45. Emily

"You ever have a big fucking Italian breakfast before?" Vito asks. He's standing at his stove with a frying pan in one hand. Thick slabs of bacon sizzle, their meaty, red and fatty bodies crisping up as he rolls the fat around.

"Honestly, I have no idea what Italians eat for breakfast."

"You got the classics. Baked eggs are popular." Vito's wearing a white tank top, slightly stained. His kitchen smells amazing. His wife's upstairs, still asleep, and his tween daughter Lucia is watching her tablet with her headphones on, rolling her eyes at her father, and it's obvious the girl loves him to death, and he loves her, because he served her first with a big wink.

"Baked eggs," I repeat. "Sounds good."

"Better than you think. Then there's the bread. And all the croissants, which are fucking French, but Italians love that stuff. I gotta admit, it's really good."

"Extremely good," I agree.

"There's breakfast pasta."

I roll my eyes and grin at his daughter when she does the same. She grins back. "I don't think breakfast pasta is real," I tell him.

"It's real as fucking shit," he says, practically shouting. He plates more bacon and starts frying eggs. For such a big, loud man, Vito moves around the kitchen like he's a dancer, sifting the ingredients around, keeping his workspace relatively clean and organized. I'm kind of impressed. He looks like the cooks back in Cucina's kitchen, and I wonder if he has professional training or something.

"Next time I crash at your house, you'll have to make it for me," I tell him.

He roars a laugh and refills my coffee. "If only you'd be so fucking lucky," he says.

"Papa, stop cursing so much," Lucia scolds. "You sound like a fucking moron when every other word is fuck."

"You see what I deal with? The girl? She's got no manners. She fucking curses more than I do and she fucking thinks I'm the one with the bad mouth. Fucking get outta here."

Lucia mimes hanging herself and her father swats at her head, and I sit back, smiling at the pair of them, and worried sick about Simon.

He dropped me on Vito's doorstep in the middle of the night. I thought they'd kick me out, but Vito was awake and prepared already. He gave me the spare room, made sure I was comfortable, then went back to sleep. I could hear him snoring through the wall. Simon's been gone since then, doing God knows what, but he left with a look in his eye that I've never seen before.

It was the same look he had when he killed those two guys in the hall. And again when he killed the men in the car. He was heading off to do something violent and dangerous, and now I'm afraid he won't come back.

But Vito keeps up the patter through breakfast. His wife, Tanya, comes down, a pretty older woman who fusses over me and acts like it's totally normal for a random girl to be sitting in her kitchen. I'm actually kind of shocked that Vito's such a family man, and I tell him so later when we're sitting out back on his little deck drinking more espresso.

"You have to be this way in our world," he says, nodding to himself like it's a truth so obvious that he shouldn't have to say it out loud. "A guy can run around and fuck women and screw up for only so long before nobody takes him seriously anymore. You want to get ahead in the Famiglias, you'd better have a wife."

I think back to my deal with Simon. "I guess that makes sense. I mean, Simon married me for a similar reason."

He gestures at me. "That boy gets it. His old man, Alessandro, is going through something bad right now, but Simon is prepared. He knows what the Famiglia needs. I'm just an old fucking prick that talks too loud and likes to cook, but I'm not afraid of change. If we don't keep moving, we fucking die. That's the truth."

"I have to admit, you're pretty deep."

He beams at me. "Ah, go fuck yourself."

I spend the morning with the loud Capo listening to him tell stories about the good old days. It gives me some perspective. Simon was raised in the Famiglia from a little kid, and he's been around the mafia since he could walk and talk. The life is in his blood, at least that's what Vito says.

And it makes sense. This is Simon's world. These are his people. Maybe his father's in some trouble right now and there are bad people that want to hurt them all, but that doesn't mean Simon's going to walk away. He's actively trying to fix things.

It's part of what I love about him.

There's courage in what he's doing. It isn't easy, going against your father, against the man you were raised to respect and love. He must be torn up inside, and I make a promise to myself that if he comes home—no, when he comes home—I'm going to make sure he knows that he isn't taken for granted. Not by me.

A door slams outside. I perk up like a lonely puppy left in the house for the first time. I hurry inside as Tanya opens the door and Simon comes inside. He looks haggard, and I'm pretty sure there's blood flecked on his pants, but I throw myself at him like we've been apart for ages and kiss him hard on the mouth, not caring if Vito's whole family is watching and his tween daughter's making gagging noises.

"I missed you too," Simon says and his eyes are sparkling.

"Don't do that again." I bury my face into his chest. "Okay? Just don't."

He says nothing and I'm guessing he can't make that promise.

Vito asks him how things went and Simon fills him in on what happened out back. I listen and try not to think about the trail of bodies he's leaving in his wake.

"He mentioned an attack," Simon says, pacing across the small yard. "But the fucker got himself killed before I could find out what he meant."

"Yeah, got himself killed," Vito echoes, smirking. "Wonder how."

"Santoro's smart. He's going to smell this fight a mile away and figure out how he can sink his knife into our side. I just don't know how yet."

Vito grunts and doesn't speak at first, his arms crossed over his big chest, resting on his massive belly. He looks like an Italian Buddha, but with more jewelry. "I know you're right, but Santoro can't be stupid enough to think he can actually win this war."

Simon's expression darkens. "With my father in charge? That's why he's been after me. Kill me and the war's done."

Vito doesn't argue with that.

Soon they're back to planning. I spend some time inside with Lucia and she shows me some games she's playing on the Switch, and the day passes like that. Tanya cooks an enormous lunch, enough to feed the whole block, and a bunch of guys start showing up. I recognize the type, and they're all very respectful toward Vito and especially toward Simon. They're soldiers, maybe low level even, and Tanya explains that they do this most days, have some of the lower-ranked boys over for a good meal. "Family building," she explains as she pulls a lasagna from the oven and puts me to work setting the table.

I can almost forget the bodies from the night before. With the laughter around me, some wine and a few borderline inappropriate stories especially considering Lucia is lurking around the edges of the gathering, I can push aside those mangled corpses. I can pretend like I didn't see Simon sink a knife into a man's throat.

He had it coming. Those corpses deserve to be corpses. But it's still a shock, seeing the man I'm married to stab someone to death and blow the brains out of three more. I want to say it revolted me, and in some ways it did. The dead bodies were terrifying. But not Simon.

The way he moved. The way he protected me and didn't hesitate. He was competent, in control, doing what had to be done, and I wanted to press my mouth to his and let him do unspeakable things to my body. I still very much want that. This thing growing between us, or this thing that's already fully formed and starting to mature, it's not what I pictured when I took him up on this deal. I figured I could gut it out, have a baby, get paid, move on.

Now I'm so deep into him that I know there's nothing else for me.

It's ride or die now.

Lunch breaks up. I spend time alone with Simon and have to resist the urge to fuck him right there in the living room. It's not easy. He smells good fresh from a shower with clean clothes on. I kiss his chin and have to pretend like my nipples aren't stiff as his fingers brush down my thigh. It's starting to get late and the sun's dipping down in the sky, and I can tell his anxiety is building. I wish I could drag him to the bedroom and help him calm down again.

His phone rings while Tanya's starting on dinner in the kitchen. Lucia's out at the movies with friends, and Vito's making his rounds to the various businesses he runs. Simon takes the call on the couch, face pinching into a tight frown. "Davide?" he says then sits up straight. "What the fuck is going on?"

I can hear it through the phone. Sharp cracks, loud as hell. Before last night I might not have recognized them, but now they're obvious.

Gunfire. Lots and lots of gunfire.

Davide's shouting over the noise and I lean in close to hear him. Simon's too distracted to pull away.

"They're fucking here," Davide yells as more booms sound. "They're here, Simon, and you gotta come. Bring fucking everyone." More gunfire and the line goes dead.

Simon gets to his feet. He should be freaking out. My heart's racing into my throat and I'm so scared I could cry, but he only pulls me up, hugs me tight, kisses me hard, and makes me swear I won't do something stupid. "Help Tanya in the kitchen," he says.

"Come back." I grab his shirt and hold it tight, burying his mouth with mine, tasting his sweetness and feeling my whole body dizzy with him. "Please, come back to me."

"I love you." He tears himself away, the phone to his ear, and runs out the door. I watch it slam shut behind him as I collapse onto the couch, crying so hard I feel like my stomach muscles might split wide open.