Page 18 of Vita Mia

“I saved your life. If my brothers had known you recorded any of it you would be dead. I saved your life and now I want to make it up to you.”

“How? Why?”

“I can help you get your life back. You stopped vlogging, right? You don’t even have social media accounts. It’s like you disappeared after that night.”

“Of course, I disappeared. I researched you, MiaBella. I know all about Giovanni Battaglia. What he did to his family and friends in Italy, and how he died. I know everything. You people are something else!”

MiaBella flinched.

She lowered her gaze. “I guess I deserve your disgust. But you’re wrong. You know nothing about my family. Neither does the world. Not until recently.”

“I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Listen to me. Lola. She’s making the charts; she’s becoming a really good singer. Have you noticed? She’s up for three Grammy’s this year.”

“I hear her songs everywhere now.”

“The press is relentless. The blogs, the gossip sights, they are digging up her past. And... it’s drawing the wrong attention to her and my family.”

“So what? They know who she is and who her father is. It’s all online, all you have to do is Google it. They know your father tried to kill him. His own cousin.”

MiaBella shook her head.

“They don’t know the real truth. Nobody does Ryder. But you’re right. The lies are all on google. And secrets can’t last forever. It’s time my family’s story, the real story, be told.”

“I don’t understand how that involves me.”

“My mother lives in Sicily now. She has agreed to meet with you.”

“Why?”

“She wants to tell you her story. Who she is, how she fell in love with my father, and what happened to our family. The real truth. She wants her story out to protect Lola, and all of us. She wants to be the one to confess it all to the press.”

Ryder’s eyes stretched. He did indeed research her. There were rap songs, documentaries, books, and movies made about the Battaglias. But most of it was myth and legend, because Mirabella Battaglia hadn’t been seen in public in more than a decade. No one got close to her.

“Think about it Ryder. You thought the Illuminati and exposing them would make you infamous. What do you think telling the true story of America’s darling fashion designer who married a mobster and disappeared from the world would mean?”

“She’s going to tell all of this to me?”

MiaBella grinned.

“It was my idea. I went to her before my brothers could hire a reporter. I confessed Ryder. I told her what happened, with us. And I told her what happened to you and your family because of me. I know there isn’t a chance for us, or for me to make anything up to you. But this is the deal of a lifetime. Will you come to Sicily and meet with her? Will you let us tell you who the Battaglias are?”

“But I’m not a journalist.”

“You can be whatever you want to be. If you record my mother telling the world the truth, you will be bigger than any journalist today.”

Ryder sweated under his armpits and his stomach did summersaults over the prospect. “When?”

“You leave with me tonight.”

“Tonight? I can’t—“

“It’s a small window of opportunity. My brothers don’t like the idea. They could change my mother’s mind. We have to go immediately to see her. Once we get there you’re safe, she’ll protect you.”

“Where is she?”

“A place called Bagheria in Sicily. It’s where my father’s people are from.”

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