Mercenary (Gangsters of New York Book 3)

by Bella Di Corte

  She stopped digging for a minute and grinned. “You are full of heat,” she said, and then she sighed. “Then the day comes when you have sons. And you ask your husband to spare them from this life. Yes, yes, they tell you. I will try my best. But it gets to them. It gets to sons, cousins, uncles. It even gets to the girls. They usually marry a son or a cousin. They become us.”

  “You,” I said. “They become you.”

  “You carry the Capitani name. You carry on the legacy. You carry many women who have sat where you are now—” she nodded to the bench “—with you. You are the Don’s wife. You are who I used to be. No matter how different we look.”

  “It’s not the way we look,” I said. “It’s the way we react.”

  She grinned again, and this time, it seemed out of pity. “Did Corrado tell you about my daughters?”

  “Some,” I said.

  She dug a little harder. Then she stopped after another minute, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I knew who his father was.”

  “I thought—”

  “They have their secrets. We have ours.” She looked at me then. Her eyes were dull, flat, even in the sunshine. “Luna fell in love with Corrado Palermo before she left home. That’s why she left, and Emilia went with her. We did not want her to leave, but she knew her father would never allow it. Corrado belonged to a different family, and at the time, there was a war going on.

  “It would have caused even more strife if Emilio had found out. Luna was terrified that if he did, he would have him killed. At that time, Corrado Palermo was making a name for himself. Even I didn’t want her associated with him.” She touched her temple, leaving a dirt smear. “An idea made it here. To his head. It didn’t leave unless it was tired or done.

  “My daughter was the same. So she left home and went to Vegas. She knew he would come after her no matter where she went, and her father would disown her when she did. Emilio did, Corrado Palermo followed, and she got pregnant not long after. But things were happening here, bad things, and since Corrado Palermo was like a son to Arturo Scarpone, he sent him to Italy to lay low for a while.”

  “Corrado Palermo had a contract on his head. When things were safe here, he came back and broke it off with Luna. He had gotten married while he was in Palermo.”

  She went back to digging, sighing. “He didn’t want anything to do with the baby or with Luna. She made us swear on each other, Emilia and me, that we would never tell. I have never spoke a word of this until today. My girls are gone.”

  “Why are you telling me?” I whispered.

  She brought her shoulders up to her ears and then let them fall. “I see that same obsession in my grandson. It worries me. History repeats itself, especially when it’s in the blood.”

  “He is not his father,” I said. “He is not his grandfather either.”

  “I agree.” She lifted the trowel and then started digging again. “But he has been raised in this life his entire life. He never had a chance to be anything different.” She looked me in the eye.

  “My husband slept sound every night. All the things he did, and not once did he stir in his sleep, unless he ate something that bothered his esophagus. All of the things he did—where was his conscience? Tell me. Does my grandson, your husband, sleep sound?”

  “Maybe his conscience was his esophagus,” I said.

  She grinned, but she knew I was avoiding the question she already had the answer to. Corrado slept sound whenever he slept, except for one time. When the boat in Lake Como had been blown up. He stayed up all night staring at me.

  “I love him,” she said. “My grandson. More than my own life. But he chose this path.” She hit something in her garden. A metallic sound rang out.

  She set the trowel to the side, took her gloves off, and then pulled out an old metal box from the ground. She dusted it off. The square box was clearly old, worn down even more by the mud that it had been packed in for what seemed like years.

  It didn’t take her as long to pack the mud over the hole. She clipped a few flowers after, and then, tucking the box underneath her arm, rose from the ground without any help. “Walk with me,” she said, nodding toward the door that led into the house.

  I looked up at the window. There he was again, watching me. I walked next to her, and he watched until he could no longer see us anymore. The lace curtains fluttered when he closed them.

  She turned to me when she knew he could not see and gave me the box with the flowers. She took my hands in hers, squeezing. “I learned to hate him,” she said. “My husband. I loved him. I loved him the moment I saw him. It came so naturally. To love. But over the years—the life, always coming second to it—I learned how to hate.

  “It was not an easy emotion for me. I wrestled with it. But after time, so much time, things, the loss of my children, the loss of a life I expected, the hate came, and it has never left me. I hate him. I had always thought the best day of my life would be my wedding day. It was the day we put him in the ground.”

  She squeezed my hands even harder. The metal box, my wedding rings, and the rosary bit into my skin. “My nonna gave me this tin. She told me there are two things a woman should always have: a garden and a money tree to bury. It should grow over the years, given to the next generation, so if they need it, it’ll be there.” She shrugged. “They have their secrets. We have ours. One thing we have in common, we all bury them, capisci?”

  She looked into my eyes and then took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. “If you love my grandson, go, or one day, you will be me. You will have so much hate in your heart for someone you once couldn’t imagine living without. Preserve what you have. Don’t let this life kill that, too. This life always comes first. Everything else comes second.

  “Give your baby a chance. A chance to…choose life. Not this one, but a good one. Give this tin to your daughter, or your son, empty. The two of you build it up together again.” She released my hands and went into the house.

  Men were around, but behind the gates, they browsed more than they watched. I cracked the tin, and inside, rolls of money filled it. She wanted me to take the money and leave.

  “We’re digging up buried treasure now,” he said.

  I shut the tin quietly and then looked into my husband’s eyes. He could be as quiet as a ghost when he wanted to be.

  I sighed, lifting the tin and the flowers. “Your grandmother gave me a family heirloom,” I said. “When the baby is old enough, we will bury this tin after using the frangipani seeds inside for a garden. A family tradition.”

  He put his arm around my neck and kissed my temple. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Alcina,” he said. “I can smell the old money in that tin.”

  We stopped walking.

  “It’s a secret,” I said. “Between two women. Why do you have to know about it? You do not tell me everything.”

  He studied my face. “You want to leave me.”

  “If I did?”

  “Yes or no,” he said.

  I did not say anything. After a minute, he put his lips closer to my ear, pulling me even closer. “If that’s a yes, tell me before you do, and I’ll give you the knife to carve my heart out.”

  “You have been offering a knife to me a lot lately.”

  “You’re the only person I would allow to kill me,” he said. “Without you, I’m dead anyway.” He said the words so nonchalantly, but with so much weight, I suddenly felt tired to the bone.

  We stepped into the house, and after he walked me to the dining room and pulled my chair out, he cleared his throat. “What I told you the night of our wedding—” He paused. “It stands the test of time. I’m the only man in your life, whether you’re beside me or not. I’ll kill any man who even tries to get close to you.”

  Then he left.

  28

  Alcina

  He looked at her like she hung the moon.

  That was why he named our daughter Eleonora Lucia Capitani—the night she was born, the moon was full and bri
ght enough to see by. Like the night he came to me in Bronte, he was moved by something bigger than the life that ruled him.

  Eleonora means “shining light.” Lucia means “graceful light.”

  Her dark hair was hardly enough to brush through, and her skin was like fine porcelain. Her eyes were brown, but I had a feeling they were going to lighten to dark amber. She would share the color with her papà. Or maybe even hazel. A mixture between his and mine—amber and brown.

  He could hold her with one hand, and she ruled his world.

  He slept very little after Eleonora was born, and something about it satisfied me.

  After the conversation with Teresa, I watched him at night while he slept. Towards the end of my pregnancy, I could not sleep anyway. He never stirred in his sleep, and he looked more peaceful than he did awake, but when one of us needed him the most, he kept guard.

  I’d decided that consciences came in all different ways and in different forms. His happened to speak the loudest when he could see the difference between his world and ours, and how far he was away when he could compare the distance.

  I knew who my husband was. I knew it the moment I looked at him. The moment I fell in love with him. The moment I married him—the moment of moments—and promised him forever.

  I knew who my husband was.

  That was why I fought a battle he could not see. If he became lost in a dangerous obsession that he could not let go of, I knew I would lose him to it.

  He had enough wars to fight. The one with the mysterious man bothered me the most.

  It was not about business, but something personal. I could see it in his eyes when he was alone for long periods of time, with too much time to think. How he could not let the idea of it go, especially since the man seemed to be playing games with him.

  Corrado Capitani was not used to losing.

  Neither was I.

  I’d be damned if I lost him to anything other than natural causes when he was old and tired.

  I was capable of doing all of the things my husband did on the streets. The difference between us: I would only do them for love. He did them for the family and obligations. It was almost instilled in him. He was a product of the life, as they called it.

  Love is not a weakness; it is the greatest weapon of all. I reached inside of the pocket of my dress and touched the rosary there, knowing just how strong I was. What I would risk for love.

  The life I had fought so hard to have—this was it. It was my husband and my daughter. La mia famiglia.

  A soft, warm hand touched my shoulder, and I smiled, putting my hand over hers. “She’s a good sleeper,” mamma whispered.

  Corrado had arranged for mamma and Anna to be here when Eleonora was born. We were going to take her to meet her nonno at the end of summer, when we flew back with mamma and Anna.

  “Like me,” Anna said, peeking over my shoulder. “She is exactly like me.”

  The three of us hovered around her door, watching Corrado hold her while she slept. She had a bed in our room, but sometimes he brought her to her room to rock her to sleep after her bath.

  “What is it about that kind of man holding a baby that is so sexy?” Anna whispered.

  I grinned. “It is.”

  Mamma pinched Anna and she laughed quietly. “It is, mamma!”

  “I am not disagreeing, but don’t give her—” she nodded at me “—any ideas. She has to give Ele some time to be the baby. Look at her. She’s bedazzled.”

  Anna and I looked at each other and started laughing, trying to keep our voices down.

  “Mamma mia!” Anna shook her head. “It’s dazzled. Not bedazzled.”

  “What is the difference, smarty pants?”

  “Dazzled is when you are bewitched. Bedazzled is what you do to clothes.” Anna started to walk toward the stairs. “Who is up for cards tonight? Since the hot man has the adorable baby.”

  At home, sometimes we would stay up all night and play cards. We would put on a pot of coffee and some music, eat sweets, and laugh. Sometimes Anna and I would play with a few cousins, and mamma would sit and listen to us while she crocheted.

  “You need a dictionary, Anna,” mamma said, kissing me on the cheek. “Bedazzled is correct.” Then she waved her hand. “I’m tired. We can play tomorrow.”

  “Same for me,” I said.

  Anna touched her nose and then pulled her finger away, like her nose was growing. “Bugiarda,” she mouthed at me. Liar. “There are so many people in this castello, I am sure I can make some easy money. They won’t see me coming. I’m so sweet looking.”

  Corrado looked at me when I opened the door the entire way and shut it behind me. Ele’s head was against his chest, her mouth open. I ran my hand through her hair, the little she had of it.

  “I bedazzle you,” he said, meeting my eye when I stood after kissing her delicious cheek.

  I smiled. “Since the moment I saw you.”

  He touched his nose and then pulled his finger away, doing the exact thing Anna had done.

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you calling me a bugiarda, too?”

  He shrugged. “You’re happier now.”

  “Ele’s here—”

  He shook his head. “You’ve always been happy about Eleonora. You haven’t been happy with me.”

  It was the first time he brought it up since we got to New York, and my heart swelled. He was in that space and time where he could feel the distance. He wanted to bridge the gap.

  “Not with you,” I whispered.

  He kissed Ele on her head and took her over to her bed, laying her down. He took the chair again and touched his leg. I curled up in his embrace and took a deep, deep, breath. It felt as if I had been holding my breath, waiting for this moment. I could finally breathe again.

  It had been wonderful having Ele. Our time was spent surrounding her, enjoying her, loving her. But this was what I had needed from him, one lover to another.

  “I love you more than life, Corrado,” I whispered. “But I get lonely.”

  “You’ve been spending time with some of the wives.”

  I tried. I couldn’t. They were different. They talked about shopping, and cars, and places to go for spa days. Our conversations had no real substance, or any real depth, or any true feeling—when they laughed, it wasn’t true.

  I was thankful for Mari. She had called me a few times, and I had called her. She even invited me to girl’s nights with the Fausti wives, but I didn’t go.

  Corrado did not like Rocco, and that was a problem. If things got tense between them…I did not want to think about what would happen. It wasn’t worth the trouble. And then Mari and Amadeo had gone back to Modica for a while. We made plans to connect when they returned.

  So it had been rough until mamma and Anna arrived. But.

  “I still feel alone,” I said. “This house.” I looked up at him. “It has everything, but nothing. It’s not warm. There’s hardly any laughter. It feels like a prison.”

  “You traded one for another.”

  “No,” I said. “You freed me, but without you here most of the time, nothing ever feels like enough. There’s excess all around me, but not the kind that matters.”

  “It’s me,” he said. “I’m doing this to you.”

  He was one of the smartest men I had ever known in many different ways. But in love he was lost.

  “Your grandmother told you of our conversation,” I said.

  “No, she lies to me. Just like she lied to my grandfather. It was the nature of their relationship.”

  “It’s not the nature of ours,” I said, sitting up, taking his face in my hands. “This is not about you, or about me, but about us. I miss you. I haven’t seen you this way since we left Italy.” I searched his eyes. “You do not look at me. Not like this. Not enough.”

  “How am I looking at you, angel eyes?” he whispered.

  My heart raced and my breath caught, like the very first time he looked at me this way. “Like you miss
me, too, even though I’m next to you.” I put my head against his, breathing him in.

  He tucked his finger under my chin, lifting my mouth to his. He kissed me slowly, deeply, and then with the same roughness that made me feel claimed.

  He broke the kiss and ran his hands over my head, then pulled ours together. “What do you want from me, woman?”

  “Everything,” I said.

  “That’s the fucking trouble,” he said. “I can’t deny you anything.”

  “What’s done is done,” I whispered. “Forgive the past.”

  He seemed caught off guard that I had asked that of him. “I can’t do that, either,” he said, and then sighed. He picked me up and carried me to our room, setting me in the bed before he brought Ele to hers.

  He wrapped me in his arms and fell asleep not long after. But I could not sleep. My conscience was at peace, but my mind kept me up.

  What had he been expecting me to ask of him? To leave his life behind and start a new one with me?

  Never.

  That was the stuff fairytales were made of. In this life, there was no such thing.

  29

  Alcina

  “I am leaving with your closet!” Anna said, lying down on the soft rug on the floor, making a snow angel with the fake fur.

  I touched her with my toe. “You must have drank too much prune juice as a child and shit all of your common sense out.”

  She rolled around even harder, laughing even louder. “I have not heard that since…bisnonno! He used to tell that to the men who would try to swindle him out of money for his fruit, remember?”

  “How can I forget? Mamma mia! My ass still stings.”

  Our bisnonno, great grandfather, was a fruit peddler, and when men used to try to lowball him on the price of his fruit, he used to tell them that. I did not realize it was wrong to say as a child. I repeated it to my teacher when she gave me a bad grade. I got my behind whipped by my mamma. Papà tried not to laugh when he found out what I’d said, and then mamma hit him with a broom. She grinned the entire time.