My Mafia Madness 3

Chapter 33 - Honesty is it's Own Reward

By the time Willow finally woke up it was around nine in the morning and, as promised, Roberto had stayed with her the entire time.

As she blinked her eyes open and focused them, she could see him seated upright in the bed beside her, out like a light.

His chest lifted and fell with each of his long breaths and a faint wrinkle could be seen between his brows, as if he were having some sort of a nightmare at that very moment.

Smiling, Willow groaned in an effort to rouse him.

And as intended, Roberto immediately sucked in a sharp breath, his emerald-green eyes flicking wide open as he turned to look down at her with concern.

“Hey, welcome back.” he announced, moving to hover closer over her.

“How are you feeling?”

She slowly began to pull herself up from the pillow and into a sitting position beside him.

All the while, Roberto helped her when doing so by lifting her by her shoulders.

“Easy there… just take it slow.” he warned her softly.

Rubbing her eyes, Willow spoke with a frown.

“What time is it?” she asked him.

Lifting his right arm, he glanced at his watch for a second before he gave her his reply.

“Around nine in the morning. You’ve been asleep for over ten hours now.”

Willow groaned with discomfort after hearing this.

Whatever sedatives she had been given must have been quite powerful and really packed a punch!

“I feel like shit.” she announced, leaning into his embrace and allowing him to wrap both his arms around her lovingly.

“Yeah, I thought you might.” Roberto admitted, reaching across towards his bedside table and grasping at a bottle of water.

He then proceeded to hand it to her.

“Here, this will help.”

Willow gladly accepted the bottle, opening it and then sculling it down as if she hadn’t had a drink in days.

When she stopped and took a deep breath, Roberto took it from her and placed it back onto the table beside him.

He felt terrible for what he had done to her.

And the hideous blanket of guilt was eating away at him with every passing second that he chose to keep that knowledge to himself.

Even if it would make her hate him, Roberto decided that he needed to come clean and tell her that he was responsible for drugging her the night before.

She deserved the truth and she deserved hearing it directly from him.

“Look, Willow…” he began hesitantly as she lifted her head up to meet his gaze.

“About what happened last night… I need to come clean about something before you somehow wind up hearing it from someone else-”

“-It’s alright, I already know.”

Willow suddenly interrupted him, a small smile gracing her elegant features.

And of course, Roberto seemed confused by this as a frown emerged.

He felt his entire body suddenly tense up with uncertainty as he remained still with unease.

“Uh… you already know… what exactly?” he queried cautiously, searching her eyes desperately for the answer.

Tilting her head off to the side so that her long wild red hair flowed down over her left shoulder, Willow’s confident smile grew even wider before she began to explain to him what she apparently knew.

“I know it was you, Roberto…” she admitted coyly, lifting her left brow in challenge.

“You’re the one who sedated me last night out on the patio, right? That’s what you’re about to tell me, yeah?”

Roberto’s baffled expression showed just how confused he truly was right now as he began to stutter nervously, blinking while fighting to try and make sense of how Willow could possibly have known it was him.

How the hell did she know it was him who injected her?

With his mouth practically hanging wide open, he focused on forming a response from it as quickly as he could manage.

“I… uh… I mean, how-” he began.

But once more, she cut him off mid-sentence.

“-Oh come on, it was kinda obvious.” she admitted to him with a chuckle.

“Obvious? How?” he questioned.

“No one calls me cutie, Roberto. No one but you.”

“Wait, I called you cutie? When?” he asked, shaking his head as his frown deepened further into confusion.

Rolling her eyes, Willow sighed as she leaned back slightly.

“You seriously don’t remember?” she challenged him.

And he shook his head in response.

“When you grabbed me from behind and injected me, you made the mistake of calling me by that name. I knew it was you right away.”

“Did I?”

He seemed surprised as he lowered his gaze for a moment in an attempt at remembering the events of the evening prior.

“I honestly didn’t even realise that I had.”

She giggled for a moment at his somewhat lost expression.

“Wait, I don’t understand. If you knew it was me, why didn’t you say anything?” he suddenly queried.

Willow thought to herself for a moment in silence before she finally decided how she would respond to his question.

And the truth was, she was enjoying watching him sweat just a little right now.

“Honestly, I wanted to see what you’d do...” she finally admitted to him with a slight shrug of her shoulders.

“I wanted to know if you’d tell me the truth or not when you had the chance to. I guess I wanted to know if you’d be honest with me about it.”

Roberto chuckled softly for a moment.

“So, in a way you were… testing me?”

She nodded her head, still smiling.

“Yeah, I guess I was.”

Growling, he shook his head as he too began to smile with embarrassment. This whole time he had been feeling overly guilty and for no reason whatsoever.

But maybe it was a good thing that he had felt the way that he had.

If anything, it showed that Roberto truly did care about Willow and her feelings. And most importantly, it showed just how special she had become to him in such a short space of time.

“I guess I deserved that.” he admitted while pulling her into his tight embrace and hugging her.

“Damn right you did, you stuck me with a frickin syringe, babe!” she countered, leaning her head against the crook of his neck and breathing in his musky scent.

“I mean, what the hell was that about anyway? Why did you sedate me?”

Sighing, Roberto took a moment to deliberate with himself as to whether or not he would tell her all the details of their plot to flush out the rival Don at the Ball.

As far as he was concerned, the less Willow knew the safer she would be, but he didn’t want to have to hide anything from her anymore.

“Look Willow, it’s… a long story.”

He spoke vaguely, causing Willow to frown and pull out of his embrace to face off with him.

“Well, you’d better start explaining this long story of yours, Roberto Romano!” she demanded angrily.

“And that includes why I happened to walk in on your f*****g asshole of a brother kissing some skank who wasn’t Alexa!”

Roberto pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment as he let out a deep and clearly pained sigh.

“You’d better tell me what the hell’s going on, right now.” she demanded.

He quickly lifted both his hands in surrender.

“Ok, ok, I’ll tell you, alright?” he agreed, hoping to calm her down.

“I’ll tell you everything...”

-

After carrying Alexa in his arms, all the way up from his office to their shared bedroom, Dante gently placed her down onto the large mattress of their bed before he then stood back up and smirked devilishly at her.

“f**k, you look incredible.” he announced proudly

“Dante...”

As modest as always, Alexa blushed a shade of crimson across her cheeks from his unforeseen compliment as she smiled innocently.

“Why are we in here?” she queried, glancing around the room.

“Don’t move… I’ll be right back.” he admitted slyly before turning and heading across the room towards one of the larger oak dressers.

“Hey, where are you going?” she called out to him, watching as he stopped in front of the dresser and pulled open one of the large drawers.

He appeared to be rummaging through it for a moment before he eventually found what he had been looking for and pulled something out before closing it again.

She watched with intrigue as Dante then turned around and crossed the room to sit on the bed beside her.

“What are you up to?” she teased with a smile as her eyes locked onto the object he was now holding in both his hands.

It appeared to be a small black box.

“What’s this?” she queried innocently.

As he spoke, her eyes flicked upwards from the box to meet his.

“A Christmas gift…” he replied, shrugging both his shoulders.

“Well, one of many I have for you, amore mio.”

“Dante…”

Alexa felt herself frown, suddenly feeling somewhat uncomfortable with being overly spoiled like this by him.

Sure, he was a billionaire who could buy her whatever he wanted to, but Alexa was the furthest thing from materialistic. She didn’t need all of the expensive gifts to make her happy.

And upon noticing this, Dante quickly spoke to reassure her.

“Bella, I know you feel uncomfortable with me spoiling you, but you need to understand that money is no object for a man like me. You know this.”

“I know, I know, it’s just…” she trailed off, shaking her head in unease.

“It feels… wrong, somehow.”

“Why?” he countered.

“Because!” she shot back at him.

“Because it’s not my money. It’s yours-”

“-You agreed to marry me, did you not?”

Dante suddenly cut in, confusing her by this sudden change in topic as she frowned before giving her reply.

“I… yes, I did.” she admitted, though still confused as to why he would bring this up now.

“Well, when we are eventually married you will legally inherit half of everything that I have.” he reminded her, causing Alexa to roll her eyes at his crude sense of logic.

“Dante, I’m being serious…”

“So am I.” he countered.

“Like it or not, you are a very wealthy woman now, Alexa Myers. Perhaps you should start enjoying your new lifestyle a little more rather than fighting it.”

Sighing, Alexa knew that Dante did have a point but couldn’t see the sense in buying countless expensive things merely because she now had the ability to do so.

To her, that just seemed ridiculous!

Alexa had always been very smart with her money in the past and she intended on keeping it that way for the foreseeable future.

No matter how ‘rich’ she would apparently soon become as Mrs. Romano.

Holding the box out for her, Dante’s smile showed just how excited he was as he spoke eagerly.

“Go ahead, open it.”

Slowly taking it from his hands and allowing his fingers to brush up against hers as she did so, Alexa licked her suddenly dry lips nervously before she opened the box and glanced inside.

But what she found inside confused her.

Reaching her hand inside, her fingers grasped at the long brass object before lifting it out to get a better look at it.

“A key?” she queried, looking to Dante for an explanation.

“For what?”

And his handsome smirk which had by now widened even further, was a clear indication of something incredibly exciting that he had planned for her.

Feeling completely vulnerable for whatever the Don had planned, Alexa could only guess as to what this key would eventually unlock...