Mercenary (Gangsters of New York #3) - Bella Di Corte Page 0,130

not understanding, until she did. She shook her head. “We will fight.”

“We will,” I said. “But I’ve seen it before. Even if I get parole, I’ll probably serve no less than sixty. It just depends on how many years I get. That’s what I’m preparing for.”

She tried to push away from me, but I held her close. She stared at me before she looked at Eleonora and then at her stomach.

“What can we do?” she whispered. “I refuse to accept this.”

“This is my life,” I said. “I go down with this family.”

“Your suit still on,” she hissed at me. “To the very end.”

I nodded.

This time she pushed away from me. “Not a gentleman’s suit, an orange jumpsuit,” she said, crossing her arms over her stomach.

One hard knuckle knock came at the door. Rocco Fausti stuck his head in. “Tito forgot his hat.”

He must have come with Mac. They were as close as two thieves.

He strode into the room, picking the hat up. He stuck it on Eleonora’s head, making her laugh when she knocked it off. He touched her chin after, and she smiled and giggled at him. He nodded at my wife.

She turned her face toward mine, narrowing her eyes when she noticed how I was looking at her. I’d been watching her eyes to see if she’d blink at him.

He shut the door, but his expensive fucking cologne lingered in the room.

Alcina took my chin in her hand. “He does not matter. Nothing else matters. But us. This moment.”

“You going to stay faithful to me for a hundred years?” I said to her. “When I’m locked behind bars and men like him are hovering around you constantly?”

“I will stay faithful to you until the day I die,” she said, squeezing my chin, coming down and giving me a kiss that was even more solidifying than a blood vow. “You have me forever, Corrado.”

“For every sunrise,” I said.

“For every sunset, too. You are my night, and I am your moon,” she said in Sicilian. “Something to live for. Something to die for. You are my body, and I am your heart. For as long as there is a breath in me.”

Epilogue

Alcina

Seven Years Later

“Orlando!” I screamed across the groves. “Bring me your bucket.”

“Let him go,” Rocco said, smiling at me as he passed. “He is just being a man.”

I pursed my lips, shaking my head. “He is not a man,” I said. “He is a boy.”

“Mamma,” Orlando said, coming to stand in front of me. “But I, ah—”

“Ah-ah!” I put my finger to his lips, trying not to laugh when he went cross-eyed at me for a second before his eyes looked up and focused on me. I ran my hand through his sweaty black hair. “No excuses. We do not hit with buckets.”

“He told me, ah, that, ah, I was moving too, ah, slow!”

He had a habit of punctuating his words with ah when he became upset.

“It does not matter, son,” I said. “We keep our buckets to ourselves. We can respond without using our hands.”

“Bucket,” he said.

“Bucket.” I nodded. “Tell him you are not moving too slow, he is moving too fast.”

He scrunched up his nose, like he wanted to growl. I told him to go play nice with the other children before he could see me laugh. I kept his bucket, though, because it was the second time he had used it as a weapon.

“Mamma mia,” I said, watching him run to his sisters like a freight train toward mountains. Ele was helping another smaller child put oranges in her bucket. Alessandra was next to her, watching, trying to direct.

A blood orange dropped in the bucket I’d taken from Orlando. I looked up into the eyes of my husband. The sun broke through the amber, making them turn almost gold. His hair was black, starting to streak with some silver. His skin was warm and tan from working in the groves all day.

“You leave me for one second, and the lions smell fresh meat,” he said, sliding his arms around my waist. He pulled me closer, kissing my neck.

“Tell me the truth,” I said, thinking back years ago to the day in his office. The day that almost destroyed me. “If Uncle Tito had not sent Rocco to grab the hat he left on purpose... ”

“The thought of him sniffing around my family after I was locked behind bars changed my mind. That’s why we’re here. Why I’m here. Prison wouldn’t have killed me. The thoughts would