Kissing The Moon Goodbye - A Midnight Mafia Novel

Seventeen

Aria

I made haste back to my room. Well, my old room. A room I hadn't stayed in since I was not even 15 years young. The bastard.

I kept my back against the door with eyes closed. The fȕcking bastard.

Moments after I peeled myself away from the door Dante entered with no knock.

"What were you doing?" He asked in a sharp tone.

"Oh you know. We both had a bit of time to kill we decided to hop onto our matching unicorns and take a ride over a rainbow." I replied casually pulling my earrings off and putting them onto a dresser.

"Why the hell was he following you? What were you doing together? Especially at this hour!"

I turned back around to face him and put my hands on his shoulders. "Relax. We weren't doing anything. I was in the tree, he found me and wanted to talk. I pushed him out and stormed off. Thus, his following me. Anymore more questions Padre?"

"Don't get involved with that man Aria." I was expecting some look of approval at the fact that I had shoved him out of a tree but he didn't seem to care.

"Did it look like I wanted to get involved? Besides, he's engaged. You know me better than this."

"You're right. I know you and I know him."

I dropped my hands from his shoulders and instead dipped my hand into my pocket to fish out my vibrating phone. I ignored his call as well as the following three before finally receiving I text which I opened with an eye roll.

"What does he want?" He demanded.

I'll be in the tree waiting.

"Nothing." I lied instantly and texted back politely telling him to fall out and make sure he caught a stick in his ass on the way down.

"Doesn't sound like nothing."

"Calm down. Seriously. I'm going to bed, he's just...I don't know." I sighed. "He's Alessio. I think he's confused or having cold feet or something. You know how Alessio is when faced with real life human emotions, he's looking for a place to run or a job to bury himself into. He won't find either with me."

"Yeah." He scoffed and turned around, as he walked to the door he muttered irritably "I know exactly how Alessio is."

I looked back to my phone for the next text.

I'm holding my breath.

It went back, way back. The phrase "I'm holding my breath" had been something we had said to one another since childhood. Much like a toddler threatening to hold their breath until they got their way we would teasingly threaten one another. Usually when Alessio was being particularly closed off or I would especially bitchy, he would ask me to calm down and I would tell him to piss off and he would remind me, I'm holding my breath and with a sigh we would come back to our senses.

I hesitated for just a second before texting back.

Don't.

*****

I didn't sleep any last night.

Breakfast with the Moretti family. Unlike Mrs. Genovese who preferred to have as many people at the table as humanly possible, Dante was opposite.

Most mornings he would have no one, occasionally he would have guests if business matters needed handled. My personal favorite morning, just after I came back from the states and was staying a few weeks with him I came down one morning to him seated at the head of the table with damn near a whole feast on the table and his only other guest was a man beaten and strapped to his chair at the other end of the table. The man nodded off once and received a quick shock, you know those shockers? Actually usually used as a sex toy for those more into kink. Not like a Taser, just a quick jolt to wake him. Dante being, well, Dante, had bragged about how many days it had been since they'd fed the guy.