Page 3 of Vow of Darkness
“You don’t need to know who put me in here,” my father says. “You just need to go.”
“Why won’t you come with me?”
“Because it’s not safe. He’ll just find me again and bring me right back here. You’ll always be in danger. You have to leave, Aurora. You have to go. Please, sweetheart. I’m trying to protect you. You’re my whole world. My everything. I need to know that you’re safe out there. I never wanted you a part of this life.”
“Mafia life,” I state. “Are you telling me that… you work for the mafia?”
“Just go.”
“No. Not until you tell me why you refuse to leave. I searched for you for four whole days. It was hard finding where your friend lived. I don’t have anyone in my life except for you. I will not just give up on you, Dad.” I have my co-workers at the café but they’re not my friends. One of them likes to bully me for not having any money. She works there because she wants to – not because she needs to. It ostracized me from the rest of myco-workers. I don’t have a boyfriend because I never had time to date when I was trying to put food on the table and help my dad out. It’s just me and him and no one else.
“Please, just go. Just go, Aurora. You need to go.”
“Not until you tell me why you refuse to leave this place. I worked hard to find you. I’m not just going to give up.”
“Will that make you leave? If I tell you everything?”
“Yes,” I lie. But I will not leave my father here to rot in this cell. Not when I can save him.
“I once worked for the mafia.”
My body goes cold. We live in Florence, Italy – the heart of the Italian mafia. I’ve always heard stories of organized crime. How some people can live without any rules put on them. But me and my father lived away from that. It never came to our door.
Until now.
“I was a middle man,” he explains. “Not at the top but not at the bottom either. I made great money until… until a business deal went bad and I lost my boss a lot of money. He was angry. I was scared. You were just a baby at home. I knew you would be in danger so I left that life behind. I left without anything. But me and your mom were going to make it work… until she got sick. And then it was just you and me. I had no way of working any sort of job that would draw the attention of my previous boss. I had to work under the table to keep you safe, which meant not making much money. It was fine for a while but then we struggled. We struggled bad.”
“What happened? How did you end up here?”
All the fight leaves his body and he slumps against the wall. “You turned twenty-one and still felt like you had to live at home for me. You were living your entire life for me and I couldn’t let that happen. But I knew you would never go because I was struggling. So I…”
“You what?”
“He stole from me,” a deep man’s voice says from behind me.
With a gasp, I whirl around to see the silhouette of a man. Not the old man who opened the door and closed it on me. A different one. Younger, I can already tell. But by how much, I’m not sure.
“Leave her alone,” Dad hisses. “She just came to help me but she’s going now. I’ll stay here. This is my price to pay.”
“Who are you?” I whisper, my lips barely moving.
The man huffs. “You don’t know who I am? Most people in this area know who I am. Or at least, they’ve heard stories.”
“Well, I haven’t. Who are you?” I have to be brave for my father. For myself.
“My name is Gabriel Romano.” He doesn’t offer anything else.
“I don’t know who you are but please, let my dad go.”
“Did you not hear what I said? He stole from me. He tried to come into my club and steal from me. I can’t let that stand.”
“So you locked him up like a criminal?”
“He committed a crime, didn’t he? He stole from me.” Gabriel still hasn’t come into the light. I can’t make out anything about him other than his deep voice.
“But you’re not the police. You just… locked him up in here. Let him go.”
“Why would I do that? We all know who Andrew Rossi is. That he left the mafia behind for his precious family. That he fucked over his previous boss. That boss was a friend of mine. I’ve heard the stories. I see this as Andrew finally paying for the crimes he has committed.”
