A gift from The Benefactor.
I tore the package open. Five Gurkha cigars. Five instructions. Five more favors I owed a nameless devil. My fingers traced the hand carved camel bone chest before I lifted the lid. Taking the first in the set out of the packaging humidor, I drew it to my nostrils and inhaled.
Broadleaf Maduro. Cameroon binder. Aged Dominican filler. Sour, sweet, and twenty-three grand a box. Whoever The Benefactor was, he was wealthy and connected. These cases were rarer than a virgin escort.
I never smoked them—I didn’t smoke or drink—but I didn’t tell Cristian this as I pulled out an S.T. Dupont lighter, bought and paid for by centuries-old De Luca oil money. For now, he needed to think these cigars were just a gift, not secret messages.
Cris held his hand out. “We’re in a five-by-five box, man. Control yourself.”
I made a show of rolling my eyes before tucking the cigar back in the chest and leaning against the leather seat. “It’s smoke, Cris. You’ll live.”
He ticked his fingers. “Formaldehyde, benzene, vinyl chloride, arsenic ammonia, and hydrogen cyanide. Some of the many carcinogens in secondhand smoke.”
I smirked. “Look who paid attention in health.”
He shook his head and his dirty blond, surfer boy hair shook with it. “Stop giving me shit. We’re in a box.”
Hardly. We sat in a private room at The Landing Strip. Irene’s room. Befriending Irene had been my first instruction from The Benefactor. She had the ins and outs of the club wired, and from intel to a debugged room to meet in, she had my back.
I didn’t know how The Benefactor knew to single her out, but I’d made the decision long ago to take down my father. I was committed, and I would take the help I could get. If The Benefactor posed a problem after I ascended the throne, I would take care of it then. I was a planner, but this was something I had little choice but to take one step at a time.
Cris nodded his thanks as I put away the cigars. He played his role well. The easygoing player no one could take seriously because they couldn’t see past the charming smirk, half-assed pickup lines, and laidback surfer style.
But time and time again, Cris had come through for me. There was no one I trusted more. When I take over the De Luca syndicate, I’ll make him my senior advisor. Until then, he did the work I couldn’t because leaving Devils Ridge would reveal my identity.
Right now, being unknown provided an advantage. Everyone here kept me a secret under Angelo’s instructions, which he gave because he thought the fewer people who knew I existed, the less legitimate my chances at taking over the syndicate would be.
He was wrong.
I removed the cigar case from the shipping box and pushed the cardboard box to Cris. “Track this. Did you get a location on the last one?”
He grabbed the box from me, pulled a knife out of his pocket, and began cutting out the chunk of cardboard with the shipping information on it. A no-name private company. He looked up at me midway. “Last package came from New York.” He paused a beat. “Romano territory.”
I watched as he finished his cutting. “Can you get an address?”
“I think my guy can get the origin city. Best we can do.”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Why do you think the Romano syndicate is sending you shit?”
“We don’t know that it’s the Romano syndicate.”
“Who else?”
I shrugged and ran a hand over my face. “No clue, but it’s a fancy gift, and clearly someone knows I exist.”
“That should worry you. Today, it’s fancy cigars—random outta fucking nowhere gift by the way. Tomorrow, it’s poison in your lungs, bro.”
“Yeah, but that’s what tomorrow’s for.”
“You’re a planner. You don’t say things like that.”
Lately, I was doing a lot of things I normally wouldn’t. I didn’t have a choice. I needed Angelo out of my life more than I cared about The Benefactor’s motives. Everything unhinged Angelo, and I let him take out his anger on my back with his belt to buy me time, but one day, it wouldn’t be enough. When that day came, I—or one of our own—would end up dead. I couldn’t let that happen.
I studied Cris, eyeing the stress lines between his brows. “Do you trust me?”
“With my life.”
“Then, trust me on this.”
He heaved a sigh and nodded. “I have a package at my place, too. Amazon Prime, so I doubt it’s a bomb or poison. But it was sent to my house, addressed to you. Kinda heavy. You think I should call in the boys to scan it?”
“No, it’s clean.”
The package was heavy because it was filled with textbooks. Six thicker than oatmeal textbooks for an ivory-skinned princess who hadn’t come to the library for six days now. Fuck. Where was this guilt coming from?
I toyed with the cigar case in my hand and nodded to Cristian. “I’ll pick it up tomorrow before school.”
He cocked a brow. “And you’re going to school, right?” When I nodded, he shook his head and grinned. “Just tell me who you’re banging, dude. You know I’ll pry it out of you. No one’s interesting in this town, but it can’t be the Vitali chick. She’s hot, but she’s a sloppy mess, and she never misses a class.”
Renata was more than hot. She was fresh air slapping me in the face, better company than I knew was possible, and the goddamned cure to loneliness. She was also off limits, which I reminded Cris. “Renata is a Vitali, and Vitalis are off limits.”
“If it’s not the Vitali…” He tilted his head, narrowed his eyes, and grimaced. “Please, tell me it’s not Laura.”
“Hell, no.” I wasn’t banging anyone. I ditched a few classes and stayed out late most days to follow the instructions on the cigars, but again, I couldn’t tell Cris. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
He nodded, accepted the dismissal with ease, and stood. At the doorway, he turned and faced me. “Why are people sending shit to you through me?”
I did it because he lived alone. His dad was currently serving two life sentences in a supermax prison. I suspected The Benefactor had the same reasons. I just didn’t know how he knew this much about my life.
“Because you’re so popular.”
Cris barked out a laugh, shook his head, and left. When the door shut, I plucked the first cigar from the case, unraveled it, and read the message, my mind reeling.
Look after the mafia princess.
I sent her to you for a reason.
Another secret revealed. Another secret to keep. I collected more secrets than a priest in a confessional.
* * *
To have faith is to trust
yourself to the water. When
you swim, you don’t grab hold
of the water, because if you do,
you will sink and drown.
Instead, you relax and float.
Alan Wilson Watts
* * *
There’s an island far off the coast of India, where a tribe of people lives isolated. For thousands of years, they’ve lived with minimal contact with the outside world. They still practice hunting and gathering, make Stone Age weapons out of loose metals, and greet outsiders with arrows. Years of isolation bred distrust, and the sight of visitors is met with violence and hostility.
The De Luca syndicate reminded me of the Sentinelese. After Ludovico De Luca killed his son, the Vitali and other syndicates wrote them off as crazy. Since then, they’ve lived isolated in their small territory of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. No outside deals. No cross-territory agreements.
Hell, they’re the only syndicate to never fight a war—and not because they aren’t interested. No, because no one considers them worth it. And so, isolation bred distrust, and distrust turned into hostility and violence when it came to the Romano; Andretti; Rossi; Camerino; and most of all, the governing Vitali.
So, I wasn’t surprised when I spent the first month of school without a single textbook. I squeezed by fine enough bas
ed on past knowledge, but it got exceedingly difficult the more assignments my teachers gave out of textbooks. In fact, I suspected some of them began giving book assignments to spite me.
Because like the Sentinelese, they treated me with hostility purely because I was a foreigner. They didn’t trust me, and they certainly didn’t trust the Vitali, which Damian outright admitted before he said he couldn’t be seen with me.
So, I suffered. Assignment after assignment. Grade after grade. The library had magically run out of stock of every textbook I needed, I knew no one would lend me theirs, and I had no way of purchasing textbooks without access to the internet.
About a week after Damian told me we couldn’t be seen together in person, I opened my locker to six brand new textbooks. One for each class I was taking. I stared at them, traced my finger along their spines, and wondered what the catch was. I’d move it, and a trip wire would cause a cascade of pig’s blood to gush onto my head, à la Carrie. Or maybe I’d open one of them, and a horde of spiders would crawl out and attack me.
Either way, I didn’t dare move them. At least not until the bell rang for first period, and the hallway cleared. The students scattered like ashes in the wind until only I remained in the hallway.
I reached into my pocket and pulled a pen out. Angling myself sideways in case something shot out of me, I stuck the pen in the locker and poked one of the books.
Nothing.
Another poke.
Still nothing.
“What are you doing?” The amusement in Damian’s voice tickled my stomach when it should have put me on edge.
Wow, I was so bad at this grudge thing. Then again, a grudge implied I cared enough to hold one. Plus, Damian was awfully nonchalant for someone I had been avoiding for the past week.
I turned to face him, racked my brain for an explanation, and came up short, so I went with the truth. “There are new textbooks in my locker. I don’t know who put them there, so I’m checking to see if they’re boobytrapped.”
He leaned against the row of lockers parallel to mine and crossed his arms. “Boobytrapped? This isn’t Home Alone. We’re not children fending off goons.”
“I don’t trust you guys.” I trusted no one, except maybe my mom.
“They’re just textbooks, Princess.”
“How would you know that?”
He closed the distance between us and leaned against the locker next to mine. His breath fanned across my face as he inched forward, closing the gap between us. “Because I put them there.” In one swift move, he swiped up the books and placed them in my hands with a raised brow. After giving me a two-fingered salute, he turned and left.
I looked down at the textbooks, a little stunned. Calculus. Macroeconomics. Literature. Spanish. Environmental Science. Computer Science. My classes. He really made it hard to hate him. What was his end game?
Before he reached the door, he turned back to me. “And Princess?”
“What?”
“See you in the library tonight.”
That.
That was his end game.
Maybe he needed me to chase away his loneliness as much as I wanted him to chase away mine. But damned if either of us would admit it.
* * *
Loving someone is
giving them the power to
break your heart, but
trusting them not to.
Julianne Moore
* * *
A light switch has multiple components. A hot wire. A 120-volt AC current. A neutral white wire. Two terminals. Power running from the fuse box. It isn’t just a switch. It isn’t just turning something on or off.
Nothing is that simple.
This included turning the truce between me and Damian on and off. It’d be so simple to just hate him or like him but not both at the same time. That would be like Allied forces invading Normandy every morning and retreating every night.
It took a toll on me. I liked Damian when I shouldn’t have and hated him when I could have allowed myself to like him. It was these conflicting emotions that distracted me as I wandered into the kitchen in the De Luca mansion.
I opened the fridge, which they had built into the antique cabinets, and pulled out a travel-sized bottle of orange juice. Araceli, who I suspected disliked me, had stopped delivering my breakfast, which left me to fend for myself out here.
When I shut the fridge door, Angelo stood on the other side, leering at me. “Little Miss Vitali, growing older and older each day, I see.”
“You don’t see anything, Angelo. You’re blind.” I rolled my eyes, uncapped the orange juice, and moved to walk around him.
His hand slammed down on the fridge, his arm now blocking my path. “You little—”
I cut him off before he could spew his stupidity. “Do you not get it? Are you that daft? I can provoke you all I want. I can call you names. Throw punches. Hell… I can kill you, Angelo. I can reach out, grip your throat with my bare hands, and squeeze until the life drains out of your pathetic, beady eyes.” I needed to nip this in the bud, to remind him of the hierarchy with words he could understand.
He pulled his gun out of his holster with his free hand and set it on the kitchen island. “Silly, naïve girl. I can end you right now. I can place a bullet in between your demon-red eyes and end this yapping before I get a fucking migraine.”
I leaned on my heels and took a casual sip of my orange juice, which I knew would irritate him. “There’s nothing you can do to stop me that won’t end with you dead anyway. That’s what it is to be a Vitali, and that’s how little the De Luca name means.”
His eyes narrowed, and he strode toward me. I started to question how much he cared about whether he lived or died. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I wasn’t providing a deterrent but giving him a challenge. Maybe instead of nipping this in the bud, I’d provoked him more. After all, rumors of the De Luca craziness had to exist for a reason, and he shared lineage with Ludovico De Luca.
“Your father thinks he can just send you into my territory without even consulting me. He thinks he owns the Italian mafia worldwide.”—Papà policed it, which was close enough—“He thinks he can do what he pleases, and all the other syndicates play along because that’s how it’s always been.” His arm lowered from the fridge, and he took a step toward me. He reached out with his finger and poked me in the chest. “Well, he’s wrong.”—Poke—“That’s not how things happen in my territory.”—Poke—“You best tell your dad, the De Luca family answers. To. No. One.” Poke. Poke. Poke.
I tilted my head. Condescension oozed out of me with purpose as I caught his finger between my fist. “I’d be happy to tell him that if you’d give me a phone.” My saccharine smile escalated his rage.
Why wasn’t I stopping? This was crazy. Angelo De Luca was a madman, but I was mad, too. Last night, I’d seen the way Damian winced when laying on the library’s divan. The day before that, I heard the whip of Angelo’s belt through the air vent connecting my room to Damian’s. My parents had odd ways of showing their love, but never once had they laid a hand on me.
Angelo slipped his finger from my grip and nodded at the gun. “There’s a bullet in that gun with your name on it.”
“Does that make you feel like a man? Do those threats help you sleep at night?” I took a step toward him, and I couldn’t get a grip on my anger. My dad raised me to be the stereotypical calm Vitali, but this was so far from calm, I wouldn’t be able to locate myself on a map. “Here’s what helps me sleep at night. Knowing you’re weak—”
“I’m not weak—”
“Only a weak man beats his son every night. You’re alive because my family lets you live. You’re alive because your son could beat you to a pulp but hasn’t decided to capture your throne. It’s that grace that has allowed the breath to flow through your lungs. One day, your luck will flee, and each breath you take will be a struggle. On that day, your son will lead your syndicate. I’ll be there to laugh. And the rest of the syndicates
will move on with their daily operations—no changes made, because you mean absolutely nothing to anyone.”
I caught movement by the kitchen entrance. My eyes tangled with Damian’s over his dad’s shoulder. Black and red. Red and black. No way out of this stare down but to dive deeper into this mess and trust I’d find an escape.
But a part of me knew there was no escape.
* * *
To be trusted is a greater
accomplishment than to
be loved.
George MacDonald
* * *
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I turned my metronome on and placed it on the floor to prepare for Angelo’s visit tonight. The beat helped me focus, and I liked to concentrate on it instead of the whipping. And I had no doubt the whipping would be bad tonight. Angelo had to be mad after his showdown with Renata, but he’d take it out on me.
I wasn’t a pushover. I didn’t usually let people treat me like this. I’d always pictured fighting back throughout my childhood, but when I finally grew big enough to throw a mean punch, I already set my eyes on dethroning Angelo. That was a job that would take more than brute force and a few clever punches.
So, I sucked it up. I held my anger in. And every night, like clockwork, Angelo came into my room, slid his ten-thousand-dollar snakeskin belt from his pant loops, and went to town on my back, stopping just before the skin split to avoid physical evidence.
The door opened. I laid flat on my bed, not bothering to look up. His belt made noise as he unbuckled it. It slid across his pants, and still, I didn’t look.
His bored tone did nothing to abate my irritation. “Kneel. Floor. You know the drill.”
I realized I must have looked absurd, too damn old and big to let anyone beat me like this and not fight back. But I did as Angelo demanded, my mind blank. My knees met the floor. The wood dug into my skin. Still, no noise but the metronome.