But … was he jealous instead? He'd certainly done an admirable job at the winery in pretending not to be. Perhaps my childhood friend was hiding more than I realized? Like, say, a crush on me?
“More than a date,” I said, looking into my drink and wondering how this would all work.
Three men.
One woman.
Four crime families, at war for a hundred years.
There was only one real solution in my mind.
I'd have to become the don.
I'd have to morph from a mafia princess into a mafia queen.
There was no way these three men would be able to function otherwise. Even if I were inclined to marry all three of them, who would be the boss? Because there is only one boss in a mafia family. One. Would they each run their own families and try to cut the Costello crime syndicate into shareable pieces?
Sorry, but I wouldn't stand for that.
“More than a date,” Marcell repeated and I felt the diamond earrings he gave me sway as I looked back at him again. “A future.”
He lifted his glass to me as if in toast.
Caj and Lucky both made noises of disgust, but I couldn't look away from the dark perfection of those eyes … those beautiful, sinful eyes.
When we got close to the docks, the tension in the SUV ratcheted up several notches; it was palpable. I could taste it on the back of my tongue, the gritty bite of dirt and ash. The men with me were nervous and nervous men, well, they do dangerous things.
We were passing through a whole block of disheveled buildings that seemed abandoned, but were actually owned by the Costello family. They were patrolled regularly by the crews—essentially mafia foot soldiers—for vagrants, squatters, and spies. It was a lot of work keeping them empty—expensive, too—but it was worth it to put a cushion between the operations at the docks and the rest of the world.
“I'm surprised your father agreed to this,” Lucky said as we got a little closer and he started to look a tad nervous. I didn't blame him; I would be, too. Although he probably also knew that if my dad wanted him dead, that he wouldn't do it here. Nah. He'd try to make it look like an accident first.
“He's an interesting man,” I said, finishing off my glass of Scotch with a slight smile. Lucky looked back at me, narrowing his hazel eyes slightly and offering up a wink. He knew my answer wasn't really an answer at all.
I set my glass in the cup holder and wished I could have another. But no, I needed to have my wits about me if I was going to deal with this shit. Nothing might happen today … but something terrible could. Hell, that was everyday being a part of the family.
“Let's start the tour, shall we?” I asked, reaching for the handle of my door and letting myself out before anyone else could—the driver, any one of the three men courting me, or one of my father's capos who was waiting to show us around.
“Adelasia!” he said as I got out and let him kiss me on the cheeks. The look he threw back at the three underbosses was not pretty. I could understand. What we were doing here was about as unconventional as anything he'd probably seen in his long life. And besides, Alberico probably had friends, cousins, and brothers that'd been killed by the Morans, Morettis, or Bellincionis.
So did I.
“Alberico,” I started as I looked around at the wet ground, the salt crusted metal walls, and the stacks of crates. Men were everywhere, hauling cargo, loading and unloading shipping containers. In the distance, I could hear the sound of the sea, the crash of waves against wood and cement. The smells here were … interesting. It was a relief when Lucky and Caj stepped up on either side of me, their scents breaking through the odors of dead fish and salt. “Do you mind showing us the damage from the fire?” I asked.
Alberico's face went tight, but he nodded, rubbing a hand over his stubbled chin.
“Those Villarreal fuckers really set us back on our orders,” he said, eyeing my three prospective beaus like he'd rather throw them into the ocean with anchors tied to their legs than show them a damn thing. But we all knew that everything that went on here today would be carefully staged for our guests. No secrets were getting out on this cold autumn day by the ocean. “Follow me, Lazy, and I'll show you around.”
We moved across the deck, my heels loud against the old wood as Alberico showed us to what was left of a small office. As of now, it was just a shell, a blackened husk with the melted plastic legs of a computer chair, a charred metal desk, and broken glass.
“Guess they thought maybe we still used paper to keep our records and went for the office?” he said with a loose shrug of his broad, hairy shoulders. As we stood there, he lit up a cigarette and started smoking, gesturing loosely in the air with it. “Problem was, it caught some old electrical lines and sparked another fire down near the ships. And then those fuckers stormed our night workers with tear gas and machine guns. Fottuti figli di puttana,” he added in Italian. Fucking cocksuckers.
“How much cargo did you lose?” Caj whispered, his voice like razors and rain. I felt both soothed and cut by it. It was a strange sensation.
Alberico gave a Caj a look like he he'd rather cut his own balls off than answer that question.
“Follow me and I'll show you how they got in,” he said, pausing to throw a sharp grin at the three men fanned out around me. “We won't make the same mistakes again.”
Starting off toward the back of the property, my father's capo led the way and showed us a spot where a metal shipping container had been pressed up against the fence, leaving a small shadowed spot that the security cameras couldn't see. It was there that someone had cut their way in, lit the office on fire and then killed the gate guards.
The men here had gotten lazy to allow something like that to happen, too many years of feuding with the same families by the same old-fashioned rules. It'd gotten them into serious trouble.
But I knew Alberico was right—they would already have learned from their errors and shored up the property against further attack.
“Is there a bathroom I could use?" I asked after a moment, tilting my head to one side and flashing a mysterious smile that I hope implied menstrual blood. Even the toughest, strongest men could barely deal with that shit. Just more proof that a woman in charge here might be a good thing.
I'd just have to convince all the mafia's capos, soldiers, and associates of that.
Sexist undertones ran strong here; it was going to be an uphill battle.
And already, I was getting a little tired of using my period as an excuse.
“Right in there,” Alberico said, lifting his chin in the direction of a rather rough looking structure built on the other side of the office that'd caught fire. “Just don't expect a lot of creature comforts.” He winked at me before turning and waving for the men to follow after him.
There was a moment of hesitation there where not a single one of them moved.
“Oh for fuck's sake,” I said as I paused on my way to the bathroom and tossed a dirty look in their direction. “If I were planning on having you killed, you know I'd do it elsewhere. And don't for a second think Carlo's that stupid either.”
Turning back around, I headed into the bathroom and tried not to judge the state of it.
But fuck.
It was a goddamn disaster.
The wall straight ahead of me was burnt and falling apart and the toilets … they could use a good cleaning. And to be quite frank, that was putting it nicely.
The place was a shit hole.
I waited in there for a good five minutes before somebody on the office side pulled one of the burned boards out with a gloved hand and made an opening wide enough for me to step through.
“Right this way, Miss Costello.”
I took the man's hand—another cousin, of course—and headed over to the real heart of the operation, leaving the three sexy underbosses behind me.
It was about an hour's drive from one set of docks to the other, long enough that the men would know before I even got there that I'd
ditched them. But that wasn't the point of this operation. No, the point was to see if anything would happen to me on the way there.
Nothing did.
I arrived early, took a tour and made some notes, and found myself with a rumbling tummy and nothing to do around lunchtime.
The fact that today had been boring—aside from the men themselves—was a good sign in Vinny's favor, but it didn't rule him out completely. I wasn't naïve enough for that.
“Lunch?” I asked as Lucky picked up the phone and a small pause ensued.
“I'm still with them,” he told me, almost hesitantly, and I assumed he meant the other two men.
“Good. Meet me at the Palazzo?” I asked. It was a family owned restaurant—obviously—that'd opened up in this skinny little hole-in-the-wall during the late 1920s as a front for the speakeasy upstairs. The speakeasy itself was long gone—only Lucky's family had one now—but the Italian restaurant was the sort of place you found if you looked up New York City's best kept secrets online. It was open to the public and an excellent money laundering operation.
“On our way,” he said, before I hung up and climbed back in my father's car.
A hour and a half later—traffic was murder in the city at any hour—I was sitting in a small booth in the back corner of the crowded restaurant, one that was always left open for a visiting member of the family. God forbid we get crowded out of our own restaurant by hungry locals.
“We make an unusual group, don't we?” Caj asked, leaning his elbow lazily on the table and looking diagonally across at me, where I sat next to Lucky. “Three men who shouldn't be on the same city block sitting at a table together, fucking the same woman together. If you really think about it, it's adaptation at its finest. We're forming a sort of … symbiosis that's at odds with the natural order of things.”
“Are you always so fucking vulgar?” Marcell asked, but he didn't really seem bothered by it. The smirk on his face told me that he'd rather enjoyed our escapade at the winery.
“Survival of the fittest,” I added, picking up my wine glass and taking a sip of 2013 Costello Vineyard Reserve Chardonnay. It paired beautifully with cheese which was why I'd ordered myself a fruit and cheese platter to play with, taking great care to pop grapes in my mouth with slow, sexual ease.
All three men were focused on my mouth.
“I still don't think we've quite worked out all the details,” Lucky said, taking a piece of bread from the basket on the table and sopping up oil and vinegar from the small plate in front of him. “But I hope you've got a feel for what we meant at the winery?”
“I need to take over for Carlo,” I said, buttering a piece of bread for myself and meeting his eyes. “That's what you want me to do anyway, isn't it?”
Lucky didn't say anything; he'd thought my original offer of a sham marriage and a race back to my old life was bullshit. He was right. I did find pleasure and self-worth in fighting for animals through the legal system; it truly made a difference. And it was certainly a more positive career choice than taking over a crime syndicate.
But … I was also starting to wonder if something was wrong with me, if I had poison in my veins that'd been injected into my zygote at the moment of conception. Was it even possible for me to be a law abiding citizen, live a normal life? I'd tried it. For a while, I'd liked it …
I bit into the bread and then almost choked on it when I saw the pair of them walk into the restaurant.
Edlyn and Bo.
Edlyn. And fucking Bo.
Of all the places in the city … New York had nine billion people living in it and my exes—best friend and boyfriend—had to show up here?!
What the fuck?
I quickly swallowed down the piece of bread with another swig of wine and watched as Bo put his hand on Edlyn's lower back, the pair of them following along behind the waiter.
He, of course, brought them to the farthest table in the back that wasn't a booth.
Directly in my line of sight.
“Sweet thing?” Marcell asked, tilting his head to the side slightly. Something in that dark gaze of his said he could read every single emotion pinging through my body. Frustration. Betrayal. Sadness.
Seeing the two of them was like saying goodbye to the end of an era, to the only chapter of my life that wasn't written in blood's ink.
“Oh? It's the boyfriend,” Lucky said, his tongue teasing the edge of his lip. “That asshole from the coffee shop.” I watched his fingers curl around the stem of his own wineglass, pulling it a little closer but not bothering to take a sip.
“Boyfriend?” Caj asked, looking a little too excited for my liking. He brushed some red hair off his forehead with a ringed hand and leaned in close to me. “Che ne dite ragazzi, lo uccidiamo?” he asked, his Italian flavored with a New York accent.
Should we kill him, boys? he'd asked.
“Ex-boyfriend, Lucky,” I said, glancing over at him as our elbows bumped. He looked back at me with a neutral facial expression, running his fingers through his ashy blonde hair.
“Ex? Things have changed since opening night at the speakeasy then?”
“That recent?” Marcell asked, turning the shadowed darkness of his gaze back to mine. “You were still dating that man when we went to dinner?”
The question he was asking me, it was not as innocuous as it first seemed.
Oh, no, that question was rife with innuendo.
And not sexual innuendo—violence.
“I was in the process of breaking up with him,” I lied, trying to remember exactly what I'd said to Lucky in the coffee shop. I needed to find some way to make that work with the current situation. “He'd been cheating on me with that woman,” I continued, licking my lower lip. “They have a baby together.”
“He should be sleeping with the fishes, no?” Caj asked in a fake, mocking little accent. That shred of humor in him though, it was as dark as the cruel and violent streak running through Marcell. Quite frankly, I'd rather run into Mr. Moran in a shadowy alley than Mr. Bellincioni.
“Let's enjoy the meal and not make a scene, shall we?” I asked, already knowing well ahead of time that I was fucked. Completely and utterly fucked.
The sound of a chair scraping across the old, cracked tiles of the floor made my teeth hurt.
“Adelasia,” I heard Edlyn say, standing at the edge of the table. I took a long drink of my wine, emptying the glass, before I bothered to look her way.
Oh, God, I thought as I studied the haggard lines of her face. Something had certainly happened in the short span of days that had passed since I'd caught her and Bo in bed together.
“Adam knows about Gad?” I guessed, not caring that the three men wouldn't understand the context of my words. Looking at my girlfriend right now, standing here with her arms crossed under her small breasts, her cheery sunflower dress looking sad and pathetic with its wrinkles and stains near the neckline … I knew I was suffering more from her betrayal than I was from Bo's.
“Can I … would it be okay if we talked in the bathroom or something?” she asked, looking at the three men sitting with me like they were aliens, with green skin and tentacles. Glancing at them with a neutral eye, I could see why she might feel that way.
Not only were they beautiful, they were shrouded in blood and death. I could practically taste that coppery metallic sting on my tongue. But oh, they were also carved of sin and sex. A woman had only to look at them and she'd feel it, deep in her bones.
I exhaled sharply through my nostrils and waved the waiter over to pour some more wine.
Edlyn stepped aside for him, and I took the opportunity to look up at Bo.
He was staring at me with a similarly sad expression. Only … I didn't give a shit about his pain. Edlyn's was a little heartbreaking. She'd betrayed me, but …
“Hai intenzione di parlare con quella che ha fottuto il tuo uomo?” Marcell asked, cocking his head to the side slightly. Tattoos crawled up from inside his suit and wrapped his neck in i
nk, symbols of sex and death: roses, guns, knives, hearts, the head of a weeping angel. You're going to speak to the woman who fucked your man?
“Scusatemi un attimo,” I replied. If you'll excuse me a moment.
Ignoring Marcell's pointed question, I stood up and tucked my dress under my thighs. Edlyn's face was a strange mix of fascination and confusion, her red curls springy and wild around her face as I led her toward the front door and straight to a small bistro table on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.
I wasn't about to cower in the bathroom to talk.
I wanted Bo—and the three men with me—to see our conversation, even if they couldn't hear it.
On the way out, I snagged a waiter and had him bring us out two orders of tiramisu.
“Adelasia,” Edlyn blurted as soon as we sat down, “I'm actually really glad we ran into you today …”
“It's a bit of a strange coincidence, isn't it?” I asked, looking across at her and wondering if I'd been wrong about the odds all along. Someone like … Edlyn, there was always the possibility that she was the traitor in my midst.
“I … you mentioned this place in passing once and …” She stopped talking and looked at me like she had no idea where I was going with my question. Either she was an extremely talented actress or else she was innocent. She'd managed to hide the affair with Bo for so long, I honestly wasn't sure which was the truth.
The waiter placed our food in front of us and I took a moment to admire it: the ladyfinger cakes soaked in just the right amount of espresso, the thin layer of whipped eggs, sugar, and mascarpone flavored with chocolate spread between each layer. The way they made it here reminded me of my mother again.
God, everything was reminding me of her lately.
“Adam knows?” I asked, setting my wineglass aside and picking up a fork. As Edlyn watched, I cut into the cake and lifted a piece to my mouth. It tasted a bit like I thought dessert in heaven might, if I believed in it anyway.
“I didn't know you spoke Italian,” Edlyn hazarded, avoiding my question and picking up her own fork. She dug into her dessert and finished half of it before bothering to speak again. All the while, I swear, I could feel eyes on us. Whether they were Bo's or Lucky's, Caj's or Marcell's, I wasn't sure.
Lavish: A Reverse Harem Miniseries (Mafia Queen Book 2) Page 4