Becoming His Wife by Hayley Faiman

Chapter Thirty-Two

TIZIANO

Gavino and his crew show up just about the time my father gains consciousness. He is moaning and moving his head from side to side. I stand in front of him waiting to see what he’s going to say or do next.

“You’re going to let her watch?” Gavino asks, his focus on my father and nowhere else.

I look back over my shoulder where Maci is sitting on the edge of the sofa, her eyes glassy as she stares straight ahead at nothingness while the men around her drag dead bodies out of the house.

Frowning, I lick my lips and open my mouth to ask her if she wants to stay, but her gaze flicks to mine and she holds it. “I’m fine,” she breathes.

“You’re pregnant,” Gavino announces.

Maci stands slowly, placing her hand on her belly. She shifts her gaze from mine to Gavino’s and she dips her chin, completely focused on Gavino and nothing else.

“This man was going to kill me, my baby, and my husband. I don’t think that I could walk away from this place without knowing that he’ll never try to hurt us again,” she states.

My chest swells with pride at her words. Fuck me, but this woman is strong, capable, and sexy as shit. This is the woman created for a Made Man—for me. I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her, and as the months pass, nothing has changed. She just proves herself over and over again as being absolutely fucking perfect.

“Then you can watch. You’re capable,” Gavino declares, his lips curving up into an approving grin before he shifts his focus back to my father.

Holding out my hand for Maci, I tug her to my side when she slips her palm in mine. Standing together, I look down at my father as he opens his eyes and gathers his senses. His eyes widen in surprise, then his brows snap together in what I assume is anger.

“Good morning,” I mutter.

“Vino,” he says, ignoring me.

Arlo chuckles next to Gavino, but none of us speak. Gavino is the boss here. Granted, I have some power as well, but my respect for Gavino is great, and he can have the floor before me. I’m not someone who is jealous or insecure when it comes to power. I have my own, I don’t need to be threatened by someone else’s.

“You fucked yourself, Tussio,” Gavino says slowly.

“Did I?” he asks, looking around. “My son is a traitor to his famiglia. I should have killed him the moment I heard he was going to align with you and shit on his birthright.”

Maci squeezes my hand, but neither of us says anything. I could tell my father to fuck himself, I could argue with him about what I was or wasn’t going to do. None of it matters because he will never believe me, and he will never know the truth of it.

“You don’t know what you’re even talking about. Tiziano is loyal as the day is long. I thought I could depend on you, but I was wrong,” Gavino says, shaking his head.

“You thought you could steal the power of my famiglia from underneath me. Instead, you’re going to kill me and take it that way. I should have known,” my father spits.

“No,” Maci shouts. “You don’t get to act like all this is us.”

My father’s head rears back as if she’s hit him. I doubt he’s ever had a woman raise her voice to him ever in his life, let alone basically call him a liar. Even Gavino’s eyes widen and he turns his head to stare at her in surprise.

Maci is trembling, but it’s not because she’s scared or cold, it’s because she’s angry. She is downright fucking angry, and I don’t blame her one bit, I feel just about the same toward my father in this moment.

Wrapping my hand around her hip, I squeeze her with my fingers, trying to give her my support. She has something that she wants to say and I’m going to let her say it. She has the floor now and she is in total control of this moment. Then, when she’s finished, I’ll take over.

“You did this. You tried to kill your own son, more than once, and me too. No way do you get to blame this on him. No way,” she says, whispering the last words.

“If I thought that you had any idea about the ways of the world, zoccola, I would give a shit what you have to say. But since your only duty is to open your mouth to accept cock and not to actually speak, I don’t give a single fuck what comes out of any of your holes.”

“Nope,” I shout. “Absolutely fucking not. You do not talk to my wife that way,” I growl.

“Not your wife, Tiziano. Nothing but your whore. Better for you, go and find someone who knows her fucking place.”

Spittle flies from his words, and his face turns almost purple with rage. I could let this go on, my father loves to hear himself speak and to act superior to everyone else in the entire world. Clearing my throat, I shift my gaze over to Gavino who only dips his chin as a silent nod of approval.

It’s time.

Lifting my father’s gun, I point it at his face and I tilt my head to the side as I watch him, waiting for his reaction. He doesn’t say anything immediately, he just juts his chin forward and presses his lips together.

“You have nothing to say as your last words?” I ask.

Only then does he shift his gaze to mine. I’m suddenly caught off guard that we have the same color eyes. I’m looking into aged eyes that match my own. I should feel guilty as I do this, as I look into his gaze, my gun pointed at his forehead about to end his life, but I don’t. Oddly, I feel nothing at all.

“You’re making a mistake. Forsaking your blood, your famiglia for these people. For that zoccola,” my father growls.

I shake my head slowly. “I have not made a mistake. I have chosen my family over a tyrant. Over someone who can only control by killing, kidnapping, and threatening. Fuck that.”

Without saying another word, I pull the trigger. Blood splatters everywhere behind him as the back of his head explodes from the exit of the bullet. I smirk as I watch him die in the chair in front of me.

Fuck. Him.

MACI

Dead.

My father-in-law, Tussio Bianchi is dead. Closing my eyes, I inhale a deep breath as Gavino shifts me out of Tiziano’s arms and guides me toward the front of the house. I keep my eyes closed until we’re outside and I can inhale the clean air around me.

Gavino clears his throat and I turn to look over at him. He gives me a grim expression but doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to. This man is completely and totally in control. He is a boss and I understand why Tiziano was so willing to not just work beside him, but for him.

“What happens now?” I ask.

He smiles softly but doesn’t reach out to touch me or anything. “Now, you go home and you live your life. Happily.”

“Do we though?”

He frowns, his brows snapping together for a moment, then he clears his throat. “Yeah, you do.”

I lick my lips and think about asking him a question, one that isn’t my place to ask. According to Tussio, I had a place and didn’t know how to stay in it. Mia warned me about it as well, and it seems that I can’t quite stay within my box.

“What about the famiglia? I don’t know the ins and outs, but I am aware enough to know that there are problems. Federal ones, which I have a feeling come with prison time. What happens then?”

Gavino doesn’t even blink at my question, he doesn’t act as if I’ve stepped out of line or offended him at all. In fact, his lips curve up into a grin. “You are supposed to turn off your listening ears when Tiziano gets a phone call that is about business, Maci,” he states.

“Hard to do when that phone call comes from someone he was fucking regularly and it’s on my honeymoon,” I snap.

A man clears his voice and I press my lips together in complete and total embarrassment. I hadn’t realized that Arlo was standing just a few feet away. He’s smiling and looking down at his feet, but I can’t focus on him, not when Gavino is staring at me as if I’ve got two heads.

“Tiziano’s personal affairs as long as they don’t affect business, have nothing to do with business.”

“Gavino,” I whisper. “My honeymoon.”

He shakes his head. “Something you have to bring up with him. Just know that we’re working on the federal thing. In the future,” he holds his hands up. “It’s anyone’s game, and that includes any business in the world, Maci, not just ours.”

I don’t tell him that doing illegal business has a higher risk for prison time. There’s no sense to it. He has his world and I’m just living in it with all of them, even if I am scared to death of it all.

“I can’t say anything about affairs though, right? That’s what Mia told me. They happen, I make sure everything looks perfect on the outside, and I shut up and smile.”

Gavino’s lips curve up into a grin. “This is not Tussio’s famiglia. Mia is right. We still have unspoken rules. Don’t make a scene in public, don’t bad-mouth your husband or anyone else in the famiglia, but what you do behind your closed doors is your fuckin’ business.”

I open my mouth to speak, but Gavino continues. “I, however, would caution against going off on him anytime soon though. He just killed his father, just found out that his mother has been dead all these years, and you are pregnant and unmarried. Maybe let him get a handle on his shit first, yeah?”

Closing my mouth, I press my lips together and roll them a few times, nodding, before Tiziano appears next to us. Without hesitation, he wraps his arm around my waist and tugs me against his side.

I feel is warm lips against my temple and all of the frustration melts. This man, he’s mine, he is who I was meant to be with. All of my anxiousness and worry completely fades.

“What is the next step?” he asks, shifting his gaze from me to Gavino.

Gavino grins. “Salvatore will help with that,” he says, lifting his hand and making a motion behind me.

Spinning around, I see Salvatore unfolding from the back seat of one of the black sedans. His eyes find mine immediately and I watch as his entire body relaxes before my eyes.

“Go to him,” Tiziano murmurs.

Without hesitating, my feet move. I hurry toward him and wrap my arms around his shoulders. He does the same, wrapping his around my back as he holds me against him.

“You were taken from right next to me,” he murmurs against my hair.

“I was,” I breathe.

“I couldn’t even come into that house. I didn’t know what I would be walking into.”

“Salvatore?” I ask, lifting my head and looking at him in the eyes.

He shakes his head, clearing his throat. “My sister was killed. I never saw her body, but she was taken from me and I just couldn’t. I couldn’t lose you too.”

Lifting my hand, I cup his cheek. “I’m okay,” I breathe. “I’m okay.”

His gaze finds mine and he holds it with his own for a long moment as if he has to see for himself that I am truly okay. It’s fine, he’s been my protector for months, I can’t just brush him off now that Tiziano is back. He’s still my boss, but more than that, he’s my friend, too.

“Sal,” Gavino’s voice calls out.

I take another step backward and slowly we walk next to one another as we make our way back over to the small group of men that I abandoned. I’m sure that I should be listening intently to what they are talking about, but I can’t.

My gaze is focused on the random men moving around the property, and the body that they are carrying out of the house. The body that I know is my husband’s dead father. The man that my husband shot point blank in the head right next to me.

I should feel scared, maybe even sad, but I don’t. This is just another notch in the long list of fucked-up shit that has happened, around and to me. I hate to even think it, but honestly, I am not surprised or scared by much anymore.

Losing Tiziano is probably the one thing that terrifies me to my core, not much else.

I can’t lose him again.

I won’t.