Page 48 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
I’d left the mafia for a reason. After fleeing Devils Ridge, Papà wanted me back in Italy to train as his second in command, but I needed out. I couldn’t stomach being part of a system that birthed Angelo De Luca, and the lies, the deception, and the way people used one another sickened me.
So, I turned to the only thing left that I enjoyed—school. Mama helped me extricate myself from the Vitali, and I left for college, went on a fast track to becoming a teacher, and have been teaching second grade ever since. But being the Vitali representative at a function felt like too close a step to rejoining the mafia fold.
Maman repositioned the queen and clasped her hands together. “I pulled a lot of strings to get you out of the mafia, Renata, and I don’t ask you for much. Your father won’t come to America, even to represent the Vitali name, and I can’t come because…” Her voice trailed off, but I knew what she’d been about to say.
She couldn’t come because of her secret relationship with Vincent.
My eyes traced the fine lines on her forehead and the way her eyelids drooped a bit. Maman still grieved the loss of her love, and I was being an ungrateful daughter. A grudge-holding chicken, too, who couldn’t see past her barriers but also resented the way Damian left the library nook.
“Please, do this for me, Renata.”
I let loose the sigh that had been building the past few minutes. “Okay.”
Maman covered the events and gave me a detailed binder of things I needed to say and do, while I prepared myself for the idea of seeing Damian again. But there are some things you can’t prepare for.
Betrayal.
Love.
Damiano De Luca.
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to accept what is true.
Soren Kierkegaard
One Month Later
“I wasn’t sure I’d find you here.”
I placed a bookmark between two pages and set the book down—The Toynbee Convector, to my dismay. “You weren’t sure you’d find me at the place you know I stay at?”
I kept my face blank and the scoff I wanted to emit quiet. Damian didn’t need to know how much he shook me. I almost couldn’t believe that I’d once been so aloof. I didn’t feel like the same person I had been when I had first stepped foot in Texas ten years ago. Nor did I feel like the person I’d been when I arrived for the funeral just over a month ago.
Irritation scuffed at my throat, its temperature rising with each step he took toward me.
Why are you so bitter he left you that morning? You wanted him to. It’s not like you like him. You can’t like him.
The voice in my head could suffer tax audits for the rest of its life, jump off a cliff, and be forced to watch Barney and Friends on repeat in Hell, for all I cared. Denial felt better than the alternative—admitting the feelings I had for Damian hadn’t lessened over time.
“You’re mad at me?” He laid next to me on the bed, his back propped against my pillow. “You changed your phone number. I just couldn’t believe it.”
I’d done that because I’d spent the first day back from New York glued to my phone, and waking up alone reminded me of how alone I’d felt over the past decade. Damian and I were heartbreak. How could I want heartbreak?
He pressed on despite my silence. “I did what you wanted. If anything, I should be mad at you for making me leave—” His tone was light, but I swore I heard undercurrents of bitterness in him. He wouldn’t admit it, but he wasn’t over my departure.
And me? I wasn’t prepared for an ambush this morning. The follow-up roundtable meetings were later today. I was supposed to have a few more hours. I’d just gotten into New York last night, and now we were fighting already?
I used anger to give me strength. “Nope.” I sat upright and scrambled to face Damian. “Don’t even finish that sentence.” My head shook, along with my already shaky façade. Hell, I’d pretty much dropped the calm, cool and collected act last month, and it didn’t look like it would make a return anytime soon. “Last month, you could have mentioned me leaving, but you said nothing. This isn’t fair.”
“There’s no statute of limitations on how long I can bring up you leaving me.”
“I left Texas. So what?!”
I was so sick of the guilt I felt over it. We’d been dating for a month. Tops. Why had I spent the past ten years agonizing over my mistake? I was a kid. Eighteen. Scared. Confused. I didn’t deserve to suffer for it for the rest of my life. Maybe I needed to be told that everything was okay.
“You don’t remember what you said?”
