Rough Redemption Mafia Romance Books 1-4

7. Savanna

7

SAVANNA

Jessica bent over in her sky blue, baby doll dress and gently squeezed the eggplants one at a time. “They need to be plenty firm, with just a little give.” She made a delicate snort. “Like something else I can think of.”

Bending over, inspecting each leaf, turning them over to examine the underside, nodding now and again as if the vegetables were whispering to her the secrets of life.

“When I first moved in with Lorenzo, I knew nothing about gardening. But he’s taught me a little at a time—about a lot more than cultivation and fertilizer.” She wagged her eyebrows at me.

“That’s nice of him,” I said, wanting to ask her to expound. My pulse ramped at the thought of asking her what it was like to be so completely adored.

Did she ever feel smothered? My fist gently tapped against my lips, and I tugged my ear over the puzzle that was Jessica.

There was the unabashed way she threw personal questions at me. “So, are you and Dante a thing now?”

I sputtered on the sip of water I’d just taken from my bottle.

“No, we uh. We barely met this week and we’re just getting to know each other.” I sucked my cheeks.

“Huh.” She showed me her palms and shrugged. “He never brings anyone to Saturday dinner, so I figured the two of you must be an item.”

A flash of Dante wrapping me in his coat and shuttling me to his truck, away from the dead body, came to mind, followed by the feel of him gently washing my hair in his tub.

Time to get this conversation directed back to her before I said something I regretted. “How did you and Lorenzo meet? He seems very fond of you.”

She scuffed her clunky leather loafer on the brick floor of the solarium and the tops of her ears turned pink. “I ran into him at the grocery store, literally. I had a bag full of tomatoes and was moving too fast. I turned around and ran right into him so they spilled all over the floor. Like a dope, I burst into tears.”

“Crying over spilt tomatoes, huh?” I made a lame attempt at a joke since she started sniffing and wiped the rolled-up sleeve of her cotton button-down shirt against her nose.

“I had a lot going on and you have to admit Lorenzo is a little scary at first glance. It was too much seeing that giant scowling down at me, and I just started sobbing uncontrollably—so embarrassing.”

I rocked on my feet. “Trust me. I know what it’s like to be so stressed your emotions are right there on the surface.”

“As soon as the waterworks started, he became a different guy. He insisted on buying me lunch at the diner next to the market.” She took a pair of orange- handled clippers out of the back pocket of her wide- legged jeans and snipped an eggplant, placing it in her basket. “I don’t think we’ve been apart since. You might think I’m a total hussy, but I moved in with him that same day.”

Well, she had me beat.

As the afternoon progressed, the Drago family flooded in the door like lemmings. Kitten, rather Jessica, had warned me in the solarium about the younger cousins.

“Animals,” she said. “Their parents buy them anything they want and let them run wild like savages. Trust me, it shows. It’s almost like they’re proud of their hellions.”

I was afraid that I too fell into the camp of finding the young boys adorable while they scaled the counter and climbed to the top of the refrigerator. Their war whoops echoed throughout the house from deep down in their bellies.

The girls were just as unruly. Stefania lay on her back in the living room, pounding her tiny fists on the floor and slamming her heels on the carpet. “Zio said I could have three chocolates, not one!” she shrieked.

“Zio, you spoil her. She’s going to get cavities if you don’t stop,” Jessica said.

“Let her, cara mia, she’s only young once. Cavities we can pay for. You can’t buy the happiness I get from spoiling her.” He held out another chocolate and held it above Stefania’s mouth as if she were a begging poodle. She opened her mouth wide and snapped it shut when he placed the treat on her tongue.

I’d never been around such a noisy, hot-blooded crew and was at first shocked by the banter they exchanged. “Shut up!” One cousin shouted at another. “I look at you sometimes and think, ‘Really? That’s the sperm that won?’”

It was as colorful as a reality TV show, and I couldn’t look away. When the meal was over, my eyelids felt like they had gained ten pounds and I kept fantasizing about bed, though it was early yet.

The Drago’s talked over one another, randomly broke out Nessun dorma! while stirring tomato sauce on the stove or washing dishes and waved their arms in grand gestures to express themselves. At a single supper they displayed more life in their little pinkies than most people had in their entire bodies.

So, this was what it meant to be Italian.

I liked it.

By the time tiramisu came to the table, I just wanted to lie down.

What I liked most of all about the Dragos, was the very male, very sexy hunk across the room who stared at me straight on, a slow smile building as he stroked his own throat.

As if he wanted to devour me, like tiramisu.

If that’s what he wanted, I’d definitely let him.

My cheeks blazed thinking about last night, the soft kiss of his hair on my inner thighs while he put his mouth on me.

Dante was beside me in an instant, whispering in my ear so close I could feel the heat of his breath. “What are you thinking about, baby?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, and rubbed at my scratchy eyes.

“That’s not what it looks like.” He brushed a finger over my cheekbone, resting the back of it on my lower lip. “When we get home, you can tell me all about it.”

“Home? You mean my studio? I need to get back there.”

“We’ll talk about that later too.” He stooped to pick up Stefania, whose face was covered in streaks of melted ice cream and chocolate. “Now isn’t the time.” Dante patted his niece’s cheeks and said, “What have you gotten yourself into here, mi amore?” He took her to the kitchen sink, set her on the counter, and gently dabbed her face clean with a wet paper towel.

My lips turned up, and I gave in, letting my eyelids slide down like garage doors and laid my head on the table.

Next thing I knew, I was looking out the window of Dante’s truck as we pulled away from Zio’s house. The house lights illuminated the front yard where Stefania was spinning circles, her arms wide open as if to embrace the entire world, head tipped back to take in the universe.

I closed my eyes on the way home and woke up with Dante sitting next to me on his bed, gazing at me with a softened expression, inhaling deeply through his nose, then exhaling through his mouth, as if coming to an important conclusion.

“I know it’s too soon, but you do something to me that I can’t explain,” he said.

I burrowed my face into the soft pillow, and my eyes drifted shut, letting sleep save me from the impossibility of finding the right words with which to answer Dante. Drifting between dreams and the waking world, my mind plunged me into a scene where I told him, “You shouldn’t trust me, not after what I’ve done.” But I spoke the words only inside my head. No one heard them but me.

I lay there for a long time before I plunged all the way into dreamland, and Dante didn’t go away.

I didn’t want him to.

The next morning, I walked into the kitchen wearing Dante’s sweats, no undies, and he asked, “I made strata, you hungry?”

“It smells good. What’s in it?”

The rectangle of golden brown with pieces of ham and spinach thrusting out of it like tiny icebergs and made my mouth water.

“Sourdough bread, cheese and eggs baked together. Plus, a special ingredient.” He slid his hip along the countertop, thrusting his chest out, and my p***y clenched her appreciation.

I was like a ripe peach, ready for picking around him. More than anything, I wanted him to take a bite.

“Mmm,” I walked to where he stood, and leaned over to smell the strata. How was it possible that this man was single?

And why on earth was he so interested in me?

Dante grabbed the cotton fabric at my hips, and used it to yank me to him, “Hard leaving you alone last night. You look so pretty when you sleep.”

Tilting my head to the side, I pursed my lips. “Dante, don’t you think we should discuss what’s happening here?” I struggled to find the words. “We don’t even know each other. Difficult as it might be to believe after my behavior the night before last, I’m not one to hop in bed with a man at the drop of a hat.”

“How big a slice you want?” he asked, his eyes full of heat.

I rolled my eyes and took the plate from him. “That’s perfect,” I said and grabbed a cup of coffee off the counter, adding a splash of cream.

Outside, the lake was still, and an enormous group of Aleutian geese grazed at the grass on the shoreline.

Dante looked at the geese, but his stare was empty.

“You might as well know, Savanna, my fiancée died three years ago.” His gaze went further out over the lake, to a place I couldn’t see. We sat that way, silent, for what felt like an hour.

“Since then, I haven’t been interested in any woman, not seriously anyway, until you.” He ran his finger over the rim of his spoon, in a hypnotizing motion so that when he lowered his voice and said, “And trust me. I’m very interested.”

I startled slightly. “Oh.” Spreading my fingers out in a fan against my upper chest, I slid them up to stroke my throat.

“When a Drago is fascinated by a woman, he doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I get that this could be a problem for you given your most recent experience with a whackadoo. I assure you, I’m not a stalker. And you’re going to like what I do to you.”

My stomach swooped and n*****s pebbled under my sweatshirt, and to hide my visceral reaction, I slid my fork into my mouth. “Oh my God. This is amazing.”

He held me under his gaze, forcing me to pay attention, “My family pledges lifelong loyalty to the people they love. Trust, obedience—those are the glue that holds us together.”

“I wondered,” I said. An image of Carlos showing up, no questions asked, after a single phone call from Dante came to mind.

“We adhere to a particular form of justice that other people might not understand.” He brushed a string of melted cheese from my bottom lip with his thumb and ate it. “I don’t think twice about what you did to that lowlife who came to kill you. He got what he deserved, and no one will ever find out.”

The muscles in his jaw rippled and his cheeks grew ruddy.

I set my spine in a rigid line, stared at my cup of coffee, and tapped my lip wondering how I not only accepted gangster justice, but, more than that, found it hot.

First, I saved myself by killing someone.

Then Dante, and his cousin, helped me get away with it.

I should feel guilty.

Instead, I felt like f*****g.

Him.

“So, set your mind at ease about that.” Dante continued with his mansplanation, and I found it kind of cute. “Don’t hold on to guilt, not for a single minute. The world is better off without that c**k sucker in it.”

We ate in silence for a bit, and I stared out the window at the spot where the trees bowed over the lake and cast reflections in the water, trying to take it all in.

Emotions were off the hook, sitting in the kitchen with this edible, sexy man who came to my rescue.

I never considered myself a woman who needed saving. Joining a self-defense class was one of the first things I did to make sure I could protect myself when Mathew started getting weird. But it felt so good to let someone take care of me.

“There’s one more thing you should know, and you won’t like it.” His gaze was probing.

“What’s that?” I bit my lip in reaction to the strained tone of his voice.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

“What do you mean?” My coffee cup trembled in my hand.

“You’re staying here. With me. I looked out for you the other night, and now it’s your turn to look out for me.”

On the other side of the bay window, a deer was grazing at the edge of Dante’s lawn. My arms were rigid under my hands as I rubbed them absently. “What makes you think I’ll do what you say? Aren’t you being a little heavy-handed?”

“Perfect way to describe it. I’m very forceful with my hand, and from the way you responded the night before last, something tells me that hot little body of yours is going to love it.”

“Dante, I have no clothes here. And what about work?” My voice lowered to a whisper.

“Of course you can go to work, your auntie needs your help. I’ll drive you there and pick you up every day.”

“You mean like a little kid?”

“I mean, I can’t rest unless you’re under my protection. And now that I’ve saved your a*s, you owe me one. You’re staying here, end of story.” He leaned over the table to brush my hair out of my eyes, and a tremor ran up my back. It was hard to distinguish whether his passion was sexy, dangerous, or both.

Hadn’t I already discovered the deceptively fine line between a man being possessive and a man being emotionally unstable? How quickly rejection turned to obsession?

Dante cut his eyes towards me. “There’s something else you need to know.”

I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose, nodding slowly.

“We’re not just roommates.“ His huge forearms wrapped around his chest like steel bands and his direct gaze unsettled me. “You’re my fiancée. At least in the eyes of the voting public, until the election is over.”

I slapped both palms on the table. “What are you talking about?”

His chiseled jaw set in a hard line, and his chin thrust out towards me. “I’m running for Union President. Let’s just say, certain influential campaign donors will only give their support to a family man. You, my sweet betrothed,” he put his hot palm over my hand and stared me down, “are going to help me land those votes.”

Dante was single and smoking hot. Women would line up around the block to stand in as his fiancée-for-a-while, so it made little sense that he’d set his sights on me. Other than the fact that I was conveniently close, and I owed him one.

Life had taught me to expect the unexpected. But as for the dirty things he’d make me do as his fake fiancée, I never could have seen them coming.