Page 127 of When She Loves
“Let’s sit down,” Vale says, leading me to a chair. “I’ll make some tea. They have peppermint here. Your favorite.”
Vale walks over to the small kitchenette, and Gemma sits down in the chair beside me, taking my hands into hers. “We’ll get through this. No matter what, okay?”
“I don’t know how I’ll live with myself if Nero dies.” I thought Nero was an arrogant ass when I first met him, but he’s grown on me over the last few months. All he was doing was trying to protect me from my father’s men. How can he die for that?
“It’s not right for Rafaele to do this,” Gemma says angrily. “Blaming the situation with Nero on you isn’t fair.”
“Nothing about this life is fair,” I spit out.
A barbed wire of anger wraps around my heartbreak. This is why I never wanted to marry a mobster. This is why I tried so hard to escape the life I was born into. There are no winners in this world. Everyone loses eventually.
Vales comes over with the tea, and I take the mug from her.
“Careful, it’s hot.”
It is, but I welcome the burn. It’s the only thing that keeps me from spiraling deeper into my dark thoughts. We drink our tea and wait for the men to come out. There’s nothing else left for me to do. Their muffled voices filter through the door, but I can’t make out what they’re saying.
After what feels like forever, they finally emerge. My breathing slows until it stops entirely. I can see the answer on Damiano’s face before he even says a word.
“I’m sorry,” he says roughly. “It’s out of our hands.”
CHAPTER39
RAFAELE
The thirty-minute journeyto the address where Nero is waiting is pure agony. Sandro is behind the wheel. I asked him to drive so that I could devote all of my brain power to finding a way out of this mess. But we’re nearly there, and I’ve got nothing close to a solid plan.
Gino doesn’t want anything I can give him. He wants to teach me a lesson, maybe the same one he wanted to teach my father but couldn’t.
Don’t fuck with my family.
I should have never gotten him involved in this mess. I still can’t believe how poorly I thought everything through.
That woman. She short-circuited my brain.
But what’s done is done. I shouldn’t think about her anymore, certainly not now when I’ve got bigger problems on my hands. She’s safe with her family, while I’m still trying to find some way out of this.
We pull into the driveway of a rickety-looking house with peeling white paint and a front yard full of weeds. The number on the door says fourteen. I knock—three times, then two. For a while, nothing happens. Then I hear a chain jingle and the lock turn. Nero appears, gun in hand. For a moment, I wonder if he’s considered just shooting me. He must suspect what’s coming. But he lowers his gun and waves us through the door.
Sandro and I step inside in silence. Nero locks the door and leads us to a living room with two sunken-in couches and a scratched-up coffee table. The place is a dump.
Nero sits down, making the couch groan. “Have you talked to Gino?”
I take a seat across from him. “Sandro, see if you can make some coffee.”
He gets the hint and leaves. Nero gives me a weary look, like he knows I wouldn’t need privacy if I had any good news to deliver. No, there’s little good about any of this.
I drag my fingers through my hair. “Gino wants you dead.”
Nero’s expression turns frozen.
“He’s furious at how this ended with his nephew. He wants me to make it right. I offered him money. I offered him territory. He said no.”
My consigliere is completely still. He doesn’t even blink. I’m not sure he’s breathing. He just stares at me from under his thick brows, an air of disbelief swirling around him.
“Fuck, Nero. Say something.”
A beat passes. Finally, he huffs a bitter laugh. “For the first time in my entire life, I’ve got nothing.”
