Gifted To The Don The Real Mafia Heiress Returns Chapter 12
Amalfi
Three months later. Amalfi Coast. A white villa on a cliff over the water.
I’m curled on the window seat with a trashy paperback — some Wall Street guy meets small-town girl — and I’m half asleep by page ten.
Down in the garden, Dante is on his knees in the dirt fighting a rosebush.
He’s in a linen shirt and old chinos. Sleeves rolled. A smear of dirt on his cheekbone.
He’s frowning at a bag of fertilizer like it’s a rival family.
A beat later, Dante sets the little spade down. Rinses his hands twice in the water bucket before he’ll touch the phone.
He walks up to the window. Hands me the phone.
I don’t take it. “Read it.”
“Yes.” Low. Level.
“Senator Ambrosio. The whole family went down. Assets seized. New administration used the money to fund the flood repairs upstate.”
“The Morettis. Estate liquidated. Vivienne — after Lorenzo, she cracked. Started barking. Bit a guard’s throat out last week. New management put her down.”
“Lorenzo Colombo. The Shadows caught him on the border. Arms and legs off. He’s a caretaker at the Colombo family cemetery now. Sits by his father’s grave every day. Watching over the seat he thought he’d inherit.”
I listen and my smile creeps up.
The new Don has a very good sense of who to make happy.
Dante wipes the message and pulls the SIM. Steps back. Waits.
The setting sun is on him. Softens the edges.
“Dinner tonight?” he asks. Careful.
“Kitchen got some good spring vegetables. I could do the risotto you like.”
Three months. The look he used to have — that hunted, half-mad thing behind the eyes — is gone.
What’s left is quiet. Full.
“Dante.”
His shoulders go straight. Head drops half an inch. “Miss Colombo.”
Those two words. Again.
I’m suddenly tired of it.
“Stop calling me that.”
He looks up. Not sure what he’s hearing.
“Call me Bella.”
He goes very still.
His mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
He looks down. Fights it. Loses.
When he finally answers, the word cracks in his throat. “Yes.”
A pause. “…Bella.”
Outside, rain starts. Soft on the lemon trees.
I look at the wet in Dante’s eyes and the dirt on his hands and something in my chest — years frozen — moves an inch toward warm.
I reach out, gently lifting his chin. “Call me again.”
His ears are red. “Bella.”
I brush a thumb along the thin scar under his jaw.
He took a bullet for me once. Nearly bled out on my shoulder — and still wouldn’t let go.
“Does it still hurt?”
He looks up like I’ve hit him.
“No.” A breath. “Never.”
I take my hand back. Turn to the window.
The garden is greener in the rain.
“Extra pancetta in the risotto.”
“Yes.” He’s already moving.
I watch him go.
The rain thickens. Runs off the roof tiles in a soft curtain.
Isabella Colombo is dead. Long dead.
There’s just Bella now — and Dante, her most loyal protector, who does the books, handles the bad neighbors, kills the occasional problem, and, apparently, grows roses badly and makes very good risotto.
This life, it turns out, isn’t half bad.