“Just so you know, Val never touched another woman, Emme. I don’t interfere in relationships. It’s all bullshit to me, but what Miceli said about him and the way he feels about you, that’s not true in any way. You have enough to deal with without listening to that bastard.”
She gave him the briefest of smiles. “What are you really doing out here, Dario?” It didn’t make sense that he’d come looking for her when he was wounded. He was hurting. He refused to take painkillers. He didn’t want anything impairing him when he was defending Val and Giuseppi.
“Came looking for you.”
“Val send you?”
“Says you’re upset. He needs to see for himself you’re not hurt. Physically, that is. He wants to help with the rest of it. Doesn’t like anyone else comforting you when he can do it.”
Those dark eyes bored into her. Saw too much. He was like Stefano. Ruthless. Merciless. No give in him. Loyal to a fault, but willing to do things unimaginable to her. Unfortunately, she knew Val was the same way. In the early days, she hadn’t thought so. She’d believed him to be sweet and kind because he always was to her.
Valentino might have been Giuseppi’s son, but he’d been adopted. She had thought he wasn’t of the same bloodline. He didn’t have those violent tendencies. She was so positive. She’d been nineteen when Greta had told her that Val’s father had been Giuseppi’s youngest brother. That was when she realized he did have the same bloodline. More, he might have been even more ruthless than Giuseppi. He just hid it better.
Dario came from that same line of ruthless blood. She had no idea who his mother was; Valentino had never said, only that Miceli had refused to marry her or even claim Dario as his child for many years. There was quite a bit of mystery surrounding Dario. She should have had Rigina and Rosina Greco, her cousins, both investigators and hell on wheels with computers, find out everything they could on him. It was very hard to hide from either one of the women once they decided to hunt you with their keyboards.
“He’ll have to get used to it, won’t he?” Emmanuelle dug her fingers into the column and turned her gaze out over the lake. “The cops will be swarming all over this place. He’ll hate that. I hate it. This was our place.” She knew Dario would hear the sorrow in her voice, but she didn’t care. He knew she loved Val. What was the point in trying to hide it?
“Why are you giving him up? Are you back to being the good little girl? Your family telling you what to do, Emme?” Dario taunted.
“I wish I were the good little girl, Dario. I wish they had ordered me to give Val up. They did when I was a kid.” She had to be honest. “But then they left it up to me, until he hurt me. Until he shattered me. Don’t ever love anyone that much, Dario.” She whispered the last to him, turning to look at him. “I have to let him go and there won’t be anything left of me. I know that, but there’s his world and there’s mine. Just don’t love like this.”
“I’m not capable, Emme.” Dario studied her face. “That night. When you came to his room, how did you get into the house?”
She shrugged and turned away from him. “I’m a Ferraro, Dario. I can do a lot of things.”
“You were going to leave your family for him then, weren’t you?” He stood up, stepping back to allow her through the door. Too many vehicles were hurtling up the drive toward them, sirens blaring.
“Does it matter?” She stepped into the entryway.
“I think so.”
“Yes. I would have given up everything for him.”
“What’s the difference now that you know for certain he wasn’t cheating on you?”
He deliberately trapped me. She knew he had. He knew things she didn’t. She couldn’t say that aloud, although she was certain Dario had that same knowledge.
“I’m a little more mature now. I understand his world a little better, and maybe him. He’s far more ruthless than I realized, and more caught up in a world of crime than I could probably live with.”
“And the Ferraro family isn’t?”
Emmanuelle didn’t answer. She avoided the master bedroom. Instead, she headed to the control room, where Enzo and Emilio were casually wiping clean every camera as if none of them had been recording.
CHAPTER SIX
Emmanuelle loved Stefano’s home. One wouldn’t ordinarily think of a hotel penthouse as an actual home. The suite took up the entire upper floor. Before Francesca, the rooms had been cold, without personality, more like a place to do business than a place to live. Once Francesca had moved in, every room had undergone a transformation, just as Emmanuelle’s oldest brother had. The transformation might have been subtle in Stefano, especially to an outsider, but all of them could see the happiness in him. That was the way Emmanuelle thought of the penthouse—a place of absolute happiness.
The kitchen was often the gathering place. Taviano and Francesca both loved to cook and were excellent at it. The table was large, and they would surround it, talking and laughing and filling Emmanuelle with hope and love of family, something she needed when she knew she had lost the love of her life—the only man she would ever love. Over the last two years, Stefano’s kitchen had saved her sanity more than once.
Sometime over the last year, Elie had been accepted as a family member, coming and going just as her brothers did, in and out of Stefano’s home and sitting with them at the kitchen table, laughing and talking, sharing that same love. Emmanuelle knew he needed it the same way she did. He’d lost his one chance at the real thing as well. She could see the knowledge in his eyes, even if the others couldn’t.
She’d asked Stefano not to invite anyone but her brothers to the meeting. He’d raised an eyebrow, but he’d complied. She hadn’t even wanted sweet Mariko or Nicoletta there. She didn’t know if she was ashamed of the things Miceli had said over his radio, knowing his men as well as every single one of her people could hear. She only knew she felt as if she were being crushed under a terrible weight. No matter which path she chose, she would lose.
Valentino, Dario and Giuseppi were just two floors beneath them. They had a suite half the size of Stefano’s home. It was enormous, one they could easily live in, with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms. They could have guards with them as well. Stefano had assigned only his most trusted staff to clean and stock their suite. Drago and Demetrio would check them before they entered the room to clean. There would be no substitutes.
Emmanuelle had deliberately avoided going to see Valentino, afraid she would lose her resolve. She had to tell Stefano the truth, now that she knew other riders could be in jeopardy. She hadn’t known before, but she had no excuse now. She couldn’t settle, pacing back and forth, the buildup of nervous energy overcoming the pain that had begun to come through from the pounding she’d taken from Mo’s fists.
“Emme, you need to just come out with it. Get it over with.”
Stefano’s voice always grounded her. He spoke low. A velvet growl of command. No one would ever mistake him for anything but the leader. When he said to do something, you just did it.
She couldn’t look at her brothers, feeling as if she’d betrayed them. Vittorio loved Grace so much. Grace had almost been kidnapped. Everyone thought it had been over a gambling debt her foster brother owed, but now she knew it was because Grace’s shadow was like her shadow. And Nicoletta …