His breath fanned my face as I massaged his scalp. He closed his eyes. I took the opportunity to study him. The distinct jawline. The high cheekbones. He could be a model or a movie star if he fled this town, ran away from this mafia life, like I’d always wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It’s hard to hear. Okay? Every night, it’s hard to hear.”
He said nothing. I cupped water into my palms and poured it over his head. When the water ran clear, I stepped back.
His eyes shot open. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Okay.” I figured I owed him as much.
“Make sure I don’t fall asleep. I could have a concussion.”
“He hit your head?”
“Kicked it. On the side. My hair hides it. No bruises that way.”
“He can’t get away with this.”
“He won’t.”
And if I wasn’t so focused on his pain and how close we stood, I would have realized what his words meant. Damian had a plan to get back at Angelo. Maybe even take him down. That was treason, and he’d just confessed it to me.
Trust.
He trusted me, and I didn’t even realize it.
Chapter Fourteen
“In the end, you have to choose whether or not to trust someone.”
– Sophie Kinsella
Damiano De Luca
Now that you’re friends with Miriam, she will bring her dad to you when the abuse gets too big to hide from him. They’ll ask you for help. You’ll convince them that dethroning Angelo is the only way.
I’d gotten the message from The Benefactor exactly two weeks after Renata arrived in Devils Ridge. I waited. Waited. Then, waited some more. I almost thought The Benefactor had gotten something wrong when Miriam and her father ambled their way into The Landing Strip.
The dark club shadowed Miriam, but I could see the shiner burgeoning on her eye. The closer she came, the more bruises I caught. She hid them with makeup and long sleeves, but I’d gotten good at recognizing abuse.
When they approached me, I stood and led them to Irene’s private room. The three of us sat on the leather, neither Miriam nor her dad Manuel talking.
I took pity on them. “He hit you again.”
My dad’s advisor Jacapo was a real nasty piece of work. When I was ten, he’d walked in on my father beating me and stayed to watch. It wasn’t a stretch to assume he was responsible for Miriam’s bruises.
Manuel glanced at his daughter before returning his gaze to me. “Yes. I don’t know how long Mir’s been hiding this from me, but even a second is too long.” His voice caught, and he paused. “It’s too long, Damian.”
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry this is happening to you, Miriam. You deserve better. But the options here are slim. If you flee, Jacapo will find you. If you kill him, you’ll end up in jail or Angelo will kill you both.”
Miriam tugged at the collar of her dress, a nervous tick I’d noticed a while back. “We were hoping you could go to your dad, and…” Her voice trailed off as I stood, turned around, and lifted my shirt. Her gasp echoed in the small room. “Oh, my God. Damian.”
It felt bittersweet to show my scars. People saw scars as vulnerability, but these were my choice. I let Angelo hit me. Not because I was weak, but because I could take it while I waited for my plan to fall into place.
I also found justice in using the scars Angelo gave me against him. They would be a useful tool in converting more De Luca members, starting with Miriam and Manuel. But I couldn’t go around lifting my shirt without cause. It would raise suspicions.
Maybe later, Angelo would slip up again and leave a mark somewhere visible. Somewhere people couldn’t ignore. Like a black eye people would ask me about and I could “reluctantly” attribute to Angelo. Show them how unhinged he’d become to his own son. Show them that, if they stepped wrong, this could be them unless I dethroned Angelo.
“Son—”
I was no one’s son, and I needed to make that clear. “I’m not showing this to garner sympathy. I’m showing you both my scars to show you the type of man Angelo is. If you go to him and tell him that Jacapo has been beating Miriam, he will not behave like another syndicate boss would.”
Manuel shook his head. “But—”
“He’s stuck in a different era, Manuel.”
“The other syndicates—”
“—have changed. Women are treated equally. They aren’t dismissed. The syndicates rarely resort to violence to resolve issues.”
Miriam’s eyes widened, and tears brimmed in them. “Why can’t that be us? Dad?”
Manuel turned to me. This was good. Yes, he’d been an obedient soldier all his life and perhaps looking for leadership in others came naturally, but the fact that he looked to me instinctually coupled with how well-liked he was in this syndicate made him a great ally. The Benefactor had been right. Again.
I reached out and touched Miriam’s shoulder. “The De Luca syndicate will remain the same so long as Angelo De Luca remains the same.”
“I-I…” Manuel reached out, squeezed his daughter’s hand, and cleared his throat. “I’m at a loss for what to do here. If we can’t leave and we can’t stop Jacapo, what do we do?”
I didn’t respond, instead waiting for them to come to the conclusion first.
A few minutes of silence passed before a hesitant Miriam stood up and turned to us both. Her eyes were a bit feverish, and she either looked determined or unhinged. “We take Angelo De Luca down.”
“Honey…” Manuel sent an uncertain look my way. “We can’t talk like this.”
“Dad, look what Jacapo did to me. Look what Angelo did to Damian. We can do this. The three of us can do this.” She turned to me. “You’re his son. You’re the only one who can take over. Please, Damian. I’m your friend. Please.”
And there we had it. I’d gotten her to beg me for what I wanted in the first place. Manipulation never felt good, especially when it came without much effort.
I took a few minutes to respond, making a show of my hesitation. “We would need to turn people to our side.”
Manuel’s head peeped up, hope transforming his features. “What do you need us to do? Anything.”
“Right now, people in this town are convinced Angelo De Luca is good for them.” I’d been slogging my way through people, turning them away from Angelo step by step. There was still a considerable amount of people on the fence, and Manuel’s support would be the difference. “We need to convince them otherwise.”
Miriam nodded. “My dad has many friends that are soldiers and capos. I am friends with all the girls here, and their clients are all syndicate.”
“You’d need to be careful. Subtle.”
“I will. I can do it.”
And I believed her. Hell, The Benefactor must have believed her, too, or we wouldn’t be here.
I continued, “Some people will be on the fence. I can’t just show them my scars.”
“Why not?”
Manuel answered for me. “It’s suspicious. He can’t walk around without a shirt. People who cut, for instance, hide their scars. People will wonder why he’s not hiding them. Why now? If they ask those questions, it can be dangerous.”
I nodded. “I’ll need Angelo to hurt me where people can see. A black eye. Something on my face. Sleeves can cover arms. Pants can cover legs. It has to be the face.”
“And you can do this?”
I thought of Ren. She’d said it was difficult to hear me get beaten, and here I was, plotting more abuse. Hell, she’d just washed my scars, and now I was planning more marks. As soon as I realized I was even considering her, I pushed the thoughts of her away.
This was my syndicate.
This was my future.
It was the future I wanted.
… And it didn’t involve Renata Vitali.
Chapter Fifteen
“Trusting is hard. Knowing who to trust, even harder.”
– Maria V. Snyder
Renata Vitali
Time passed oddly in Devils Ridge. Days seemed to drag, but nights passed too quickly. When it came to our nights in the library, they couldn’t come fast enough. Weekdays were easier. I had school to monopolize my time until the De Luca driver dropped me back off at the mansion, and I spent the rest of the day doing homework, taking naps, and waiting for one in the morning to come.
Weekends were the worst. I had no electronics, I saved reading for my library nights with Damian, and I could only sleep so much. There was nothing to do to pass time. Damian spent most of the weekends out of the house.
But this week, Angelo left for Oklahoma to seal another oil deal, and I hadn’t heard Damian leave his room. The housekeepers even dropped off his breakfast and lunch to his door. Still, neither of us approached the other. I spent the day lying in bed, mostly staring at the ceiling. In silence. So much silence.
In the jungle, silence is a sign of danger. Animals know to stay silent when a predator comes. The mafia world is a lot like the jungle, and I should have considered this with each passing second.
And then I heard it.
The first grunt.
I thought I was hearing things at first, but then it happened again. The sound came from the wall Damian and I shared. I sprung out of bed and inched closer. Another grunt. Dragging the nightstand to the air vent, I stood on it.
Angelo wasn’t here. This couldn’t be a beating. And when I peeked through the vent and caught a blurred image of Damian in bed, I knew it was definitely not Angelo. I couldn’t make out a clear image through the vent, so I scrambled off the nightstand and onto the bed.
I pulled the covers over me as if they’d protect me from the image spearing my brain.
Another grunt, but this time, he added, “Fuck, yes.”
A feminine moan filled my room, and she panted out, “Yes, Daddy. Faster.”
Damian groaned out, “Feels so good.”
I ducked my hand beneath my sheets and toyed with the trim of my panties. I was going to Hell. Damian moaned again, and my fingers dipped below the fabric, teasing my clit. Listening to Damian with another woman shouldn’t have hurt me, but it did. It gutted me. Still, I couldn’t stop touching myself.
“Yes, please. Faster. Faster. Faster. I’m so close.”
Dear Lord, there were two of them.
Two. Girls.
That gut-punch feeling could go to Hell. I didn’t own Damian. No, I didn’t even want him. Right? But the sounds of his grunts hitched my breath, and driving away this lust seemed impossible. I tried to push it out of my head, wondering what the hell I was doing.
“Harder,” one of the girls begged.
I slid two fingers inside of me and pictured Damian above me. His hand was on my breast, my neck, my hair, his scent everywhere. I was close. I could hear him groaning from his room, too, and I came. Breathy. Moaning. Way too loud.
Definitely going to Hell.
My cheeks burned as I came down from the high, unable to believe what I’d just done. I made a mess on my hand, so I slid off the bed to sneak across the hall to the bathroom. Damian’s door opened the same time mine did.
I considered pretending I hadn’t seen him before deciding that would be too obvious. I turned to face him and crossed my arms. “Your dad has a ban on guests, and I wouldn’t piss him off. Not that you’re around to see it, but he’s been on a rampage lately.”
His eyes flattened, and he skimmed them over my body. “Has he hurt you?”
“No.” I peeked around him, trying to peer into the room as subtly as I could.
“There’s no one in the room, Princess.”
“But I heard—” I faltered, not liking how pathetic I sounded. “There was a girl—”
“Porn, Princess. It was porn. You’ve never watched it?” His amusement had me reconsidering the past twenty minutes. He knew I could hear him through the vent. Had he done this on purpose?
I shook my head. “I heard—”
A smirk lined his lips. “It’s called jacking off. You know, self-pleasure. Masturbating. Cleaning your rifle.”
“Okay, I get it.”
“Painting the ceiling. Playing the skin flute. Choking the cyclops.”
“Damian.”
“Milking the lizard. Dishonorable discharge. Croaking the frog.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Firing the flesh musket. Giving a dirty handshake. Basting the ham.”
“I swear to God—”
“—Taking the sausage hostage. Emptying the cache. Clearing my browser history.”
“You like to touch your penis. I get it.”
If it were anyone else, they’d be laughing at his words. Neither of us laughed, even when we poked fun and prodded one another’s buttons. Damian sobered. The silence between us reminded me of the jungle. Except he was the predator, and he’d already come.
“Angelo will return later today.” Damian’s eyes ran over me once more, methodical and almost detached in their perusal of my body. As if cleaning him in the bath had never happened. And then he said the most unexpected thing. “If my dad tries to hurt you, find me.”
It was little things like this which told me he cared.
And it was the pathetic pattering of my heart which told me I did, too.
Chapter Sixteen
“Love meant jumping off a cliff and trusting that a certain person would be there to catch you at the bottom.”
– Jodi Picoult
Damiano De Luca
“I think it’s unrealistic. Impossible, even.”
Who knew, between the two of us, Princess would be the pessimist and I, the idealist?
I eyed the article of great-great-grandfather Ludovico on the wall, careful to keep my eyes off of Ren. I was well aware that I enjoyed our nightly literary debates way too much. “You don’t think people have the innate goodness in them to rally for a common goal?”
The magazine felt heavy in my hand. Not because it was an issue of Playboy, nor because it was a limited edition 1984 run, but because it was the only thing keeping me from striding across the library’s timber floors and kissing Princess. Vitali blood or not, I wanted her. Craved her in ways I’d never allow myself to pursue. She was, after all, a Vitali. And I was, after all, a lowly De Luca prince.
“Think about it like this. Decent people don’t commit hardcore crimes, nor do they always follow the rules. They sneak into the carpool lane or speed when they shouldn’t, but they’re not out there murdering people. They don’t go out of their way to donate all their non-basic essentials, but every once in a while, they’ll volunteer at the local animal shelter. They’re just… normal. Balanced. Trying to live their lives as best as they can, but sometimes their best isn’t the best.” She sat on the divan across from me and set her copy of The Toynbee Convector down.
Her eyes darted to my Playboy, which held the original copy of the short story we were discussing. “Say there’s a normal distribution of goodness in the world, and the average person, at 50%, is a decent person. That would mean there are 34% of less-than-decent people, 13.5% of bad people, and 2.5% of awful people. That’s billions of people that aren’t even decent. You think they could muster up all that gushy goodness to create a utopia based on the crazy rantings of a self-proclaimed time traveler?”
“Fucking hell.” I shook my head, ignoring how hot her arguing made me. I wanted to pry that paperback from her hands and replace it with my body. “Did you really just ruin Ray Bradbury for me?”
“Maybe you should learn to debate better.”
“Maybe you should learn to—”
My dad’s voice rang in the hallway as he yelled at one of the maids. Ren’s disappointed eyes met mine before we both scanned the room. She scrambled upward and slipped behind the nearest floor-to-ceiling drape, hiding like we were doing something wrong by spending time with each other. Maybe we were, but it didn’t feel wrong until someone invaded our bubble.
“Ah, there you are, my p
rodigious son.”
I turned to Angelo as he swung the double doors open, and they struck the doorstoppers. “Obviously.” I paused a beat, a carefree smirk I didn’t feel curving my lips. “I didn’t think you knew what ‘prodigious’ meant, but hey, I didn’t think you could find the library either.”
“Shut your fucking mouth or your biggest life accomplishment will be cleaning toilets at The Landing Strip.”
My dad owned The Landing Strip, the one and only strip club in Devils Ridge, but he didn’t know I frequented the place. Not for enjoyment, but to network. To show the De Luca soldiers and caporegimes how they could be treated if they supported me.
And I had cleaned the toilets there. I helped the staff, got my fucking hands dirty, made jokes with them on their breaks, asked them about their sons and daughters, and showed them just how much more I cared for them than my father did. Just one of my many steps to dethroning Angelo.
I dipped a hand into my pocket and leaned a hip on one of the divans. “What do you want?”
“You see the Vitali girl lately?” He sneered and whistled at the same time, which was kind of impressive if you thought about it. “She’s growing.”
I leaned further against the cushion and forced myself to remain impassive. “You’re sick.”
Angelo took a seat on the divan closest to where Ren hid. “There’s an opening at The Landing Strip.”
“And?”
“And it’s time we made that Vitali girl earn her keep.” Behind my dad, the drape shifted. Ren must have been pissed, or creeped out, or both.
“Earn her keep? You’ve been cooped up in this town too long, old man.” I eyed Ren’s copy of The Toynbee Collector beside him. “That idiom no longer refers to room and board.”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I ran a hand down my face and contemplated the millions of things that could be running through Ren’s mind right now. “Seriously, what do you want?”
“The Vitali girl working at The Landing Strip.”
Mafia Romance Page 116
