Page 33 of My Dark Ever After
“It will be,” he stated firmly, like his belief alone could make it so. “Enjoy the view. I’ll make sure Ludo knows where you are.”
I nodded, turning away from him to the shadowy mouth of the stairwell.
“Follow the light to the top,” he instructed before closing the door and leaving me alone in the dark.
I listened to my own harsh breaths for a moment, willing my heart to slow and my equilibrium to balance. When I felt steady, I sucked in a deep breath and started up the narrow, winding stairs.
Leo’s words had touched on the questions that lay at the foundation of my tension with Raffa.
Was I brave enough to love him for who he was and courageous enough to stand beside him in the criminal underworld he reigned in?
And did I really know the whole truth?
Both Raffa and Leo had implied that I did, but knowing that Raffa was a mafioso was the tip of the iceberg. Had he killed many men? Any women or children? Did he have morals or rules of conduct when he was free to write them as he pleased? What was the ethical tapestry of a made man? What was the structure of that kind of business and organization?
There were considerably more questions than answers. If I wanted to know Raffa, the real man and not the one I’d idealized, I would have to let my natural curiosity lead me into trouble once more. Only this time my eyes would be wide open, fixed on the treacherous nature of the steps I took forward.
The first questions I had to ask were of myself.
I wasn’t a stupid woman.
College educated, bright enough to graduate top of my class, I had always been complimented for my intelligence and puzzle solving.
So had I really been so blind to the hints that Raffa was something darker than Prince Charming? Or had those very clues drawn me in even closer, a glittering lure leading me through murky waters?
I might have been the good sister and daughter, the A+ student and sheltered sick girl, but I was also the woman who fantasized about spankings and bondage. The one who thought a necklace of love bites was just as pretty as one of jewels. The one who watched violent movies because the action excited her, and the one who got aroused, sometimes, when she learned MMA and took an opponent to the mat. There was something hungry in the heart of me, and Raffa had been the first person to see it. To feed it full.
So maybe I hadn’t acknowledged his darkness, but had I secretly known or willfully turned a blind eye to continue living out the fantasy of my Italian hero?
Maybe.
Pink light splashed across the stones at my feet, warming my ankles like tropical water as I reached the top of the stairwell and stepped out onto the small platform under the peaked tower roof. The bell was almost as big as the space, a great big iron bulb. Archways opened the enclosure at regular intervals, revealing a stunning view of the piazza filled with colorful, costumed revelers and the band playing away in one corner. Beyond that, down the slope of the hills leading away from town, were countless rows of vines marking this as a part of the famous Chianti region. Everything was covered in honeyed light dripping from a multihued sky that seemed to melt into itself, vivid pink to orange to softening yellow and blue.
It was breathtaking.
I followed my impulse to lean through an archway, elbows braced on the warm stone and chin propped on my hands so I could enjoy the rest of the sunset by myself, way above the teeming mass of Italians.
I don’t know what it was exactly that alerted me to the presence of someone in the stairwell, because they didn’t make a sound. It was just a vague sense, honed over months of paranoia and recent trauma, that tickled the back of my neck like a cool breath.
I was no longer alone.
Adjusting my stance casually, I moved so the entrance of the stairwell was in my peripheral vision and the blurred movement in the shadows of the lowering dusk light solidified into a human form.
I had nothing on my person except the cell phone in my cardigan. Carefully, so my arm hardly twitched, I dipped my fingers into my pocket and pulled out the phone. I thumbed the screen open and hit Raffa’s name in my Favorites.
Just as the faint whisper of a ring began, the person stalking me decided to pounce.
They lunged out of the darkness onto the small platform, intending to tackle me, maybe, or force me into the corner.
But I was already moving, twisting with the half wall at my back so I was no longer in the corner. The man couldn’t stop himself mid-motion, so I could use his own momentum against him and shove him harder into the half wall. His head cracked against the stone with a sickening sound, but he recovered quickly.
When he turned to face me, forehead split and bleeding heavily above one eye, his hands were lifted as if in surrender.
“I am not here to harm you,” he said in slow, careful Italian. “I am a friend.”
I could hear Raffa’s voice calling out from the phone in my pocket.
“I don’t know you, and usually when someone sneaks up and lunges at you, they don’t have friendly intentions,” I countered, shifting so I was closer to the stairs.
