Page 19 of I Would Die For You

And it’s a good thing I’m feeling so on top of the world. My job description looks like it’ll be put to the test right away.

A group of girls is sitting in the lounge, and just one glance at them tells me they look like trouble. Dripping in designer labels in their barely-there clothing, expensive handbags, and glittery jewelry, their faces painted with makeup that’ll need a trowel to remove so thick it’s caked on, I don’t need to see the wine glasses on their table to know they’ll soon graduate to mayhem. Call it instinct or honed skills as the ‘slut’ of the school to zoom in on the mean girls in every circumstance.

Getting closer, it’s clear these young women, if they can even be called this, are barely out of high school. The makeup is to make them look like grownups, the heels and jewels like they’re playing dress up with their moms’ accessories.

I clock the second things will get rough. One of them, egged on by the group, gets up and starts to flirt with the bartender, Nico, who’s at least a decade older than them. Ever the professional, he doesn’t take the bait, which angers the girl. When she reaches for the placket of his shirt, I notice the bouncer, Sandro—who seems to have read the situation the same way I have—start toward her. But he doesn’t get to her until she’s pulled Nico to her and has slammed her mouth onto his, trying to force her tongue in as if she’s on a mission to check out his tonsils.

Don Giacomo is very clear on the rules: no one manhandles his employees, women and men alike. So the little vixen gets hauled by Sandro, and she’s refusing to go down. Her friends are rallying up, coming to her aid, though they’re no match for the beefy bouncer now being aided by Dino, the Don’s bodyguard.

“Go home,” Dino is saying. “Sober up before your parents find out what you’ve been up to.”

One of the girls, who looks like the ringleader of the gang the way she sicced the assailant onto poor Nico, steps up haughtily and looks down her nose at the men.

“Do you know who I am? You have no idea who is soon to be my husband, do you?” she shrieks.

This little girl is getting married? She’s barely out of diapers.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Dino is saying. “Not when you girls will be behaving like this in Don Rossi’s club.”

“You’ll regret this,” she hisses. “Once Stefano hears about this… Yes, Stefano Beccario is my fiancé,” she adds, gloating.

“We’ll settle this when he gets here,” Dino is saying. “In the meantime…”

I don’t hear the rest of his words, my ears having started to ring the second she uttered the name of her future husband.

There’s no doubt about it—she enunciated very clearly, and there aren’t two Stefano Beccario in Torino. This can only mean…Stefano has been lying to me all along? He’s engaged to be married, and in the meantime, he’s just having some no-strings-attached fun with me?

I thought we were having fun, too, but not like this. All of it, it was a lie, then?

And in this moment, I know it. I was kidding myself all this time, because the way this news is hitting me, like the blunt knife of betrayal is piercing through my chest, it means just one thing:

I’ve developed feelings for Stefano Beccario.

It means I’m totally screwed.

Chapter 7 Stefano

It’sbeeneasytoevade my father for the past week since our confrontation at lunch last Sunday. He’s got a few jobs to handle around the region, having been dispatched as the Don’s enforcer. A woman from another Albanian gang came forward and blew the whistle on some drug trafficking operation going on just outside town. Word must be going around Don Rossi is a man who will protect girls and not abuse them.

And all this must surely be thanks to Kaya. It’s because of her the women the Don’s men rescued from Jasir Daku’s prostitution operation spoke up, and look at the legacy this is leaving behind now.

Kaya. A smile beams on my face when I think of her. I’ve missed her. Spending all my nights with her, I’ve been remiss in thinking about the people in my entourage. My poor cousin has been completely neglected—not that Valentino lacked feminine attention to soothe his woes—but the bro-code deemed we were overdue for some bonding time.

We’d already planned to head to the Vinovo, Juventus’ training grounds just outside Torino, to catch the afternoon training session of the players now that the Serie A will debut again shortly. Then my other cousin Franco, one of Val’s younger brothers, dropped in on a surprise visit from London.

He’d only be staying for about twenty-four hours, so we took him along, and no one ever says no to ParisianLe Cordon Bleucookery school graduate Franco’s food. So we ended up back at my place, a convivial evening spent around good food, better wine, effortless conversation, and ending with Franco and me getting to our ongoing rivalry on the Xbox, purist Franco chiding me for not being into PC games. Good times, indeed.

But while it soothed a part of me, the one that’s always longed for siblings and a big family, I missed Kaya something fierce. I’ve been to sleep every night lately with her tucked in my arms and her head in the crook of my shoulder, her warm skin pressed against me and her rounded ass cradling my cock and balls.

That’s the place I want to be in every night now, and frankly, I’d thought such a notion would scare the shit out of me.

It didn’t. It even felt like something I was looking forward to, something I longed for.

Merda. This woman, she’s getting under my skin, like a splinter that’s burrowed but one I don’t want to expunge from my flesh. Instead, I want to grow around it, to take it in and make it a part of me, one that’ll always smart but which ultimately means I’ll feel. With her, I’m me, with no barriers up, no pretense ongoing, no persona to uphold.

So here’s me stalking into Demos tonight to find her. I don’t care what I have to do, but I’ll have her in some way before the hour is out, mark my words. She’s essential to me, as vital as the very air I need to breathe to remain alive.

Fuck, I’ve got it bad.

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