Veiled Vows: An age gap, marriage of convenience, secret pregnancy, mafia romance (Mafia Lords of Sin)

My mother hasn’t said a word since I came home and found her over my father’s dead body with a knife in her hand.

Not a single word.

Last night, she barely even seemed to register I was there when I pried the weapon out of her cold hand and guided her up from the floor. Twice she nearly fell from how numb her legs were after prolonged kneeling. She didn’t say a word when I guided her into the bathroom and propped her up on the toilet. She didn’t say a word when I demanded answers or told her to wait while I went to check on my father.

His skin was cold to the touch and the blood around him was congealed. He died some time ago.

Panic then gripped me for a good few seconds before I did the only thing I knew. I squashed down the rising panic, the upset, and the fear and got to work.

By the time the sun rose the following day, the house was clean and my father’s body was on ice down in the basement. The guards who came running at my SOS took over securing the property and hunting down where the rest of the staff had vanished while I tended to my mother, who remained on the toilet seat where I left her.

Now she sits in the lounge wrapped in a blanket with a steaming hot cup of tea clasped in her hands, staring through the window at the increased patrol walking past. The crunch of gravel under their boots is almost alarming.

“Mom?” Dragging one hand through my messy hair, I approach her slowly and kneel in front of her. “Mom, can you look at me?”

“What are they even doing?” she says suddenly, her voice low and waspish. “I hope they don’t trample my flowers. I spent so long tending to them. So long.”

“Mom?” My heart’s been racing all night long, and my mind is a jumble of panic over whether or not I’m doing the right thing since no one seems to have a clue what the hell happened. No one except my floaty, distant mother. “Mom, can you please look at me?”

“The flowers,” she says softly, shaking her head. “Don’t let them ruin my flowers.”

“Mom!”

She jumps slightly and guilt swells in my chest. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“Don’t yell at me Jasmine,” she says softly as if scolding a child. “You should know better.”

“I know. I know. I just … I need you to look at me. Please.”

When she does, her eyes are distant. Like she’s looking at me but not seeing anything in front of her. “Oh, my daughter.”

“Mom.” My tongue feels heavy as I force the words out. “Mom, I need you to tell me what happened last night.”

“Last night?” Her head tilts and she frowns briefly. “Last night …”

“Yes. Last night. What … What happened to Dad? Can you tell me? Can you tell me what happened to him?”

She screws up her eyes and shakes her head. When they open, tears shine in the corners of her eyes and she smiles a watery smile. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s all going to be okay now.”

“Mom, what happened?” My frustration grows. Why can’t she give me a straight answer? I need her to tell me the truth. “Were you attacked? Was it self-defense? I saw the logs. I saw you ordered all the guards away last night. You even fired a bunch. What happened? Please Mom, please tell me.”

“Don’t you worry your pretty head, Jasmine.” She smiles suddenly and turns her attention back outside. “I was just trying to save you. That’s all I ever try to do.”

“Mom, what are you—” A knock at the door interrupts me. My head drops low and I close my eyes, willing down the overwhelming surge of agony that rises in my chest like heartburn.noveldrama

I need answers.

“Ma’am?” A guard pops his head around the door. “The doctor is here to see Mrs. Falzone.”

“Let him in,” I sigh, standing. As the doctor walks in with a polite smile, I wave him toward my mother. “She’s all yours, Doc.”

I have to leave the room while the doctor tends to my mother because her lack of response to him brings a growing sense of dread. If something doesn’t snap her out of this, I’ll never get answers.

Since my mother is a closed book, I only have a few options left. The CCTV around the estate only shows the guards leaving, as well as an argument my parents had in my father’s study, but they appear to make up amicably and retire to bed around the usual time. There are no cameras in the bedroom, so I have nothing to go on. Whatever happened in there is locked in the floaty mind of my mother.

So I return to the bedroom.

Not a single thing is out of place. The cleaners did an excellent job at wiping up the blood and removing all evidence, but I can still smell it. A coppery tang that hangs in the air like the stink of greased metal.

In the silence of my parents’ bedroom, the tears come. Grief swells up like a balloon inside me, taking up so much space that I can’t breathe. Tears fill my eyes but they don’t fall, a sob rises in my throat but for some reason, I can’t let it escape. It stays trapped inside me along with all the other pressure until everything throbs like a bruise. I clutch at my stomach as images of last night flicker in my mind—my father’s corpse, the knife in my mother’s hand, the dark empty house.

Everything had been going perfectly until I came home.

I wish I never did.

The sob still doesn’t come, and somehow I’m able to rein it in and grapple back in control of my upset. I swallow hard, shoving everything down into the dark depths of my guts and finally take a breath.

I need answers.

My parents’ room, once immaculate, grows to look like a bomb has hit it as I tear through every cupboard, drawer, and loose floorboard that I can find in my search for answers. Fuck knows what I’m looking for but there has to be something. A clue or a hint as to what happened here and why.

Why my father is dead.

Why my mother is broken.

Why my world is shattered.

That answer comes in a small mobile phone hidden behind a fake back panel in the drawer of my mother’s dressing table, tucked away behind old bottles of perfume and hand cream.

It’s a simple phone that turns on at the push of a button, but the passcode on the screen gives me pause. Why does she have a phone hidden away here?

What the fuck is going on?

Cracking her passcode isn’t hard since my predictable mother put her own birthday. The phone itself is blank other than a single string of text messages from a number with no name. She didn’t save it in the address book.

My heart begins to pound as I scroll through the messages one after the other. They date back months. My mother has a whole conversation with this stranger about me, Roman, and the entire arranged marriage, but none of the messages are pleasant. They warn my mother that the wedding is a catastrophic mistake, that Roman is a cruel, malicious man who will stop at nothing to destroy our family. They claim he’s got a history of dating and killing the women he falls in love with due to his Yakuza connections, while also claiming that he never left the Yakuza. He’s an undercover rat intent on destroying both families, and if my mother doesn’t stop the wedding, she’ll end up with a dead daughter, and she’ll be next.

Several texts list horrific details of what Roman will do to me and even my body after I die. I can’t stomach reading it all. I close out of the messages and fight back a gag of bile that threatens to rise.

What the fuck.

My mother’s been having secret conversations with someone who claims to be exposing the horrible truth about Roman Gatti. So why didn’t she say anything?

Downstairs, the doctor leaves after explaining there’s nothing physically wrong with my mother, but he would like to up her anxiety medication and get her in to see a psychologist. I appease him with agreements and send him on his way, then return to her in the lounge, where she sits in the exact same place.

The tea in her hands has long gone cold.

“Mom?” It’s a challenge keeping my voice steady as I crouch in front of her and hold out the phone. “Mom, I need you to tell me what this is. Who were you texting? Why were you having secret conversations?”

The burning question of what happened to Dad sits on the back of my tongue unable to escape.

She lowers her gaze to the phone, and suddenly the fog is gone in her eyes. She sets her cup aside with trembling hands, then clasps my hand and the phone between both of hers. “Oh honey, don’t you see?”

“No Mom,” I say tightly, fighting an overwhelming flood of frustration. “I don’t understand anything.”

“I did it to keep you safe, don’t you see?”

“What did you do? Who were you talking to?”

“Alto.”

“What?” My heart plummets to my gut. “This was Alto?”

“He’s such a nice man. He was warning me, don’t you see? He warned me what a dangerous and terrible person Roman is. He warned me.”

“Mom—”

“I tried to tell your father, I did. I tried to tell him and warn him. Over and over I told him how dangerous that nasty boy Roman was, but he didn’t listen. I told him to stop the wedding, and he didn’t listen to that either. He didn’t care. Men never listen!”

“Mom.” The word croaks out of me. “You—nothing in these messages is true. Do you realize that? You met Roman. You liked him, remember? At dinner.”

“He’s a snake,” she mutters bitterly, staring at me and yet somehow looking past me. “A charming, charming snake. But I saw it all. That boy Alto though. He was a good boy. Trying to warn me. Trying to help you.”

“No mom, you’ve got it all wrong. Alto tried to kill me, do you remember?”

She shakes her head quickly and pushes my hands away. “No, that’s not right. Roman is the dangerous one. He’s Yakuza, Jasmine. Remember what they did to me?”

Somewhere along the lines, the past has grown tangled in her mind. Her truth is a jigsaw collection of reality.

“Mom, listen to me. These messages are lies. Alto is a monster. You knew this. He tried to kill me. Why would you listen to him?”

“He was trying to help.” She lifts one hand to her lips and in a blink, she’s crying. “He was a good boy. I wanted to save you, dear. I wanted to save my daughter from a terrible, terrible life.”

“Mom …” I don’t want to ask and yet I have to. Her jumbled words frame a picture I’m not ready to look at. But I have to. “Mom, what happened to Dad?”

“Your father …” She scoffs sharply and looks away out the window. “He never listens. He never does. So many times I try to tell him and he’s just blinded. I told him about Roman. About how it’s all him, but he never listened. Alto listened. He listened to everything I said and he understood. He told me the truth. But your father?” She tsks softly. “I had to make him listen.”

This can’t be real.

There’s no way this is real.

“Mom … what did you do?”

“He wouldn’t stop talking. Talking and talking and talking about the wedding and how good it makes us look. How it’s the best idea in a long time. How we’ll become unstoppable. How Santino will get what’s coming to him. I told him it’s not important, it’s not worth what will happen to you. We can’t give you to that monster, I said. He called me … he called me crazy. He knows I hate that word. He just wouldn’t stop talking, so I-I …”

She looks down at her hands and frowns. “I just hit him once, I think. I remember the knife was there because my fabric scissors broke and I was in a rush, so a knife felt like a good temporary tool to get what I wanted. And I just … I hit him. You know how your father gets. He doesn’t listen, and I just wanted him to listen.”

“Mom—” My heart pounds, my hands shake, sweat beads at my temple, and a sickening chill sweeps through my convulsing gut. “Mom, you didn’t hit him. You stabbed him.”

“No …” She shakes her head and a strange, distant smile stretches across her lips. “I just made him listen And now, don’t you see?” Suddenly, she faces me and grabs both my hands in hers with an eerie, gleeful look in her eyes. “You’re free! I saved you, darling. I saved you! You don’t have to marry Roman anymore because your father is … is …” She frowns. “He’s dead. I killed him. To save you. And it worked, don’t you see? I killed him and now you can be in charge and you don’t have to marry that dangerous man. Don’t you see?”

The room spins, but my mother’s eyes remain an anchor point as I try to process everything she’s saying. “M-Mom⁠—”

“Tell me you see,” she says earnestly. “There’s no feud now, don’t you see? No feud means no marriage. No marriage means that monster stays away. We’re safe. You’re safe. Are you happy?” She cups my cheek, alerting me to dampness I hadn’t registered as tears leak down my cheek.

“Are you happy, Jasmine?”