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“Renata Vitali. She’s so cool. I heard she has a real-life unicorn.”
Renata Vitali.
She probably didn’t have a unicorn, but if anyone could find one, it’d be her, considering she was practically one herself.
There’d been no pictures of her past the age of fifteen. It was like she’d disappeared from the planet.
She’d come from the Vitali family, mafia royalty that operated out of Italy, yet she had no Italian accent. She also looked as well-kept and flawless as I expected a mafia princess to look. No surprise there.
What did surprise me was Damian’s reaction to her.
I hoped she kept him distracted all weekend because his interest in me reeked of danger.
Chapter
Thirty-Nine
Only when it is a duty to love, only then is love eternally and happily secured against despair.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
ARIANA DE LUCA
After a slew of other funeral events—some several months long of traditional death rites activities, I’d been told—the highest level Made Men convened at L’Oscurità, which had shut down for the night.
The staff was still there, and I’d agreed to bartend for the night. I’d barely seen Bastian since this morning.
I wanted to check up on him, but at least he looked better than he had last week.
Bastian sat in a corner booth with Niccolaio and Asher as I tried to keep up with the mountain of orders.
The woman who’d left with Damian earlier took a seat in front of me. Tessie had called her Renata.
She glanced at Frankie, Gio, and Eli Romano before returning her amber eyes to me.
“I’ll take a whiskey neat. Single malt Scotch.” She slid her sweater down her arms, hooked it on the hook beneath the customer side of the bar top, and met my eyes with her eerie amber ones. “Macallan if you have it, please.”
“I have a 35-year-old in the back…”
“That’ll do.”
I slipped into the cellar and leaned against the wall, giving myself time for a breather. Bastian met me within seconds, like he’d been watching me all night, waiting for a moment when I’d be alone.
“You okay?”
I glanced up at him. “I should be asking you that.”
I felt like I had no place in the bureau’s world. After being surrounded by Made Men all day, some who shared the same blood or last name as me, I was starting to realize I had no place in this world.
I needed to find myself—to discover who I was without all these outside forces. I’d always been good at following my duties, but in all of that mess, I’d lost my sense of my duty to myself.
He took a step closer, his tailored suit making him appear lethal.
“I’ll be fine. We’re supposed to be celebrating Vince’s life tonight, so I’m trying to force out everything negative.” He took the place next to me against the wall. “Fuck, it’s hard.”
“I don’t think it’ll ever be okay.”
He shot me a look. “Thanks.”
