by Mynx, Sienna
“I don’t understand. He was her husband. Why did she leave him?”
“I told you they were never married.” He said bitterly. Mira realized he had shared that truth with her, but she didn’t find it scandalous. He spoke of it as if their love was some mortal sin. She opened her mouth to apologize and he shook his head. “Don’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be cross.”
“Your mother made a sacrifice for you. For your sister?” Mira asked.
“Yes.”
“She loved you.”
“She had no one but us. Even in Ireland she was treated with scorn.” He sighed, dropping on the sofa. Mira sat next to him. “My mother arrived in Napoli with her parents at the age of fourteen. Her dad wanted to open up his textile business there, and hearing that they could prosper better than in poverty stricken Ireland, he relocated the family. At the time my father had gained prominence within Mussolini’s Republic. He had a lot of influence.” He ran his hand through his hair and sucked in a deep breath as if the weight of the tale constricted his breathing. Mira ran her hand across his chest to soothe him through the telling.
“I don’t know when he first laid eyes on my mother, but he did. He said once that he’d never seen hair so red on the head of an angel. He said he fell in love at the sight of her.”
“She was a child, only fourteen.”
Giovanni wiped his hand down his face and slouched in the sofa seat. “Yes, she was a child.”
“I understand, you don’t have to—.”
“I’m not done.” His tone was flat but assertive. “He commanded a lot of respect.”
“As do you?”
Giovanni glanced over to her with a curious frown.
“You helped me with opening the doors to my boutique when we were closed down. Seems that your family’s influence extends through southern Italy.”
“It does.” Giovanni chuckled. “To insult a man of my father’s prominence is a grave mistake. The McHenry’s didn’t know this. My grandfather challenged Papa openly for touching his daughter inappropriately during a visit to their store. He threw him out. My father left without any complaint. This part of the story was told to me by my cousin, as part of my shame.”
“Why is it your shame?”
Giovanni stared down at the picture. “My father ordered his brothers and men to leave the McHenry’s alone. No punishment was to be extended for the insult. It confused them all. One thing Don Tomosino wasn’t was a charitable man. But he had other plans for the family. He had other plans for her.”
“What did he do to your mother?”
“The unthinkable. He raped her.”
Mira froze. Had she heard him right? He used the word rape as casually as a man would say the word love. She looked down at the picture of the family with a renewed understanding. It pained her to hear the fate of an innocent girl by the hands of a lustful, calculating man twice her age.
“How did he get her alone?”
“My mother attended a school in the hills during the day, while her mother and father worked to get the business off the ground. They had a driver pick her up each evening and take her home. She once told me her dream as a young girl was to be a nun. Her father had taken her to Vatican City and she believed in her calling.” Giovanni chuckled bitterly. “It was not to be.”
“We don’t have to talk about it.”
“We do. I want to. Papa learned of her school schedule and interceded. He had her brought to him.”
“Did your mother tell you she was raped?”
“No. I’m a man now. I know how this works. Whether she understood or consented to what happened to her that afternoon, she was a young sheltered girl who had no idea of the consequences. After it happened she tried to cover her shame and avoid him, but Papa convinced her that she would have to continue to let him have his way with her or her family would be disgraced. Soon she was pregnant with me and her world fell apart.”
“I know the rest of this story.” Mira said sadly. Her stomach soured. She didn’t want to hear anymore. “Her family threw her out. Didn’t they?”
He nodded. “As my father knew they would. Her parents were sickened and enraged to learn that the affair had been going on under their nose. To them it was the most unforgivable sin. My father being a married man made it all the worse. She fled to him for protection. Because her father felt wronged, he went to a feuding family that he heard customers whisper were enemies of ours. He asked the Don for revenge. In exchange he would give him part ownership of his textile company. That was a direct insult to my father since he had given my grandfather a free pass in his city. Blood spilled in the streets over this feud, and until this day many blame the Battaglia’s for this. Mama’s parents fled in the night to Ireland with nothing but the clothes on their backs.”
They sat in silence.
Mira put her hand over his. He turned over his hand and captured her palm, intertwining her fingers with his. “Then came you?”
“Papa’s wife was barren. To Papa the union was a fraud. He felt cursed to be joined to her and treated his bride horribly. Mama was her replacement. She gave him what he always wanted, what none of his mistresses were able to achieve. A son.”
“Does he have other children outside of you and your sister?”
Giovanni sighed. “I don’t know. None have never come forward.”
“Then why not divorce his wife and marry your mother?”
“Divorce?” Giovanni nose wrinkled. He glared at Mira. “We’re catholic. Divorce is not an option.”
“But he had affairs. Adultery is a sin.”
“Divorce from men like him, like me, would never be an option.”
Mira withdrew her hand from his, understanding his message loud and clear. Giovanni’s gaze returned to the portrait. “His wife was madly jealous of Mama, the Irish woman with the bright red hair who had charmed her husband away. Even though my mother was a child herself, she hated her on sight. She made Mama’s life miserable during the last months of her pregnancy. Even in Mondello the people shunned her. When Papa came for us, I was two months old and Mama was heartbroken.”
Mira didn’t know what to say. She looked back at the picture, “What’s your mother’s name.”
“Evelyn, but he called her Eve.”
“Did she ever explain why she stayed with him?”
“I suppose she loved him, or learned to love him as some prisoners learn to love their captors. Because in spite of everything he put her through, she was a devoted woman to her faith and her family. We were moved to Melanzana and she became the donna of our family.”
“But you said she ran from him?”
“Even a saint has her limits.” Giovanni dropped his head back and told the rest of the tale with his eyes closed. “She watched me and my cousin grow in the image of our fathers. The way we worshipped them and our lifestyle as teenagers became too much for her. When Lorenzo’s father was killed, Mama took Lorenzo and his mother in. The competition between my cousin and me worsened and Lorenzo’s mother constantly worked to drive my mother from my father’s heart. To do so would mean I wouldn’t be a Battaglia heir. Lorenzo would fill those shoes.”
“Oh, okay.”
“So my mother went to my father and asked that Lorenzo and I be schooled away from Italy, that we not know the brutality of our family’s history. My father refused. He told her that I would carry on the traditions. I was his son. She packed our things and bought us a ticket out. Telling my dad she wanted to purchase things for our upcoming visit to Mondello, we slipped past him and the guards.”
“Then you told him where you were?”
“And he came for us. I later learned that she made him swear to send me to college in America, to give me a different life. He told her she could never leave him again and would give him another son. That’s why he put her here. Her open defiance wouldn’t allow for him to bring her back to Sorrento. Catalina was born. Having Catalina healed my parents. They changed. She and my father w
ere inseparable from the moment Catalina entered our lives.”
“What happened to her, after your father’s death?”
“When he was shot and I accepted an oath, the ordeal broke her heart. She pleaded and cried at his bedside to release me. Mama actually thought I’d be some great lawyer and leave this life. He refused. We fought; I didn’t show her the respect she deserved. I was too hell bent on avenging my father. I’m not proud of the things I said to her. Less than six months later she took ill. I believe she stopped taking her insulin. She died soon after.”
Mira pulled his face to hers and kissed him. He reclined her on the sofa and she parted her legs continuing the kiss. With him on top of her, she felt the weight of his burden. She clung to him wrapping her legs around his waist. Giovanni’s mouth was the most persuasive. The kiss pulled her under his spell. His lips grazed her cheek and then went down to her neck while he worked the zipper on his pants and freed himself. He lifted and raised himself by gripping the arm of the sofa above her head. The folds of her dress had parted and slow and easy he untied the ribbons to her hips to release her panty. Afterwards he was thrusting into her hard and strong. He pressed his forehead against hers and they breathed in unison as he drove both pain and pleasure into her until her body melted beneath him and she cried out her release. He lay on her panting against her ear with his face partially covered by her shoulder and the sofa seat. Mira stared up at the ceiling thinking of her own sad tale. Should she share it? Could she fathom the sad life her mother too shared with a man that led to her misery and then her conception?
“My mother ran away from my grandparents when she was sixteen. With a boy from our town to God knows where.”
Giovanni withdrew from their intimate connection but rested on her breasts, close to her heart. She stroked his head to share what she did know of her mother. Her intention was to lessen his suffering but the more she talked of her mom, the more it lessened her pain as well.
“She came back ten years later with me in her arms. My grandmother said her eyes were dead. For old people dead eyes meant the person had lost their soul. The bracelet you found with my purse was attached to my wrist. My mother would not speak of who my father was, but Me-ma said it wasn’t James. Later they discovered she had overcome a bad drug habit. Something she confessed in my grandfather’s church. She found a way to remain clean. After a month she asked my grandparents to take care of me. She said she had left her heart somewhere else and it was time to go claim it. My grandmother begged her not to go. She couldn’t believe her daughter would run out on a new baby for a man. My mother swore that wasn’t what she meant, but she never disclosed the truth. Four months later she died of a heroin overdose in Chicago.” she said bitterly.
His head lifted. She touched his face. “You see, your sorrow is mine as well.”
He nodded and relaxed against her breast. Mira closed her eyes. Before long they were asleep.
Chapter Ten
Dominic removed a pair of slender black gloves and slipped one on his left hand then the other on the right. A perfect fit. His gaze lifted to the mirror. He didn’t possess the features of the Battaglia men, namely Lorenzo and Giovanni. Both were giants in personality and height. Dominic barely stood over six-feet. His hair, unlike theirs, was curly, his skin a richer shade of olive and his irises a deep chocolate brown. Still he loved them both like brothers. Papa Tomosino had been the only father he’d ever known. Giovanni told him they shared the same blood within omerta and that was enough. It was Dominic’s brain, quick decisive actions, and carefully laid plans that always bore results and earned him his respect. Tonight he would keep a cool head. Get the information his Don needed and return to Napoli before the sun rose.
The whimpering drew his attention from the mirror. Maria Bottego, daughter of Sal ‘il sarto’ Bottego and Fish’s whore, sat on the edge of the bed sniffing. She was a beautiful young thing. Her dark hair cascaded down her shoulders and shielded the tears streaming down her face. He could understand why Angelo and Fish constantly fought over her.
Dominic walked out of the bathroom into the bedroom. He’d arrived to find her in a skimpy negligee, satin and pink. He told her to cover up before he signaled for Carlo to enter. Dominic was a gentleman; Carlo on the other hand didn’t have such grace. It was evident from the smells from the kitchen she was expecting Fish for dinner and dessert.
He stared at her. The woman found it hard to make eye contact. Her mascara ran dark tears down her cheeks. A few black tears dropped to her lap. He removed the gun from the back of his pants and screwed on the silencer.
“Why the fuck is she crying? No one has touched her.” Carlo sneered. He glared at the woman from the corner he leaned in, a toothpick swirled on his tongue between his pressed lips.
Carlo was mean. It was the only word to describe him. He was another giant among men. Stood as tall as Giovanni and Lorenzo, and chose to dress like a businessman instead of the thug his reputation proclaimed him to be. He hated to have him on a mission of discretion, although Carlo’s thirst for respect and blood could prove handy if Fish didn’t cooperate.
“We do this clean.” Dominic approached Maria. He curled his index finger under the young woman’s chin. “Tutto a posto.”
She sniffed and blinked up at him. Her hands trembled in her lap. The corner of his mouth lifted into a small smile.
“Be a good girl for me. Stay in here and stay quiet. Carlo will behave unless you give him a reason not to.” Dominic glanced up to Carlo to emphasize the order.
She nodded that she would obey. On cue the door to the front of the small cottage opened and slammed shut. “Maria! Get your ass out here. I’ve been calling you.”
Dominic winked. He brushed his index finger along the side of her cheek affectionately. He shot Carlo a look and the enforcer removed his toothpick flicking it to the floor. His hooded gaze narrowed in on Maria and the woman pleaded with Dominic with her eyes to not be left alone with him. Dominic waited a beat and Carlo nodded his obedience. Satisfied Dominic walked out of the bedroom. He could hear Fish in the kitchen, possibly sampling the dinner his woman had prepared for him. He chose to go left to remain in the shadows toward the enclave that separated the family room from the bedrooms.
“Maria? You here?”
Dominic watched and waited for Fish to leave the kitchen for the bedroom. He did. Fish was only five-foot six, but not chubby like the Calderone men. He had a slender frame and a nasty scar under his neck that stretched from ear to ear. He dealt in knives after having one used on him as a preteen. Everyone knew no man could survive a one on one knife fight with Fish.
And that wasn’t the best of his talents. Fish was best in explosives, which was why Dominic kept the gun steady and ready. The Calderone’s and the Ndrangheta were best known for firebombing and blowing up their adversary.
Careful, Dominic slipped behind Fish once he passed. Unfortunately, his shadow gave his presence away, and Fish was ready. He swung with a blade in his hand. Where it came from Dominic wasn’t sure but he countered by leaning out of the strike reach just as it swung up to run through his throat. He hit Fish hard and fast in the gut and then shoved his fist into his throat. The deft move brought Fish to his knees. “Salve.”
Fish gagged.
“Surprised to see me?”
The hacking man with watery eyes looked up to his attacker and the light of recognition drained blood from his face. Fish’s eyes stretched once his mind made the recognition.
“It’s been awhile. I’m disappointed. You don’t write, you don’t call.”
“I… why are you here? What have I done?” Fish dropped the blade and rubbed his sore throat.
Dominic smiled. “My Don deserves answers, and you are going to give them to me.”
“I won’t tell you shit!”
Dominic nodded. “Then that’s a shame. I left a present in the room with your puttana. Shall I tell you who it is?”
Fish looked back over his shoulder. �
��Is Carlo here? With Maria! Maria!” Fish staggered to rise to run to her rescue. Dominic forced him down with a hard grip to his shoulder. Fish returned to his knees, his eyes wide with panic. He placed the silencer between Fish’s brows. “Let’s have that talk.”
****
“Couldn’t we have stayed the night?” Mira asked. She really wished they had more time to talk and share with each other. But a stranger appeared at the door, and Giovanni left their warm bath. Curious, she stood in the tub and leaned over to the windowsill, dripping wet. She stood on her toes and held to the sill; afraid she’d slip and break her neck in the claw foot tub. She couldn’t see Giovanni but the visitor stood off from the step. He appeared to be a young kid of sixteen who had arrived on his bike. He gave Giovanni a phone from the front basket on his bike.
Mira left the tub and wrapped a towel around her damp body. She crept downstairs just as the conversation ended, and Giovanni reentered the living area. She watched him plug the phone into the wall. As soon as he did the phone began to ring. Giovanni took a call and paced. He spotted her, and she bolted back up the stairs, her heart racing. Later he found her. Neither mentioned what she witnessed. Instead they shared a lovely dinner. They made love with her pressed down on the table where they had dined and his long hard cock ramming into her from behind. Again Giovanni sank his teeth into her shoulder, back, and when he flipped her over and he laid her out on the table to ravish her more, he bit into her breast. Sweet merciful God, she loved every minute of it. Until it ended. He told her to dress and they were on his motorbike racing along the roadways at a very dangerous speed back to the airport. Once they landed in Napoli he whisked her away in a car to Sorrento.
“It could not be helped.”
She realized she was pouting and corrected the action. It was crazy to be so needy of his time. Even with Kei, the attraction between them wasn’t this strong. The cold hard reality was that eventually she and her Don would have to return to their separate lives. She dreaded the day. However, it was best to accept the truth of what they were and weren’t now rather than later. To her disappointment they drove up the winding road directly to the Battaglia gates and the truth waited.
