AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t even know if she’ll – ” I said, then stopped in despair. “She could have moved on by then.”
Dario shook his head. “No. If it was meant to be, it will happen. As much as I want you to work with me and my family, I tell you this, honestly and truthfully: Rachel is far more important. You must go to her. You must get her back. That should be your only goal when you leave San Vittore. BUT… if it doesn’t work out, God forbid… remember my offer. It will always be open to you.”
“Dario…”
I really appreciated what he was trying to do for me, but I’d only agreed to Alistair’s offer because I would be taking out bad guys.
There was no way in hell I was going to join the mafia so I could go around telling shop owners, Nice little business you have here. Be a shame if something happened to it.
Dario put a hand up to stop me. “No – we don’t need to talk about it anymore today. Just keep it in the back of your mind.”
I sighed and nodded.
He stood up and walked towards me, his arms wide open. “Thank you for what you did. For fighting alongside me… for trusting me enough to walk away, even though I know it hurt you to do so… and for telling me everything you did. Again, I am in your debt for the rest of my life.”
When I stood up, he hugged me fiercely and slapped me on my back.
When he pulled back, he was smiling. “Come – let’s have a little wine while we wait out the end of the world.”
And that was how we spent the final hours of the riot: drinking wine as he told me everything he hoped to accomplish when he eventually took over the family business.
In Dario’s version of things, his family was a force for order and stability in Tuscany. There would always be illegal activities; it would be better for them to be conducted by level-headed businessmen instead of brutes who would prey on the community like vampires.
But Dario wanted to change the way things were done – to do away with some of the darker sides of the family business. He wanted to end the family’s involvement in drugs, sex trafficking, and prostitution. He’d fought with his father and uncle repeatedly over those issues, to no avail. The older men saw them as business, nothing more. But once Dario took over, he planned to outlaw them completely within his organization.
Women who wanted to be sex workers could do so on their own, but they wouldn’t owe a cut of their earnings to the Rosolinis. Dario would also discourage – and, if need be, forcibly ‘remove’ – any pimps who tried to exploit those women through violence.
It all sounded admirable… if you could call men who made themselves rich through crime ‘admirable.’
But I didn’t care about Dario’s plans other than admitting he had some good ideas.
I only had one priority: to survive San Vittore so I could get back to Rachel. That was all I cared about.
Little did I know, I would be sorely tempted to betray Dario in the days ahead – and they would do it by offering me the only things I cared about.
My freedom…
And Rachel.
101
After the riot was over, the inmates were forced at gunpoint to clean up the mess. Besides the trashed commons areas, there was a lot of blood – and over two dozen dead bodies. Some of them had been killed by the guards; others had been murdered because of bad blood or gang rivalries.
Then there were the ones Dario and I were responsible for.
We weren’t part of the group that handled Aristide and his underlings’ corpses, but I watched from a distance as other inmates carried their bodies to the morgue.
Surprisingly, there were no accusations.
No questions.
No investigations.
Nobody asked us about the blood on our clothes.
Although, to be fair, there were a lot of inmates with blood on their clothes.
The warden and prison guards just acted like it was over and done – no need to discuss it.
