by Cora Reilly
Fabiano was dangerous. He wasn’t someone to stay close to. But the idea that for the first time in my life there was someone who could keep me safe was too enticing.
I’d caught her hesitation when she’d spotted me. Like a mouse in front of the trap, torn between tasting the cheese and running off.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, arms wrapped around her old backpack as if she needed another barrier between us.
“I told you I would protect you, and that’s what I’m doing. I don’t want you to walk around at night alone.”
She stared out of the passenger window, hiding her face in the shadows. My grip on the steering wheel tightened. “You can’t drive me home every night. I’m sure you’ve got work to do.”
Her lips pinched, and her fingers dug into her backpack. What had she heard? There were always rumors about me. The worst were usually true.
“Don’t worry. I can make time for important things.”
The Camorra was important. Remo and his brothers were important. She wasn’t supposed to be.
She turned, brows furrowing. “Important? Am I?”
She wasn’t. She was…I wasn’t sure what she was to me. I kept thinking about her when she wasn’t around. About those damn freckles, and those shy smiles. About how she was alone, had been alone even when she’d still lived with her mother. I knew how it was to be alone while being in a house with other people. My father. His second wife. The maids.
I ignored her question. “If I’m not in the parking lot after work, then wait in the bar for me until I pick you up.”
“I’m not in kindergarten. I don’t need someone to pick me up. Not even you, Fabiano. There’s no reason for you to do this. I can protect myself.”
I pulled up in her street.
Once I’d shut off the engine, I turned to her. “How?”
“I just can,” she said defensively.
I nodded toward her backpack. “With what’s in there.”
“How do you…” Her eyes widened a fraction before she caught herself. “It’s my problem, isn’t it?”
“It was before. Now it is mine. I don’t like the idea of someone getting their filthy hands on you.”
She shook her head. “We’re not together, are we? So I can’t see how it’s your business.”
I leaned over but she backed up against the passenger door. So that’s how it was going to be? “The kiss we shared means it is my business.”
“We won’t kiss again,” she said firmly, determinedly.
I smirked. “We’ll see.” I knew she was attracted to me. I’d sensed how strongly the kiss had affected her, how her eyes had dilated with lust. Perhaps her mind was telling her to stay away but her body wanted to get much closer, and I would make her give in to that desire. Even now, as I leaned close to her, I could see the conflict in her body language. The way her eyes darted to my lips and her fingers clutched her backpack at the same time.
“You can’t force me,” she said, then bit her lip, reconsidering.
“I could,” I said with a shrug, then leaned back in my seat, giving her space. “But I won’t.” There was no fun in using my power or force to get what I wanted. Not with Leona. I wanted to conquer her. I wanted many things.
She gripped the door handle, but I put a hand down on her knee. She shivered under my touch but didn’t pull away. Her skin was warm and soft, and I had to suppress the urge to trail my hand up under her skirt and between her legs. “What is it you got to defend yourself?”
She hesitated.
“Believe me, Leona, it doesn’t matter if it’s a knife, gun or Taser. It won’t do any good against me.”
“It’s a knife. A butterfly knife.”
I’d have guessed Taser. Women usually preferred them or pepper spray because it was less personal than having to ram a blade into someone’s flesh. “Have you ever used it?”
“You mean on someone?”
“Of course. I don’t care if you can make a sandwich with it.”
Anger sparked in her blue eyes, and I had to admit that I enjoyed seeing that kind of fire in them, when she’d seemed so docile and sweet the first time I’d talked to her. It promised more fun in other areas.
“Of course not. Unlike you and your mob friends, I don’t enjoy killing people.”
Friends? The mob wasn’t about friendship. It was about dedication and loyalty. It was about honor and commitment. I didn’t have friends. Remo and his brothers were the closest thing to friends I had, but what connected us was stronger. They were like family. My chosen family. I didn’t bother explaining all this to Leona. She wouldn’t have understood. For an outsider, this world wasn’t understandable.
“You don’t have to enjoy killing to be good at it. But I doubt that you’ll ever get the chance to consider killing someone. I think you’d be disarmed in no time and probably get a taste of your own blade. You have to learn how to handle a knife, how to hold it and where to aim.”
“You didn’t deny it,” she whispered.
“Deny what?”
“That you killed people, that you enjoyed it.” I didn’t say that with some people there had been quite a bit of joy in ending their fucking lives. And I knew that killing my father one day would outshine every other kill so far. Leona looked honestly puzzled by my reaction. Had she still not grasped the concept of being a Made Man?
Instead of a reply, I tapped the tattoo on my forearm.
She reached out, fingertips gracing the black lines of ink. Her touch was always so careful. I had never been touched like that by a woman. They usually raked their fingernails over my back, clutched and stroked. There was nothing careful about these encounters. I’d enjoyed it, but this…Fuck, this I enjoyed more.
“Could you get it removed? Could you stop being what you are?”
I didn’t know any other life. The few day when I hadn’t been part of the Outfit and not yet part of the Camorra, before I’d found Remo or rather before he’d found me, I had been like driftwood, caught up in the tide, no destination to my journey. Days that had felt like eternity. I’d been adrift. “I could. But I won’t.” Remo, of course, wouldn’t allow me to quit. This wasn’t a fucking job you could give your two-weeks notice to. This was for life. “You said it, it’s who I am.”
She nodded. Perhaps it had finally sunk in.
“I will teach you how to use that knife and how to defend yourself.”
She looked tired. That was perhaps why she didn’t try to argue even if I could tell that she wanted to. She opened the door and got out. She turned to me. “Sleep tight, Fabiano. If your conscience lets you.” She closed the door and headed toward the apartment building.
When I’d started my induction process in the Outfit, I’d felt guilt over what I’d seen others doing. And even later, when I first started to fight at Remo’s side, I’d felt bad for some of the things I’d done, but now? Not anymore. After years of being an Enforcer, I didn’t feel anything anymore. No regret or guilt. People knew what they were getting into when they owed us money. No one got into this without a fault of their own. And most of these guys would sell their own mother if it meant money to gamble or bet or buy shit.
I’d never had to kill an innocent. There were no innocents in our bars and casinos. They were lost souls. Stupid fuckers who lost their family’s home because they spent their nights gambling.
Leona was innocent. Despair had driven her to work in Roger’s bar. I hoped she’d never get in the crossfire. I didn’t like the idea of having to hurt her.
Chapter Ten
There had been many sleepless nights because of the noise coming from my mother’s room. Either because she was at it with a john or because she was having a drug-induced crying-fit. But now the noise in my head kept me awake.
Fabiano’s blue eyes flashed before my inner eye. Cold and calculating. Attentive and alert. Seldom anything else. Except for when we’d kissed. There had been a warmer emotion in them. Perhaps only desire or lust, but I
wanted to think something else as well.
I pressed my palms against my face. Stop it.
I needed to stop seeing something in him. I needed to stop wanting his touch when the same hands did horrible things to others, things I couldn’t even imagine, things I didn’t even want to know.
There was a sick fascination I couldn’t deny nor suppress. The mafia had always been something out of movies, something mysterious to me. I knew this was real life, not a Hollywood movie with a good ending. Mobsters in real life weren’t misunderstood antiheroes. They were the bad guys, the ones you didn’t want to encounter.
Bad. It was such a difficult term. What was bad?
I was trying to sugarcoat this. It was something I had a lot of practice doing. I twisted and turned, then eventually sat up on my mattress and reached for my backpack in the dark.
I shoved my hand in and found the knife. I yanked it out, then pressed the button that made the blade shoot out with a soft click. The steel of the blade gleamed in the dim moonlight streaming in through the dust-covered windows. I’d never used it, not really. I’d pointed it at someone once. The same guy I’d stolen it from. He’d been one of my mother’s johns. The worse kind. The kind that liked to beat and insult women like my mother, the kind that enjoyed making them feel even more like crap than they already did. Who liked to barter over the price after the deed was done and often paid close to nothing. If my mother hadn’t been desperate, she probably wouldn’t have had him more than once, not after he’d barely paid her anything for sucking his disgusting dick and do other disgusting things.
I’d been locked in my room when I heard them argue, and despite my mother’s warnings to keep my room locked at all times when she had clients, the fight had drawn me out.
I’d found his trousers on the couch. And I’d decided to check them for money. Instead I’d found the knife. I’d hidden it behind my back when he and mother had stormed out of her bedroom. Mother had been half naked, and he, too, had only worn socks and underpants.
“You’re not worth thirty bucks.”
“You asshole, I let you come in my mouth without a condom.”
“As if your dirty mouth is worth anything.”
He stopped when he spotted me. A sick grin curled his lips. “For her I’d pay thirty.”
I’d been fifteen back then.
He had taken a step in my direction. My mother’s eyes had darted from me to him. They had been hazy and unfocused. She needed crystal.
I jerked the knife forward, and released the blade.
“That little shit stole my knife,” he snarled.
“Don’t move. Or I’ll stab you.”
I’d wanted to, and I probably would have without remorse, if my mother hadn’t started pummeling him with her fists, shrieking. “Get out! Get out, you sick fuck! Get away from us!”
He had left without his pants, muttering curses, and leaving us with sixty bucks and a knife.
I moved the knife from side to side, considering it in the moonlight. I knew I was capable of using it if need be. I wasn’t as innocent as Fabiano perhaps thought I was. I knew there were people out there who deserved to die. I slid the blade back in, then shoved it under my pillow. Fabiano beckoned to a side of me I didn’t like, a side that had thrived under the harsh years of growing up with a whore as a mother and a gambling addict as a father. Perhaps that was why Fabiano’s closeness scared me.
Perhaps I worried he’d bring out my dark parts. I was my parents’ daughter after all, and they both weren’t good people. I’d always made sure to try twice as hard to be nice, not to suspect the worst in people. I’d learned to smile even when it was hard.
I wasn’t sure where this was going between Fabiano and me. But fighting it was something that cost too much energy and head space, both of which I needed if I wanted to build a new life. If I kept my focus on working and perhaps finding a new job, I’d be gone from Vegas in a couple of months. Fabiano would be a thing of the past then.
Someone banged at my door. I looked around blearily. The sun was low in the sky. The door swung open and Dad stumbled in.
I sat up sleepily. “What’s wrong? What time is it?”
“You need to give me some money. I know you must have gotten money for work this week.”
I had gotten money, but apart from getting us food, I’d set it aside to finally buy another (less expensive) dress. I rubbed my eyes, trying to get rid of the brain fog. “I thought you were working too.”
He didn’t say anything for a while. “They fired me.”
“Before I came here?”
He sighed, then nodded. So he’d lied to me. “Leona, I really need that money.”
“Who is it you’re owing money? The Camorra?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I could talk to Fabiano—”
“Are you stupid? Only because he’s fucking you, doesn’t mean he’s going to listen to anything you say.”
I snapped my lips shut, suddenly wide awake. Had he really said that?
“Don’t give me that look. People are talking. You’ve been seen riding around in his car. They call you his whore.”
My stomach tightened at the insult. I’d fought so hard to have never put that label on me, and now, away from my mother, in Las Vegas, people actually did call me whore.
“That’s none of your business,” I gritted out, becoming angry. I didn’t want to lash out at him, even if he deserved it for lying to me constantly. “I don’t have money for you.”
“I let you live here, and that’s what I get for it?”
He was drunk. It became more and more obvious. “I pay for our food. I clean the apartment, and you already took money from me.”
Even though he’d hurt me with his insults, I still felt guilty for refusing him.
Without a word, he barged in and grabbed my backpack. He rifled through it, but I’d learned from last time. He made me jump when he grabbed my wrist, dragging me to my feet. “Tell me where it is.”
I smelled tequila on his breath. It had always been his favorite, and my mother’s.
His grip was even harder than last time. Tears burned in my eyes as I ground out, “Let me go. You’re hurting me.”
“Tell. Me. Where. It. Is.” He shook me with every word he said.
Anger, hot and blinding, burned through me. “That’s why mom left you. Because you always lost it and beat her. You haven’t changed a bit. You disgust me.”
He shoved me away, so I fell back on the mattress, before he whirled around. Then I heard another male voice. I stiffened as steps came closer. I quickly got to my feet and pulled my jeans short over my panties. Dad came in, saying, “She’s nice to look at. Have a go at her. That should pay my debt.”
I sucked in a breath. Addiction turned even the kindest people into ruthless criminals, and my father wasn’t even all that kind. Still I’d have never thought he’d do something like that to me. That he was the reason why my mother had sold her body was something I’d suspected all along.
Dad pointed in my direction. A dark haired man with grey streaks came in. He seemed distantly familiar, and one glance at his forearm showed me that he was part of the Camorra. My chest constricted with terror. I squared my shoulders, my eyes darting to my backpack on the ground between them and me. I wished Fabiano was here, and that realization, too, scared me shitless.
The dark eyes of the man scanned my face, then he shook his head. “No can do, Greg. She belongs to Scuderi.”
What? I stopped myself from contradicting him. If being Fabiano’s meant, I was safe from my father selling me off like cattle, then I was gladly his – for the time being.
Dad spluttered, and opened his mouth to argue, but the mobster turned on him and smashed his fist into Dad’s face. Blood shot out of his nose and he dropped to his knees. “Soto,” Dad gasped. But Soto hit him again and again. I jumped over the mattress and grabbed the man’s arm, trying to pull him off my father. Perhaps Dad deserved it,
but I couldn’t bear seeing it. I couldn’t stand back and watch him being beaten to death.
Soto pushed me aside, so I stumbled backwards and landed with my butt on the mattress, but he finally let up from Dad. “Two hours,” he told him. “Then I’ll be back.”
“No wait,” I called when he was halfway out the door. Dad was sitting with his head between his knees, blood dripping on the floor from his nose and lip. I went over to the moving boxes stacked up against the wall and reached behind the one on the ground, pulling out my entire money. Two hundred dollars. I handed them to Soto. He counted the money without a word. He gave a nod and just disappeared.
“How much did you owe him?” I asked.
“150,” Dad rasped.
“But he took two hundred.”
“That’s for his trouble to pay me a visit,” Dad said bitterly. He pushed himself to his feet, one bloody palm against the wall. “If you’d given me the money right away, this wouldn’t have happened. It’s your fault.”
He stumbled out of my room, leaving only the bloody imprint of his palm on the grey wall. I sank down on the mattress, drained.
I kicked the sandbag once again. I really needed another fight soon.
Soto strode through the training hall toward me. His expression was a bit too triumphant for my taste. That was never a good thing with the idiot. “Hall offered me his daughter as a way to pay off his debt,” Soto said as he stopped beside me.
“Hall?” I asked, the name was ringing a bell somewhere. He wasn’t someone who owed us big money, or I’d have been sent to take care of him. Not important.
“Leona Hall.”
He didn’t get the chance to say another word. I thrust him against the wall, and dug my elbow into his throat. His head was turning red, then purple, before I let up slightly. “If you touched as much as a hair on her body, I’ll rip you to shreds.”
He coughed, glaring daggers at me. “What the fuck? I didn’t do anything.”