Return of the Real Italian Alphas

THE REAL

ITALIAN ALPHAS

RETURN

A Paranormal Mob Romance

BONNIE BURROWS

Copyright
©2015 by Bonnie Burrows

All rights reserved.

About This Book

Gabriel & Betsy Russo are desperate to keep their birth of their beautiful twins a secret as this could complicate matters even more.

Crime boss Lupo has put a bounty on the head of the couple and he wants them back, dead or alive. If he were to discover the couple now have children then things would get even more dangerous.

Gabriel knows the only way to be free of Lupo is kill him. But how do you kill someone who can not be killed?

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Table Of Contents

C
HAPTER ONE

C
HAPTER TWO

C
HAPTER THREE

C
HAPTER FOUR

C
HAPTER FIVE

C
HAPTER SIX

C
HAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

“Over two months hiding in the baggage on some boat,” Betsy grumbled as she stretched her aching muscles. “I’m starting to feel like a vampire straight out of a really old novel.”

Gabriel smirked as he looked at his wife, saying, “Ma bella, you know that vampires do not exist.”

“Funny that werewolves do, and vampires don’t, isn’t it?” she answered as the two stood near the rail beside a lifeboat. The ship’s captain, looking highly irritated, was waiting for them to get off his boat and into the smallish vessel that would leave them stranded somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.

“I am waiting,” he growled impatiently. “If it’s one thing I cannot stand, its stowaways.”

Betsy got in first, followed by Gabriel, and then the boat swiftly dropped and hit the water hard. Betsy bit her lip, making it bleed. Her husband glared up at the insensitive captain but he was already moving away from the rail and barking orders to his crew.

“I hope that guy doesn’t report stowaways in an online log book,” said Gabriel as he picked up the oars and started to row. Since it was sunset and he knew they wanted to go east, he put the beautiful skyline behind him as he went, affording Betsy a perfect view of its splendor.

“I think he’s more mad that we made it most of the way there than he is that he had to sacrifice this little boat on us,” Betsy said with a chuckle. “See, there are seabirds in the air already.”

Gabriel looked up, and sure enough saw the bird Betsy was talking about. He decided to follow them instead of guessing in the darkness, and after only a very few hours they found land. It was obviously civilized since they moored on a dock and walked up the long boardwalk to the road. The sign posted on the wall was written in Italian, making him smile to see his own native tongue.

“It looks like we’ve landed in Messina,” Gabriel told her. “We’re going to need to find another boat if we hope to cross the other half of the Mediterranean. Andare, we must find our way to the other side of this little outcrop they call Sicily.”

Betsy nodded as she followed him up a steep incline and out onto the highway. A car was driving past, but when Gabriel tried to get them to stop, the driver took one look at him and sped away. He and Betsy exchanged a confused look, shrugged, and kept walking. Eventually, they got someone to stop.

In Italian, the driver asked, “What are you two doing out here? Shouldn’t you be at the meeting?”

“What meeting?” asked Gabriel, confused.

“Aren’t you werewolves?” he wanted to know.

“Well yes, but we’re not from around here.”

“Get in the car,” he ordered. “Giovanni will sort you out.”

“I think we’d best get in the car for now,” he explained to Betsy. “But I don’t really like the sound of this. If I tell you to run for it later, just do it.”

“What’s wrong?” asked Betsy uncomfortably as she got in and looked at the driver uncertainly.

“
Americano?”
he asked her, sneering slightly.

Gabriel said, “We both are, sir. I really don’t think we’ve got anything to do with this meeting of yours. We’re just trying to get across town to catch a boat to Africa.”

“No werewolf passes through here without speaking to Giovanni,” he told him. “If you don’t mean any trouble, he’s sure to send you on your way.”

Gabriel and Betsy sat nervously the whole way to Catania, where the driver said the meeting was being held. They felt like a couple of fish out of water as they stepped into the meeting hall. Betsy immediately spotted one of Lupo’s most trusted guards among the crowd.

“You know that part about running?” she whispered, pointing the man out. “I think now would be a good time for it.”

“No, no, my dear,” said the driver in broken English. “We were told to keep an eye out for you, and now here you are. I’ll be well rewarded for bringing you in.”

“Go!” shouted Gabriel, and the two of them bolted for the nearest exit. The door clattered behind them, drawing the attention of the people inside.

“
Rincorrili
!” shouted the driver. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know he’d just told a mob of werewolves to pursue them.

“Now what?” Betsy wanted to know.

“Follow those seabirds,” Gabriel said, pointing out a big, whitish bird that was flying by.

“What if they’re going to the wrong beach?” Betsy asked.

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Just go that way, then,” he told her, pointing in the direction he wanted her to run. The two of them took off and were soon by the shipyards. Knowing the werewolves would be watching for them to approach commercial passage ships, Gabriel got a better idea. They jumped onto one of the fishing boats moored along the way instead.

“
Aiuto
!” said Gabriel as he shook the driver awake. “We need to get across the water.”

“
Americano,
eh!” the fisherman growled. “I no help you. Get off my boat!”

Gabriel grabbed the man by the throat and sat in down on the chair next to his mattress. “I don’t have time to discuss this. You can either stay on board so you get the boat back or figure out how to get it back once we’re through with it. Your choice.”

The man glared at him, but decided he’d be better off to stop arguing, and nodded his head instead. Gabriel taxied the boat out into the water and eased his way southward, doing his best not to go too fast or seem suspicious in any way.

“Why you want to go to Africa, eh?” the fisherman asked.

“Personal enrichment,” said Gabriel.

Betsy gave a nervous laugh. There was another boat on the water. “We need to get out of sight, Gabriel.”

“If you don’t want to be the victim of collateral damage, I suggest you get rid of these guys,” said Gabriel as he pointed to the boat’s controls. “We’re going below. If you value your life, just tell them you’re headed out to fish. They shouldn’t find that suspicious if you just act natural.”

“Act natural, eh?” he scoffed. “I got an
Americano
breathing down one neck and who knows what breathing down the other.”

“Just a mob of bloodthirsty werewolves,” Gabriel told him. “No problem.”

The man began to curse as the two of them scrambled down the steps, closing the door quickly behind them. They crossed their fingers that the wolves wouldn’t even bother with their escort.

Using a loudspeaker, the larger boat called to the smaller one, telling the fisherman to prepare to be boarded. They could hear voices speaking for a while and Gabriel began to worry that the wolves might be able to smell them.

Three barrels of fish were sitting beside them on the floor, and he turned and dumped them all over himself and Betsy. It must have worked, for soon after they could hear the man saying good-bye to the fisherman, and then he was gone. Their boat began to move again. Betsy and Gabriel started putting the fish back into the barrels.

“You can come out now,
Americanos,”
called the fisherman. “We have left your pursuers well behind.”

Relieved, the two of them came to the cockpit again and Gabriel took over the wheel.

“Who were those guys, anyway?” asked the fisherman. “Why are they after you?”

“Let’s just say we want to have a new life, and those are the guys who say that we can’t,” said Gabriel. “By the way, thank you for the use of your boat.”

*

They crossed the Mediterranean without further incident and came ashore somewhere in what Gabriel guessed was Libya. Not wanting to encounter any more civilization, however, the two headed south just in case, since they knew the very most northern shoreline contained a few settlements. They were lucky enough to come across a small encampment where a couple men kept some camels.

The animals were slightly spooked by them since they were werewolves but they managed to find one that was willing to give them a ride. They set out across the desert as soon as the sun set. The full moon rose up into the night sky but both of them resisted the urge to transform so their mount wouldn’t totally freak out and leave them in the middle of nowhere.

“Hazir did say the camel would return home if we left him out in the dunes,” Betsy reminded Gabriel. “I’m fairly sure that if he ran from us, he’d run back home. It’s what he was trained to do.”

“I agree, ma bella,” said Gabriel with a nod. “It would be too great a risk, I think.”

“It’s so quiet out here,” Betsy said then. “Do you think this is what it must be like up on Mars or something?”

“Well, it could be except if we were up there, we would not be breathing,” Gabriel reminded her with a wry chuckle.

Betsy pulled a face at him, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her nose, making her laugh. Then she frowned, and said, “I wonder how the kids are doing.”

“I wish I knew,” said Gabriel with a heavy sigh.

“It is beautiful out here,” said Betsy softly. “Do you think Egypt will be like this?”

“Not likely,” he answered, giving her a hug as he smiled. “We should find out soon enough. Do not worry, mi amore, I’m sure this camel won’t get lost.”

Betsy giggled when his hands slipped down to play with her breasts. “Gabriel, don’t start what you can’t finish. This camel will leave while we’re on the ground if we start that. Unless you think we’re going to find a convenient hitching post out here somewhere.”

Gabriel laughed too. “Not so, ma bella. Who said anything about dismounting the camel to finish the business? It would be a small matter of adjusting our clothes and the seating arrangements.”

“I am not having sex with you on the back of a camel,” Betsy informed him. “Especially not while I’m resisting the urge to wolf out.”

“Would that not be a strange sight to behold?” Gabriel chuckled as he drew her closer into his arms. “Two wolves going at it hot and heavy on a camel’s back as he kept right on trotting along? The observer would wonder if they needed to get mental help after that.”

“Stop it!” Betsy said, laughing even harder. The camel snorted at the pair of them. “I think the camel feels that you and I might need some mental help for even having this discussion.”

They laughed for quite a while before they settled into a comfortable silence. At some point Betsy managed to drift off in her husband’s arms. When she woke, all she saw was more desert. There was no real way to know how far they’d traveled, but the sun was rising in the sky, making the temperature quickly rise.

“Drink this water,” said Gabriel as he handed her a canteen. “I can see an oasis up ahead, probably about fifteen minutes away. We can stay there during the heat of the day, and continue on tonight.”

“Good idea,” Betsy agreed.

“It’ll probably take another night to pass into Egyptian territory, but I’ll feel much safer once we do,” said Gabriel then. “Libya is not the safest place for Americans with no valid visa.”

“Which we can’t get for ourselves without telling Lupo right where we are,” said Betsy with a nod.

“Exactly,” he said with a shake of his head. “How does that saying go? ‘Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’.”

Betsy smirked. “Yeah, something like that,” she answered. “Do you think the camel should be hitched to one of the trees?”

“I guess,” he answered uncertainly. “I admit, I know very little about camels. I never thought I’d actually be riding one. Of course, when I left Italy as a small boy, I never thought I’d be returning to this part of the world at all, but one never knows.”

They came up to the edge of the oasis a few minutes later and the camel strode right in and came to a stop beside the water. It settled down onto its haunches and began to drink greedily. Gabriel and Betsy climbed off its back, and Gabriel tied the camel to one of the trees using a length of rope stored in a bag on one of its sides.

Thinking to make the animal more comfortable, he removed the covering over its hump and even went so far as to rub the animal’s back for a few moments before he gave it a pat and stepped off with his wife. The camel bellowed what he assumed was a call of thanks, so he smiled and nodded to it as he went.

He brought the hump-blanket along and laid it out for the two of them to lay on. They curled together on it and dozed off, waking several hours later to realize the camel had somehow untied itself and gone out into the desert.

“Oh no!” Betsy groaned. “What do we do? We can’t possibly go out into the desert on foot.”

“Well, I’ve heard camels have minds of their own,” Gabriel said. “I guess we’ll just wait for nightfall and see if the beast returns. It’s highly possible he will.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“We will decide what to do then,” he answered. “But for now, perhaps we could take a dip in the water. The day has grown quite hot.”

“Yes, I suppose it has,” she agreed.

Gabriel and Betsy threw off all their clothes and dove into the water. It was a bit muddy, so they knew they had to be careful in case any kind of animals lurked beneath the surface. The shore had been decidedly uninhabited as far as they could see, and as they swam they didn’t find any creatures there either. Gabriel suspected it was because the two of them were werewolves, and animals tended to shy away from them, but he didn’t explain that to Betsy.