Page 12 of Bene

“I asked him to let me tell you,” Mario said, his tone low.

“Tell me what?”

“Vanna—”

Her head snapped back and forth, glancing between the people down the hallway of her private school, and Mario. It was only then that she realized how empty the place was. The last class of the day, so it made sense that most of the kids had run the hell out of there because freedom was now at their fingertips.

Something in her heart said that freedom was nowhere for her. It was too heavy—too harsh, even. A weight had come to sit in her stomach, just like the ones sitting on her shoulders now, too. It almost made her feel sick, really.

One always knew when bad news was coming.

They only had to pay attention.

“What’s happened?” Vanna asked, her voice rising and coming out sharper. Desperate. “Where’s my dad? He’s supposed to be the one who picks me up from school? Is he outside?”

“Vanna—”

“Where’s my father?”

Mario wasn’t even trying to smile now. Vanna wished her heart didn’t hurt as much as it did in those moments.

“I’m sorry,” Mario said, “but your dad was killed—”

“Hey.”

Vanna blinked out of the memory at the voice echoing behind her. Just like that day as she was coming out of her final class of the day, how he greeted her … it was exactly the same, and given how she felt in those moments, not very much had fucking changed.

If only Mario understood how much she hated him for that. Because he asked to be the one to deliver the news—he caused her more pain than he knew, and she would never be able to forgive him for it, either. He hadn’t killed her father—his grandfather did that when he learned Adam was plotting against him to take over—but it didn’t matter to Vanna.

That memory seared into her brain.

In her very soul.

And so did Mario’s voice as he told her.

Glancing over her shoulder, she found Mario waiting at the end of the walkway, near the statue of the angel that appeared to be protecting the plots of graves beneath her. To his benefit, he didn’t step off the walkway to come closer to Vanna. Mario never cared, really. Not that her dad died, or that she was left alone as an orphan, taken in by his mother and father, and she understood why, too. Because her father was the traitor. He proved his bloodline true.

The clan always said he would go against them. That, like his father before him, he would prove to be the bastard son of Gabriel Canali, and he did exactly that. But her? Well, she was just a girl, and that didn’t mean very much to them. She certainly couldn’t do anything to hurt them, or their organization. Well, that’s what they thought. God knew, during those first couple of months, revenge on the people who took her father from her was the only thing on her mind. She might be just a girl, but she was still one of them.

Born and raised in their way.

Still fucking Camorra.

An eye for an eye was bred as deep into her bones as it would get, and her need for revenge came from that, and little else.

Someone had to take her, though. They couldn’t find her mother. Vanna didn’t feel anything about that. The Detti family it was. Or rather, Mario’s parents. It was hard to want to hurt the people who also took her in and cared for her during one of the hardest times of her life.

Funny how that worked.

God had a good laugh at her expense.

“Are you almost done?” Mario asked.

Vanna nodded. “Almost.”

That might be a lie.

She really didn’t know.