Shopping was not an aphrodisiac.
Nor was visiting the police station and the American consulate, where I pulled strings to get Guinevere seen to immediately while I waited outside, working from my phone.
Yet by the end of our errands, my blood felt like it had been boiling on low heat for hours.
Impulse control had always been one of my greatest assets. I was not besieged by lust, avarice, gluttony, or envy like so many other capos and soldati whose hunger was never sated. Being a criminal was not something I would have chosen for myself, but now that I was firmly entrenched on the wrong side of the law, I found I relished the mental challenge of it. How to bend the rules into angles that worked for me without breaking them completely. How to rule the underworld of the north without drawing attention from the wrong people as capo dei capi. It was about checks and balances, problems reduced to easy mathematical equations I could solve with simple logic.
I had been top of my class at Oxford in math and economics and gone on to work on Lombard Street, in the heart of London’s financial district, for years before I was called by duty and honor to come home.
Emotion and hedonism did not factor into my life.
Blasphemy for an Italian, but it was one of the reasons I’d always been drawn to Britain and to finance.
My father had made excuses all my life for his behavior.
I am a man. I have needs.
She was so beautiful, I had to have her.
Yes, the palazzo was too expensive, but we need to show others we are rich and powerful.
He dared to speak to me like that, so I was forced to cut out his tongue.
Pathetic, I had always thought, to be so ruled by his baser instincts.
Yet I found myself oddly incapable of refraining from touching Guinevere when she emerged from the changing room wearing my favorite color just because I’d asked her to. There was an ethereal quality about her beauty, something in the large, luminous eyes and the small, full red mouth, the sharp chin and all that thick dark hair swinging in waves to her waist. She was delicate, almost dreamy, but also elfin, and everyone knew never to underestimate the dangerous appeal of the fey. In that dress the color of freshly oxidized blood, Guinevere would have looked as perfect in a Tuscan field of poppies, twirling like she was doing under Maria Lucia’s arm, as she would have spinning to slip a blade neatly between the ribs of some hapless victim.
The duality of the fantasy—of her—wrote itself into my bones. Soft and sharp, naive and witty, untried but strong.
For the first time in a very long time, I gave in to my reckless impulses and undid the bow at her shoulder just to watch that dress dip dangerously low over one pale breast. I thought of biting that white skin until it was the same color as the fabric, until that sweet mound was ringed in teeth marks.
I could have too. Her desire was obvious in the stain of her cheeks and the hitch of her breath. She wanted me, and she wasn’t afraid of it. Her chest pushed slightly into my hand, and when I bent to kiss each of her suede-soft cheeks, I caught the pucker of her mouth ready to meet my own, and I was charmed by it.
What I could teach her, I thought, and was almost scared of my own desire to do so. To take her in hand and show her how to please me exactly as I wished. To introduce her to pleasures her sweet, shielded brain had never even thought to dream of.
I had stepped away from the temptation, but it had taken a surprising strength of will to do it. And even then, throughout the mundane, frankly irritating errands we accomplished the rest of the day, I found myself struck by the contours of her bow-shaped mouth, wondering if that incredibly soft skin extended to the tender curve of her inner thigh.
When the police officer took her into a room to speak with her alone and they came out laughing softly together, I made sure to remember his name—Riccardo Grassi—and had to fight the urge to stop her from giving him her phone number.
When we went to the consulate and my friend, Giuseppe Diati, told me in a congratulatory way that she was very beautiful, I did not fight the urge to tell him to keep his eyes to himself.
She seemed to awaken an oddly intoxicating mix of protectiveness and arousal in me that I hadn’t felt before in any of my thirty-four years, despite having countless partners.
So it irritated me that Guinevere Stone, this slip of an American girl who looked unfairly like a princess from a medieval Italian romance, could set my regimented life on its head.
It had been my intention to take her for dinner at Trattoria Marione because I knew she would fucking delight over their Florentine ribollita, but by the time we finished at the consulate, I felt as if I were coming out of my skin with a mixture of desire and irritation.
So I set our course for home and turned up the volume on the jazz filtering through the Ferrari. Despite my ignoring her, Guinevere’s presence was impossible to overlook. She shone with her own light, even sitting in the tight confines of the sports car. I watched the play of expressions over her face from my peripheral vision as we passed sights she had clearly read about and lusted over for years. The way her fingers touched the window so reverently made me wonder how they would touch me. Would that same worshipful light enter her eyes as she slowly undid my zipper, metal tooth by metal tooth? Would that same shocky gasp leave her lips when I took the tip of one of her small breasts between my lips?
“Madonna santa,” I cursed under my breath as we finally pulled through the automatic gates to the courtyard of my palazzo on the south bank of the Arno River.
If I had to spend one more moment in a confined space with this siren, I was going to lose my infamous cool and do something we’d both regret.
Like press her reverently to the window and kiss her until she trembled.
“Servio will make you whatever you want for dinner,” I grunted as I unbuckled and opened the door. “I have to work the rest of the evening.”
Before she could respond, I was levering myself out of the Ferrari and stalking across the pavers to the side entrance. The gym was on this lower level, and without skipping a beat, I tore off my suit jacket, kicked off my loafers, and rolled up my sleeves before stalking over to the punching bag hanging idle in the corner.
When I looked up countless minutes later, sweat was beading in my hairline and dripping from my jaw. Martina stood in the doorway, affecting my normal pose in silent mockery.
I blew a lock of wet hair out of my eyes and steadied the bag with my gloved hands so I could start my combinations again.
“So,” she said, when it became clear I would not indulge her. “Fun day?”
My answer was a jab-hook-uppercut combination that set the bag vibrating on its chain.
“I know men don’t enjoy shopping much, but I thought you would have at least enjoyed the company.”
Martina was like that, a bloodhound with the scent of vulnerability in her nose, ceaseless until she hunted it down and pinned it beneath her notice.
Her laugh filtered through the quiet room when I did not respond.
“Are you ready for me to call in your mother? Angela would love to take in a pretty stray. Your sisters would probably throw her a welcome party.”
The idea of Guinevere meeting my family was almost horrifying. They were not cut from the same cloth, but there was a synchronicity that I inherently knew existed between them. The big, boisterous family obsessed with living in each other’s pockets and knowing every single person’s business and a girl who was so clearly a little lost and lonely, and entirely too lovely. They would stitch together beautifully. Mama would harness Guinevere’s enthusiasm for Italian culture and teach her how to cook every Tuscan dish. Delfina would take her through the olive groves and vines, showing her how to test the fruits for readiness, educating her on Tuscany’s famous Sangiovese grapes, while Stacci and Carlotta would enfold her in family duties, pushing babies into her arms and laughing with her as she played with the young boys in the grass.
The vision was so vivid it took my breath away the way punching the merda out of the punching bag had failed to do.
“No,” I said curtly, but there was a wealth of reasons behind the syllable.
At the moment, I could convince myself this strange fascination I had with the American was lust. Heady. Dangerous. But acceptable. I was a red-blooded man faced with a gorgeous woman who needed my help. There were very few men who would not feel as I did in the same situation.
But if I saw her in my true home with the people I had given up my lifelong dreams for, I was aware that passionate intensity could morph into something entirely too heartbound.
“A hotel, then?” she offered sweetly, as if she was the kind of person who lived to be helpful. “She is so young—you’d want to make sure she was somewhere safe. As a concerned older guardian.”
I shot her a glare and caught the wide, shameless grin pinned to her face. “Vai a quel paese.”
Fuck off.
Her resulting laugh was bright and long. “Oh, Raffa, I only wish Leo was in town to see this.”
Cazzo, I was grateful he was at the villa with the family. Martina was pushy, but she had nothing on Leo, who would level me with one amusement-filled look and offer to be my best man at the wedding.
“Was there a reason you decided to bother me?” I demanded, and turned my focus back to the punching bag and the burn in my torso as I beat into it at a steady, punishing pace.
Jab, jab, right hook, uppercut, jab, jab.
“Oh, not really,” she mused blandly, pretending to check her fingernails as if she gave a shit about their appearance. “Probably nothing you’d be interested in because you don’t care much for the girl either way.”
“Spit it out, Tina,” I ordered as sweat dripped into my eyes.
“Va bene. Ludo found the man, Galasso.”
Immediately, my hands fell limply to my sides, and I turned on Martina with a snarl. “You tell me this now?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t know you’d be so . . . invested.”
“Cut the shit,” I demanded before tearing off my gloves with my teeth and shucking them to the floor. “Where is he?”
“They have him at Trattoria Umberto, in the cellar.”
“Why so public?”
“Ludo found him in town skulking around, and it was the closest place.”
“They will be in full dinner service upstairs,” I pointed out.
Another shrug. “It’s loud with the live music, and the cellar is beneath layers of concrete. No one will hear them. Or you, if you decide to deal with him yourself.”
I ignored her, already stalking out of the room to shower and change for the reckoning with Guinevere’s would-be assaulter. A human head was much better than a punching bag for relieving stress anyway.
The trattoria was in Santa Croce and filled with locals who tried to stay away from the chaos of central Florence during the summer months, when tourists descended on the streets like locusts. We had owned the restaurant for twenty years, since the proprietor Ambrigio’s wife was diagnosed with cancer, and they had no money to pay for the bills and her treatment. My father had stepped in with an offer of help, plenty of strings attached, and the trattoria had made us a tidy profit from its legal business as well as hundreds of thousands of euros in laundered money. It was also where I met with the odd local capo to discuss business over Ambrigio’s delicious bistecca alla Fiorentina and a bottle of Chianti or, on occasion, where I doled out punishment to rats and other bottom dwellers who interfered with my business.
Obviously, this visit was about the latter.
When I descended the steps into my own hellish dominion, Galasso was sitting at a wobbly old wooden table against a rack of wine. Carmine stood behind him with his arms crossed, his whipcord-lean frame made threatening by the sheer number of weapons discernible on his person: a gun in his shoulder holster, brass knuckles on one fisted hand, a row of knife handles visible above his waistband. Next to him stood Renzo, his younger brother, who made up for his age by being the biggest man I’d ever known, towering over even me at six foot six, with a neck as thick as a leg of prosciutto. Ludo, the third in my trio of trusted personal soldati, greeted me at the stairs, his heavy brow and slightly undershot jaw giving him a primitive appearance that was inherently threatening.
Sometimes, people made the mistake of underestimating me because of my good looks, which I always found utterly amusing. If I was attractive, it was because generations of my mafioso ancestors had been affluent enough to attract beautiful women despite their own lack of beauty until the end result was someone like me.
Beautiful and dangerous, as so many mythological beings.
Galasso muttered something behind the tape over his mouth and tried to stand up as soon as he saw me, but Renzo clamped a hand over his shoulder and forced him back down.
I ignored him completely, heading to the wine rack to pick a nice bottle of Brunello di Montalcino to share with my guest. It was the kind of expensive bottle that needed to breathe, so I moved to grab a vintage Murano decanter from a cabinet and transferred the red liquid into the glass with my back to Galasso. He watched me with wide eyes as I slid out the chair across from him and settled comfortably into it before placing the wine between us on the table. I sniffed the cork, then accepted two short glasses from my friend and poured Galasso and myself some of the fine vintage.
Sliding the glass across the table with one finger, I nodded slightly at Renzo, who reached forward to tear the tape from Galasso’s mouth.
“Figlio di puttanna,” he cursed viciously.
“Watch your mouth,” I encouraged him calmly, observing the play of the low cellar light in the garnet-red wine. “You would not want to ruin our civilized conversation by insulting my mother, would you?”
He glared at me, chin lifted pugnaciously. “What do you want with me, Gentiluomo?”
“Ah, so I see I do not have to introduce myself. That makes things easier. Though I do not know you, Galasso. Perhaps we should start with your introduction?”
When he didn’t immediately speak, I flicked my gaze to Renzo, who used the butt of his gun to pistol-whip the man.
He let out a cry, blood flying from his broken nose, but quickly after he murmured, “Galasso Pagano.”
“From?” I encouraged with a thin smile, as if this was just a polite interview.
Sometimes it was fun to play with your food before you destroyed it.
“Napoli.” He spat a wad of blood onto the floor beside the table. “Originally.”
“Ah, and how long have you been in our lovely Toscana?”
“Four years.”
Premonition skittered down my spine. Four years ago my father was killed. Four years ago I became a man I’d never intended to be. “Where do you work?”
“With the vines. Up near Pistoia.”
“What car do you drive?”
He blinked but answered easily enough, caught in the tide of rapid questions. “A 2012 Lancia Ypsilon.”
“Color?” I asked, deceptively calm even though my blood was surging through my veins, thirsting to spill some of his. I had armed myself with more information about him over breakfast with Guinevere, so I was ready to catch him out.
“Blue.”
Chi vince piglia tutto.
We have a winner!
“Well, Galasso, I am sorry my men bothered you. We have had trouble with rats, you see, and you have the distinct look of one.” I shrugged and gestured to his broken nose with my glass. “Maybe it is the nose? Either way, please accept my apologies. They acted without thinking as sometimes soldiers do.”
Galasso peered at me through his small brown eyes, brow furrowed as he chewed furiously over my words, testing their merit. I merely returned his gaze calmly.
Eventually, he sighed, and the tension in his shoulders dissolved a bit. “Thank you. I thought being brought in front of Il Gentiluomo had to be a mistake.”
“Yes, yes. Please, lift your glass and drink with me. It is a very fine vintage befitting an apology.”
Galasso was clearly not a clever man, because though he had heard of my reputation enough to know what they called me in the underworld, he raised his glass with a barely shaking hand and clinked it against my own.
“Salute,” we said in unison, and each brought the wine to our mouths.
I watched over the rim of the glass as Galasso took a deep draught of the Brunello di Montalcino red and then, finding it exemplary, he took another, longer taste.
When I lowered my glass without drinking, he did not notice.
“It is good, no?” I asked with a bland smile when he downed the wine like a heathen and set the empty glass heavily on the table.
“Excellent,” he admitted. “We make good wine in Pistoia, but it is mostly Vernaccia. It is nice to have a decent red.”
“You like wine, then.”
“Mmm, what Italian doesn’t?” He laughed, and the line of his shoulders loosened completely, his thighs spreading wider beneath the table. Getting comfortable.
“Of course. Wine, cars, and women.”
Understanding made his wizened brows lift. “This is why you asked about my car. Ah. I admit, it is not a fancy one. I bet you drive something slick. A Lamborghini.”
“Close.” I dipped my head and poured him another glass of wine. Watched his thick fingers close around the glass and imagined them closing around Guinevere’s thin ankle. “A Ferrari.”
“Aha!” he exclaimed, as if he had guessed correctly from the start. “I knew it. I love the Ferrari. What I wouldn’t give to drive one someday.”
I let the moment settle. Watched as he drank down more of that fine red wine.
“You know,” he said with a sly look. “It would be a good way to forget how your men treated me. That one with the face like a pig’s nearly put out my shoulder.”
In the corner behind me, Ludo grunted softly.
“Now, that is an idea,” I murmured, then looked up at Renzo over his shoulder. “You do not think my offer of wine is enough?”
He had to tread carefully to avoid further insulting me, but there was a sly cast to his gaze that intrigued me. “I have powerful friends, Signore. Not so powerful as you, but still, they are old school. They do not like one of their own to be mistreated.”
“What friends would those be?” I asked softly.
“Leonardo di Conte.”
I fought the smile that pulled at my mouth, but Carmine had to hide his behind a hand.
“Well, we would not want to upset Leonardo di Conte, would we?” I said somberly, even though the man he spoke of had been my lifelong friend, as close to a brother as I had ever had.
Obviously, Galasso knew enough to know about the mythical Il Gentiluomo, but not about my outfit.
“Will you get the keys, Zo?” I told Renzo. “The least we could do is let this poor man take a ride.”
Galasso’s eagerness leaked through the air, gaseous and nauseating. The charade was almost over, and I was finding it harder and harder to pretend.
“So you like red wine and vintage Ferraris. What kind of woman do you enjoy, Galasso?”
His name hissed through my teeth, a threat he was too inebriated to notice.
“Smooth,” he said, like the pervert he was. “Young and sweet. Ask any real man, he’ll tell you the same.”
I waited until his chuckles settled and then slowly got up out of my chair. “Come, let us go to the car.”
Galasso stumbled getting up but smacked Carmine’s hand when he tried to help, muttering a curse under his breath as he moved forward when I waved him down the hall ahead of me.
“I like them with eyes like a doe’s, wide and lovely brown,” I told him conversationally as we walked slowly down the winding, dark corridor carved into the ground. “Long dark hair soft as mink, and fast. So fast, you cannot catch them if you give chase.”
In front of me Galasso missed a step ascending to the next room and stilled, shoulders hunching slightly.
“Do you know such a girl, Signore Galasso?” I asked softly as I stepped too closely behind him, looming over his shorter frame. “A cerbiatta so enchanting you could not stop yourself from trying to hunt her down.”
“I don’t,” he argued until he felt the tip of the hunting knife in my hand pressed hard enough to draw a bead of blood, as red as our shared wine, against his neck. “H-how did you know?”
“Because that little fawn stumbled into the path of an even bigger predator as she fled from you.”
“You can have her!” he almost shouted, the words bouncing off the close walls. “I-I didn’t even touch her.”
“Oh, but I think you did. I think you touched her hip and then her ankle. I know you wanted to touch a lot more than that. Did you never learn, Galasso, that all women are too good for the likes of you? And unluckily for you, this woman in particular is so far above your thick head that now you must lose it for attempting to keep her for yourself.”
The door opened before Galasso so quickly, he didn’t have time to orient himself before I was shoving him over the ledge onto the black tarp Renzo had laid across the floor. The older man fell to his knees with a wailing moan for help.
Of course, there was no help to be had.
He’d trespassed into my underworld, where I was judge, jury, and executioner. Some capos relegated the blood work to their soldiers, but not me.
Especially not now.
Before Galasso could straighten from his unbalanced lean, I was on him. My fists were slightly sore from the beating I had given the leather bag in my basement, but that did not numb their efficacy at all.
One strike to the side of his head, already muddled by the drugs I’d slipped into the wine.
Another to his broken nose when I flipped him over and straddled his torso.
A trio to the cheeks—left, right, left—like the number of kisses Italians bestowed for good luck.
I thought of Guinevere alone in a foreign country, helpless and vulnerable on the side of the road, desperate for aid that came in the shape of this man beneath my knees. I thought of the half-moon smile and the low-lidded gaze peeking out beneath long lashes as she smiled shyly at me and the surprising edge of her bladed tongue.
Slowly, methodically, with an audience of three, I beat Galasso Pagano to death.
And when I was done, I carved “stupratore” into his forehead with the edge of my knife and watched as Ludo lifted the body in his gloved hands to transfer it to my vintage Ferrari waiting in the back alley, driven there by Carmine. He would take them into the countryside and stage a car crash somewhere deep in the valley. With his blood alcohol content high thanks to the drugs and the wine, there would be no doubt the accident was of Galasso’s own making.
Except for those letters across his forehead deeming him a rapist.
The police would not have enough to make a case for homicide, but those who lurked in the unlawful shadows would know a message had been sent from the Gentleman of the Camorra, and they’d live in fear of receiving it themselves.
Do not fuck with me or mine.
When I’d decided that Guinevere was mine, I was not sure and didn’t linger on. The point was, it had happened, and I wasn’t the kind of man to worry about why.
