Page 49 of I Would Die For You

“The Don is handling things in Italy?”

I nod. Now that’s one notion I didn’t want to dwell on. His comment brings it back to slam full force into my chest. I can’t unhear the words, can’t undo the thoughts that have crossed my mind since the night I came to see Kaya only to find she wasn’t at her studio. The night she was having dinner at the Don’s house, then we all left Italy before we could really talk.

“I think she’s met Giuseppe.”

The words blow out of me like the pin from a grenade.

Val frowns. “She did?”

“The Don asked her to dinner at his house. No one visits his place without an invite because that’s where his son is.”

And he called her “cara” more than once. Did he mean it as a superfluous endearment, or literally like ‘my heart’? He also asked her to trust him, to come back to him…

“What do you think it means?” Val asks with a careful measured tone.

The truth I’ve refused to see, imagine, or face in the past few days.

“He wants her.”

She was his before she ever became mine, after all. He let her go, but now, we’re all going back. She’ll be under his protection—mine might hold weight in most circles as an enforcer. But he’s a full-fledged Don.

“You can’t be serious,” Val chides.

He’s not dismissive, just thinking I’m being paranoid.

“You only met Giuseppe after two years in Torino. She… He never introduces any woman to him.”

“True. But that’s still—”

“Far-fetched? He asked me to bring her backto him.”

“But you’re married to her.”

“You think that’ll mean jack-shit? He’s a Don.”

MyDon, I don’t add. My vow of allegiance is to him, even superseding the ones I made to my wife.

Silence blankets us for a long moment. Val takes a deep long breath. “What are you going to do?”

Hell if I knew how to answer that. All I know with one hundred percent certainty is that every fiber of my being screams that she will forever remain my wife.

Chapter 16 Kaya

Equalpartsrefreshedandgroggy is how I feel when I emerge from sleep. It’s strange—I wasn’t expecting to find myself in the cool mint-green tones of the guest bedroom I’d been occupying at the Andretti residence in New Jersey.

It seems to me so much has happened, and it’s all hazy like a dream. Going back to Portland, seeing my dad at the casino with Evan Monroe, then back at the trailer…a man slitting his throat, the knife coming at me next.

My gasp resounds though I also don’t register it. That shiny blade. Then the guy wobbled, and I remembered what to do with a john who was getting violent—security there taught us this move so we could win a few seconds until they could intervene. A flat-palmed slap to his Adam’s apple. That took him by surprise, and I grabbed the knife… Did I slam it into his neck?

All this had been feeling like a nightmare I was reliving, and when the smell of warm, coppery blood registers in my nose, bile surges up, and I’m scrambling to reach the bathroom where I retch into the toilet bowl.

All of it did happen. I was out of it in a way, but not so out of it that I don’t remember. The man falling down in a slump. Stefano being there, cradling me to his chest. Every time I close my eyes, I remember the feel of his strong, solid arms around me, and a measure of solace enters me, my breath not so erratic anymore.

I killed a man… My head goes down, and I’m retching again.

What did I do? But I had no choice, did I? He would’ve killed me. And he’d have taken great pleasure from it, too. I can still picture the evil gleam in his eyes as he’d lunged—

My stomach upchucks again.

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