Page 33 of Revenge on the Mafia

“Stupid thing didn’t see the glass.”

A few beats of silence followed. I wondered what they were doing.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” Anna snapped but her voice cracked.

“It’s just a bird.”

“It’s someone’s mom or dad.”

Fuck.

“I thought it was a stone.”

The girl scoffed. “No one’s going to stone a house with a Mafia man in it.”

I beg to differ.

“Tell you what, let’s give it a funeral.”

“I’d like that,” Anna agreed.

Footsteps approached the hallway, and I slipped out of sight.

A stone hit the glass, and soft giggles exploded below. I shifted away from the window. Anna and Mara tried again. When there was no reaction, Mara ran away, but Anna kept trying. Her mood went from playfulness to annoyance to anger. I almost wanted to open the window and stick my head out. She was curious, as usual, why her papá sent them away when there was one particular visitor. A person she’d never seen or heard of before. But I’d seen her plenty of times. If only she knew.

“Anna,” her sister called out, but she ignored her, collecting a new set of stones to aim. “Joel’s here.” A smile tilted her face. Heat rushed to her cheeks. Her first love. Joel Laguna. I’d found out his name and everything else about him. I watched her drop the stones and run to him. Her tanned skin and bright pink bikini were inked into my memory. It was her favorite color. Fuchsia wasn’t just any pink. I’d listened to her educate her little sister. From then on, I knew what fuchsia was. A color as uncommon in my world as an innocent man. Just as uncommon as a made man being with a civilian. A non-Italian at that.

‘Joel’ had no such issues. He grabbed her ass and pulled her to him, smacking his lips to hers. I stuffed my hands in my pockets. Didn’t want to break the glass and someone’s bones. The door shut behind me. When I turned, Juan stood there with his cigar pipe in his hand. He watched me thoughtfully. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed him come in. Nor did I smell the distinct flavor of his sweet cigar. His gaze dropped to my pockets, where my balled fists still fought for control. Zero, one, one, two, three… after eighty-nine, I slowly relaxed my hand and walked to the desk.

We never spoke of it.

Until the next time he caught me looking at his daughter.

Eighty-four hours had passed.

She hadn’t tried to kill me again.

She was scared of the knife, but she was easing into it. It bothered me that I didn’t know what she was getting up to for eight hours at night. So, I’d installed a half-inch-sized camera in her room. Every night she did two things. Scribbled in her diary and practiced holding the knife.

I wanted to possess her. Keep her as mine forever. But what I wanted more was for her to find joy in life again. Some days she walked from room to room in a daze. She fucking irked me then. I wanted to throttle her and comfort her at the same time. I wanted that spark of hers to be back. She was fire eleven years ago. Now she wanted to be ice when she was born to set the world ablaze. And I was going to make sure she did.

I’d pissed Magda off by asking Anna to make my meals. She’d have been outraged if she knew the real reason behind it. Every time Anna served my meals, I taunted her. Asked her if she was being a coward. Every time she cursed me in Spanish, a little bit of life crept into her lungs.

The day before, I’d caught her in one of the guest rooms and wondered aloud if she was even capable of killing me. “Do you have the guts to do it, mia piccola assassina?”

The Spanish that had flown out of her mouth was fucking music. She’d been so riled that she hadn’t noticed that the speakers had subtly been playing her favorite sonnet while she’d been in there. Asturias for a solid fourteen minutes.

Each day I watched her, I increased the length and upped the volume. Always after riling her up.

She’d get to put me six feet under. But only after she learned to live again.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ANNA

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”