Page 121 of My Dark Ever After
Everyone was dressed to impress, flaunting their wealth in designer suits and gowns, both men and women decked out in gems. Raffa and I had stood at the entry to the cemetery for over an hour greeting the guests, and I was surprised that most of them handed us baskets of cookies, sweets, and wine.
Raffa had explained it was custom in the south, where his mother was from, to give acannistru, or basket of sweets, to celebrate the dead, and it was a fitting hostess gift for the celebration.
There were also black chrysanthemums everywhere, throwing me back to that last night in the palazzo when the Venetian had sent an assassin to take us out.
“You are safe here,” Raffa murmured into my ear as if sensing my disquiet. “I have men crawling every inch of the perimeter. No one will get to you tonight. Or ever again.”
“Even you can’t promise that.”
“I can and I will. You saw how I killed Philippe. But you did not know they call me Il Gentiluomo because I leave notes on my corpses, little life lessons to warn my enemies.”
“What did you leave on Philippe?” I asked softly in the lull we had between conversations with endless mafiosi and their dates. “I thought you were going to feed him to the pigs?”
Raffa’s expression could not have been called a smile, though his mouth flexed. It was a dark, sinister twist of his lip that made me shiver in places I probably shouldn’t have. “He did not deserve such a subtle ending.”
“He strung him up in the Square of Miracles in Pisa, in the very same place Gaetano had told him to come if he ever wanted to see you alive again,” Martina said, appearing at our side with a martini, a skewer of olives raised to her lips. She ate one before finishing. “It was quite the spectacle. It was even in the papers.”
“The note read ‘Touch her and die,’” Carmine added, plucking the olives from Martina’s hand to swallow the last two down himself. “He has always been dramatic.”
“Says you,” Renzo said, pushing his brother away from Martina, either to punish him for stealing from her or to stop Martina from stabbing him in the eye with the skewer, as she looked very ready to do.
“Raffa,” I murmured, sliding my hand down his arm to squeeze his hand. “Why do I have a feeling that is about as romantic as mafiosi get?”
Martina laughed. “Because that’s probably true.”
“Well, he did fill an entire Uffizi exhibition with art that symbolized our love story last night,” I said slyly, because Raffa had left it to me to tell his inner circle—ourfriends—about our engagement. When I questioned why he had kept it from them, he said he wanted me to be the first person who knew, outside of my father, whom he had actually asked for his blessing.
I still could not believe he had given it.
But it gave me hope that the recent chasm between my father and me could be breached by the honesty and trust we were finally trying to communicate to each other.
“Cazzo, Raffa,” Carmine said as Ludo wandered over with a napkin piled withdolci dei morti, little cookies shaped like bones. “What was the occasion?”
“Maybe the fact that Guinevere survived being abducted?” Renzo asked dryly.
“Or the fact that she’s decided to stay with us?” Ludo added, flashing a brief smile, his mouth still filled with food.
“I had a very good reason,” Raffa agreed, lifting my ringed hand to his lips to kiss it.
“He asked me to marry him,” I admitted as my ring flashed in the candlelight.
“Dio mio,” Martina gasped, snagging my hand to raise it to her face.
“Merda,” Carmine muttered, bending over next to her.
“That’s quite the rock,” Renzo said, thumping Raffa on the back with such a broad grin, I almost didn’t recognize the taciturn man. “Congratulazioni.”
“Congratulations,” Martina crowed, throwing my hand in the air to practically suffocate me with a tight hug. “I am so fucking glad we get to keep you.”
“Me too,” I croaked as she tightened her hold.
“Try not to break my fiancée’s ribs, Tina,” Raffa drawled. “Her father will take back his blessing if one of mysoldatistarts breaking her bones.”
“Sorry,” she said with an unrepentant grin. “I am just so thrilled.”
“Me too,” Ludo declared, shoving Martina aside with a hip to encompass me in his wide, bulky arms. His hug was achingly gentle, those man-killing arms barely contacting my skin. “Happy for you. And me. I like my workout buddy.”
I laughed and kissed his cheek. “Me too.”
