“Thanks.”
I fisted my hands at my sides at this infuriating man. Rainey came by with a pot of coffee.
“More, ma’am?”
“No,” I said, tacking on a “thank you,” as I folded my napkin. I forced myself to take a deep breath. “I’m done.”
She stepped away, nodding, and I made to rise.
“I’ll have more, Rainey,” Salvatore said.
I shoved my chair back, scraping the legs along the hardwood floor.
“Sit, Lucia,” Salvatore said as Rainey poured. She avoided looking at either of us.
“I’m done.” I set my napkin on my plate.
“I said sit.”
His tone made me meet his gaze. He wiped his mouth and pushed his plate back, all joking gone from his expression. For a moment, we battled in silence, me standing, willing my legs to move, the limbs refusing. Him watching me, intently waiting to see what I’d do.
Rainey, who had left with the coffeepot, returned, saw us, and disappeared back into the kitchen. You could slice the tension in the dining room.
Salvatore raised an eyebrow and gestured for me to sit. I thought about my options. I was in his house, in a town I did not know, miles from the next house, without a vehicle.
I sat, folded my arms across my chest, and jutted my chin out.
“Your sister does that.”
“What?”
He stuck his chin out to show me. “Stubborn. I guess it runs in the family.”
I adjusted my position, sitting up straighter, lowering my stupid chin. He was observant, I had to give him that. He must have seen it at my father’s funeral.
“She and I are very different people.”
He raised an eyebrow but apparently decided not to pursue it. He shifted his position, pushing his chair back and folding one leg over the other. He took up a lot of space. Too much.
“Let’s go over the rules of the house now that you’re finally here.”
I waited in silence. I’d hear him out first. Tell him to go fuck himself after.
That thought took me back to an hour earlier, to him standing over me, his big naked body, his thick cock in his hand pumping, pumping…
I shook my head, forcing the image away, and looked at the floor littered with the bread I’d torn up throughout breakfast. I’d made work for Rainey in my anger at Salvatore. I’d pick it up when we were done.
“First rule, you are not to leave the grounds without my permission, and you are never to go anywhere alone.”
I snorted. “As if.”
“As if what?”
He leaned forward, his expression questioning but also consequential, calling me on my bullshit because he and I both knew I couldn’t leave without A) having a car, and B) knowing the code to open the gate.
“I won’t be treated like a prisoner.” I almost added in my own home, but this wasn’t my home.
“It’s not a prison, Lucia. I want you to be safe. I have enemies, like your father did. They may think getting to me is best accomplished through you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
He sounded almost genuine. He sure looked it. But then again, he’d seemed different earlier too, before he’d used my body’s surrender against me.
“You’re free to wander the grounds. There are several acres of woods, so take care you don’t get lost. The house as well, only my study and my bedroom are off-limits. I’ll show you around once we’re done. If you need or want anything, all you have to do is ask. You’ll have a monthly allowance—”
“I don’t need your money.” I had my own. My family was not poor, even after the Benedetti’s destroyed us. I’d inherited everything but the house after my father died. Although without credit cards, with no way to access that money as long as I was locked away here, I was still at Salvatore’s mercy.
“Well, you’ll have it anyway.”
“I don’t want it,” I muttered.
“What are you doing, Lucia? What exactly is going through your mind right now?”
“I’m trying to wrap my brain around my new prison. First, you send me away to the fucking nuns for five years—”
“It was part of the agreement—”
“I may as well have been behind bars, and you know it!”
He just shrugged a shoulder.
“Now I’m sitting here in your house, where I’m supposed to live as your—what? Plaything?—and I’m being told the rules like I’m a child!”
“Aren’t you? Look at how you talk to me. I’m not an unreasonable man, Lucia, but I will be obeyed.”
“Obeyed? You want me to bow down to you? You’ve got another thing coming.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea of what I have coming.”
“Are we done?”
“No.”
I bit my lip, waiting.
“I have a cell phone arriving for you today—”
“I have my own.”
His jaw tightened, and he took a minute before responding. “Well, you’ll have a new one. When you want your family or a friend to visit, you’ll let me know first.”
“I don’t need to see my family, and I don’t have any friends, so I’m well and truly yours. I guess that makes you happy.”
“It doesn’t, actually.”
Why did he have to seem so fucking genuine?
It was my turn to shrug a shoulder and, needing to break eye contact, I leaned down to pick up a few pieces of the bread I’d inadvertently scattered.
“Leave it. Rainey will clean it up.”
I shook my head, feeling tears building, refusing to let him see.
“Leave it, Lucia. When I’m talking to you, I expect your undivided attention.”
I snorted, wiping my face, angry again. I faced him. “You expect so many things. Maybe what you need to do is check those expectations. You’re less likely to be disappointed then.”
His eyes narrowed, and his chest heaved as he took a deep breath in.
“Am I irritating you, Salvatore? Because you know what’s irritating me? Your…stuff…drying on my skin,” I said through clenched teeth. I stood so fast, I knocked the chair over behind me. “You’ve told me your rules. Well, fine. I have just one of my own. Leave. Me. Alone!” I turned on my heel to march off.
“Sit back down,” he hissed. “Now.”
“Fuck. You. I’m going to take a shower.”
I heard his chair scrape back, and I started to run for the stairs, all the while wondering what the hell I was doing. Where I was going. He had the key to the lock. It’s not like I could hide. What was I doing?
Salvatore caught up with me. I didn’t even really fight him when he took my arm and dragged me up the stairs with him.
“You want a shower? Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ll take you to have that fucking shower if my stuff is so irritating.”
“Let me go.”
He hauled me to my bedroom and into the bathroom. There he released me. I backed into a corner, his fury suddenly frightening.
“Get in the shower,” he said, reaching for the collar of my blouse and tearing it down the middle.
I screamed, trying to push him back, knowing it was impossible.
“You wanted a shower.”
“I’ll do it,” I said as he popped the buttons off my shorts and yanked the zipper down. “Please. Just—”
“In the shower!”
He shoved me into the shower, even though I still wore my bra and panties.
“Let me go. I’ll do it, I promise.” He stopped and brought his face within an inch from mine.
“You don’t have to promise. I know you’ll do it.”
He switched on the water, and I recoiled from the cool spray that hit one side of my arm.
Tears burned my eyes, and I cursed the drops that fell.
“Take off your bra and panties,” he said, pushing his hand through his hair as he stepped back.
“I will. Just go, okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pus
hed you.”
His breath was audible, his lips tight, the look on his face telling me he was trying hard to get himself under control.
“I have to pee. Let me pee.” I tried, hoping that would convince him to leave. Using that moment to reason with him. “I’m sorry, okay?”
Some battle raged behind his eyes, and next thing I knew, he had me shoved against the shower wall, one hand wrapped around my throat. I grabbed his forearm, trying to pull him off. He reached over and switched off the water, drenching one side of his T-shirt in the process.
“Piss.”
“Wh…what?”
With his wet hand, he pushed my panties down to midthigh. “Piss.”
“Salvatore…”
“Fucking. Piss. You want me to leave you alone? I will. But first, you piss.”
We stood staring at each other, his eyes dark with anger, mine, maybe the look of a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming Mack truck? I didn’t know what to do, whether or not to try to reason with him. I didn’t know him. That fact well and truly hit me for the first time, right here, right now. He was the son of a mafia boss next in line to succeed him. I’d seen he was armed at my father’s funeral. This man knew violence, it was his world. What horrors had his eyes seen? What atrocities had his hands committed?
In this moment, he was truly and utterly terrifying.
I let my arms fall to my sides, no longer fighting against tears, and I did what he said. I pissed. He glanced down for a second, then returned his gaze to mine. As warmth trailed down my legs, he released his hold around my throat and stepped back, blinking as if coming out of a stupor, shaking his head. I slid down and sat on the shower floor, watching him as he looked at me, the rage all but dissipated now, as if evaporated into thin air, replaced by…remorse?
Salvatore walked out of the bathroom, and I heard the bedroom door close. I rose and started the shower, stripped off the rest of my clothes, and stood under the warm flow, weeping, a sense of loss so all encompassing, so whole, it physically hurt.
6
Salvatore
I left.
I walked out of the house and to the six-car garage, a building separate from the main house. Taking the keys from the locked box by the door, I chose the Bugatti and climbed inside. I turned the key, the engine crisp and sharp in the early morning quiet. The gates opened, and the tires squealed as I left the property and drove onto the lonely single-lane road. I opened it up then, enjoying the rush as my body pressed back into the seat, the car’s powerful engine roaring, taking the turns tightly, my foot pressing harder and harder on the accelerator.
Who the fuck was I? What in hell had I just done, humiliating Lucia like that? Hurting her. Christ. Fuck.
I was a monster.
I inhaled and exhaled short, audible breaths, my stomach tight, the muscles of my arms clenched as I fisted the steering wheel hard.
She got under my skin. This barely twenty-one-year-old woman whom I fucking owned got under my fucking skin every single fucking time. I needed to control her for so many reasons. But I couldn’t do it this way. Fuck. I’d scared the piss out of her, literally. Her eyes—they hadn’t accused me. No. They’d been terrified of me.
“Fuck!” I punched the side of my fist against the steering wheel.
A car turned a blind corner, surprising me, his horn honking, waking me from wherever the fuck I was. I jerked the steering wheel, and the Bugatti swerved onto the side of the road, missing the car by inches.
“Shit!”
The man in the other vehicle flipped me off.
“Fuck you!” Not that he heard me. My windows were up. My cell phone vibrated in my pocket as I slowed to a full stop. The display on the Bluetooth said it was Roman. I got out, rubbed my face with both hands, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. The phone stopped, then started again. I dug into my pocket and fished it out.
“Roman,” I said after sliding the Talk button. I walked a few steps away to look over the deserted road, the dewy grass sparkling in the sun, the morning quiet apart from the birds chirping in the trees.
“Morning, Salvatore.”
“You’re calling early.”
“I wanted to talk to you. I tried to call last night but couldn’t catch you.”
“What is it, Roman?” Was this about the meeting? Luke DeMarco?
“Your father wants to be sure you’ll be attending his birthday dinner.”
“You’re calling me about that?” It was at the end of the following week, and of course I’d be there. There was no way for me not to be. Unless I wanted to give Dominic ammunition.
“He wanted to invite you and Lucia to spend the night.”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll drive home.”
“He insists.”
I took a deep breath. The party was going to be held at the house in the Adirondacks, but I’d have driven four hours each way rather than spend more time in that house with him.
“Of course,” I said, understanding.
“Listen, there’s one more thing.”
I waited.
“Your brother.”
He paused, and I could hear him measuring his words.
“I just thought you should know he met with your father late last night.”
My father had gone back to the house in Calabria after I’d left for New Jersey. “So?” I asked, not surprised. He’d been pissed to have been left out of our meeting.
“He’s stirring the pot, Salvatore.”
“What’s new with that?” I’d known my uncle all my life. He was an intelligent man. He was also a businessman. He knew what would happen if Dominic, rather than I, took over the family. And he somehow had a calming effect on my father. Sergio had trusted him. And I trusted Sergio.
“Nothing is new, but now that you’re…distracted…with your houseguest, he’s suggesting he take care of the DeMarco problem.”
“Take care of it how?”
“Take out Luke DeMarco. Make an example.”
I shook my head, although Roman couldn’t see. “Fucking typical. This is my problem to deal with. Not his.”
“He’s got your father’s ear.”
“That’s not news.”
“It’s different this time, Salvatore,” he said heavily.
“When are they flying home?”
“Late afternoon. I’m flying with them.”
Silence again, but I could tell he had something to say.
“Franco won’t give the word just yet, but you need to know what’s going on.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
I hung up and pocketed my phone. I didn’t want to deal with Dominic’s jealous aggressions right now. I had other things on my mind. I needed to get back. Talk to her. Explain that I wasn’t a fucking monster.
She’d said she had no friends and refused to see her family. Well, we had more in common than she knew. She’d learned to hate my family over the last five years. Learned to hate everyone, maybe. I just, stupidly enough, didn’t want her to hate me.
I got back into the car, started the engine, and drove an hour to the cemetery. I came here more often than I probably should. Parking close to the family plot, I got out. The heat and humidity seemed to want to suffocate me after the air-conditioned drive. I stopped and picked up a dozen white Calla lilies from the flower store a block away, my mom’s favorite, and headed up the small hill. The ground beneath my feet felt soft here, damp and covered in moss. A small gate surrounded the plot of land housing many of the Benedetti family. I walked my usual path, reading off the names of the dead in my head, noting the number of years each had lived. Too many damn lives cut short.
But this was what we did. We killed. We died. And for what?
I reached the spot where my mother’s and brother’s headstones stood side by side. I tossed the dying flowers, the ones I’d brought the last time I’d come, and replaced them with fresh ones. I pulled out some weeds and scraped dirt off the inscriptions on both the
ir tombstones, noting the year of birth and death on Sergio’s grave. He’d been a year older than I was now. Married. His wife pregnant when he died. It wasn’t fucking fair.
When it had happened, I’d been broken. He was my one ally, my friend. He’d known how to become boss. Our father loved him and yet, Sergio wasn’t like him. Not at all. He’d been gunned down at a gas station. A stupid, cowardly drive-by. He’d deserved a better death than that. And he’d deserved a life first.
My father had retaliated, but something didn’t sit right with me. In fact, the whole thing stank. They’d blamed a smaller family from Philadelphia, one that was supposed to have been loyal to us. Somehow, evidence had turned up incriminating them. But it didn’t make sense, not then, not now. My father had been crazed, though. He’d loved Sergio, and he’d simply reacted, killed off the boss’s sons. Effectively ending the family.
I was supposed to have been with Sergio at the meeting he was coming home from, but I’d been sick. In a way, it felt like I’d cheated death, but then, if I had been there, maybe Sergio wouldn’t have died. Maybe things would have gone differently.
I never said much when I came to the cemetery and never stayed long. Just showed up. Wanted them to know I hadn’t forgotten them. I got back in the car and headed toward Natalie’s house. Natalie was Sergio’s wife. Apart from her friendship with me, she’d cut off ties with the family after his and my mother’s deaths. She hated my father and brother. She hated the life. But she had loved my brother, knowing the cost of that love.
My father hadn’t really allowed her to walk away, though. Not with her bringing his first grandchild into the world. Jacob Sergio Benedetti was born six months after Sergio’s murder. Natalie had purposely not given him an Italian first name, which had pissed off my father. Jacob was one and a half years old now. I knew she worried about what demands my father would put on her as Jacob grew older, but she kept those mostly to herself. My father supported them financially. As much as I knew Natalie hated it, she needed the money. And as long as she took it, Franco gave her the space she wanted. I guess he figured he owned her anyway.
I dialed Natalie’s number on my cell phone. She answered after the fourth ring.
Salvatore: a Dark Mafia Romance Page 6
