Mafia Runaway Lover

Chapter 4

The car moved at an unhurried pace through the city.

It was late, but the streets had not gone to sleep. Neon bled across the wet asphalt in long streaks of pink and green, and the shop windows glowed as though they were waiting for someone to come home. People crowded the pavements in coats and scarves, laughing, arguing, hurrying nowhere in particular. Now and then a burst of music or the wail of a siren leaked through the glass, then faded behind them.

Rose sat very straight in the leather seat.

Beside her was Rafaello, the man who said he was her lover. And still, without a single memory of him, everything felt strange. His shoulder was close enough to touch. His cologne, warm and faintly like cedar, filled the small space between them. She knew none of it, and yet her body kept leaning toward it, just slightly, like a plant toward a window.

He had not let go of her hand since the hospital doors.

His palm was warm and dry. He did not squeeze, only held, the way one holds something that might slip away if looked at too hard. Every few moments his eyes moved to her face. They were gentle eyes. But there was a distance in them too, like a window with the curtain half drawn.

"We're going back to our home, Rose," he said.

Our home. She turned the words over silently. They sat in her chest like a stone she could not swallow.

"Ah..." She hesitated, then forced the question out, because not asking felt worse. "Am I your fiancée?"

It was a reasonable thing to ask. Lovers grew serious, then became engaged, and then, eventually, married. That was how it went. Wasn't it?

But Rafaello fell silent.

A traffic light turned red and washed his face in the color. The silence lasted perhaps three seconds, no longer, and yet it was long enough for Rose to feel the air in the car change, the way a room does when someone steps in without knocking.

Did I say something wrong?

"Not exactly," he said at last.

His voice was easy. Almost too easy.

"But the fact that we've always slept in the same bed hasn't changed."

Heat climbed her neck so fast that it made her dizzy.

"Oh," she managed. "Oh."

She stared at the headrest in front of her, at the back of the driver's neck, which was perfectly still. Underneath the embarrassment was something smaller and more absurd, a quiet pinch of disappointment she could not explain. She did not even remember this man's face. Why should it matter that there had been no ring?

She looked at him, at the expensive cut of his coat and the watch on his wrist, and then at herself in a borrowed hospital sweater, her hair still stiff with the smell of antiseptic. *Maybe we're from different worlds. Maybe that was the reason.*

"The truth that I love you," Rafaello said softly, "hasn't changed either."

She turned.

He was smiling, faintly, only at the corners, as if the words had slipped out without his permission. Before she could think of an answer, he lifted his free hand and rested it against the side of her head, his fingers light in her hair.

It was nothing. A touch. And her whole face caught fire.

She spun toward the window so quickly that her reflection jumped in the glass. A pale woman with wide eyes and a flushed face looked back at her. A stranger. They were all strangers, the two of them, and the woman in the glass.

"Are you shy?"

She did not answer. She became very interested in a flower stall, in a man selling roasted chestnuts, in a couple sharing one umbrella on the corner.

Behind her, Rafaello laughed.

It was a low sound, almost startled, as though it had surprised him as much as it had her. He did not tease her further. He only watched the back of her head for a long moment, and the smile slowly softened into something she could not see.

The car turned onto a quieter road.

Rose watched the lights thin out and wondered what waited at the end of it. What did their home look like? Was there a kitchen where she had burned things? A window she liked? A side of the bed that was hers? She reached for any of it, and her mind opened like an empty drawer.

Nothing. Not even dust.

The thought hit harder than she expected, and her eyes stung.

What if it never comes back?

The fear was cold and quiet. She wanted it, the missing years, so badly that it frightened her. How they had met. Who had said it first. Whether he had been clumsy about it, or she had. The small stupid things. The jokes only the two of them understood, the way he took his coffee, the shape of an ordinary evening. Without them she was only a body wearing a borrowed name, sitting beside a man who looked at her as though she were the entire world.

And what did she have to give him back?

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Rafaello turned his head.

"For what?"

"For forgetting you." Her voice shook, and she hated that it did. "You look at me like that, and I don't even know who you are. It isn't fair to you."

He did not speak at once. Something crossed his face, quick, too quick to name. And then it was gone, and there was only warmth, so gentle that Rose felt her breath catch.

"Rose. Look at me."

She did.

"This isn't your fault. None of it." His thumb moved slowly across the back of her hand. "If anyone should apologize, it's me. I should have protected you better."

The words went through her like warm water through cold fingers.

"But what if I never remember?" The question came out very small.

"Then it doesn't matter."

He said it simply, like it cost him nothing.

"We'll make new memories. More and more of them. Better ones, happier ones, more beautiful than any you've lost." He lifted his hand and patted her head, once, twice, the way one calms a frightened child. "I'm not going anywhere. Take as long as you need."

Rose let out a trembling breath, and her shoulders loosened. She had not noticed how tightly she had been holding them.

Rafaello watched it happen. He had seen how she stiffened whenever he touched her, how she held herself a little apart, even now. He did not mind. Patience was not a virtue he had been born with, but he would learn it for her. He would learn anything.

I must have been so lucky, Rose thought, resting her temple against the cool glass. To have met someone like him.

She did not know that the gentle smile above her hid a darkness she had already walked through once.

She did not know she had been foolish enough, once, to fall for his lies.

---

The mansion rose out of the dark like something carved from the night itself.

Lamps lined the long drive. The iron gates opened without a sound. Men in black coats stood at their posts along the path, and not one of them looked up when the car drew to a stop.

Rafaello got out first.

He rounded the car and opened her door himself, and before Rose could say that she could walk, he bent and lifted her into his arms. She gasped and clutched his coat. His grip was careful, almost reverent, and he stepped out of the car with her held against his chest as though she weighed nothing at all.

Every servant waiting on the steps froze.

The butler's hand tightened on his cane. A young maid near the door forgot to breathe.

They all knew the woman in the Don's arms.

Rose. The maid who had once been fortunate enough to catch their master's eye. The girl who had vanished from the house on a night they had all been ordered never to speak of, and who, they had been quietly told, would not be returning.

And now here she was. Pale, bandaged, cradled like glass. And their master was looking at her in a way none of them had ever seen.

But they were mafia servants. They had been trained to swallow their surprise and wear a blank face, and so not one flicker of it reached their eyes. They only bowed, low and silent, as the Don carried his lover up the steps and through the great doors and out of sight.

The doors closed.

For a long moment, no one moved.

Then Enzo, who had stood in the shadows by the pillars the whole time, stepped forward. His boots made no sound on the stone. He stopped in front of the butler and the head maid, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet enough to be mistaken for gentleness.

"Every servant in this house keeps their mouth shut. If one word slips, they will pay for it."

"Yes, Sir," the butler said at once. "Understood."

"There will be no exceptions."

The two of them bowed so deeply their foreheads nearly touched their knees.

"Understood, Sir."

Enzo gave a single nod, then turned and was gone.

The head maid, Maria, straightened slowly. Her hands were not quite steady, and she folded them in front of her apron to hide it. She turned to the gathered servants, her eyes moving from one frightened face to the next.

"You heard him," she said. "If a single word gets out, if the young miss learns anything at all, every one of you will answer for it. So you will keep your mouths shut. You will remember that."

No one dared to look up.

"Yes, Head Maid," they murmured.

Only then did they scatter, picking up their trays and their brooms and their folded linen, returning to their tasks as if the night had been like any other. As if nothing at all had happened.