Page 91 of Mafia Darling

I grabbed my cups and hurried toward the register. Flustered, I reached for my wallet . . . and realized I didn’t have one. “Perdonami,” I told the cashier and looked up for Leo. “I forgot my money.”

She waved me off. “That is not necessary, Signora Ravazzani.”

How did she know . . . ?

Oh. I supposed everyone in the hospital knew who I was.

“No, please. We can pay.” I didn’t like the idea of getting things for free because of my husband’s last name.

My last name now, too.

Leo arrived and held out a few Euros. “I’ll pay you back upstairs,” I told him as we walked away.

“That is not necessary, signora. It is an honor.”

“Well, this is for you,” I said, lifting one of the three cappuccinos.

“Grazie,” he said as we walked back to the elevator.

The antiseptic smell clung in my nostrils, a perfume of loss and pain, a cocktail of human suffering that lingered inside these walls. I could still remember visiting my mother, holding her thin hand and crying. The twins hadn’t visited as often, so I’m not sure what their memories were of Mamma’s last weeks, but seeing her waste away had been fucking awful.

The elevator doors opened and we stepped in. I had to forget those memories and forget about Agent Rinaldo. Only my husband mattered right now.

* * *

Time moved slowly the next few days.

They took Fausto off the ventilator two days after his surgery. Not long after, his eyes fluttered open. There he was, alive and still with me. I pressed my forehead to his cheek. “Ti amo, baby.”

There wasn’t much more to say than that, because he drifted back into unconsciousness. The knot in my chest eased a tiny fraction. Our problems were far from over, but it was good to see his gorgeous blue eyes staring at me once again.

We decided I would spend nights at the hospital, while Zia would sit with Fausto during the day. This would allow me to go home and clean up, as well as see to the estate and business matters during Fausto’s recovery. The doctors were keeping him heavily sedated for the time being and they didn’t anticipate him leaving the hospital for at least a month.

Marco and Giulio took over Fausto’s office, the two of them sequestered in there for hours at a time. I knew they were trying to find the shooter and Enzo, as well as going over other mafia business. Every time I asked about what was going on, they evaded the questions, clearly trying to shield me. Except there was no reason to shield me any longer. I made my choice when I married Fausto, then again when I cursed out Agent Rinaldo in the hospital cafeteria.

Still, Giulio was steadfast in his refusal to involve me.

Zio Toni took me under his wing. He came over and met with me in my new office, which had been an old library that no one used anymore. We walked through all the legitimate businesses—the number of which absolutely made my head spin—and he shared the financial documents with me. I spent one whole day just trying to wrap my brain around Fausto’s laptop, including the bizarre naming system he used to keep the Guardia off his ass.

If nothing else, this experience taught me that my man was clever.

And rich.

I knew he was rich, but this was on another level. He owned companies throughout the world with hundreds of thousands of employees, and this didn’t include the illegitimate businesses. Those made money hand over fist. Put it all together and I couldn’t even fathom his net worth.

I enjoyed the work. It gave me something to do, something to distract me from worrying about everything else going on. The first thing I did was tackle his email in-box, which was something of a catastrophe. Fausto wasn’t big on responding, clearly, which left tens of thousands of unopened emails. The number of notifications made the back of my neck itch.

“You can see he’s old school. He prefers to talk rather than write,” Zio Toni said with a chuckle when I pointed this out.

“But how does he know there isn’t something important in here?”

“He waits until I call him to tell him something important is in there.”

I rubbed my forehead and stared at the overflowing in-box. “Isn’t that incredibly inefficient?”

“Yes,” Toni said without hesitation. “But I can’t get him to change, no matter how many times I bring it up.”

“He needs, like, an executive assistant to manage his shit.”

---