No.
There was no way he did it.
I knew my dad wouldn’t have taken kindly to me coming to the house unannounced the way I was about to, but this was serious. He had probably already heard, and we needed to have a meeting, even if it was just him and me.
I had made sure that Daniella was in the house before I left for my father’s house. I would have brought Sophia, but she was in no position or state to move or want to be moved. She had been crushed. Absolutely shattered by the news. When I had found her waiting for me, I knew that she knew. I could see it on her face when she looked at me. I honestly believed for a second that she would accuse me of having something to do with it.
There was no way I could have kept that a secret from her. I was ready for her to push me away—and she hadn’t. I couldn’t have left her in the house alone. Fuck. What a time for this to happen. It was almost like this was calculated. It was like whoever had done it knew that Sophia was just beginning to become happy and comfortable being married to me and they decided to fuck it up. It was like whoever did this knew and they had ulterior motives.
I felt sick. I felt angry. Someone was playing with fire and they were about to get burned. Not only were they fucking with my family and our business, they were fucking with Sophia, and when you fuck with Sophia, you fuck with me. Frank Dandolo wasn’t perfect, but she loved him—and that was all that mattered. There was no way this wasn’t calculated to devastate Sophia specifically and put a strain on the relationship that our families had formed.
I got to the house and had to wait downstairs for about an hour before my father was ready to see me. Mom was apparently in the house too, but I didn’t see her. It was the man I wanted to see. Something was telling me that he hadn’t had anything to do with what had happened, but waiting for him, the thought that he maybe did made me mad.
What if he had done it, or had had it done? What if this was his plot from the very beginning with having Sophia and I married in the first place? I mean, if that was what he wanted then that was a perfect idea that he had put together. First, get your own son and the child of your arch rival married. That would disarm him. That would bring the two of you closer and unite your strengths. You had the chance to get in, really go deep and see the way he runs his operations. He might let you in on some secrets; you might even become cautious friends. He would have no reason to doubt or suspect you because the two of you made a fair trade; your first born child for his first born child. A son for a daughter.
The more I thought about it, the less fair the trade seemed. Sure, both were losing their only children, but Frank was losing more. He was already at a sort of disadvantage with the fact that Sophia was a woman and they didn’t have any more children. She would not pass the Dandolo name on into the future, since she was marrying me, she would pass the Orsini name on. It didn’t even stop there. She was the one who was expected to join my family, not I join hers. My father was very much gaining a daughter, but Frank wasn’t really gaining a son. There must have been more to it somehow because there was no way that Frank had been totally unaware of the sort of exchange that was going on. Maybe that was the case, but then again, maybe there were layers to this that were hidden to me, that I didn’t understand and that somehow made the agreement sweet enough of a deal for Frank to actually want to take it. I could not speak on Frank Dandolo’s character, but I could talk about my father. The man was cold-blooded.
It would have been a cinch for him to kill Frank. It would have been criminally easy to get him at that point, and since they had already declared their unity, perhaps his territory and empire would fall under his control by default once he was dead anyway. Brilliant. I just hoped it wasn’t true. I wasn’t ready to completely forsake my father and everything that I had been raised to know and strive for as an Orsini, but if my father had anything to do with this, he was losing his son today.
He finally came down the stairs. He looked a little agitated to see me.
“Marcelo,” he said in greeting, “what brings you here so early?”
It was still morning. It wasn’t even ten yet. He could put that fake-outraged act to rest because I knew for a fact that I hadn’t woken him from his beauty rest. I knew he wasn’t about to start going into why it was incorrect etiquette to show up unannounced at a person’s house before noon. No way. We weren’t playing that game today. Not when my wife was sick with grief and there was a chance that he had something to do with it.
“You really don’t know, Dad? Frank Dandolo is dead. Murdered. Do you know anything about this?”
My father's eyes narrowed; the same dark brown eyes that I had inherited from him.
“Let’s sit. I know you must have a lot of questions.”
I watched him make his way to his office in disbelief. He was way too calm in all of this. Why didn’t he look like he cared, or even knew what was going on? In his office, we sat the way we had sat many times, including the time that he had told me I was going to marry Frank Dandolo’s daughter, Sophia. I braced myself because the possibility that he was going to open his mouth and say something hideous to me was still there.
“Why are you here, son?” he asked me.
“Why am I here? What are you talking about, Dad? Frank is dead. Sophia’s father is dead.”
“And you think I don’t know that? Why did you really come here? It wasn’t to tell me that Frank had been murdered.”
“Did you do it?”
“No,” he said simply.
His answer annoyed me. It was too brief and too dismissive. No? What the hell did he mean, no? That was the answer to the question that I had asked, but it was by no means a substantial answer. That didn’t tell me anything new or answer the question as to who actually did do it if it was not him. He must have sensed my anger because he spoke before I could.
“What makes you think I would do something like that, Marcelo?”
“You and Frank were enemies.”
“And then you and his daughter got married. We buried our differences. The joining of our families was a unification tool in more ways than one. I may have had my quarrels with him in the past, but at the end, we realized we would be stronger united and that was what we did. We united. I don’t know what you think is going on, but I have nothing to do with it.”
“Then who did it?”
“I can't tell you that, Marcelo. I can only tell you what I did or didn’t do. I had nothing to do with Frank Dandolo’s death. I wouldn’t do that to myself, to your, or even to your wife. Do you know what this means for us? Dandolo’s absence means there’s a power vacuum that someone most likely is going to try and fill.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. We can hold his men and his territory for a while, but at some point, he is going to need a successor.”
I took a minute to realize what my father was talking about.
“You don’t mean—”
“He has no other children. It has to be her,” he said. It was laughable to think about because I actually knew her, but my father was dead serious. Was the head position of underground organized crime a place for a woman? Sure, maybe some women, but not Sophia. I was going to make the decision for her even though it would piss her off. No. That one wasn’t happening. She was not getting into this whole circus. She didn’t even entertain it; there was no way she would want to step up into her father’s position.
“She was crushed by the news. Dad, she’s pregnant, she can’t fill his position, not right now and not in the state that she’s in.”
“I’m just telling you what needs to happen,” he said. “For her sake, mine and your own, you need to find out who killed Frank.”
“For my sake?”
“You are an Orsini, Marcelo. That makes you a suspect. Look at the conclusion that you drew yourself, coming here to talk to me.”
I looked down. I understood the way I could be a suspect theoretically, but really, I could never. I would never do that to Sophie, rega
rdless of what our fathers were quarreling about. That was low, and there was no way she would be able to take the news that that had happened to her father and that I had done it. I would never do anything to Sophie knowing that it would hurt her. I loved her. I would tell my father that, but he wouldn’t care. He just wanted the truth to come out before something ugly came of the uncertainty surrounding the murder.
Who the hell would do this? There were other people who hated Frank, but would anyone really go to those levels? If they knew anything about Frank, then they knew that he and my father were working together now. They must have. That meant that they had to know that going after him would have some sort of impact on my father and me. But who?
“Marcelo?”
I looked up and saw my father looking at me.
“How far along is she?” he asked.
That was sudden. I realized that we hadn’t actually told anybody yet that we were expecting. She wasn’t showing yet, and though she was getting sick in the mornings and she had told me that her tits hurt sometimes or whatever, she didn’t look pregnant. It was still really early on, too early to start telling people because this was still the time when pregnancies sometimes terminated themselves. That was the word that Sophie had used when she had explained it to me, and it scared me shitless. I didn’t want our baby to be terminated.
I was so scared that the way she was feeling, her depression would have some sort of effect on the pregnancy. Even if I found out who was behind the murder today, and I went to Sophie with the report before dinner that night, it would not change the fact that her father was dead. It might put her mind at ease a little bit, but it wouldn’t fill the hole that had been ripped inside her.
“Just about a month or so,” I told him.
“Congratulations,” he said simply, as he stood and shook my hand. He gave me one of the rare smiles that he reserved for special occasions. I thanked him. The news wasn’t really supposed to slip out right then, but it had and he had taken it… not badly. Had he not taken it badly? It was hard to tell because he was inscrutable.
In the business, you aimed to produce heirs so that you could keep the shit going generationally. All the wealth remained in the same family, getting bigger and longer the further the line went into the future. He was probably happy for me, or maybe he was surprised that it had happened so fast. I had sure been surprised. Maybe he was shocked that Sophie and I were doing it at all. I had no idea what he thought, and the most likely scenario was he was not going to tell me.
Me… I barely knew what to think anymore. I left.
Did I owe him some sort of thank you? Did he expect one? I could see the way an interaction like that could feel awkward for both of us. He talked to me less like I was just another man first and then like I was his only and oldest son second. I am sure that it was not his intention to deliver the woman who I would fall in love with into my arms, but he had, and in a way, I had him to thank for that.
My father was telling the truth. He could lie and had lied, even to me when he had to, but he was telling the truth about this. I had no doubt. Something was wrong, but it went deeper than what I originally suspected—and that scared me.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sophia
Marcelo would have let me stay home from the funeral if I had asked him to.
I had spent nearly the entire two months since I had received the phone call from my mom telling me dad was dead in bed, doing nothing. It was more accurate to say that I was trying to do nothing. What I was doing instead was ruminating on the darkest thoughts that I could surrounding what had happened and how. Of course, that was what I was doing. I was so good at it after all.
I had completely refused to see the body or to hear more about the event than I absolutely needed to. My imagination was colorful enough to fill in the blanks that I didn’t want filled and to apply the horror that such an event obviously needed.
It was absolutely gruesome to imagine your parent dead. It was more gruesome to imagine them being murdered. What had my dad been thinking right before it had happened? Had he felt pain? It pained me to think that it had been slow and painful for him. It pained me even more to think about who could possibly have done it.
Marcelo and his family crossed my mind because Marcelo and his family always crossed my mind. It didn’t make sense that the Orsinis would have anything to do with it, but who knew? What the hell made sense anymore anyway? Nothing—because my father was dead. His life had been taken from him—and now he was gone. It made no sense—and it was not fair.
Maybe if I stayed still long enough, I would become part of the furniture.
It mattered and didn’t matter who it was that murdered my dad because at the end of the day he was still dead and I still didn’t know what the hell was going to happen with my marriage. Was that it then? Dad was dead… did that mean the marriage was off? Our marriage was legal and binding in every way despite the fact that it had been arranged and that we hadn’t known each other when we got together. I hated to think of it, but I couldn’t help the fact that I did. I was in such low spirits that dark thoughts came to me with far more ease than bright ones. Marcelo was my husband, but one of the men for whose sake we had been married was dead. What did that mean for us? Were we still married? I wanted to still be married. My marriage had become a source of such gratification and happiness recently. The presence of Marcelo was one of the few things that was keeping me going, both literally and figuratively.
Everything had excited me. I was excited about the baby, and now, we had another wedding to plan, our wedding, the way that we wanted to do it. I had been thrilled, delirious with happiness, and just as fast as I had gotten it, it was gone.
The only real indication I had that time had been passing by was Marcelo’s comings and goings. I had turned our bed into a place of mourning, and it wasn’t fair to him. Every single night it surprised me when he would climb into bed with me. I felt like the grief and sorrow radiated off of me, and it was starting to get on the sheets and seep into the mattress. There was no lack of beds in the house, but he chose, night after night, to sleep at my side.
Every morning he would wake up earlier than usual and he would wrap his arms around me and ask how I was feeling. I was sleeping so much during the day that my nights were usually sleepless. He would ask me what I was going to do that day, and he would ask me to do something, too. It was always something really simple, like sending an email, or going to Central Park. Easy. The aim was literally just to get me out of bed and give me some sort of goal, however small, to work towards achieving that day.
Every night he would come home, and he would get me out of bed or wherever it was that I was vegetating to have a bath or shower with him. This was the part when I sometimes cried. He never told me to stop or became impatient and left me alone. He would just hold me and let me cry until I was done. When we were in bed, he would tell me everything that he had done that day. Everything. He would tell me whether he went to the store and saw a watch he wanted to purchase, or if a pigeon shit on his car that day, everything. He was taking it a lot better than I was. It was my father that had been murdered and not his, but still, it couldn’t have been easy being around me when I was like that. I was a complete sad-sack. He was being so sweet and kind to me, and all I could give him were tears and general sadness.
If he had used that time to seek out Alana or any other woman to satisfy him sexually, I wasn’t even in a position to be mad about it. I wouldn’t be happy about it, but there was a difference between cheating on your wife and having a need that she was at the time unable to meet for you. I couldn’t even imagine how unappealing I probably was to him at the moment. I likely looked like one of those stray, mangy dogs off the streets whose coat was dry and dull and who nobody wanted to adopt and take home.
If I had to choose, I would want him to use his hand and basically tough it out, but it wasn’t fair for me to expect his libido to have taken the same dip that mine had. A
few times I had rolled into his back at night and asked him to wake up. I just needed to feel something and wanted to give him something to know that I still wanted him in that way. I felt empty and broken and his body and having him inside me could take that away, even if only for a little while.
Sometimes it worked.
Sometimes I had it in me to please him. The hard part wasn’t being there physically, I loved to feel his hands on me and his cock inside of me. It felt incredible, physically. He filled me so tight; it felt amazing, and he knew exactly what to do with his mouth and hands to make me go wild. It was being there emotionally and psychologically that was difficult. It killed me that I couldn’t be there for him all the times that he needed me to be because, dammit, I wanted to be. I wanted to be there for him so badly; he deserved so much more than a woman who was practically dead inside with him in his bed when he was doing his best every day to carry both of us.
Marcelo had hired a nurse to watch me during the day and make sure I was getting enough food, and she also made me stand up and walk up and down the street a couple times for exercise if nothing else. I was still pregnant. I had to make sure the baby didn’t suffer, no matter how much I was. There was no way I would be able to come back from my father’s death and losing the baby all in one jump. No way. That would kill me.
The Don's Baby: A Bad Boy Romance Page 18