The Protector 2

Chapter One-9

“It was. I had prepared for it for a long time, and I wanted to make it really special for you too.” Oh, and it was, you can be sure about it, dickhead – I think to myself. “Damn it, Rae, I was in love. I was ready to wait for you, and I was f*****g privileged when you said I was going to be your first. I had bought the whole flower shop, almost drowned myself in rose petals at home, just to make the mood romantic. I bought champagne and all kinds of s**t. I wanted to make our first time unforgettable for both of us,” he clears his throat. “Your first time,” he adds, and jumping up, he begins to walk up and down nervously.

“I don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head, because the whole story is getting more and more chaotic. What the hell is his point?

He stops in front of me, digging both his hands into his hair. Then he continues with frustration.

“I couldn’t help myself. I could hardly wait to see you again, but you said you didn’t have time before the party. i***t that I am, I still went to your apartment. I had bought you something… a gift. It was silly, nothing serious, just a Halloween costume. It was more like I needed an excuse to see you before the party,” he pulls up his shoulders submissively, and I listen with a frown, growing more and more excited. “I was on my way to the house when I saw you with those t-t-two,” he stutters, then suddenly goes quiet.

“What do you mean?” I ask quietly.

“You came out of the house on a dark-haired man’s side who had his arm around your shoulder. He was hugging you, and you were whispering with each other as if you’d been in an intimate relationship. At first, I had no clue what was going on. I just stood there like some loser, staring at the scene.”

I listen in shock, then I lift a finger.

“Wait just a second. I’m not following you,” I say, totally dumbfounded.

I’m wrecking my brain to recall that day, but it’s been eight long years since. He begins to pace up and down again, then continues with agitation.

“Then another guy showed up and gave you a hug. He whirled you around him, and I saw him kissing you. My girlfriend. You were hugging two complete strangers, two gel-haired arseholes in the street. And they had the air of money around them.”

“Holy s**t, Rafe!” I moan, as the picture is becoming complete in my head. I’m unable to sit still, so I get up too, and making my way around the sofa, I lean against the kitchen counter. The whole world is turning with me.

“You must understand me,” he goes on, pleadingly. “I was blinded with love, I idolized you, I was ready to do anything for you. I couldn’t even wait a few f*****g hours. I rushed to your place, just to see you for a moment, and what I saw there, a-a-absolutely ruined me. My girlfriend, my Bella who had supposedly not been with a man before and kept herself for me, drives off to hell in a red Ferrari with not just one, but two macho-looking dudes. Can you imagine how I felt?” he looks at me in agony. “You have no idea what was going on inside me. I crumbled to pieces right there, in front of your house.”

“For the love of God, Rafe, the two guys you saw me with were Sandro and Chris,” the words break from me with frustration. “They had come to take me home to the estate for lunch. My cousins, damn it! You know them too, don’t you?” I point my finger to him, accusingly, my voice close to hysterics.

Rafe collapses onto the armchair, puts his forehead into his palm, and gropes his hair.

“Yeah, Now, eight years later, I know who your cousins are. But back then, I had no clue, to hell with it. I f*****g had no idea.” He looks up at me with agony, his eyes are full of pain. “You had said nothing to me about your family. You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie. I just… Oh God,” I groan painfully, covering my mouth with a hand.

“Cosa f*****g Nostra, Rae? You should have told me,” he spreads his arms with despair. “You said your parents had died and your uncle was raising you. I didn’t even know where you lived. If you had brothers or sisters. There was no mention of cousins. I hardly knew anything about you. Then, there was all that insanely expensive stuff in your apartment. The Chinese porcelain and the designer leather sofa. Do you think I didn’t spot them?”

“f**k off, Harlan!” I spit the words angrily, and turn my back on him. “You see some expensive stuff in my apartment and think that I’m a slut?”

“Damn it, Rae. No!” he rubs his forehead. “I have no idea what I believed, but you were so secretive all the time. You didn’t tell your family about me, and never said anything to me about your life out of university, either.”

“And you wonder why?” I shout, and make a theatrical handgesture about myself. “Do you wonder why I didn’t tell you at the beginning that my family is a member of Cosa Nostra, and that the money that covers my studies, comes from organized crime? I wasn’t proud of it, if you must know.”

“You should have told me. I wouldn’t have cared less. You knew that I wasn’t clean either.”

“Oh, please!” I laugh aloud bitterly. “The two things can’t even be compared.” Staring in front of myself, I continue. “My whole life up to then was spent in the shadow of the mafia. People giving me strange looks at school, my parents’ death, the private lessons, being stigmatized at highschool. The university was the first place where nobody knew my background. That was the best thing about it. Anonimity, get it? There I wasn’t the little mafia princess,” I exhale despisingly, drawing quotation marks in the air. “I was one of the many. An average student. Living my own life, at last. My cousin brothers weren’t breathing down my neck all the time, like before. You have no idea how much strength it took to keep them away from the campus. Since I moved in, that was the first time they had been there, and even that was a special occasion. Uncle Emilio insisted on the lunch, as I didn’t want to have dinner with them.”

“You should have told me,” he moans so quietly that I can hardly hear it myself. “You should have trusted me.”

“I was going to,” I reply powerlessly. “I was planning to, you have no idea, how many times, but… Everything was so different, so… perfect with you. I didn’t want to destroy what we had. I thought I was able to leave the outside world behind, and if I closed my eyes, even reality would disappear, and only us two would remain.” I take a glance at him very carefully, wondering how he reacts. “I love Sandro and Chris, but I knew that the idiotic alpha-male would have taken the better of them if I had taken you home. That’s why I kept putting off the time to introduce you, because I was scared that things would change between us if it turned out that…” my voice dies off, and I make an effort to swallow the tears that are about to well from my eyes.

Rafe’s voice breaks the heavy silence settled between us.

“So you were serious about me?”

He looks into my eyes with great despair, as if his life depended on my next word. His eyes are full of appeal and regret.

“I had nobody else but you. You were the only one.”

Torn, he throws himself back in the armchair, and stares at the ceiling. The corner of his mouth is quivering; I don’t know which one of us is closer to crying.

“I thought… I thought you had knocked me over. I thought you were only fooling me around. I died in front of your house that morning, Raven. Do you understand?”

“You thought I was cheating on you. That I was something else than I had shown you. So you decided to repay it, is that right?”

Devastated, he closes his eyes, his fist is gripping the edge of his jeans. I have never seen him in such a state before.

“For the first time in my life, I was in love like crazy, and I felt like you had dragged me through dirt.”

“But… I don’t get it. Why didn’t you ask me? Why didn’t you at least try…?”

“I called you later. I simply couldn’t accept that it was possible. Remember?” he looks at me dejectedly, and I give a sad nod. He did call, and I… lied to him.

“I hoped you would explain yourself, that it was only some misunderstanding. f*****g hell!” he groans with pain. “You gave me nothing. Nothing I could hold on to,” he lifts his hands with despair. “I lost my head, so I began to drink. By the time you arrived at the party, I was totally wasted, and there was only one thing on my mind: to repay the pain you had caused me. I wanted to break you as you had broken me. I wanted to hurt you.”

“It worked,” I sigh submissively, knowing that in this game we were both losers.

He snorts bitterly, and continues while leaning forward.

“I’ll never forgive myself that night. And believe me, I suffered the most for what I had done.”

I honestly doubt that – I think to myself bitterly, but I don’t say it out loud.

“Why didn’t you ask who I had been with? Why didn’t you nag me about it, making me face the facts? If you had done that, my only chance would have been to admit everything about the Bertone clan.”

“I have no idea. I was an i***t. I thought you had stood me up, and my ego was hurting. What I had seen, devastated me, and perhaps I was ashamed that love had made me lose my mind.”

“But you had spent a lot of time with me before. How can it be, that you still didn’t trust me? How could you have such an assumption about me, when we were together, from day to day? Did you know so little about me? You treated me at the party like a slut, a valueless object. It’s hard to believe that you really loved me, because this is not how people treat someone they value,” I shake my head with doubt.

Rafe’s eyes are sparkling as we look at one another. He jumps up from the armchair, and with just one leap, he comes up to me. He stops so close that our knees are touching. And then, as he looks into my eyes, he starts a confession with a voice shaken by emotions.

“Was I not serious? Did I not love you? Damn it, Raven, I was more serious than you, ever. I wanted to marry you, for f**k’s sake,” the less than romantic words break from him. “I had planned that damned Halloween night much differently than what it had turned out to be. I had even bought the engagement ring. It was in my pocket. But when I saw you with them, I lost my head, and then drank myself stupid,” he blurts out obsessively.

I stare back at him with my chin dropped. I can’t believe my ears.

“Did you just say that you wanted to marry me?” I whisper.

He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it, only to open it again, but he looks miserable. He is lost for words.