Gio
First the burning. Then the blood seeping through my fingers. Always the sound of Paolo croaking my name over the crack of more gunfire.
Gio, no!
Gio’s hit!
It’s the horror of loss ringing in his voice that makes my heart pound. Not the pain. Not my own fear of death. I don’t think about my demise in the moment. I didn’t when it actually went down, and I don’t in the nightmares that plague me every night.
And always the girl.
She’s in every nightly replay. Sometimes she gets shot, too. Those are the worst. My inability to rescue her, to protect her from damage makes me want to die right there. Other times she runs to me, after I’ve been shot. She wraps her arms around me and we both fall down.
Always her wide blue-green eyes lock onto mine the moment the first gun fires. I watch the terror fill them as the bullet tears through my middle.
That’s the moment that keeps her in my dreams. In that split second, in the window where I’m sure I’m going to die, hers is the face I see. My fears are for her safety, and my anguish over being shot is that I can’t protect her.
In her gaze, I swear I see it all mirrored back at me. She, too, thinks I’m going to die, and her anguish is in not warning me in time.
Because she tried. I remember every millisecond of that part. The five breaths before I got shot. I remember the way she tried to signal with her eyes. The way she refused to leave and get to safety, even though she had to know her cafe was about to explode in glass and wood and bullets and blood.
She’s like an angel in the dreams-her pale face the beacon I use to understand my own death.
Only I don’t die.
I didn’t die.
And you’d think that would make everything crystal clear. The whole near-death experience thing. It’s supposed to make you realize what you regret. What you desire. And then you get a second chance to make good on life.
Instead, I’m trapped in a nightmare-induced fog. Trying to untangle the meaning while I go through the motions of living.
The Caffè Milano girl doesn’t have the answers-I don’t know why or how my subconscious assigned so much meaning to her. She was just caught in the middle of a bad scene between the Russian bratva and our outfit.
And yet I can’t get her out of my mind.
The angel of my death.
Near-death.
Marissa. An innocent girl I have no business sullying.
A girl who already saw too much.
A liability.
Marissa
Some things you can’t forget. You can’t unsee. Can’t unhear.
Blood all over these floors. The sound of gunshots. The way my heart stopped when Junior Tacone pointed that gun at me, deciding whether to let me live or die.
I hate this time of day when the customers thin out, business gets slow, and I only have time to remember.
It’s been six months since the battle between the Russian and Sicilian mafia went down in Caffè Milano, and I’m still jumpy as hell. Still examining every customer who comes in, praying he’s not Russian mafia come for revenge. Or to shake me down for information on how to find the Tacones.
But they haven’t come. No one ever came except the Tacones with their window repair guys and a large enough amount of money to upgrade our whole kitchen. Which was good because our walk-in cooler was inches away from dying and this place hasn’t had a remodel since my grandparents opened it in the 1960s.
I pull a bowl of pasta salad from the deli case to put in the walk-in overnight. When I come back, I freeze, a gasp hitting the back of my throat.
At first, I think it’s Junior Tacone standing at my deli counter.
The guy who went gangster on my place and gunned down six guys. The one who is supposedly the protector of this neighborhood.
It’s not Junior, though. It’s his brother, Gio Tacone, the one who took a bullet out on the sidewalk. The man I thought was dead.
“Mr. Tacone!” I curse myself for sounding breathless.
“Gio,” he corrects. “Marissa, how are you?”
He knows my name!
That’s more than I can say for Junior, the current head of the family. And I wish it didn’t do fluttery things to my insides, but it does. Gio rests a forearm on the counter and pins me with a dark-lashed hazel gaze.
He is pure man-candy. With those chiseled good looks, he could easily have been an actor or model, and he has the charm to match.
“You’re alive,” I blurt. I hadn’t heard that he survived. I checked the newspapers and Googled his name after the shooting, and there weren’t any reports of his death, but I saw him take a bullet with my own eyes. “I mean, you made it. I’m so glad.” Then I blush, because, yeah. I’m probably not supposed to talk about what happened, even though it’s just the two of us here.
Gio catches my wrist, stilling my hand. His thumb strokes over my pulse as my fingers tremble in the space between us. “Why are you shaking, doll? You scared of me?”
Scared of him? Yes. Definitely. But also excited. He’s the one Tacone brother I look forward to seeing. Always have, even when I was just ten years old, wiping tables down while the mafia men met.
“No!” I pull my hand away. “I’m just jumpy. You know-since… what happened. And you startled me.”
His gaze penetrates, like he knows there’s more to it than that, and he wants to know it all. A curious shifting happens in my chest.
I tuck an errant strand of hair behind my ear to cover my mounting discomfort.
“You have nightmares?” he guesses, like he’s read my mind.
I give a single nod. Then it occurs to me how he knows. “Do you?”
I don’t expect him to confess it if he does. I come from an Italian family. I know the men don’t admit weakness.
So, I’m surprised when he says, “All the fucking time.” He touches the place where the bullet must’ve gone in.
“Wow.”
The corners of his lips quirk into a devastating grin. The man really should have gone into show business. “What? You think real men don’t have nightmares?”
“Maybe not the men in your line of work.”
The smile fades and he arches a brow. Oops. I crossed some line. I guess you don’t mention a mobster’s line of work.
I ignore the increased thumping of my heart. “Sorry. Is that something we don’t talk about?”
He makes me sweat for two beats then gives a half-shrug, like he decided to let it go. “I didn’t come here to ride your ass; I came to check on you. Make sure you’re okay.” He blinks those dark curly lashes that would be feminine except for the manly square jaw and aquiline nose. “Sounds like you’re having a hard time.”
The danger bell starts tolling in my head.
Never accept a favor from the Tacones. You’ll pay for it for the rest of your life.
That’s what my grandfather used to always lament. He borrowed from Arturo Tacone to start his business, and it took him forty years to pay off. But pay it off he did, and he was damn proud of it, too.
“I’m fine. We’re fine.” I straighten and lift my chin. “But we’d appreciate it if you’d hold your business meetings somewhere else in the future.” I don’t know what makes me say it. You don’t piss off a mob boss by insulting him or making demands. I definitely could’ve found a nicer way to make my request.
Again, he considers me for a moment before answering. My palms get clammy but I keep my head high and meet his gaze.
“Agreed,” he concedes. “We didn’t expect trouble. Junior regretted what happened to this place.”
“Junior pointed a gun at my head.” The words tumble out and crash between us. Too late to take them back.
“Junior would never hurt you.” He says it so immediately I know he believes it’s true. But he didn’t see what I saw. That moment of hesitation. The murmuring of his man beside him that I’m a witness.
He thought about killing me.
And then decided not to.
Gio catches my hand again and holds it, stroking the back of it this time. His fingers are large and powerful, making mine appear small and delicate in comparison. “That’s why you’re jumpy, huh? I’m sorry you got scared, but I promise you, you’re safe. This place is under our protection.”
I swallow, trying to ignore how pleasant his touch is. How nice it is to be soothed by this beautiful, dangerous man. I summon more bluster. “Maybe it would be better if it wasn’t.” My voice doesn’t come out steady. There’s a wobble to it that betrays my nerves. I clear my throat. “You know, if you just left us alone.”
I hold my breath, tensing for his reaction.
Huh.
If I didn’t know better, I would say my words hurt Gio rather than pissed him off. But he just shrugs. “Sorry, doll. You can’t get rid of us. And you’re on my watch now. Which means you’re perfectly safe.”
I want to tell him I’m not his doll and he can take his protection and fuck off, but I’m not insane. Also, some traitorous part of me wants him to keep stroking my hand, keep studying me like I’m the most interesting person he’s seen all day.
But I know all that’s a lie.
Gio’s a player. And my body’s response to his presence is dangerous.
Gio abandons my hand in favor of cupping my chin. “You’re mad. I get it. I’ll let you show me a little claw today. But we paid restitution to your family and will honor our commitments to this neighborhood and to Caffè Milano.”
His touch is commanding and firm, but still gentle. It makes the flutters in my belly grow more wild.
“Gio,” I murmur, turning my face away from him and out of his hand. My nipples are hard, rubbing against the inside of my bra.
He pulls a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and drops in on the counter. “Give me two of those cannoli.” He points to the case.
I obey wordlessly and tuck the hundred in my apron pocket, not bothering to offer him change. I figure if he used a hundred, it was because he wanted to throw his money around, and I’m going to let him do it.
He smirks a little as he takes the plate with the cannoli and sits down at a table in the cafe to eat them.
Fuck. I am so screwed.
Gio Tacone just decided to make me his pet project. Which means the chances of him ending up owning me just shot sky high.