Page 2 of Bene

Their life in a nutshell.

Her father talked.

She listened.

Adam was all she had, after all. Her blood relatives were long gone. Her grandfather, Gabriel Canali, murdered, and her aunt—Elena, her father’s half-sister—had committed suicide shortly after, leaving Adam alone as the bastard son of a dead Camorra boss, with a criminal organization in ruins, and the clan in shambles. Shunned by his father before his murder, as his now-dead mother did her best to keep him away from the life, Adam was lower than dirt and treated the same for years after.

All because of one family.

One man.

Gian Guzzi.

He’d married her aunt, killed their grandfather, which caused Elena’s suicide, or so she had always been told, and ruined the Canali name forever. It might have happened decades ago, but to them … to Vanna and her father, who lived with the knowledge of what transpired way back then, and suffered the consequences of it long after, well, they simply couldn’t forget.

They couldn’t afford to.

It didn’t matter they were Falcos—using the last name given to Adam by his mother—because they were still Camorra. And this was their way.

“Well?” her father asked, bringing her back to the present with a bang. “Do you have an answer for me?”

She did.

“Vendettas,” Vanna replied, parroting the only appropriate answer. “Our vendettas are most important.”

That smile graced Adam’s lips again.

Faint as it was.

He grew quiet, and so she turned her attention back to the phone in her hands. Traffic crawled on, but soon they would arrive at the restaurant where her father intended to make his next move to take over the Camorra clan. A goal of his, he made clear, that he had worked on since it was ripped from his hands after his father’s murder.

That was two decades ago.

Finally, he had the chance to take his rightful place again heading the clan. Rome didn’t get built in a day, Adam said, and I won’t take over in one, either. He talked a lot, and she thought he said these things to her because she was all he had, too.

“Vanna?”

“Hmm?”

“I need you to remember that … about our vendettas—always.”

She glanced up from the screen of her phone, meeting her father’s stare in the rearview once more. It also allowed her the chance to see where they currently were in the city. A couple of blocks away from her school where he dropped her off every morning before going about his day and business, only to be right there at three PM sharp to pick her up. No excuses.

He listened to her day.

She listened to his.

People didn’t understand why she never disobeyed her father—always his good girl, following every rule set out for her. She never wondered why. He nursed her when she was sick, read her bedtime story after bedtime story, and he was all she knew.

Her mother, a transient, neglectful thing, hadn’t been in her life since before she could remember. She resented Rose for that the most, and while anyone who had known her mother often said Vanna took after the woman in appearance, she had no memories of her. Her dainty features made up of a button nose, delicate cheekbones, dark brown eyes the same shade as her wild hair, and heart-shaped lips didn’t match her father at all, so she knew it had to come from her mother.

And yet, she still found a better sense of familiarity looking at her father than she did staring into a mirror at herself. She blamed her mother for that, but at least she had her dad.

She loved him.

He loved her.

“And someday,” Adam said, bringing their vehicle to a crawl behind the car in front of theirs that slowed for a yellow light up ahead, “we will finally be able to fulfill our vendetta, won’t we?”