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“No,” he chuckled. “I bought you an art gallery. In Sicily.”
My eyes widened in shock. “What? A gallery?”
“Si. It’s yours to do what you want with it. You said your dream was always to own your own gallery and showcase local artists’ work. Perhaps, you might even showcase your own?” he grinned. “It’s a blank canvas so to speak. So you have free reign to do whatever you want to do.”
“I can’t believe you bought me a gallery!” I breathed, clutching the keys in my hand as my heart expanded at how well he knew me and how much he was willing to do to see me happy. “And you would let me run it? Actually be there?”
“How else would it work?” he laughed as I stared at him in disbelief. “You will have security there, of course, but no one in Italy would dare harm you. We will live the lives we want.”
“But won’t I need to be in the South for this to work,” I leaned forward, covering his body with mine as he narrowed his eyes at me.
“I’ll make you a deal. Set a date for your art gallery opening in three weeks, Princess. That gives me time to deal with Galiz and I promise I will be back for it.”
“Three weeks? That is so long,” I cried.
“I will try to be home sooner. But I wouldn’t miss your grand opening for anything so it is my promise to you that I will be back.”
“Okay,” I replied in defeat, leaning forward to kiss his lips tenderly. “I love you so much. Thank you for my gift. It is the most thoughtful present anyone has ever given me and I didn’t get you anything.”
“Oh, I have my gift… you said we had all night and it still is not over,” he smirked as he rolled on top of me and started kissing his way down my body. I sighed blissfully, giving myself over to the pleasure of his tongue between my legs as I pushed the fear and worry deep down inside me and focused on him. Here. Right now.
We spent the rest of the night making love. The sun was starting to rise when my body finally gave in to the exhaustion and my eyes closed, huddled against his strong chest. I woke hours later to an empty bed and a folded note on the pillow next to the keys.
My eyes instantly teared up, knowing he had gone. We had said all we needed to say last night in words and actions. But it still hurt more than I ever anticipated. I wrapped the duvet around me, missing his warmth already as I opened the note.
To my Gorgeous Wife (Fuck, I love saying that),
Don’t be mad. I didn’t wake you because this isn’t goodbye. It’s ‘see you soon’.
Focus on the gallery. Spend time with your family. Pack up all your things. And I’ll be home before you know it.
You won’t hear from me now until it’s done. I can’t risk it. But know, you are always on my mind. So when you miss me, just paint me a picture. I expect to see it in your gallery opening.
I love you.
Until forever.
Your Husband.
The Ultimate Sacrifice
“I am looking forward to you showing me around your kingdom and sampling the Italian goods. I hear the Italian women are a feisty bunch,” Galiz sneered, tapping his heavy rings against his tumbler as he lounged back in the suede seat on his private jet. My eye twitched ever so slightly as the sound travelled straight through me, causing the growing need to grind my teeth together. Instead, I did what I had been doing for the last sixteen days. I forced my lips to curve into a smile and buried the hatred that festered inside me to the depths of my dark soul. “I love women who put up a fight. They pretend they don’t want it, but we always know they love being our little sluts.”
I lifted my own glass to my lips, sipping the vile brandy he forced us to drink to give me a few seconds to calm myself and hold onto my patience. Not long now. Any minute in fact. And I would be able to do what I came here to do. Rid the world of pure evil.
“Well, you won’t be disappointed,” I answered with a sly smirk, stooping down to his level of depravity. The things I had seen over the last two weeks would haunt me forever. The moment I landed in Chicago and entered the devil’s den, Galiz had made it his mission to try and impress me by proving just how much power he had. Power over his men. Power over his family members. Power over his employees. And power over his women. But he had mistaken power for disrespect and intimidation. He was feared, yes. But ruling by invoking fear alone was never going to impress me.
The way he ran his businesses was by sheer force and brutality. He looked for the smallest mistakes made by those around him just so he could feed his sick craving for dominance by torturing them or hurting their loved ones for fun. His drug runners were fucking kids on the street as young as seven. ‘The younger the better,’ he had stated. ‘They don’t expect more than a few dollars in exchange for their efforts.’ But it was the last two nights that really revealed this man’s true colours. He took me to one of his auctions where he bought underaged girls and mistreated women for his trafficking rings. The state these women were already in was horrific. Some of them still showed how petrified they were, the desperation evident in their eyes as they were paraded in front of sleazy men, their bruised and malnourished bodies shaking with fear. But it was the ones who had no fight left in them that affected me the most. The emptiness in their eyes as they looked right through me made me feel sick. If I had been feeling an ounce of guilt at taking this man’s life, which I hadn’t, that alone would have been enough to make me go through with it.
When he turned to me and whispered, ‘Not quite up to the calibre of Elenora Buccini, hey? Now you can see why I wanted her for myself,’ it had taken every thread of discipline I possessed to not kill him on the spot.
Only one good thing came out of sitting through that ordeal and pretending I was impressed. I had gained enough intel about how the operation ran to bring it down. Turns out, after a few too many drinks, Anthony becomes very loose lipped. I had names. I had details about how they captured these girls. I knew where they held them until the money was transferred. And this morning, the FBI would have received an anonymous tip-off with all that information. Too bad Galiz would be dead before they had a chance to arrest him.
“So… King of Italy. Your papi would be proud,” Galiz smirked as I stood up and walked over to the bar at the end of the plane, checking his men’s whereabouts as I did. There were four in total, plus the two pilots flying the plane. When I first arrived in America, it became pretty clear that Galiz was never left alone. He always had a handful of soldiers around him, which meant that if I wanted to get close to him—close enough to kill him without being suspected—I would have to earn his complete trust. Infiltrate his circle. Make him believe we were cut from the same cloth. And that had taken time. Nearly three weeks to be exact. But it had all been leading up to this moment. I’d invited him back to Italy with me, pretending I needed to cut short my visit to America to deal with some Italian politics. Making sure everyone believed I would be taking my own private jet back to Italy, I changed my mind on the runway and decided to board his, claiming I would prefer the company. He ate it up. No one, except the men aboard, had any idea that I was on his flight. My jet would still land in Sicily in a few hours’ time. But his would not.
“Another brandy?” I shouted over my shoulder as I poured myself a glass.
“Why not! When in Rome,” he chuckled, warranting an eye roll from me as I poured his drink out too. Checking subtly that none of his men were watching, I tipped the sedation into his liquor and carried it back over to him.
