AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I nod because she’s right. Regardless of the kind of thug that Hector is, no one goes back on deals made in either the mafia or the Irish Mob. Doing so is like giving an immediate invitation for a hitman to take you out, and no one will shed a tear if your assassination was brought on by going back on your word. If there’s one thing the mafia and the Irish Mob have in common, it’s an adherence to the old rules. A man’s word (or a woman’s) is considered binding. After all, there has to be some measure of honor, even within the world of crime. Not that Hector deserves any such respect.
“There’s going to be hell to pay regardless,” I say with a heavy exhale. “The other crime families are going to cause chaos over the show continuing. I don’t want you going back to the show, Dahlia. Going back might put you in even more danger than just not going at all. But I’m here now, Dahlia. And I’ll protect you. I’m going to find a way to stop Hector, and I want you to trust my judgement on this.”
“I love that you want to protect me, and I do trust you, but I also have a voice, and this is something I want to do for you and for me,” she pleads. “You can stay by my side backstage and be there to keep an eye on Hector.”
“I can’t let anything happen to you Dahlia. Because…because I love you,” I blurt out in a knee jerk reaction.
Fuck.
For a few seconds, Dahlia stares at me with her mouth hanging open and no words at all coming out. When she finally says something, it’s only a single word. “What?”
I can’t really backpedal from that. “I love you,” I repeat. This time, I look straight in her eyes as I say it and I speak slowly and purposefully with every word. I should have said this a long time ago. But now that it’s been said, it needs to be really heard.
“But how can you say that to me?” Dahlia asks, a single tear already streaming over the crest of her cheek. “You left me. You left me and didn’t say one single word to me for years. You broke my heart.”
“I only left you and stayed away from you to protect you,” I explain to her for the first time. “I know that this is years too late for me to be telling you, but I didn’t break up with you because I didn’t love you. It was quite the opposite. I loved you so much and I still do. It killed me to leave you. But if I had stayed, then you would’ve been brought into my world. I was becoming acapoand you would’ve been entrenched in the mafia world—a dangerous world.”
“Not too dangerous for all the other women you were with,” she says. I can see the hurt playing out across her eyes.
“Actually, it was,” I answer, solemnly referring to Lucas’ mom.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt. “You couldn’t possibly expect to know because I never told you anything. You had your mom telling you to be wary of me and she was right. Just look at all that’s happened to you since I came back into your life. This is exactly why I left you to begin with, Dahlia, and it’s exactly why I stayed away up until I saw you at the theatre.”
“And now?”
“Now, I just can’t stay away any longer and you deserve to know the truth—I love you. I always have and I always will.”
17
DAHLIA
No sooner do I hear Vari profess his love for me than I’m flooded with emotion. I try not to believe it could be true, because I want to protect my heart from being broken again. But in the end, there’s nothing that I can do to resist, because I love him too. I’m overwhelmingly and undeniably in love with Vari Roberto, whether he is man, monster, or mafia trouble. I can’t keep myself from wanting him.
I lean forward and kiss him, placing my hands on either side of his jaw tenderly, and he kisses me back. Injured or not, Vari lifts me and carries me to bed. This time, when he pushes himself inside me, all that I can hear inside my head are the three words that he said to me—I love you. Everything feels more real now. My body responds to his touch as if I’m willingly letting him command me. His tongue fills my mouth, his cock fills my body, and when orgasm overtakes me, the sensation is like that of no other.
There’s a danger to Vari Roberto, and not just because he can point a gun and kill people. There’s a danger in his very essence, an intensity and power that overtakes me and makes me bend to him, and I love it. As I drift off to sleep in his arms, I feel safe, but there’s also something else. There’s the part my mother warned me about, the part that becomes so consuming that you can lose yourself in it.
18
VARI
“Have you seen this shit?” Alessio spits out in disgust, slapping a copy of today’sNew York Timeson the table where I’m having breakfast. He’s pulled out the Arts section so that it’s on top, and splashed across the front page is the headline, “Bada-Bing Bada-BANG! Mafia Broadway Play Takes a Turn for the Real.” It’s a huge story, including multiple photos, detailing the recent shooting and poisoning incidents at the theatre. They also extensively interview some egghead “mafia experts,” who talk in detail about howBlood Roseis an “unusually perceptive look into the actual workings of organized crime,” so much so that they agree that “an actual mafia insider must’ve had a large hand in the script’s creation.” The other families aren’t going to like this one bit.
At the performance later that night, Dahlia looks even more stunning than usual. And once again during the performance, she puts on an absolutely epic show. Her acting is on point and during a particularly intense scene, her stage presence is enthralling and commanding. So commanding that I am almost too entranced by her to notice what is going on in the audience. But then I start to notice a change in the energy that is in the air. There's a nervous tension, a heightened adrenaline, and too much sound of shuffling in what should be an otherwise silent performance hall. I stay alert, but also stay focused on Dahlia.
When I look out into the audience again just a few minutes later, I notice that the theatre is now even more packed than it was a few minutes ago, as if the ushers are still letting people into the show even though it’s almost over. But when I look over at the ushers at the doors to see why they aren’t keeping people out as they should be, I notice that they’re all gone and have been replaced with soldiers instead from the various families. Something isn’t right. I narrow my eyes to see more clearly in the darkened theatre and can make out that all the restless sounds of moving around aren’t just coming from one or two people, but from several rows completely filled with members of the Irish Mob.
In an instant I realize what’s happening, and I shoot my eyes over to the stage in the hope that maybe Dahlia will catch my look of warning and realize she needs to run and hide. But before I can do anything about it, it’s too late. A shot is fired and all hell breaks loose as the mafia and the Irish Mob erupt into a very real and unscripted battle right in the midst of the Broadway theatre.
19
DAHLIA
I’m onstage singing my favorite solo of the entire production, set within the most poignant and emotional scene of the play, when fighting erupts in the audience as if someone’s set off a mushroom cloud of chaos. Shots are being fired off, and people are screaming and panicking as they run everywhere trying to find a way out of the performance hall. The crowd of regular patrons have no idea what’s going on as they try to flee the building, only to find that all of the doors have been locked and everyone’s trapped inside together.
I scan the wings of the stage for signs of Vari, but I can no longer see where he went. On stage, with the spotlights still shining on me and the audience seats looking like nothing but a dark blur, I feel terribly exposed, like a sitting duck with a giant red target on my head.
