Page 82 of My Dark Fairy Tale
Merda, she was phenomenal.
“I thought we wanted to phase out the drug trafficking?” Martina reminded me. “We’ve shifted a lot of those old resources into the wind business.”
Green tech was a new and burgeoning industry in Italy and across Europe that we had jumped into on the ground floor. We had earmarked half a million euros to bribe local officials to get permits for even more wind farms this year after grossing over thirty million euros off them last year. The lack of government regulations and increasing need for green energy made it a perfect business for the family.
And it was considerably less harmful than the drug industry.
But this could not be helped if we wanted to get the DIA off our backs.
“We outsource it,” I explained. “Pull Clan Burette in to take over the operations. Get them set up with the mini submarines in Genoa with Gerlando. He still runs the x-ray machines at the port? Perfect. We connect them. Then the Albanians owe us a favor, the Grecos are fucked, and we toss Burette a bone after I publicly set down his daughter last night in front of half of Florence. Three birds, one stone.”
“Stealing the Albanians’ business back from the Grecos isn’t enough of a punishment for those motherfuckers,” Ludo grunted.
Which was true.
“We could—” Renzo started.
“No, we are not killing any of them.” I shot my bloodthirsty enforcer a look. “We are trying to get off police radar, not invite further scrutiny.”
“It’s not like the Gentleman not to send a message,” Martina mused, staring at me shrewdly. “Do you have another idea?”
The Grecos had tried to undercut my authority by planting an earworm with the DIA that I had secretly taken over my father’s illegal enterprise and was smuggling drugs into Livorno. It was only fair to turn that police attention back on them.
“Call Drita,” I told Carmine, grinning like the cat who ate the canary. “Set a meet and explain things to her. I think she can be convinced that the Grecos need further punishment, too, and what better way to do that than getting the DIA’s eyes on someone else?”
Martina laughed, bright and happy and edged with evil intention. It had always been one of my favorite sounds, and I grinned at her then. It was in moments like this, problem-solving, maneuvering the constant moving parts of an illegal empire, that made me forget why I had ever shunned this way of life.
It was dangerous, yes, but at the end of the day, it could also make you feel something more than just alive. It could make a mortal man feel like a god.
But when Guinevere popped her head back into the room and announced she had made us all an American breakfast, I realized that my little fawn had the very same effect.
“Cerbiatta mia,” I said as we moved out of the study toward the sumptuous scents from the kitchen and terrace, my arm around her waist. “How would you feel about visiting an Italian beach one day?”
Chapter Eighteen
Guinevere
Living with Raffa was both incredible and frustrating.
Incredible, because his palazzo was a work of art and history that his cook, Servio, and housekeeper, Annella, had countless stories to tell me about. It had originally been constructed in the sixteenth century by Gherardo Silvani for one of the wealthiest merchants in the city and later sold to a local eccentric art lover, who had commissioned Il Garofalo to paint on the ceiling in the living room a mural depicting a woodland setting besieged with wild animals and a naked nymph hiding in the greenery, the goddess Diana painted beside a huge buck in the foreground.
It made me wonder if Raffa had drawn inspiration for my nickname from the otherworldly imagery.
So living in a breathing testament to Florentine history was amazing daily, as was getting to know the motley crew Raffa seemed to have at his beck and call. Despite my negative first impression of him, Carmine proved to be almost ridiculously charming and an incredible storyteller. He regaled me with stories about his youth trailing after Raffa; his older brother, Renzo; and Leo in the Tuscan countryside. The games they would play and the trouble they got into—apparently Leo almost got them all suspended for a rude prank he pulled on one of thenuns at their primary school. He was just as chatty as I could be, and I found myself seeking him out whenever the villa was too quiet and Raffa was busy with work.
I already knew and liked Martina, though her ruthless teasing never failed to make me blush. She was incredibly smart and had taken to furthering my Italian-language education by giving me actual homework and quizzing me over mealtimes.
“If you want to be with a Romano, you must speak Italian,” she had explained seriously.
“I leave in three weeks,” I’d reminded her, but she had only sniffed and continued with our lessons.
I was grateful.
It made it easier to speak to Ludo, who did not speak English as well as the others but whom I liked the best. He was quiet and unassuming, not particularly handsome but with a set of the sweetest brown eyes I’d ever seen. When Raffa was too busy to go on my runs with me, Ludo would come. They were often silent journeys, but I enjoyed his peaceful energy and occasional keen observations.
He was also happy to aid me in my search for Italian relatives. I figured if anyone could find information on my family tree in Tuscany, it was the man who ran investigations for Raffa’s investment firm. We didn’t have much more to go on than the fact that my father had immigrated to the United States twenty-six years ago and was born somewhere in the countryside close to Florence. He had changed his name when he immigrated, but I knew he was born with the first names Mariano Giovanni.
Italian recordkeeping was notoriously unorganized and not digitized, most of the information kept on handwritten papers in local record offices, but Ludo promised to do his best with such solemnity that it made me believe he’d make more progress than I ever had.
