Chapter Sixty One

She saw their faces right before they died and they haunted her, she woke up screaming and there was no one there to comfort her. She had alienated everyone,it would soon be her twenty first birthday and not a single person acknowledged it and in her heart she doubted she would reach it, she sat on the bed in her room and cried. There was no one to blame but herself she had started this war and just as quickly she tired of it, men were such fools, but their pride would not let them submit to a mere girl. She did not want to keep killing, it wasn’t the Dons most of them deserved whatever she dished out but for every one of them she killed a family was eliminated.That was what she hated, their wives and children, granted most of the children were young adults,  but it still made her feel sick having to kill them. She had no choice, to leave any of them alive would mean another family having a vendetta against her she sat with her head in her hands,                                                                                                                                                    ‘Why had it all gone so wrong?’                                                                                                                  Tears streamed down her cheeks she  did not even know where her best friend was,

‘What kind of friend did that make her?’

She thought looking out of the window, she had not spoken to Carlotta since she had walked away from her months ago, she sighed and made a decision. Getting up she turned off the laptop and called her Guards,

‘Porta l'auto’ [Bring the car]

She sat back in the  seat she told her driver to head for Carlotta’s villa  not seeing the look that passed between him and her guards as they drove across the city. Carlotta’s villa was locked up and silent it was clear no one had been there for weeks and Juliette looked about her in surprise no one had told her she had gone away. These days she had her finger on the pulse of everything happening  in the Mafia families, if she wanted to stay alive she had to be one step in front of all them. Wandering around the back of the villa she found it was locked there to and the curtains were drawn puzzled she headed back to her car and then stopped. Her Guards watched her from behind their dark glasses their faces impassive, turning she headed down the drive and then turned off striding up the path toward the little cottage that stood back from the road. It belonged to Carlotta’s gardener/handyman she knocked on the door and he answered,

‘Hi Juliette, how are you?’

He smiled at her speaking in English,

‘Hi Leon, I am okay. Where has Carlotta gone?’

The man frowned at her and she saw a shadow cross his eyes,

‘You do not know?’

Her heart sped up and she shook her head,

‘I, no, I haven’t been keeping in touch with her. We had an argument, a falling out. It was silly, I know that now’

He held up his hand to stop her,

‘She is gone Juliette. The villa is closed, she will not be returning’

Juliette stepped back shocked,

‘Gone? Gone where?’

Leon looked away,

‘I do not know’

She stared at him and she knew,

‘Mafia?’

Her voice was barely a whisper and his nod was only the slightest movement of his head she took a deep breath then headed back to the car forcing the tears in her eyes not to fall. She drove back to her own villa and went straight to her office opening a bottle of wine she sat drinking. She stared out of the window but saw nothing, a replay of her time with Carlotta played in her head, all the things the older woman had done for her. Fat tears ran down her cheeks as she drank and remembered, totally unaware of the other woman’s betrayal, all she knew was the love she had given her so freely.

Carlotta had hidden her true reason for befriending the beautiful young woman, she had manipulated and used her to get close to Romero, and further her own ambitions within the Mafia. The documents Romero had showed that she was going to sell Juliette to the highest bidder once the Dons had brought her down, it was Carlotta who had used her influence over the teenager to plant all the paranoid thoughts about the other Dons and Romero especially. She had brought Juliette to this war using her innocence and breaking her trust what she had not taken into account was that Romero would fall helplessly in love with her and it had infuriated her. Juliette had won him over  so effortlessly yet Carlotta had spent years trying to seduce him, every since he had taken over as Don she had flirted and teased offering herself to him at every opportunity. He had refused her every time, at first he had been kind saying he wanted to keep her as a friend and her insistence had driven him to take the action he had.  He did not want her, he never had and it was of no interest to him when he was informed by the brothel of her death, as far as he was concerned she had brought it on herself. When he said no he meant no and Carlotta had never accepted that.

Juliette got wasted she blamed herself thinking Carlotta had just left and gone somewhere she was unaware that one of her Guards was watching until she collapsed uncomsious  so drunk she was sprawled on her sofa not even making it to her bed. The Guard  had set up a distraction that drew her number two Gino, and the rest of the guards away from her and used the burner phone Romero had given him for exactly this purpose.

‘Don Romero, ha scoperto Carlotta, avevi ragione, vieni ora e non combatterà’ [Don Romero, she found out about Carlotta, you were right, come now and she will not put up a fight]

He strode into her villa half an hour later and scooped the barely conscious young woman into his arms, she stirred and open her eyes,

‘Hello Romero’

 She giggled looking into his eyes as if this was the most normal thing in the world and then passed out again.