Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

DARIO

I have a Moretti man carry the dinner plates from the kitchen into the empty high-rise restaurant. Elena sits across from me, her sparkling shirt catching the light, her hair curled in a wild mass down to her shoulders, waking up parts of me I need to keep dormant. She doesn’t even want me kissing her, let alone anything else.

As I cut my steak, she says, “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me anything,” I say.

“What do you want to do with your life?”

“I have to keep the Family?—”

“No,” she interrupts. “Not what you have to do. What do you want to do? What would your days look like if you weren’t part of the Mafia?”

I shrug. “I’d probably work full-time at Paths of Promise. I’d spend more time fishing.”

“You like fishing?” she asks, surprised by my answer. “My dad used to take me sometimes.”

“Your father was a man of good taste. Fishing’s the most peaceful activity I know of until it isn’t. It’s like the antidote to this Mafia life. Maybe I’ll take you one day.”

“Yeah.” She looks down at her plate. “Maybe.”

I can’t blame her for the uncertainty. I definitely can’t resent her. I want to talk about what happened and explain myself, if that’s even possible. I sense it would break open a seal she’s desperately trying to keep closed, so I’ll keep my lips closed for now.

“Tell me about your acting,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “You saw my acting at that first dinner.”

I grin widely. Her tone has got that classic Elena sarcasm again. It makes me want to draw it out of her repeatedly, to rebuild the piece of her that’s broken her closeness to me. “I mean your real acting work.”

“I haven’t had big parts, but then, you know that.”

“Part of this gig was that you couldn’t be well known,” I agree, “but that doesn’t matter now. Forget I said gig . It makes this whole thing seem like something it’s not.”

She takes a bite of her burger as I chew on a mouthful of steak. I wonder if she’s trying to delay answering.

“I’ve always been most interested in complex characters,” she says. “When I was a kid, our drama teacher wrote this play about a superhero. It was pretty silly, but everybody wanted to be the hero. I wanted to be this side character who didn’t even have very many lines. This character had a tragic backstory, and they couldn’t decide how they felt about the idea of superheroes. It appealed to me. Life is never black and white.”

“It’s as gray as my hair,” I agree.

“Hey, silver.”

I smirk again. “Pardon?”

“Your hair isn’t gray . It’s silver .”

“That seems like a distinction without a difference.”

“Gray makes you seem old,” she says. “Silver is mature and experienced, which is what you are. You’ve only got a little here and there.”

“I am older than you, though.”

“I don’t care. Do you?”

“Not one goddamn bit.”

Her smile is a gift I’ll never stop trying to earn if I get the chance. She beams at me, but then her expression falters. It’s like she can forget about everything briefly, but it all comes crashing down again. “Since we’re on the subject of acting …”

“Yeah?”

“I wouldn’t be able to act if this thing was for real, would I?”

She knows the answer to this. I know the answer to this, but the idea of tearing her passion away makes me feel ill. “It’s not customary for Mafia princesses or queens to have careers,” I tell her, “but rules are made to be broken.”

“Are you just saying that?”

“The old school mindset is that women must give up their passions for the Family. The men have to as well. If I wanted to be, say, an opera singer?—”

She explodes into laughter, and it’s glorious. She laughs like she thought she might never laugh again. She covers her mouth after a moment. “That was the dorkiest laugh ever, but an opera singer ?”

I stand up, my hand on my chest. “Hey, I’ve got some pipes. Is that what they call them? Pipes?”

She raises an eyebrow. I’m addicted to her sass. “You better show me.”

I belt out some of the ugliest notes known to man. She laughs again, plugging her ears. “Okay, enough,” she says.

Sitting down, I say, “The point is, I couldn’t be an opera singer, accountant, or anything other than the heir and Don of the Moretti Family, and I’m okay with that. If the Morettis didn’t run this city, the Cartel or another two-bit family like the Romanos would take over. They do vicious, ugly things?—”

“I know what they do,” she snaps.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“No, I’m sorry. It’s just so much better to forget about that.”

I reach across the table, touching her hand. She moves her thumb over my knuckles like trying to comfort herself, distract herself.

“I’d make an exception for you,” I go on, “if you wanted to keep acting?—”

“There’s no if about it.”

“I’d make sure you could,” I tell her. “If my father had a problem with the break in tradition, he could go to hell. If anybody else had something to say, they’d have to say it to my face. I can see how much you love acting. When you were speaking about that school play, you lit up. I couldn’t take that away from you.”

“It’s a dangerous game, giving me hope,” she murmurs.

“Hope for what? Hope that you can forgive me?”

“I don’t have to forgive you,” she says, her hand getting tighter on mine.

“The farmhouse?—”

“Yeah, but I don’t have to forgive you for that,” she says. “You didn’t kidnap me. You saved me.”

“You saw a part of me I never wanted you to see. I lost it. I never lose it. Hell, Elena, before you came along, I don’t think I snapped once in my entire life. I don’t think I felt a moment of passion, but you’ve changed me. You’ve brought something out I didn’t know was there.”

She blinks, her eyes glistening.

“Hey…” I move around the table, kneeling next to her. “It’s okay.”

“I’m not crying.” She rubs her cheeks. “I need to toughen up. Heck, before you, I was tough, so ditto. You’ve also brought something out in me, but you can’t make promises about the acting thing.”

“Yes, I can,” I counter. “I promise you if you …” If she what? Wants to marry me for real? What are we even discussing here? “You won’t have to sacrifice your passion.”

A smile makes the corner of her mouth twitch. I lean up, tempted by her lips, but she turns her face away again. This time, I don’t kiss her on the cheek. It’s too private here. Despite everything, she’s too goddamn appealing to me. It’s like there’s something deep inside telling me to claim her.

When I return to my seat, she says, “Thank you.” I don’t know if she means my promise or that I didn’t kiss her.

“I can put it in writing if you want,” I say jokingly, reading the look on her face.

“Why would you say that?”

“You seem to doubt me.”

“No. I was just thinking …”

“About what?”

She sighs. “We’re talking about me still being an actor if anything about this thing, us, can be real. It doesn’t matter anyway. I don’t belong in your world. Your dad would never approve. My aunt would never approve.”

“Maybe you weren’t born in this world,” I growl, “but belong is a tricky word. Maybe you belong with me.”

“So it was love at first sight?” she says bitterly.

“Life is complicated,” I say huskily. “It’s not like movies. It’s not like books. Love at first sight is overrated. However, feeling, certainty, knowing that you were different and special the moment I saw you, that’s a fact, and I don’t care if you think I’m just saying this or it’s lame. It’s the truth.”

“I felt the same,” she whispers, holding my eyes with such intensity I want to kiss her again. “But …” She bites down.

“It’s okay. You can say it.”

“That was before I saw your dark side.”

“Can you ever accept it, Elena?” I say, my voice getting as low as my feelings when I think about this ending. It was always going to end, but it feels unfair now, somehow. “Sometimes a man has to do bad things to stop worse things from happening.”

“Is that fair, though?” she asks.

“Fair?”

Maybe it’s the darkness in my tone, or the mafioso in me is too close to the surface. She looks down at the table, making me feel like an ass. I touch her chin and guide her gaze back to mine. “You never have to be afraid to talk to me.”

“You went so far,” she whispers. “You were … feral, savage, primal. Maybe it’s like you said. This isn’t a movie. This is real life, and in real life, it was just … I don’t know—more than shocking. I don’t know if a word exists for it.”

“I lost it,” I admit, “but when I saw him about to drag you down into that cellar, I knew nothing good was going to come from it. I knew he was going to do vicious, unforgivable things to you. It happened fast, but in the space of less than a second, my mind filled with all those sick acts he would have committed. I rarely let myself go like that, but he deserved it .”

“He said he had family to take care of.”

“I’m sure he said lots of things.”

“He said he was disappointed he wouldn’t get to do … things to me.” She shudders. “I bet you think I’m a sucker for even caring. I bet you think it’s sad that I would even think about this longer than a day.”

“No,” I snap. “I think about every bad thing I’ve ever done all the damn time. I try not to let it weigh me down. It’s like I said. If the Morettis didn’t run this city, it’d be people like Vincenzo and his soldiers—men who would happily drag women into cellars and do unspeakable things to them. I can be sorry that you saw it, sorry that I went full berserker on him, but I’ll never be sorry for saving you.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to be,” she whispers, touching my hand and clutching me tightly. “Dario, can I kiss you?”

I smirk. “As if you’d ever need to ask.”

Walking around the table again, I pull her into my arms. She grabs onto my shoulders and pulls herself to me, her body grinding against mine in a way that awakens all my instincts. I groan as I find her lips, but I’m careful not to push too far, careful not to press her beyond her comfort zone.

Even as my manhood rages and my mind burns with all the lust we could share, I keep it sweet. My woman deserves that.