To have him.
I deleted the thought as soon as it came. There was no room for emotion at this table. I felt none from him. There would be none from me.
He nodded. “I agree.”
Rocco wrote something else down.
This was how the conversation continued. Rocco or Capo would bring up a term, we would discuss it, and then we would either agree or not. If we didn’t, we went back and forth until we were both satisfied.
Money. I would have access to all of his funds after we were married. The millions and millions he had. He set no limit. However, if I left him or wanted to divorce him, or broke the “central” rules of our agreement, I would get nothing. Not even a penny.
“Final,” Capo said, his eyes never more serious. “I don’t believe in divorce. You are mine until I die.”
“But what…what if one of us becomes unhappy?”
“This arrangement is not about love, Mariposa. You do understand that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, too defensively. “I do. You’ve said it. I’ve said it. I get it.”
His eyes challenged the statement, but he didn’t harp on it. “You take love out of this.” He motioned between the two of us. “Neither one of us will ever be unhappy. We have our terms, and those should keep us content. We both have a purpose for this marriage. I want loyalty. You want to live. Not all marriages are built on love. Love is a fragile house that crumbles. What we are building at this table will be untouchable.”
“Moving forward,” I said.
I’d receive a ten-thousand-dollar stipend until we were married. To buy food, clothes, and whatever else I’d need until it was a done deal.
We even touched on specifics such as: how many times we’d travel in the year. We could go over that, if we wanted, but not under it. Two, we decided, was an ideal number. He’d chose one place, I’d choose the other, and there was no three involved unless we went over that number.
The two men had been shocking me the entire time, so I decided to get one in on them. I told them that under no circumstance would I get ass implants. The idea was still fresh in my mind, and I made Rocco write it down. Capo grinned as he said, “I agree. No ass implants, or any cosmetic surgery, unless my wife requests it. However, I’d prefer if you didn’t. It would seem like a waste of money. Why paint the butterfly?”
After an hour went by, a knock came at the door. The three of us sat back, the conversation fading, waiting for Rocco’s secretary to take our lunch orders. My stomach growled loudly, and my cheeks flamed. Even though I had been staying with Keely, I hadn’t eaten much of her food, only when she made me. I was still helping her pack, but it never felt like enough.
Capo ordered for me. He ordered dessert for me, too.
“That was nice of you,” I said. I was too embarrassed to order for myself. I knew the food was expensive, and I’d never ordered anything like that before.
He nodded once and then grinned at me.
Rocco’s secretary became still. Watching him. She watched him until he turned his eyes toward her. “That’s all for my fiancé and I.”
She nodded, fixed her hair, and then smiled at him. She tucked the list against her chest when he turned away without a response. I watched her until she closed the door behind her. She was an attractive brunette, runway ready. Giada, Rocco had called her. She was someone I’d expect with Capo. She’d look right on his arm.
Giada & Capo. Their names even seemed right together.
Rocco suggested that we continue the meeting until the food was delivered. I couldn’t have agreed more.
I lifted my hand, like I was in school. “I want exclusive rights to you,” I said. “Starting now.”
“You will have to explain that in more detail, Mari,” Rocco said, shifting some papers around.
“She means,” Capo said, a slight grin touching his eyes. “She wants us to be exclusive. Right now.”
“A little ahead of me,” Rocco said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. Capo and I were staring at each other. “We were going to discuss this next.”
“However many times Capo wants to take me out on date night is fine by me.” I waved a hand. “Let it be a surprise, just not three times a week. But I’m ready to discuss these terms now.”
“We have arrived at exclusivity due to the lady’s urgings.” Rocco flipped a few more papers. He grinned again. I think he found me amusing. “Since you have declared your feelings on the matter of the two of you being exclusive, we know where you stand, but I feel it best to discuss the matter in detail. If you would rather not be intimate with Capo, you cannot expect him to be celibate. He would take lovers, but would be discreet, of course.”
“Discreet,” I murmured. “Of course.” And I’d be made a fool of. And even worse, I didn’t like the idea of the brunette secretary slipping in and out of his room while I slept next door, or wherever.
Rocco nodded. “Mari, you would have to be discreet—”
“No,” Capo said. “No one touches my wife but me.”
The room became exceptionally quiet. When I turned to look at Rocco, he was staring at Capo. Rocco’s face rarely showed any emotion, but Capo’s response seemed to take him by surprise. He wasn’t expecting that.
Was it not a big deal before? I had no reason to think they hadn’t discussed a few points of the terms ahead of time. I could tell which ones when Capo became firm on a few things before I even had a chance to think them through.
“It’s settled then,” I said. “No one touches me. No one touches you.”
“Esclusiva. Esclusivo.” Rocco wrote on his paper.
“Are you a virgin, Mari?” Capo asked.
“Why?” I blurted out. “Will it make my price go up? I don’t think it can. I mean, you’ve already offered me everything, money wise, as long as I don’t leave.”
I didn’t like the way Capo looked at me. He was trying to dig the information out by sheer will alone. Did he expect me to be experienced because I was a poor girl on the streets? Oh, that’s right, I thought cynically, I basically went to his club looking to sell my body for a dollar. Turned out, I was about to sell my secret in return for my life.
“Does it matter?” I tried one last time.
“It matters to me,” Capo said. “Your answer will direct our first time together.”
Direct our first time together? What did that even mean? He’d be rough with me if I weren’t a virgin?
I stood from my seat, the first time since I’d attempted to walk out on him, and went to the window. The view from this high up was dizzying. New York seemed so beautiful at this height, when your feet couldn’t touch the ground.
“I don’t know,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You don’t know,” Capo repeated. I could imagine his face, his dark eyebrows drawing in.
Silence washed over the room. After a little time, he asked me to explain.
“I don’t know!” I said a little louder. “When I was sixteen, I was fostered by a rich family. Political. He...would touch me. It didn’t go as far as sex, because I left before it could. I refused to let him do that to me. Keely helped me get a fake ID, and I worked odd jobs wherever I could. I slept at shelters. Sometimes at Keely’s when her Mam would allow it.
“I kept my head down so I wouldn’t get sent back to foster care. I avoided the cops, too, until I was old enough to legally be on my own. He did things to me, though, things I’d rather not discuss. I’m sure you’re both smart enough to understand why I really…don’t know if I’m a virgin or not. But I am clean. A man hasn’t touched me before or since. I never had the time to worry about a relationship, but even if I did, I never thought I’d want to be touched again.”
“Or to owe anyone,” Capo said softly, but there was an undercurrent running through him that I felt from where I stood. It felt cold on my back.
He had figured out the reason why I hated accepting kindness without giving something in return. The foster je
rk had told me that he had done me a favor, taking me in, and I owed him for his kindness. At first, I believed him, and would have done anything to make myself at home. Home. But when I realized what he expected of me, kindness never felt so dirty.
I was ashamed. Each night I knew he was getting closer and closer to doing something to me that could never be undone. Fingers were one thing, his nasty dick another. So I hid a knife in my bag, and when he tried, I told him that I’d scream and cut him if he did. Living on the streets was better than living in what felt like a cage. He had a wife and children, all sleeping in the rooms surrounding mine.
“Kindness,” I said. “I’ll never owe anyone for it, if it’s in my power.”
“Do you want to be intimate with me, Mariposa?”
“There are other factors at play here, Capo.” I repeated his words, only replacing his name with mine. “I ask that you give me time to come to your bed.”
“Concordata,” he said softly. And I knew from earlier conversations that meant agreed in Italian.
I stood at the window so long that when I turned, I found Capo sitting at the table alone, his eyes on me.
“The meeting over?” I asked, suddenly fearful that my confession might have turned him off. Was I used goods? I had never admitted that aloud, not even to Keely. I had just told her that the political jerk was mean to me, abusive almost, but never went into detail. I think she knew, but she didn’t press me, only told me that if I ever wanted to go to the police, she’d be there with me.
“No.” The rasp in his voice was strong. “Only taking a break.”
I nodded, turning around again.
“Sit down, Mariposa.”
Thinking that we were about to eat, or going to start soon again, I did as he said. It was easy to take direction from him. He really did have his shit together.
He rose from his chair, his imposing figure coming to stand before me, before he took a knee in front of me. He placed his hand on my knee. “You didn’t wear the new shoes I sent over,” he said.
The light hit his eyes, and I thought of the ocean, of depths I wanted to explore. There was no denying that there was something dark beyond the light, but in some odd way, I wanted to explore that, too. I wanted to know that what I’d done, out of fear, out of desperation, wasn’t as wicked as I felt it was—not screaming when the political ass touched me the first time. I wanted to know that other people had secrets that were hard to tell, too. I just hoped that I wasn’t the only one in history who would trade telling them for a chance to live.
“No.” I grinned a little. “You weren’t my official capo then.”
He returned the grin. Then he reached for my bag. When I flinched and grabbed for it, he took his time prying it from my hands. He opened it and took out the new shoes, like he knew I’d packed them. I had. Slowly, he reached down for one of the worn-down plastic flip-flops.
I went to pull back, but he held tight. “They’re so dirty,” I whispered.
“I’ve touched worse and worse has touched me.”
I let him have my feet, watching as he switched out my old shoes for the new ones. They felt so good on. I hadn’t had a pair of shoes that were mine alone since I was ten.
“Your bag,” he said. “It belonged to your mother.”
It took me a second. “My mother? You mean Jocelyn?”
“No,” he said. “Jocelyn Flores was the woman who took you in and loved you as her own. ‘Fucka me.’ That was something old man Gianelli, her father, used to say when he’d get irritated with the bugs in his garden eating his produce. Sicilians love their gardens.”
“You knew my—Jocelyn? Pops?” Pops was Jocelyn’s father, my adoptive grandfather. I hadn’t met Jocelyn’s husband, Julio Flores. He had died before they adopted me, but I got his last name.
He nodded. “I knew them well.”
“Pops died first,” I said, wanting to tell him. “Jocelyn died a year later.”
“Heart attack,” Capo said. “Cancer.”
“That’s right,” was all I could say. Their home was the only stable one that I’d ever known.
“You still go back to Staten Island to revisit the house.”
“I do.”
“I gave them enough money to take care of you.”
“You—what?”
“What happened to it, Mariposa?”
I stood, putting some distance between us. “She was so sick. We used it for her treatment. Then they took the house. There was no money left. No one to take care of me.” I bit my lip. “How do you know all of this?”
Capo was still down on one knee, the dirty shoes dangling from his fingers. “I knew your parents, your birth parents, Corrado and Maria. Your name was Marietta Palermo.”
“Marietta Palermo.” I tasted the name. It felt foreign. Wrong. “I was five when—You had something to do with me going to live with them, didn’t you?”
“I did. I brought you to live with them. I changed your name.”
“Mariposa,” he said, using an Italian accent on the Spanish word. “I’ll call you Mariposa. The butterfly.”
The bastard had named me.
“Why?” My hands clenched at my sides.
“Marietta means sea of bitterness, or something close to it. I wanted you to have something better to direct you. I wanted you to become the thing you loved the most. The butterfly. You deserved the chance. Both names started with Mari, something your mother called you. I wanted you to keep that part of her with you as well. And I knew it would make the transition easier. For a small child, you could still tell people that your name was Mari. It wasn’t such a stretch.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why did you bring me to live with them? What happened to my mom and dad?” Those two simple words almost ripped me in two, but I held myself together.
“Killed,” he said.
“In a car accident?” That was what Pops and Jocelyn had told me.
He set the old shoes down reverently, and then stood, facing me. “The Scarpone family murdered them.”
“The…” I couldn’t even say the word. Mafia.
“They demanded your blood, too.”
“I see.” I sat, all of my weight plopping down. I couldn’t stand, though I reached for the bag to hold it close. It was the only thing Jocelyn said had come with me when I arrived at her door. The bag held two coloring books. One filled with butterfly pictures and the other princesses. A box of colors. The butterfly hair clip.
“Barely,” he said.
At the one-word response, my eyes turned up to find his. He was looking at me, always looking at me, with an intensity that kept me rooted but made me feel like I could fly.
“You knew I liked butterflies. Coloring.”
Mariposa. Butterfly.
“You told me,” he said. “You asked me to color with you. Blue was your favorite color.”
“Still is,” I said, thinking of the color of his eyes.
I was going to be sick. I closed my eyes, taking deep breaths in and out.
“You…” I had to take another breath. “You’ve been keeping tabs on me.”
“No,” he said. “After I left you with Jocelyn and old man Gianelli, I cut all ties. It was safer that way. I had planned on having someone close to me check every so often, to make sure the money was still there and that you were taken care of, but then something happened, and life got in the way. When you showed up at Macchiavello’s the first time, I thought you seemed familiar. When you showed up at The Club, I knew. The ice pack you left behind confirmed it. I ran the DNA from your blood on it.”
“You saved me. Saved me from those people.” Your people? The question burned the tip of my tongue. I wanted answers, but we were talking about the Scarpone family—they seemed to be entering my circle a lot lately. Anyone who knew anything about anything knew who the Scarpones were. They were not the Faustis, not by any means, but they were known to be ruthless to the core.
Five families ruled New York, and the Sca
rpone family was one of them. They were the top dogs. Because of people like them, I had learned early on to keep my head down and my eyes averted. It was one of the reasons I didn’t rat on Quillon Zamboni, the man who touched me while I was in foster care. To be curious went against all that I knew, how to keep myself safe, but I was marrying this man. I had to know this, at least.
“You’re one of them.”
He watched me for a moment, his face expressionless. “I was one of the pack.”
“But now?”
“I’m a lone wolf.”
“Why? Why’d you save me?”
“You were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. So innocent that it broke my heart. You had the butterfly clip in your hair, and all you wanted to do was color. I had never experienced that before, something powerful enough to change the course of my actions. You made me see something different. I saw you, Mariposa. I wanted your innocence to live.”
He said these powerful words, but without an ounce of emotion. He could’ve been talking about what to wear to go outside—if it was cold enough to need a jacket.
“At what cost?” His or mine, I wasn’t sure which I asked for.
“A vein,” he said. “Another day.”
“That’s all you’re willing to give me?” I said.
“Today.”
I knew this was a deal breaker. He wouldn’t tell me. And did I really want to know specifics? Would it change the outcome of this arrangement? Once I was in, I was in. No getting out. He had already given me the warning. There was no doubt he was going to act on it. There was something about him that dared you to cross him, but stopped you just before you did. Think twice.
I was pretty confident, though, that even though he was one of them, he must’ve been considered a disposable man, a man who had survived the family’s long-reaching arms. Not someone exceptionally close to the family’s inner workings, or he wouldn’t be here.
Money was at stake, living, but for me, it felt like so much more. What, I had no clue, but it felt dangerous. Not something to take lightly. All of my years I craved to live, and here the chance sat before me, beating like a heart, but it came with consequences. Unhealthy veins.
Machiavellian: Gangsters of New York, Book 1 Page 11
