Page 23 of I Would Die For You

She gulps, and it’s audible in the quiet of this soundproofed room.

“We need to talk,” she continues.

“Yes,” I sigh. “But not now. I have to go see the Don.”

She’s worked for him, even though she hasn’t swornOmertàto him. Many think it’s just a vow of silence the Mafia stick to, but it’s so much more than that. It includes a code of silence, yes, but it’s also a pledge of allegiance, a vow on our life and to give our life should we need to for the one we pledge fealty to—our boss, our Don. So she must know what it means to be called in. No one delays that beyond the utmost necessity.

She lets me disengage from her, and after I’ve put myself to rights, I clasp her cheek and drop a kiss onto her lips.

“I’m not engaged, Kaya. There’s no one but you.”

I hope this will help buoy her and keep our pending talk at bay for the foreseeable future. I recall Dino saying he needed to talk to me when I got in. Does he know something? As the Don’s bodyguard, he sees and hears a lot of things. Was he trying to warn me? Of what? Don Giacomo hasn’t given me a hint that he’s displeased with me lately.

My mind full of these questions, I force myself not to turn back and look at Kaya as I exit. Doing so will only make me want to stay, and I can’t have this right now. I need to know what the Don wants.

Once in the corridor, I halt Dino with a chin-nod. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

He sighs. “Are you marrying Lorena Bruno?”

“Hell no!”

Dino raises his eyes to the ceiling. “Grazie a Dio! Doing that, Stefano…” He shakes his head.

I get it, and he gets it, too. We’re the new generation, men who have been brought up to respect women, and most of us somewhat do this though some turn into chauvinist pigs occasionally. Lorena is eighteen. Robbing the cradle isn’t the mark of machismo it may have been thirty or forty years ago, like for men of my father’s or Cesare Bruno’s generation. Some of them married girls as young as fifteen with the bride’s parents’ blessing.

“I hear she caused a scene,” I say.

“You have no idea. These little girls playing at being grown women.” He sighs again, and by this point, we’ve reached the staircase leading to the mezzanine floor.

Dino nods up, and I take it as my cue to ascend and that we’ve dealt with what he wanted to talk about. Thank the Lord it’s nothing worse. So the summons from the Don may be a coincidence, coming from the mere fact I’m here tonight. Or he also wants to talk about the Lorena debacle. I roll my eyes at the sky and take a deep breath before knocking on the door.

When he bids me to enter, I go in and close the door behind me. In these lofty yet ultimately closed confines, I can smell the heavy whiff of sex on me. For fuck’s sake, I still have Kaya’s scent on my hand, having just used some tissues to wipe them dry before going out.

“I didn’t interrupt the fun, I hope.”

Don Giacomo’s lips are twitching slightly when he turns to me. So he’s going to take the piss. Fine by me.

“Just about done,” I reply.

“She came first.”

“Of course.”

It may sound odd to be speaking so freely of our sexual adventures, but my godfather is also my mentor. He took me to my first woman when I was sixteen, a girl from one of his brothels, and he told me in no uncertain terms my pleasure always came after I’d made my lover come—we owed it to a woman, he’d stressed.

“Good.”

His face transforms then, and a rush of ice climbs up my back. More than the tightness gripping his craggy features to make them even more fearsome, it’s the lack of whiskey glass in his hand which alerts me to the fact something dire is happening and I’m about to find out.

“Your father is retiring,” he says quietly.

This is something I’ve always appreciated about Don Giacomo—he doesn’t beat around the bush.

But then it registers.

“Perché mai…”

The words leave me before I can rein in my disbelief and utmost surprise. I think I would know if my father were about to retire, seeing as he’s, well, my father even though we’re not really on speaking terms right now.

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