Page 360 of Marcello

I laughed and kissed her, luxuriating in the feel of her naked body against mine. “The fun part will have to wait.”

“Of course.”

I turned on the water. Once it was hot, we stepped into the spray.

“Oh my god,” she moaned as she tilted her head back. “That’s almost as good as sex.”

“Really,” I joked.

She grinned. “Almost. Not quite.”

I lathered up a bar of soap in my hands, then began to rub away the grime on her skin.

Suddenly she burst into tears.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, and immediately felt stupid.

Her family was dead, and she’d been through hell. Everything was wrong.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she sobbed.

“Well, we’ll never be apart again – ever,” I promised, and held her in my arms as she cried.

A brief thought entered my mind about This is the part where the hero…

But I pushed it away.

I was done stuffing down my emotions and seeing my life as a movie.

From this point I was going to live it… with the woman I loved.

140

Niccolo

Inside The Mansion

Lars attended to Dario with a medical kit we’d brought. He used rubbing alcohol to cleanse the wound, then stitched it up with a needle and thread.

It was all done without anesthetic, so it had to be extremely painful – but Dario never flinched.

While that was going on, I attended to the logistics of our departure.

First and foremost, we needed transportation back to our cars, which we’d left miles away, outside Sotto Napoli.

There were plenty of Cadillac SUVs parked around the mansion, but no keys to go with them – so I had the Widow’s foot soldiers search the pockets of every dead Camorra they could find.

Fifteen minutes later, we had enough keys to make sure we could leave.

Meanwhile, I ordered Giorgio and Vincenzo to scoop all the money off the dining room table into plastic garbage bags. They seemed to enjoy that immensely.

Another one of our foot soldiers collected Dario’s gear from the basement. When my brother came into the dining room, he was wearing his black shirt again.

“What’s going on?” he asked as he watched Giorgio and Vincenzo.

“We negotiated with the Camorra for the mansion,” I answered. “We didn’t agree to give them everything inside it.”

“Hm,” Dario grunted. “Have you got our men looking for anything else of value?”