I glanced out the side window, checking to see if the other limo had arrived yet. The night before, Dante had left the mansion with Cristiano so we wouldn’t risk bumping into each other this morning before the wedding. Nona had been adamant that it was bad luck to see each other before the ceremony. With a soft kiss to my cheek, he had left me at my bedroom door and disappeared with my cousin.
His limo was missing, however, and a trickle of trepidation tried to worm its way into my excitement. Turning back to the still open door, I called to Scarlett, “Where is Dante?”
She turned from straightening her husband’s tie to frown. “I thought he would be here by now. He dropped off the flowers and the earrings with the command to give them to you, and I assumed he was on his way here.”
“He and Cristiano had one last stop to make,” Ciro volunteered. “I’m sure they will be here soon.”
Instead of easing my worry, the words caused my stomach to tighten as my alarm only heightened. I glanced at my father out of the corner of my eye, saw how calm he seemed, and had to force myself to ease my hold on my beautiful bouquet of roses before I destroyed the stems. His calmness was the most worrisome for me. Only three days before, he had exploded and nearly come to blows with Zio Vito when his last attempt at forcing me to back out of the wedding failed. Since then, he had been eerily even-keeled.
The calm before the storm. That was how I always thought of it when Papa was this peaceful. It was when I feared him the most. Because that was when the beatings were at their very worst.
Fearing the man who was supposed to love and protect me, I got out of the limo and quickly straightened my dress before hurrying toward the church. I couldn’t wait in such close confines with that man. I couldn’t sit beside him and pretend like everything was okay when I was practically shaking with nervousness.
What if Dante changed his mind? What if he decided he didn’t want to marry me?
What if he broke his promise?
If he didn’t marry me today, I would be dead by morning. I knew it in my gut, could feel it in my bones. My father’s wrath would be unleashed on me that night for defying him and accepting Dante’s proposal. I felt it simmering inside of him from the moment I agreed to the terms of my uncle’s proposition months before, and it had reached the boil-over point when I said yes to Dante only a few short weeks ago.
Around me, there was an entire brigade of men in suits with heavy artillery under their jackets. These men had been a part of my everyday life from the minute I was born. But back in Sicily, security hadn’t been nearly as tight as it was here in New York. I wasn’t sure if it was just because Zio Vito was the head of the Cosa Nostra, or if it was because that lunatic had kidnapped Scarlett all those months ago.
No one ever told me anything, and I knew better than to ask, so I had no clue which it was. What I did know was that those goons in suits my twin cousins hated so much actually gave me a small measure of comfort. If they were always around, then my father kept his distance. With them patrolling the mansion, he couldn’t sneak into my room at night.
“There it is!” Victoria called out before I could reach the front door of the church.
As I turned to see the limo slowing, my heart relaxed its pounding, and I was able to breathe a little easier. The twins and Nona rushed up behind me, trying to keep me hidden from Dante’s eyes, while several of the guards moved to open the limo’s back door as it pulled to a stop not far from the one that had brought me.
I tried to see over Scarlett’s shoulder and frowned when I noticed the door hadn’t been opened yet. Someone spoke into their headset, and I saw a frown pucker my uncle’s brow as he watched the men. “Open the door,” he commanded.
The guard lifted the handle and shook his head. “Locked.”
“I said, open the door,” Zio Vito roared.
Suddenly, it felt like everything around me was moving in slow motion. The guard tried the door again as another walked around to the driver’s side and pounded a beefy fist on the window. He said something I didn’t catch, just as the others cursed and charged toward us. The limo was suddenly obscured from my vision as Ciro and Adrian reached us before the guards could.
Ciro grabbed Scarlett and carefully pushed her to the ground, taking me with her while Adrian’s big body swallowed up Victoria’s and Nona’s as they landed only inches from me. I didn’t understand why we were on the ground, why these two big men and the guards were suddenly shielding us like tents.
My mind was blank until I heard the boom. The entire world seemed to shake underneath me, and still, I couldn’t make sense of it. I heard the groans of men in pain, felt the sting of something sharp as it hit the back of my neck. Scarlett, who was half on top of me, didn’t make a sound, and for a moment, I even wondered if she was breathing. The smell of burning rubber and something worse filled my nose just as I heard Nona cry out.
“What’s happened?” she sobbed.
“The limo blew up, Nona,” Victoria explained to her in a voice that shook as she stroked her hand over our grandmother’s brow. “It’s okay—you’re okay. You only have a small scratch on your forehead from the fall.”
“Ciro, where’s Papa?” Scarlett demanded, and I was relieved to feel her breath on my neck. “Please, check on him!”
“Your father can take care of himself, vita mia.”
“Check on him!” she commanded, pushing at his chest. “I’m fine, damn it. He was standing right there when it happened.”
With a curse, he kissed her lips quickly and then jumped up, yelling to the men at his feet to cover us. Without his weight on top of me, I was able to lift my head and look at the chaos that was now surrounding us. The sound of sirens in the distance rent the air as I took in the sight of the limo that was now in flames.
“No,” I whispered and jumped to my feet. “No!”
“Allegra!” Scarlett caught my wrist and tightened her hold, locking me in place when I would have run to the blazing limo. “Don’t. There’s no way anyone survived that.”
“No.” Tears blinded me as they flooded out of my eyes, and I fell to my knees as my heart shattered in my chest. “Dante is in there!”
She hugged my head to her chest. “I know, honey. I know. So was Cristiano.” Her voice trembled, but she swallowed her sob.
This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening.
It was just a nightmare. I would wake up soon and be back in my bed, ready to get up to start my day.
Ready to marry the man I loved.
Chapter 3
Allegra
Everyone around me was a blur as they quickly moved from one place to another. The sound of sirens and shouting men seemed to be coming from a long distance away, as if they were all in a tunnel and I was standing just outside of it. I was barely an afterthought as fireman put out the blaze of the limo and EMTs rushed to assist those injured by the explosion. I felt cold and numb as I stared sightlessly at the church that was supposed to hold the ceremony that ensured my future.
Now, that wouldn’t happen. Dante, my savior, was gone.
“No,” I whispered brokenly. “You can’t be gone.”
“Sweetie, let’s go back to the compound,” Victoria urged in a weak, wobbly voice, not for the first time. “There’s nothing more we can do here.”
“No.” I shrugged her hand off my shoulder and wrapped my arms tighter around my middle in an attempt to hold myself together. I couldn’t fall to pieces. I had to be brave for Dante. Because he wasn’t gone. If he were, I would have felt it in my heart, in my bones.
“Please, Allie,” she sobbed. “Scarlett and Nona are already on their way back with Ciro. Let Adrian and me take you home. This isn’t something you should see.”
The sob broke my trance. I hadn’t just lost the love of my life today. I’d lost a cousin, and Victoria had lost her brother. The two had been close, and as I lifted my eyes to finally look at her, I could see the loss was taki
ng its toll on her already.
She was crouched down in front of me, her fingers just as cold as my own, her face streaked with soot and tears. Adrian stood behind her, his eyes darting around as if expecting any one of the emergency workers to suddenly become the enemy and try to harm what was his.
My stomach lurched as the reality of everything finally hit me. They were gone. Both Dante and Cristiano were actually gone.
Without my permission, my eyes drifted back to what was left of the limo. “I can’t leave him,” I whispered. “Don’t make me leave him.”
I heard a curse, and then I was being lifted. Adrian held on to me tightly as he carried me away from the chaos while Victoria practically jogged in her heels to keep up with him. “If it were me, I wouldn’t want my woman to see me like that. Don’t give yourself more images that will only haunt you, little one.”
His soft tone had my eyes filling with tears. “He’s not gone,” I sobbed, desperately holding on to hope because my heart would be destroyed if it was true. “He can’t be.”
“He is, sweetheart. They both are. But don’t worry. I’ll deal with those—” He broke off without finishing, his jaw clenching as he carefully opened the back of his car and seated me inside.
Victoria appeared on the other side of me, and she pulled my head down onto her shoulder, her trembling fingers stroking over my hair. I caught the smell of smoke and realized it wasn’t just her dress, but my own. The fumes from the fire had soaked into the material of our clothes. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured over and over again on the short drive back to the compound, but I wasn’t convinced.
Nothing was going to be okay now. Not one single thing was ever going to be right again.
Zio Vito was in the living room when Adrian carried me into the room, placing me carefully on one of the sofas. Zio had an ice pack on his head, and even through my own shock, I could see his face was full of rage.
“This stinks of Santino,” he half growled to Ciro, who was standing by the fireplace with Scarlett tucked close to his side.
“Those motherfuckers love to blow shit up,” Benito Donati agreed, standing on the other side of his daughter-in-law, who looked ready to drop at any second. But even as I watched, Scarlett refused to sit yet again when her husband urged her to.
My uncle stood, his face contorted with his anger at the loss of his son as well as a man who had always been like a son to him. “Bring me their heads,” he roared.
If he had been thinking straight, I knew he wouldn’t have said anything like that in front of his daughters or me. But no one was thinking clearly right then, and honestly, I wanted the men who were responsible for this just as desperately as he did.
Adrian grasped Zio Vito by his left shoulder and gave it a hard squeeze. “Calm yourself,” he commanded. “Ciro and I will handle this. But you must be calm for the women.”
Before my eyes, my uncle began to crumple. “My son,” he whispered in a voice so full of loss and pain, my heart broke all over again. “They took my son from me.” He shrugged off Adrian’s hold and picked up the nearest object—a lamp. It shattered into a million pieces against the opposite wall, making me flinch. “They took my son from me!” he bellowed. “I will slaughter them all!”
“Papa.” Scarlett crossed to him, her arms going around his slightly thick waist, and buried her face in his jacket.
All the fight left him just as quickly as it had appeared. His arms snaked around her, holding her to him in a vise-like grip as he lowered his head to her shoulder. A sob left him, shaking both his and Scarlett’s shoulders from the force of it. “My son.”
Tenderly, she stroked her fingers over his head and just held him for a long moment. It was hard to watch him like this. The loss of Cristiano was destroying the strongest, most powerful man I had ever met. No parent should ever have to say goodbye to their child like this.
After a while, Zio Vito began to sway, and both Ciro and Adrian helped him take his seat. His phone rang, but he ignored it. Scarlett searched his suit jacket pockets until she found it and lifted it to her ear. “What is it?” she barked, then listened with a wrinkled brow. “I understand. I’ll be right there.”
“What is it?” Ciro demanded.
Her gaze went around the room, taking everyone in, as if debating if she should answer her husband in front of us. “Business,” she finally said. “Let’s go.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You’re not leaving this damn compound. It’s dangerous out there, vita mia. I want you where you’re the safest.”
“There is no safer place than with you,” she countered, and her husband rubbed his hands over his face in exasperation.
Papa stood slowly from where he had been sitting on the sofa across from me. He looked emotionless for the most part, but even through my distraught haze, I could see the wheels turning in his head. I knew him too well, and I was sure he was going to make the most of this situation.
Gio Vitucci was the kind of man who craved power—over others, especially. And if Zio Vito was out of commission over the loss of his son, there was no better time to start pushing his older brother out of the way so he could take over.
“I will take care of it, Scarlett,” he told her in a calm voice, even as I imagined him mentally rubbing his hands together in glee.
She lifted her gaze, the look in her eyes defiant and commanding. “Papa is in no condition to handle anything right now, and a Vitucci needs to deal with this.”
“And you are no longer a Vitucci. Your last name is Donati now. I, however, am a Vitucci. I am next in line now that Cristiano is gone,” he reminded her in a voice that should have told her not to argue as he stared her down. But it was an unwinnable war. Scarlett was too stubborn to give in, even under this ruthless man’s hard stare.
“I am my father’s daughter.” Her tone was ice-cold and just as dangerous as the man standing behind her at the ready to destroy anything or anyone who dared try to harm his precious vita mia. “Papa has always said he would have turned everything over to me had I been born first. I will handle everything in his place.” Refusing to argue with my father further, she glanced up at her husband. “Are you coming, or would you rather I go alone?”
“Fuck,” Ciro half growled, half groaned, but he followed after her.
Before she left, she stopped beside her twin. “Take care of Papa,” she murmured.
“I’ve got this,” Victoria assured her, giving her sister a hug. “Just be careful. I don’t want to lose you too.”
When they were gone, my gaze went around the room to who was left. Nona was absent, but I’d heard Scarlett quietly tell Victoria not long after we had arrived that our grandmother was in her room. Benito was still standing by the fireplace, and Adrian was now consoling Victoria as they both stood beside her father.
My gaze went back to Papa. His face was drawn after the small showdown with Scarlett, but I could see the smugness in his dancing eyes. He didn’t seem to care that his nephew was gone, that his brother’s child had died this day. I felt sick looking at him. His hatred for Dante and anything De Stefano had consumed his ugly soul until there wasn’t an ounce of love left in him.
With everyone else so lost in their own sorrow, they couldn’t see the look in Papa’s eyes. Because if they had really been looking, they would have seen what had always been glaringly obvious to me.
My father’s evilness.
--
Like I was a child, Victoria helped me upstairs to my room. With soft, soothing murmurs, she undressed me and helped me shower. The numbness had yet to wear off, along with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that Dante was fine. The two conflicting emotions didn’t mesh well, and I alternated between freezing and feeling like I might vomit at any moment, to being utterly calm in the face of the reminder of the explosion.
Her tender yet firm fingers massaged my scalp as she washed my hair then the rest of my body. As I stepped out of the shower,
a towel wrapped around my body, I saw my dress just lying on the bathroom floor. It was completely ruined, not only by the fumes of the smoke and the other chemicals that had been in the air outside the church, but with soot and dirt. It was never going to be the same.
“How will I be able to marry Dante in this dress?” I whispered as tears filled my eyes. “I’ll never be able to wear it again. It’s destroyed.”
My cousin caught me by the arms when I started to bend over to pick up the dress. Her tender fingers became hard as steel on my flesh as she shook me several times. “Allegra, stop it,” she commanded in a tone that forced me to focus solely on her. “Dante is gone. He died today. You have to accept that, honey. There’s no coming back from what happened. There was nothing left of his body. Nothing.”
I jerked out of her hold, my tears evaporating. “Go away, Victoria. I can get dressed on my own.”
“Sweetie…” She blew out a tired sigh. “I’m sorry. But you aren’t facing reality. Dante and Cristiano are gone. They aren’t coming back.”
“Yes, I heard you the first time.” I walked into the bedroom and crossed to my closet. Pulling out a simple pair of cotton sleep pants and a matching top, I tossed them on my bed before grabbing a pair of panties out of my underwear drawer.
“But you aren’t accepting this,” she stated as she watched me closely.
Dressed in my pajamas, I climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over my lap. “I can’t accept it,” I admitted and pressed my fists to my heart. “I can still feel him, here. My heart is still in one piece, it’s still beating. So, he can’t be gone.”