Dante’s in his low belly.
But Jacopo didn’t go down.
His face clear and cold, eyes filled with pain that was more spiritual than physical, he fired a shot straight at Agostino.
At me.
He was a turncoat. A traitor. And it was clear that he’d never totally approved of me.
So I felt one moment of fear that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Because the bullet didn’t touch me.
It went straight through Agostino’s skull.
He collapsed to the ground behind me.
In front of me, Jaco swayed, his free hand going to the base of his throat were the wound bubbled grotesquely.
When he fell, Dante was there to catch him, lowering him to the ground gently, going to his knees beside him.
“Cazzo, Jaco,” he cursed, pressing a big hand to the wound in his neck.
I dropped to my knees and pressed both of my hands to the one in his belly.
“Are you okay?” Dante demanded, his eyes wide and matte black. “Tell me, merda, are you all right!?”
“Yes, yes, focus on Jaco. I’m fine.”
Adrenaline had eradicated whatever damage Agostino had done to me. I was pure energy, all of it focused on the dying man who had stood between Dante and a gun.
“Why?” Dante murmured, pressed his hands even harder around the seeping wound. “Why didn’t you just tell me, you stubborn stupido?”
Jaco’s lids fluttered, his breath a wet rattle. “Family shame. Started with my father. D-Didn’t want to hurt you, D.”
“Stai zitto,” he ordered. “Shut up. You can explain when you are healed.”
Jaco tried to laugh, but blood spurted from his mouth like a mini geyser. “’Fraid not, fratello. ’S okay. I go to Bambi and Papa.”
“Jacopo.” Dante’s voice was ravaged with tears, his face so taut with anger I thought it would crack in two. “You idiot. I would have protected you all.”
A little smile teased the bleached edges of his mouth, but Jaco didn’t open his eye again. Blood leaked from the corners of his lips and trailed down his chin.
“Can’t protect the w-whole world. Call me your brother before I go,” he whispered, hardly any sound. “Forgive me.”
“Fratello,” Dante murmured, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Ti amo sempre, fratello mio.”
I will love you always, my brother.
Tears dripped down my own face as Dante held his cousin in his lap and watched him die, choking slightly on his blood then going still. His face relaxed with peace and Dante kissed him again on the forehead as he murmured a prayer for the dead in Italian under his breath.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
I knew they were coming closer because I’d left my phone in the closet.
My heart stopped then restarted with an awful electric shock. I shoved to my feet and sprinted to the kitchen cabinet to throw the door open.
Aurora sat huddled in the shadows at the back, hugging her knees to her chest as she rocked herself, tears dripping from her cheeks.
“Vieni, gattina mia,” I murmured, bending into the cabinet to pick her up. “Come here, sweet girl.”
She clutched at me, her nails breaking the skin on my arms as she practically crawled up my body into my embrace. I held the back of her head and bottom as I stood up, careful to keep her from seeing the dead bodies in the living room.
Although she had just spent the last half an hour in a closet listening to her mother, father, and uncle die.
She was so quiet, crying silently in my arms, until Dante stalked forward, his face like a thunderclap. She didn’t flinch as he approached even though I almost did, he looked that ferocious. Instead, she turned in my arms and launched herself into his, sobbing the second she hit his chest.
Blood dripped down his wrist to the floor from the wound in his left arm but he didn’t seem troubled by it. He curled her against his big torso, curving his shoulders inward, wrapping her tightly in his arms as if he could shield her from the pain.
He couldn’t.
Neither of us could.
I moved into them, wrapping one arm around Dante’s waist and the other around Aurora, who grabbed my hand and lifted it to her cheek cuddly it desperately.
We stood there together, silently, mourning, as the sirens grew louder and finally, red and blue blocks of light spiraled through the bloody crime scene.
Thirty-Three
Elena
Six months later.
Dante didn’t like it.
It was the only way, but I understood his reluctance. I never wanted to be within ten feet of another di Carlo ever again.
That Family had worked their asses off to ruin Dante’s. To ruin mine.
Now the New York Salvatores were a unit of four; Tore, Dante, Aurora, and me, though we still had our family by choice at our backs.
Which was why Dante eventually agreed with my plan to parlay with Gideone di Carlo, the new Don of the Cosa Nostra.
If we wanted to adopt Rora it was the only way to do it.
Technically, Gideone had legal rights to be her guardian as he was her only surviving blood relative. If we wanted to make her ours, we needed him to surrender those rights.
Surprisingly, it was Gideone who had reached out to me after the massacre at Bambi’s house. The crime was all over the news, throwing Dante and I into the spotlight again in a way I could have done without. Thankfully, it was obvious because of Bambi’s restraining order against Agostino and her records at the hospital proving his abuse that he was to blame for the circumstances of Jacopo and Bambi’s deaths.
We were free from blame legally, but not morally.
All three of us had been shell shocked by that night.
Dante couldn’t sleep most nights for the guilt he felt about not realizing their situation sooner, for not pressing Jacopo about his strange behavior or forcing Bambi and Aurora to live at his place.
Aurora, of course, was the most deeply affected by it. She couldn’t stand to be away from Dante or me at all so we had to work our lives around one of us being with her at all times for the first month she lived with us. She didn’t trust strangers and she didn’t want to go back to school where she felt exposed and vulnerable. Sometimes, at home, when I couldn’t find her, she was hiding in a cabinet in the kitchen or the bathroom. She told me it made her feel safe.
She broke my heart every single day.
Thankfully, we took her to see the best childhood psychologist in Manhattan, an old friend of Dante’s from his days at Cambridge, and within four months of bi-weekly therapy, Aurora was starting to be more like her old self again. She’d even agreed to have a sleep over at Mama’s house last weekend.
It was a process and I knew it would be a long one.
I hadn’t had the same childhood trauma, but I’d had my own and it had taken me twenty-seven years to get over the brunt of it.
I hoped that the love and affection of the rest of her family would go a long way to healing her much more quickly than I had.
Which brought us back to the little café Yara had first taken me to nearly a year ago to tell me her own mafia story.
I was close with the shop owners now, Andrea and his wife, Guilia, and they greeted us with big smiles and kisses as we turned up that Friday morning to meet with Gideone.