The Mafia's First Choice

Chapter Two:The Woman In Pale Dress

Carmela's POV

I stared at Giovanni, the words hanging between us like a loaded gun. The car rolled through the massive iron gates, tires crunching over gravel as armed men stood like statues in the shadows.

“Who?” I demanded, my voice sharper than I intended. My hands clenched in my lap. “Who in this house wants me dead?”

Giovanni didn’t even glance at me. His profile was carved from stone, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the approaching mansion. His rich Loud cologne filled the confined space, making it hard to think straight.

“Giovanni,” I pressed, leaning toward him. Answer me. If I’m walking into a death trap, I deserve to know".

"Who wants me dead?" I pressed. "You don't say something like that and go silent. Tell me."

"You'll find out soon enough."

"That's not an answer."

"No," he agreed. "It's not."

The car rolled to a stop. He was already reaching for the door handle, the conversation closed in his mind the way doors close in houses.

I grabbed his arm.

He looked down at my hand on his sleeve.

"I have a right to know," I said.

"If someone in that house wants me dead, I deserve to walk through those gates knowing who I'm watching."

Giovanni held my gaze for a few seconds.

"Everyone in my world is watching everyone," he said. "That's how you survive it."

He removed my hand from his arm with a gentleness that felt more like a warning than courtesy.

"Stay close. Don't touch anything. Don't speak unless I introduce you first."

I opened my mouth to argue, but the car stopped immediately. He was out in a flash, coming around to my side and opening the door with a firm hand. “Out. Now.”

The night air hit me like a warning—cool, heavy with the scent of pine and distant sea salt. I stepped out and froze.

The estate was enormous. It simply existed at the end of a long private road, behind two sets of iron gates and a security checkpoint where armed men with earpieces checked the car twice before waving us through.

When the final gates opened, I stopped breathing for a moment.

The main building rose three stories high, all stone and dark wood, with wings stretching into the darkness like arms ready to crush. Floodlights illuminated perfectly manicured grounds, but they only highlighted the fortress.

guard towers at the corners, high walls topped with razor wire, security cameras sweeping every angle with red blinking eyes. This wasn’t a home.

I understood that the moment my foot touched the gravel. A home had warmth somewhere in it—a crooked lampshade, a dog underfoot, the sound of someone laughing in another room.

This place had been stripped of all of that and replaced with function. With control. This was a fortress that had learned to wear a mansion's face.

“Welcome to the Damiani estate,” Giovanni said dryly, his hand settling on the small of my back. The touch sent an unwelcome spark through me—firm, possessive. I hated how aware I was of him.

The house staff were lined in two neat rows on either side of the stone entrance steps. A tall woman with steel-gray hair stepped forward first.

“I am Maria, the head housekeeper,” she said, her voice neutral but respectful. She gave a small nod.

“Your rooms are prepared, Signorina Rossi.”

Beside her, a broad-shouldered man in a dark suit inclined his head. “Enzo, chief of security. Anything you need, let me know.” His eyes flicked to Giovanni for approval.

Then a sleek woman in her thirties, clipboard in hand. “Elena, Mr. Damiani’s personal assistant. I’ll handle your schedule and any… adjustments.”

Most of them kept their expressions blank, professional. But the last one—a younger maid with sharp features and dark, resentful eyes—didn’t bow her head. She stared at me like I was dirt on her shoe, her lips pressed thin.

When our eyes met, she looked away too slowly. Suspicion coiled in my gut. Was she the one?

Giovanni guided me inside without introductions. The foyer was opulent—marble floors, a massive crystal chandelier overhead, art that probably cost more than my entire neighborhood. But every corner screamed control.more cameras, guards posted at exits, the faint bulge of weapons under jackets.

We were halfway across the main hall when the woman appeared at the top of the staircase. She descended slowly. Not because she had to—she was upright, sharp-eyed, not a woman who moved slowly out of necessity.

She moved slowly because she wanted me to look at her. To understand, before she'd said a single word, exactly who held authority in this house. She was perhaps sixty. Immaculately dressed in dark silk. Silver hair swept back from a face that had once been striking and was now formidable.

Diamonds at her throat—understated and clearly worth more than my entire life. Giovanni went still beside me. Almost imperceptibly. But I felt it.

“So this is the baker’s daughter,” she said, voice dripping with disdain. She stopped at the bottom step and looked me up and down slowly, from my plain clothes to my braided hair.

“I expected better. Giovanni, really? This is what you bring into our family? A girl who smells like cheap dough and desperation?”

Heat flooded my cheeks, but I lifted my chin. “My name is Carmela Rossi. And I didn’t ask to be here.”

She laughed, a brittle sound.

“How charming. Defiant already. You think you belong here? In my house? You’re a debt payment, nothing more. A temporary inconvenience.”

“Mum.” Giovanni cut in, his voice low and edged with steel. He stepped slightly in front of me, his body a wall of heat and protection.

“Enough. Carmela is my future wife. You will treat her with respect.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed.

“Respect? For her? You’re making a mistake, Giovanni. She’ll weaken you. The family doesn’t need...”

“I said enough.” Giovanni’s tone brooked no argument. The air thickened with tension. His mother’s face flushed, but she pressed her lips together and gave a tight nod.

“Very well. For now.” She shot me one last venomous look before turning and gliding back up the stairs.

I exhaled shakily. Giovanni’s hand lingered on my back a moment longer than necessary.

“Don’t let her get to you,” he murmured, close enough that his breath brushed my ear. That cologne again—intoxicating, wrapping around my defiance like smoke. “She’s protective. It’s nothing personal.”

“Feels pretty personal,” I whispered back. Our eyes met, and for a heartbeat, the danger between us shifted into something hotter, charged. Then he pulled away.

Maria led me upstairs to my room while Giovanni spoke quietly with Enzo. Second floor, at the end of a long corridor flanked by dark wood paneling. Two cameras—one at each end of the hall. I spotted them immediately.

A guard stood at the top of the staircase. Another rotated past the door every twenty minutes; I tracked the shadow under the door until I understood the pattern.

The room itself was—objectively—beautiful. A bed that probably cost more than three years of my bakery wages. Fresh flowers on the dresser, white and odorless and decorative. A bathroom lined in marble. A wardrobe that had already, somehow, been stocked with clothing in my size.

“It’s beautiful,” I said flatly.

Maria nodded. “Mr. Damiani insisted on the best. Dinner will be brought up. Rest well.” She left, but I heard the soft click of the lock from the outside. My heart sank. Golden cage, indeed.

I spotted a camera discreetly mounted near the balcony doors. Guards’ footsteps echoed in the hallway.

I changed into the silk nightgown laid out for me—soft, expensive, not my style—and tried to sleep. But my mind raced. Giovanni’s refusal to answer. His mother’s hatred. That maid’s glare.

Hours later, a faint creak woke me.

I got up anyway, because I have never been the kind of person who talks herself out of her own instincts. I moved to the door and opened it slowly, just enough to look into the corridor.

It was empty. The guard's post at the staircase was vacant.

That was wrong. I stepped out. The corridor stretched in both directions, looking dark except for low amber wall sconces.

I moved toward the main landing—following the wrongness of it, the absence of what should have been there—and had just stepped onto the marble landing and looked up— The chandelier came down.

One side of the mounting gave way with a crack that split the silence like a gunshot, swinging the fixture down on its chain. It crashed into the marble floor exactly where I would have been standing if I hadn't taken two more steps forward.

Crystal exploded across the floor. The chandelier swaying above the wreckage, half-mounted, half-fallen, creaking in the sudden stillness.

I stumbled back against the wall. Heart slamming against my ribs so hard I could feel it in my throat.

“What the...?” I wanted to say then I heard footsteps.

Guards shouted. Giovanni appeared at the end of the hall, shirt unbuttoned, gun in hand, looking lethal. “Carmela!”

I turned toward him, shaking. My eyes caught movement at the far end of the hallway—opposite from where he came. A woman stood there in the shadows, watching me. Elegant silhouette. She smiled slowly, coldly.

Then she whispered, just loud enough for me to hear:

“You should have died.”

She melted back into the darkness as Giovanni reached me, pulling me against his chest. His heart thundered under my cheek, his arms strong and warm.

“Are you hurt?” he demanded, tilting my chin up. His eyes searched mine—fierce, almost possessive. The heat from his body cut through the fear.

I shook my head, but my voice trembled. “She was right there. A woman. Smiling.”

His jaw clenched. He didn’t ask who. He already knew more than he was telling. “Stay close to me from now on. No more wandering.”

I wanted to push him away. To demand answers. But as his hand cupped the back of my neck, thumb brushing my skin in a way that sent unwanted sparks down my spine, I realized something terrifying.

In this fortress, Giovanni might be the only thing standing between me and death.

And I wasn’t sure if that made him my savior… or the biggest threat of all.