Taboo Flames (The Sicilian Sins #2)

Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22

Aurora

I can still hear the loud booming sound resonating in my head minutes later. The chilling knowledge that I was so close to death keeps me in a suspended state of reality.

I can’t stop shaking.

Even after Gio is done screaming into his phone for minutes and I’m bundled safely into his car, it still feels like I can’t breathe.

If Gio hadn’t delayed me from getting into my car…

My brain refuses to complete the rest of the sentence. I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

“You’re okay,” Gio says sternly, dropping his hand down on my thigh and squeezing comfortingly.

“I almost died,” I whisper.

“But you didn’t,” he insists.

“I would have. If?—”

“Life is too short to waste time with what ifs,” he tells me. “You didn’t die, and I’m not going to let you die, princess. Not at the hand of these bastards.”

I close my eyes and sink deeper into the cool leather seat of the car. I don’t know where he’s taking me, but at this point, I don’t care.

I’ve missed Gio. I’ve missed seeing him and touching him and the sense of safety I only ever find with him. Despite knowing that Gio has a dark side, he’s still my safe space.

Waiting for my phone to flash with his call was the worst torture I ever had to endure. My first reaction to seeing him today wasn’t anger over what he had said to me. Instead, I actually felt extreme relief.

There is so much to unpack there, but that’s for another time.

I finally become aware of my surroundings when we drive through a familiar heavy steel gate.

“This is Giordano’s house,” I murmur.

“It’s the closest and safest place for us right now. I’m having my men sweep my house and your studio for bugs and planted devices. I’m confident nobody could have gotten bugs into your house, though, so these are the most plausible places for now.”

I still remember what happened the last time I was here—the situation that led me here and how I’d balked at his order and gone ahead into Giordano’s house, only to get lost and somehow end up finding that photo.

In summary, it hadn’t ended well. Especially the part where Gio had driven off without me.

“Are you going to dump me here again?” I question.

“I’m never letting you out of my sight again unless it’s absolutely necessary. Not until I get to the bottom of this.”

I watch his hard jaw and clenched hands and feel danger seeping out of him. I’ve never felt more protected…and loved. I know I’m being stupid again, throwing my hat in with a man who’s not capable of reciprocating, but everybody’s permitted to be stupid once in a while.

We climb out of the car and make our way inside to The Godfather’s office.

He’s seated behind his desk, wearing a flat cap and a knitted sweater. I still find it hard to believe that this man is a notorious mafia ringleader. He looks like someone’s kindly grandpa.

“So many visits in such a short amount of time,” Giordano chuckles. “I know it’s not good news, but I’ll take any excuse to see my son.”

“Hello, Giordano,” Giovanni says in greeting.

Giordano chuckles.

“They rigged her car up to explode,” Gio says angrily.

The amused look slides off Giordano’s face and is replaced by a sharp focus that makes me begin to understand the dangerous side of him.

“That’s a step too far,” Giordano says in a hard voice.

Gio nods sharply. “This is the safest place I can think of for her. I hope it’s not a problem.”

“This is your home too, Giovanni,” Giordano responds. “You’re always welcome here.”

Gio takes me by my hand and begins to lead me out of the office wordlessly. I go without complaint, too shaken up to be my usual mouthy self.

Right at the office door, one of Giordano’s men pushes the door open and holds it for us. I’m almost fully past the man when my eyes land on his hand.

I bite back my terrified gasp at the sight before me. A sight I’d have never expected to see here, of all places, and one that has haunted me for weeks.

I haven’t seen the tattoo since my altercation with the pimp, but there’s no way I can forget the image. It’s been burned into my brain. Why does one of Giordano’s men have the spider tattoo? And I’m pretty sure it’s not a coincidence.

It’s the same exact one, with the long spidery legs extended across the surface of the skin and the bulbous head dead center.

I do my best to keep the shock out of my expression until Gio and I are safely behind the doors of another room. Even then, I don’t know how safe it is to talk here.

First, it was the picture, and now this.

“Gio, I have to tell you something,” I immediately begin when I drop into the chair.

“I want to tell you something first,” he says with a serious look as he takes the chair next to mine. “And it’s important. At least to me.”

I stare at him in surprise. There’s a note in his voice that I’m not at all familiar with. It’s almost as if he’s…nervous.

“Okay, you go first.”

I can tell him about my conspiracy theories later when we are in a safer place. I’m too paranoid to believe the room isn’t bugged.

“No, no. You can go ahead,” he says.

“It’s fine. Please,” I insist, desperate to hear what he has to say. “Mine can wait.”

Yes, you can wait to hear that your beloved Giordano, The Godfather, is a sham of a man and may just be the enemy we’ve been looking for.

Gio swallows, stands up from the chair, and begins to pace. I watch him curiously as he rakes his hand through his hair severally, messing it up from its laid-back perfect state.

“You asked me about this once.” He holds up the chaplet that’s a permanent fixture on his wrist.

I nod.

“It belongs…no…it belonged to my mother. It’s the only thing I have left of her,” he tells me, his gaze stuck on a point in the distance. “I don’t know how much you know already?—”

“None of it matters,” I cut in immediately. “I only want to hear it from you.”

“You know I can’t tell you everything, right?” he states. “There are parts of me that are best left under lock and key. Parts that even I never want to remember.”

“You can tell me anything.” I jump up from the seat and walk toward him. “I just want to know and understand you, Gio.”

He licks his lips and clears his throat. “While my father was alive, he wouldn’t have won any Best Dad of the Year awards. He was far too much of a loser to even win Worst Dad of the Year.”

Gio let out a humorless chuckle. “There were only two things he lived for: coke and the gambling table. I don’t remember him ever being much of a man. Not even in my earliest memories. He never hit us, though, so maybe we had it good.” He shrugs. “He just didn’t care enough about us to hit us. He would gamble, win some money, lose a whole lot more, get coked up, and end up passed out in unusual places. We lived in permanent debt because of his habits. Imagine a seven-year-old kid wandering the streets of Sicily at dawn trying to find what corner his father had ended up unconscious in.”

I gasp and cover my mouth in horror at the thought of what he went through. I can’t even imagine it. My own father may have been an asshole, but we always had Leo to save us.

“I’m so sorry,” I murmur, feeling tears burn my eyes.

“It wasn’t all bad,” he deflects. “I didn’t care about him. It’d have been way worse if I did. It was my mother I pitied because she cared. She cared far too much to be able to abandon him for good and save herself, and I cared about my mother too much to leave him out there to die. It was a cycle no one should have been caught in.”

“You were just a kid.”

“Trust me, princess. After what I’d seen, I was far from being a kid.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I protest. “You were a kid, and someone should have saved you.”

“Knights in shining armor are things of fairytales, baby. They don’t exist.”

I give him a look. “It’s a good thing I’ve got my head stuck in a fairytale then because you’re my knight in shining armor.”

His gaze softens, the dark shadows that were behind them slowly shifting away.

“I watched him die, and the only thing I felt was relief that my mother was finally free. We could start a new life without him. I thought everything was going to be good for me.” He shakes his head and scoffs. “Well, it was nothing but another pipe dream.”

“We’re all permitted to dream,” I whisper.

“For some of us, the only thing we’re capable of living is a nightmare.”

“That’s not true,” I retort.

He smiles at me. “I know that now. Every moment with you has been a beautiful dream.”

The tear that has been threatening to spill over finally falls from my eye. “You’re not going to distract me from hearing the rest of your story.”

He chuckles. "As you can probably tell, my hopes for a better life didn’t end well. Almost a week after my father died, I came home to an empty house."

I have a feeling I know where this is going.

“She left,” he says in a broken voice. “I sat at the front steps for days, waiting for her to come back. I thought if I moved, she might come back, and I’ll miss her return, so I sat right there and waited.”

“She didn’t come back,” I croak.

“She didn’t come back,” he confirms, echoing my statement. “When they came to take the house and everything inside, they only let me leave with the clothes on my back. I managed to grab the chaplet, and that’s when I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

“What if something happened to her?” I ask. “Maybe?—”

“There’s no use considering or arguing about the maybes. It already happened,” he tells me. “I’m happy she got the freedom she wanted. I always thought she stayed for me.”

“You don’t know that,” I say stubbornly.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering, Aurora,” he says as he cups my face with his hands. “I’m content with knowing she walked away.”

“But—”

He presses his thumb over my lips, silencing me. “It’s okay, princess. Sometimes, bad things happen, and there’s no good reason for it. Just more bad.”

“I hate that you went through all that,” I say, feeling sad.

“It all worked out in the end.”

I’m not sure it did, but I don’t say it. What happened to him broke a part of him that was open to letting people in, and I fear I’m always going to be standing at the gates of his heart, begging to be let in.

“Let me take you home,” he says.

I take a step back, hurt that he’s trying to get rid of me after what we just shared. “Aren’t we going back to your house?”

“Since I won’t be around while I dig into this, your house is the safest place for you right now,” he says.

“I don’t care. I want to be with you,” I say petulantly.

“Aurora, please.”

It’s the use of my name that gives me pause. He only ever uses my name when he’s being very serious.

I lean up and brush my mouth against his, and before I can move away, he drags me to him and deepens the kiss, making me moan into his mouth and clutch him tightly to me.

Somehow, it feels too much like a goodbye kiss to me, and I don’t like it.

“Gio—”

“Don’t say it.” His voice is a desperate breath against my mouth.

I press my forehead to his chest and allow my soul to be at peace in his presence.