AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But it doesn’t change the fact that our relationship is a ticking clock.
It just changes how much it will hurt, in the end.
16
DANTE
From the moment Emma leaves my penthouse the next morning, I want to see her again.
I’ve never felt this way about anyone. I’ve never had a woman spend the night before, but after Emma and I fell breathless and sweaty back into the sheets, I couldn’t imagine asking her to leave. If anything, I wanted her to stay there forever, her head pillowed next to mine, her dark hair tangled around her face.
I woke before her in the morning, and just watched her for a moment. She looked beautiful, peaceful, her makeup from the night before still shadowed around her eyes and her hair still curled. I wanted to reach out and trace my fingers up the line of her arm, over the curve of her shoulder, down the sharp angle of her collarbone. I wanted to touch every inch of her all over again, like a map that I can’t wait to explore.
Sex with her has done nothing to dull my desire. If anything, every time I’m with her, I want her more. It’s like a craving, an addiction that has settled down into my bones, and the only thing that will relieve it is having her with me.
But unfortunately, that won’t happen for another week.
My stomach twists as I remember why, pushing all of the good memories of Emma waking up in my bed and the sight of her wet and dripping in the shower out of my head, replacing them with the stress of what’s ahead of me.
Don Fontana, the head of the Sicilian Family, is in Los Angeles. He’s here with his underboss, ostensibly on ‘vacation,’ but my brothers and I are expected to have dinner with him. I offered to host the dinner at the family mansion, but Fontana declined, insisting that we meet at a restaurant that he owns.
It’s a display of power, and I’m under no illusions that it’s anything else. I’m moving our family away from the old ways, and Fontana wants to remind me who’s in charge. But I’m not afraid of him.
He has the power to remove me as a part of the Family, but nothing else. He can’t take away the fortune that my father amassed and split between me and my siblings, and he can’t take away my family name, which I’m building an empire of my own with. It’s one of the reasons I want to get usoutof the illegal shit—I don’t want Fontana to have so much power over me. If our empire isn’t built on the foundation of connections that he can sever, then his goodwill and approval won’t matter.
I don’t intend to let him see me flinch.
It means, unfortunately, that I don’t have nearly as much time to let Emma occupy my thoughts. I send her a text, letting her know that I hope she got home safely, and receive a brief response in return.
I did. Thanks for asking. See you this weekend.
That’s all. No inclination that she wants to see me before then, not even an opening to continue our conversation. I can feel her pulling back, putting distance between us, and it’s the exact opposite of what I want.
But short of going to her shop—which I know would upset her—or going over to her house, there’s not much that I can do about it right now. And I need to focus on Fontana’s visit and what that means for my family.
Aida isn’t present for it, but she wouldn’t have been welcomed anyway—yet another facet of the old-school mafia that I disapprove of. As far as I’m concerned, she has as much right to know what’s happening with our family dealings as anyone else, but Fontana wouldn’t see it that way. He likely wouldn’t even let her in the door. There are rumors that his daughter has a larger hand in the Family these days than a woman in Sicily would typically be allowed to have, but it’s all done under the guise of her husband, Fontana’s underboss. Fontana would never actually let a woman sit at his right hand, even his daughter.
Lorenzo, Carmine, and I take a town car to the location—a Michelin-starred Italian restaurant that Fontana owns. Carmine is respectably dressed for once—I made sure of it, and Lorenzo looks every bit the distinguished mafia son. I know he’s privately looking forward to the meeting. If he were the one running the Campano family, we wouldn’t be making strides away from Sicily. He’d rather be in Fontana’s pocket than out of it.
The security around the restaurant is heavy. It’s been closed down for the meeting, and I can’t help but roll my eyes at the show that Fontana is putting on. It’s a callback to the days of mafia bosses meeting in the back rooms of the pizza parlors and bistros that they ran to hide their illegitimate businesses, but on a much grander scale, to remind us of his power and wealth.
That nothing can undermine his place in the Family, no matter what anyone else tries. And theyhavetried.
We’re escorted upstairs to the top floor with a view of the pristine kitchen and the city beyond. Fontana is sitting at the head of a large round table, a loaf of bread on a wooden board in front of him with a dish of olive oil and herbs. A glass of red wine sits next to the plate in front of him, and he’s speaking quietly to someone sitting next to him—a dark blonde man in an impeccably tailored suit.
I recognize the man immediately—Andre Leone. Fontana’s son-in-law, and his new underboss.
“Don Campano!” Fontana rises from his seat, saying my name with a joviality that I know is entirely false, reaching out to shake my hand. “I’m pleased that we could meet. Sit down.”
There’s a cheer to his voice, but it’s not an invitation. If I tried to leave, he would take it as an insult, and there would be hell to pay. I know that as well as I know anything else.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again.” The lie rolls off of my tongue easily, the kind of false platitudes that I’ve been taught all my life to deliver when need be. “You remember my brothers, of course.”
“Of course. Lorenzo and Carmine. A pleasure to see you as well.” The repetition grates on me as Fontana speaks, the falseness ringing in my ears. No one means any of this. Fontana would happily see me dead if I stood against him in any permanent way, and I have no love for him. He sees me as a blight on my family name, undoing everything that the last three generations worked for, and if hecouldstop me, he would.
It makes me ache to see Emma. To sit in her warm kitchen and watch her move around it. To sit on the beach next to her. To hear her talk to me about art as she inks it on my skin. I always knew I craved more normalcy than the life I was born into afforded, but I never realized how much until I started to—
I cut off the thought before I can finish it. The end of that sentence will only bring me pain—today, more than ever, when I need to focus on the conversation at hand.
