Her Mafia Daddy - Chapter 65: Chapter 65

Someone pounded on the door. "Hello?" I called. It opened and one of the crew members peered inside. I could barely see his face, but his expression did not reassure me. "Signorina, si fermi qui."
He gestured to the bed. I understood the word here, and I assumed he was telling me not to move. "Are we in danger?"
He gave me a helpless shrug that said he didn't understand. "Si fermi qui, per favore."
"Okay," I said, practically being drowned out by the sound of the wind and waves crashing outside the yacht. The boat rose and fell, and I dug my fingertips into the mattress as best I could. Holy shit. Were we going to sink?
The crew member disappeared, leaving me alone in Rafael 's big bed. Rain pelted the glass, sheets of it coating the deck beyond. The wind was louder than I'd ever heard, a fierce roar so strong it was a wonder the roof didn't blow off. I didn't have any personal experience to compare this night with, but I couldn't help but wonder if this was a tropical storm. Worse, a hurricane?
Fear turned my blood to ice. I couldn't move, my body frozen in dread as the waves rocked the yacht. Should I be searching for a life preserver? I stared out at the black water and shivered.
Unfortunately, I wasn't a great swimmer. I certainly couldn't swim to shore, which meant I'd either drown or become shark food if the boat sank.
Oh, God. The waves seemed to be getting larger. Angrier. I tried to think of it like a roller coaster, a ride I had to endure for a little bit, but it didn't work. The longer it went on, the worse it became.
At one point, my stomach revolted and I had to rush to the toilet to vomit. I had no one to hold my hair, no one to tell me this was all going to be okay. I was in the middle of a terrible storm all alone in a place I barely knew. If we died tonight, I would never see my sisters again. I would slip under the waves and disappear.
That scared me like nothing else. As the waves continued to batter the yacht, I clung to the bed and prayed, queasy and miserable. I could only wonder, had Rafael known the storm was coming? Was this his way of punishing me?
Rafael's POV
When the storm abated at daybreak I was in the helicopter, flying toward the water. The wind hadn't completely died down, and the pilot struggled to keep the craft righted. I didn't care. I had to get to the yacht.
There had been no way to reach her last night, or I would have gone. But the wind had been too fierce, too sudden to risk a small speedboat or the helicopter. I hadn't even been able to reach her by phone to reassure her, as we'd lost service early on in the storm.
I knew the yacht was sound. Nothing, not even a category five hurricane, could capsize a boat that big, equipped to handle rough seas. But for someone not used to the ocean, a storm such as the one last night could be terrifying. I hated that I put her through it. Instead of letting her come back to the castello, I'd left her on the yacht, alone and with no way to reach me, surrounded by a crew that spoke little if any English.
Bastardo! What had I been thinking?
The night had been a sleepless one. I paced and worried over Valentina . At dinner, Zia had given me an earful about my treatment of Valentina , hissing, "Vecchi peccati hanno le ombre lunghe."
It was true. Old sins did have long shadows, and I knew that what I'd done would have long-lasting repercussions. While I regretted leaving Valentina the instant I departed the yacht, I could not weaken and reconsider. I intended to live with the consequences, good or bad. Of course, if I had known about the storm, I would have handled things differently. I prayed she would forgive me.
As we approached, the yacht was still, the waters once again calm. I held onto the door handle, tossing my headset onto the seat next to me, and As soon as the helicopter touched down, I was out and racing along the deck.
A lump of fear lodged in my throat as I opened the suite's door. Valentina was sprawled out on top of the bed, limbs askew, asleep in one of my dress shirts. My shoulders relaxed slightly, until I got close enough to see the dried tears on her cheeks.
Something in my chest turned over. I found a soft blanket in a drawer. Carrying it to the bed, I crawled next to her, gathered her to me and covered us both. She sighed and nestled closer, her eyes never opening, and I sagged into the mattress, exhausted. I should have been here last night, as we'd planned. Or we should have been in my bedroom inside the castello.
My anger over her disobeying me was not an excuse for isolating her and scaring her half to death. Marco had tried to tell me as much on the ride back to the estate yesterday, but I hadn't listened, so full of my own importance that I couldn't see reason. I closed my eyes, determined to make this up to her. I wanted my sweet girl back.