I’d done everything I could: gotten him to a clinic, begged them to treat him like family, and pushed until they did. I never expected to see him again.

He’d been a shadow in my past, a fleeting second when my conscience nudged me to do the right thing.

Now, that man was standing in front of me, alive and whole, and I hadn’t realized up to this moment that it was him .

‘Rio,’ I whispered, the name sounding different now, weighted with a shared, mind-blowing history. ‘ Tu ?’

He nodded, his eyes searching mine as if unable to believe it himself.

The blood drained from my face, a wave of shock washing over me so powerfully that I had to steady myself against the table nearby. My hands trembled, my pulse racing in my ears.

All the time spent with him, never knowing, never realizing our connection was more profound than I had ever imagined.

A breathless laugh escaped me—part disbelief, wonder, and sheer awe at the strangeness of fate. ‘I can’t comprehend it,’ I said, my voice breaking. ‘I saved you .’

I glanced up at him, and my vision blurred with tears I didn’t know I was holding back.

His face softened, and something in his eyes—tenderness and gratitude—had my chest tightened.

‘Chiara, you didn’t only save me,’ he rasped, stepping closer. ‘You gave me a chance to live. All this time, I never discovered who made that possible.’

His words expanded in my mind, soul, and psyche, filling me almost to bursting.

The air smelt and was flavored anew, more pure somehow.

Was this real? Had I saved the life of the man I loved so long ago?

My hands flew to my mouth, stifling a sob that bubbled up from deep inside me.

‘I never thought I’d see you again,’ I murmured, my voice trembling as I tried to make sense of the overwhelming emotions flooding me. ‘I thought you were a mere stranger. I didn’t know I didn’t know it would be you.’

Rio’s palms found mine, pulling them away from my face.

In the warmth of his touch, a new wave of emotion rose in me—joy, disbelief, and wonder. The realization was surreal, as if the universe wove us together in ways I hadn’t dared to imagine.

‘I can’t believe this,’ I whispered again, shaking my head in amazement. ‘All long.’

‘You don’t understand,’ he said, voice breaking. ‘What you did, how you kept me alive when I didn’t deserve it—it blows my mind, Chiara. I thought I loved you before, but now,’ he trailed off, shuddering. ‘Now, it’s like I can’t breathe without you by my side, that you’ve been part of my life this whole time when I didn’t know it.’

I gazed at him, eyes wide, surprise and emotion snaking through me. ‘Rio—’

‘I love you,’ he growled, his timbre solid and sure. ‘I adore you more than I can explain, and not solely because of what you did back then. Because of who you are. Because you’ve been by my side, even when I was unaware of it, our lives became connected long before I understood it, and I can’t imagine my life without you now. I owe you everything, Chiara. Not for saving me back then, but for being here now, for being you.’

I gazed up at me, tears gathering in my eyes, and for a moment, neither of us spoke.

We swayed into each other, the essence of the past between us and something else—more substantial that bound us together more than I ever thought possible.

I whispered, ‘You don’t owe me anything, Rio. I was doing what anyone would do.’ I paused, my throat tightening with emotion, ‘Regardless, I love you too.’

His sensual lips widened into a full smile, those muscled, sinewed arms pulling me closer, arms wrapping around me as if he’d never let go.

‘No one else would have done what you did. No one else would’ve seen me the way you did. No one else would’ve made me feel like this.’

My tears spilled over, not in shock or confusion this time.

They were steeped in pure, raw joy.

Pleasure surged through me as I realized our lives had always been intertwined.

Rio pulled me into his embrace, and I clung to him, the heat of his body against mine, the steady beat of his heart under my ear.

I closed my eyes, letting the moment wash over me, luxuriating in wonder. I smiled through my misted eyes, overwhelmed by its peace.

Emotions shifted deep inside me, and I felt a sense of completeness I had never experienced before—we had found each other.

His hand slid up to cradle my head and kissed my forehead. He held me close, checking my pulse, the rise and fall of my breath, and the steady beat of my heart against his.

I was sure of one thing: I was never letting him go.

He let out an exhale he’d been holding, and for the first time that morning, his muscled body relaxed.

We lay in silence for a while, clinging to each other and listening to the rhythmic sound of the waves crashing on the shore outside.

I tagged the faint calls of seabirds in the distance and, beyond that, the hum of boats gliding through the water. The sea, endless and steady, was a comfort.

I tilted my head to look at Rio, his face calm, the strain fading from his features. His eyes fixed on the horizon, where the sun was rising, casting a soft golden glow over the ocean. He caught me watching him and smiled faintly, brushing a strand of hair from my face.

‘I never thought I’d feel like this,’ I murmured, my utterance muffled against his chest.

His arms tightened around me, his rasp thick with emotion. ‘I never thought I’d owe my life to the woman I love.’

I pulled back, gazing up at him, my heart swelling with a fierce type of joy.

The kind that only comes when you realize something extraordinary had happened.

‘Maybe we were always destined to encounter each other,’ I sighed, wet welling once more in my eyes.

Yet now they were a release—a shedding of all the years since and the agony endured.

He cupped my face, his thumb brushing away the tears that clung to my cheeks. ‘I believe that,’ he said, his voice timbred and full of conviction. ‘I maintain we were always meant to be together, Chiara. From the beginning to our end, I’ll always want to be next to you, leonessa .’

With Rio, I found a peace I had never realized possible.

It settled like the gentle rhythm of the waves against the shore.

After waking from the heavy fog of catatonia, my senses were fragile and heightened, as if I were relearning how to live.

Rio appeared to understand that without a word.

He prepared simple meals for me, always something nourishing and warm.

The flavor of his homemade broth soothed me from the inside out, grounding me in the present.

Every gesture was intentional and unhurried, as though time slowed down for us.

Each morning, we’d take a slow walk along the beach, the sand cool beneath my feet, the salt air fresh on my skin.

He never rushed me, not once.

He matched his steps with mine, a steady presence by my side, letting me find my own pace.

Sometimes, we walked in silence, with only the sound of the waves and the distant calls of seabirds.

Other times, he would share small, tender memories of his parents, their love for the ocean, and simple things.

I sensed his grief soften like he was releasing something heavy he’d held onto for too long.

Being with him allowed my heart to mend in ways I hadn’t thought possible.

I could breathe again, more profound than I’d dared to in years.

He found peace, too. We were healing in each other’s quiet company, our pains ebbing like the tide, leaving us renewed, lighter, and no longer alone.