Page 62 of Devil's Vows
“Gabriella…Gabi! Breathe, baby girl, just breathe. I’ve got you.” Ivan is there, cupping my head, his lips to my temple. “You’re safe, the girls are safe, and over my dead body will anybody touch you or them like that.”
Through the fog of memories, one thing appears fully formed and clearly visible, something he needs to understand.
“Nobody ever touched me,” I murmur against his shirt and then struggle up to look him in the eye to make sure heunderstands. “Men came, used the other girls, right there, but none of them ever touched me, because—because I belonged to Randazzo.” Even the priest left me alone, although I saw the sick desire shine in his eyes like the Devil’s greed. “And then, in the mornings, I’d wake up, and the girls would be gone. Just gone, and I’d have no idea what happened to them.”
And it haunts me.
“Just gone?” he whispers, his eyes searching mine.
I nod, tears streaming.
“Fuck,fuckfuckfuck,” he hisses as he takes my face with both hands and pulls me to him, dipping his head to press his forehead to mine. “But they never touched you?”
Not then, and no, not like he’d imagine when they did. “I belonged to Randazzo, his daughter, and I was to stay pure for the man I was going to marrying. To be used in negotiations when the time was right.” I swallow, needing to close the circle. “Nobody dared touch me. I was there for about two weeks before Mancuso dragged me into his car one afternoon. We drove for hours, through the night. By daybreak, we reached a small village with a convent. He rang the bell and just left me there, on the steps, as he drove off. I never saw him again.” But his last words to me still ring in my head.Let’s see if it goes any better for you in here, little whore.
“Fucking Mafia,” he spits out as he shifts in his seat. I push back at his harsh words, but he holds my head, staring into my eyes. “Randazzo is dead. You arehere. You aresafe. You understand?”
I nod. For now, this is all true, and he doesn’t need to know the rest. All the love he has for his girls…this will never happen to them because he won’t allow it. He’ll tear someone to pieces for even looking at them.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t had one of these panic attacks in ages.” I wipe at my tears, embarrassed that I had a meltdown in front of my boss, after his sister triggered me with her insinuations,even though this attack has been building for weeks. It’s been too much upheaval, too much change, Mother Lucia’s murder, coming back to America and reliving why I left it in the first place—it was just a matter of time.
“Never be sorry,” he says, brushing loose strands of hair from my cheek. “Just rest here and let me take care of you.”
31
IVAN
I gently stroke her hair as she drops her head to my shoulder in exhaustion. Her panic has run its course, and she’s nothing but a treasure of warm, soft woman in my arms, fragile and precious, fitting so perfectly, you’d think I’d been born to cradle her like this.
Nothing in all the footage I watched of her with the girls prepared me for this.
Gabriella might be calming down, collapsed against me and falling asleep judging by her rhythmic breathing and the way her hand slipped from my shirt, but I have rage piling up in me, brick by fucking brick for what she’s endured and witnessed, which by the rough brushstrokes she’s painted was barbaric, depraved—inhumane.
She might have grown up in an isolated religious environment, but on the way to the convent, she’s been exposed to the worst. My constant nightmare. My biggest dread. My core fear.
She hasn’t told me everything, but I won’t push her tonight. I’m amazed she even shared this much with me. All I can do is hold her, make her understand andfeelshe’s safe here, while Istew in my own murderous wrath. I could kill so many people right now. A pity half of them are already dead.
First on the list is fucking Don Scalera for selling his only daughter for whatever fucked-up reason he had. Second, Randazzo for buying her, trafficking her through some fucked-up Mafia gang, and then having the audacity to fucking die before I could get my hands on him. Then this Antonio Mancuso pitstop fucker would choke on his own dick if only he was alive for me to sever and serve it to him.
All five of her brothers for stepping into my trap blindly, as if they never saw this day coming.
Myself, for making another fucked-up Mafia deal where she’s just a pawn. The Mafia is bad, but the Bratva isn’t any better.
Inwardly, I quiver because my girls could be dealt the same hand if I don’t put my house in order. If I don’t have sons who will see to it that they don’t come to harm. Who will avenge them if they do. I might not live long enough to even see them married, safely, with men I approve of.
What the fuck does that even mean? Men I approve of? AmIon that list? This is the type of shit that’s been giving me sleepless nights.
And then there’s Milana, hellbent on going back to Russia, the last place she can go right now.
I drop my head back, seething at this world we were born into. I might be Bratva, and Gabriella might have been born in the Mafia, but at our core, we are the same, in the top echelons of two powerful organized crime rings, where the only way out is death. And until death takes us, we will fight with our very last breath to keep our positions because that’s the only way to protect those we love.
She stirs against me, her hand brushing over my chest, over my clavicle, shoulder, and down my arm to come to rest on my biceps. Her caress is slow and soothing, as if she can sense myrage tensing me up and she’s trying to calm me as I calmed her earlier. It only makes me want to hold her closer, because I’ve never been soothed like this.
I should get her to bed, but not here, not in her room. In my room, behind the security gate, where she can be with the girls and sleep close to me. In my bed, for once, next to me—even better, in my arms. I know she’s been disobeying me, sleeping on the sofa in my room and not in my bed as I told her to do.
“Ivan,” she says softly, startling me.
She’s been quiet for so long, I thought she’d drifted off.
