‘Don Vito wants you gone,’ he said, reiterating his boss’s brutal request. ‘She will be informed you have left early… I will give you your phone when we reach London.’
I didn’t object, because I didn’t have the strength to argue with him. In fact, I was unable to feel anything now, not even concern for how my sister would react to the news. I watched, glassy-eyed, while the blood-red dawn edged out the night and we drove through the back streets of Naples.
I stared at the city I had found so exciting, tears scouring my throat and making my eyes burn. Vito’s face, so harsh and determined, and his hard body pressing into my softness—coaxing me to orgasm, covering me as the bullets rained above us, then thrusting me away from him as if I were garbage—were all I could see, all I could feel, as my exhausted mind tried to figure out if my night with him had even been real…
Or simply a terrifying and unbearably erotic dream.
Chapter Six
Mia
Three months later
The days andweeks which followed drifted past in a fog. But the events of that night remained vivid, coming back to me in hyper-realistic dreams.
Everything that had happened with Vito—from the moment I had first met his searing gaze on the yacht until he had thrust me away from him, the scent of blood and gunsmoke permeating my senses. I recalled every detail with startling clarity, like a movie in my mind playing on a loop, each overwhelming emotion mixed into the mêlée of images.
Vito’s expression—fierce with hunger, demand and then disgust. The harsh planes and angles of his face both bad and beautiful. The helicopter ride above the city—the wind brushing my bare legs, the touch of his palm on my trembling thigh, the gush of anticipation like a drug. His callused fingers gliding over my skin, his tongue demanding my surrender, that insatiable cock driving into me. His husky voice, thick with appreciation, imagining me pregnant, his harsh plea for me to move. And the terrifying sights and sounds at dawn. The chaos, the blood, the hollow pop of gunfire something I’d never heard before and never wanted to hear again.
It all came back to me over and over again, waking me sweaty and scared each night, but also filling me with the vicious yearning which made my clitoris throb and my heart gallop.
But everything after that night and the dawn raid sank into an impenetrable fog once I had been escorted back to the UK.
The car which had left the estate had driven me to a small airfield outside Naples, where the truth had finally dawned on me.
Vito wasn’t just a billionaire businessman. And he wasn’t a phenomenally hot Italian aristocrat either. The secrecy, the violence which surrounded him spoke to something very different. I couldn’t get my head around it though, as I struggled to keep the stress and fear and nausea from consuming me.
A private jet had been waiting for us at the airfield. I was still wrapped in the blood-stained sheet as I was escorted onto the plane and it soared into the early morning light. We landed a few hours later in another private airfield in the UK… Lorenzo had accompanied me on the plane, and once I’d managed to shake at least some of the panic and fear from my head, I asked him the questions whirring around in my tired mind.
Who was his boss really?
Why had those men been shooting at us?
Would Vito be okay?
Because even though I knew now Vito was not one of the good guys, I still couldn’t get the picture out of my head of him diving across that bed to protect me. Or the bright red blood coursing down his chest from the bullet wound in his shoulder.
Lorenzo hadn’t answered any of my questions, of course.
By the time we landed, I had managed to take a shower and change into some actual clothing—despite the shivers still wracking my body and the numbness in my limbs. And I’d also managed to gather at least some of my wits. Enough to know I would be better off if these men didn’t know where Evie and I lived. When Lorenzo asked me for my address so the car which had arrived at the airfield could drive me home, I gave him a fake location. He stared at me for the longest time, and I had the suspicion he knew I was lying. Then he nodded and gave the fake address to the driver.
But before I could climb into the car, he grasped my arm to murmur in my ear, the veiled threat clear, ‘If you speak of this night to anyone, it will be bad for you and your sister. Do you understand?’
I nodded, because I did understand. I understood totally now.
‘Is Vito a mafia boss?’ I asked, the words echoing in my head, and sounding impossible even as I said them.
By then, though, my mind had become foggy. I couldn’t seem to feel much of anything anymore. I was living outside myself, in an alternative reality, where I’d morphed from being a teaching assistant finding her joy in Naples to a woman who had not only developed a sexual obsession with a mafia boss but had survived a shootout.
So even though I understood Vito was dangerous, I couldn’t seem to get it to settle into my skull.
Lorenzo’s face hardened, but he didn’t look surprised by the question. ‘Don Vito is thepadrinoof the Rocco family. And he will protect what is his,’ he said, the threat not even veiled anymore.
Then he nodded at the driver and let me get into the car.
The truth should have sunk in after that. The truth that I would be lucky never to see Vito again.
But my subconscious refused to play ball. It felt as if I was living my life on autopilot. Those vivid, devastating dreams which woke me up every night more real than the days I spent going through the motions of my safe but now hopelessly monochrome existence.
