Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 148612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 743(@200wpm)___ 594(@250wpm)___ 495(@300wpm)
“Yeah, they’re good at all kinds of things.” She was noncommittal. She had always been careful never to talk about her family around Valentino, Dario, Giuseppi or even Greta. Thankfully, they didn’t ask her many questions, but even when asked the nicest, most basic question, such as how was everyone, she had trained herself to think carefully before answering cautiously.
“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.