Page 4 of Runaway in the Mafia
A tinge of guilt coasted through my veins when her face brightened. It wasn’t her fault. It was him. Even when he was gone, he fucking messed me up. But I couldn’t tell her that.
“You’ll have your meetings home again?” she asked hopefully. “The library is just fine,” she added hurriedly. “You don’t have to have them in Papa’s office.” She said it softly, but the unvoiced words hung heavy in the air.
“Just a few meetings, Mamma. Then I’ll move them to here.” Even though I hated people in my sanctuary, it would have to be done. Better than that shit place. No one visited me in my office in the city, anyway.
“If that’s what you want.” She sighed heavily. “Don’t just walk in and out then. At least see your sister. Lia misses you, too.”
I nodded, ready to be left alone.
She wrung her hands and looked at me. I didn’t know what she expected from me. A cosy lunch to discuss her fucking husband? “Alright then. I’ll let you be.”Finally.
She made her way to the door but stopped halfway there, past my desk. “Oh, I forgot to tell you I have a ward.”
I dropped the paperweight and looked up at her. “A ward?”
“Yes, isn’t that what you call them? Someone who is under my care?”
“Which one of my cousins are you going to mother now?”
She frowned. “Not a cousin. A girl I’m helping out.”
For fuck’s sake. She thought I didn’t know about her weekly visits to the women’s shelter she’d helped build. But there wasn’t much that I didn’t know. I let her do it because her steps were lighter when she left that place than when she entered, and God knew my Mamma deserved some happiness in her life. If helping runaway girls made her happy, so be it. But bringing one of those girls into her home was a whole new level of stupidity. She was bringing an outsider intoCosa Nostra.
“Is she one of us?”
“No.” Her jaw tightened with determination. “She’s special.”
As in not coated in criminal blood as we were?
I sighed. I was sick of being the bad guy. “Mamma, you know that’s not going to happen. She’s an outsider and…”
Her shoulders stiffened, and her eyes shone with determination. “She’s not. She’s my ward and don’t...” she held up her hand at me, “try to change my mind. She’s here to stay. The only reason I’m telling you is to warn you.”
I frowned. “Warn me?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “To stay away from her.”
My jaw ticked. Well, this was low, even for my mother. “What the fuck do you think I will do with some runaway girl?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Just keep your testosterone away from that girl. She’s gone through enough.”
I didn’t think I had ever had my mother warn me off someone. For all her shadowed words about me being exactly what Carlo was, this was the first time she’d outright told me she believed I’d fuck any girl I found in our home. My molars ground. You had to leave it to your Mamma to speak the truth.
She must have seen the pain in my eyes that I tried to conceal. Her voice softened. “It’s not only you. I have warned your cousins, too.”
“Yeah? Don’t forget Carlo’s womanising brothers, then,” I snarled. Papa was not a word I associated with Carlo.
“Them, too.”
“What’s so special about this girl?” A spark of curiosity ignited. What’s got Mamma ignoring her good sense and bringing this girl home?
“Everything. She’s not the type to be around made men.”
“What type is she then?”
“Not your type.”
CHAPTER TWO
