I looked up at the ceiling, still trying to breathe, thinking, Is this sarcasm or just a cruel joke?
The frigging water burned my throat, and I couldn’t stop coughing. Water was killing me. He was killing me. What was he doing here?
He couldn’t be…
He held out his hand for me to take. “You can call me Capo,” he said, “if you wish.”
The man in the suit. Mr. Mac. Boss. Capo. Four and the fucking same.
Blue. All I could think was blue. His eyes. They were blue. The kind of blue that you could get lost in, float in, never wanting to return to earth. They were calming, but something about them was guarded. Like if you had to survive hell to earn his heaven.
“Mariposa.”
His voice. It washed over me then, like it had done the night in The Club. It was low, gruff, and the sexiest thing I’d ever heard.
Even though my eyes watered, his hand was still outstretched, and I couldn’t help but stare at it. I kept thinking about the way he had touched me. Held me. Our moment in the candlelit room.
The hand he held out took a firmer shape, lived in this moment, and I noticed a tattoo that covered the entire portion of his opposite hand, his left. It began at his wrist and ended at the beginning of his long fingers. It created the face of a snarling black wolf. The animal’s eyes were electric blue, like his.
If this man wanted a woman to have all kinds of sex with him, why would he ever have to pay someone? I was willing to bet my stale loaf of bread that almost any woman would want to be touched by him. He was universally appealing, and he had that something about him that evened out his beauty. It was something wild and rugged. He had something that existed deeper than the physical and couldn’t be truly explained.
No. It could in simple terms. He was a brutal force. I could feel him pushing in on me without even touching me.
He cleared his throat, and my eyes automatically went there. It was the first time I’d seen him so close up. Just like I hadn’t noticed the tattoo, I hadn’t noticed the scar that circled his throat. It was old, almost the same color as his skin, but noticeable.
“Ms. Flores,” Rocco said, breaking my trance. “Shall we begin?”
It took me a moment, but after Capo retracted his outstretched hand, I cleared my throat and croaked out, “Yeah, but call me Mari.”
Rocco nodded. “Mari.” He gestured to the seat.
I took it, my eyes never leaving Capo’s. His eyes never left mine. It was intense, but somehow I didn’t care. I wanted to stare at him. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get tired of looking at him.
Seeing him from a distance suddenly felt like a sin. All of his features were better seen up close.
Capo took the seat across from me, his cologne filling my nose as his clothes were pressed from the movement. Rocco gave us a minute as he thumbed through the papers situated in front of him.
Capo reached across to take my hand again. “Mariposa,” he said. “You can call me Capo or Mac.”
I cleared my throat, knowing it was going to sound off when I spoke. I still hadn’t taken his hand. I knew how it felt against mine, and I was almost afraid that a spark would go off when we touched. I wondered if a spark had gone off when he had touched me in the dark at The Club? I had felt it. “I’d rather call you Capo,” I said, my voice small and full of sand. “And you can call me Mari.”
I reached out to make the connection then, not wanting to be a chicken, but when I got close, I slapped at his hand, like I was giving him a sideways five. Too soon. It was too soon to touch him again. To be caught up in him. I didn’t want my eyes to give away what he possibly didn’t see in the darkness. How much he had affected me.
He grinned, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “Mariposa,” he said, using an Italian accent on the Spanish word. “I’ll call you Mariposa. The butterfly.”
The butterfly. I moved my head to the side, somehow thinking I could see him better. It didn’t make things clearer, but from any angle, he was stunning. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen apart from my favorite. The butterfly. That was why I hated when people who meant nothing to me called me by my full name. It was the only thing special about me, and when they said it so plainly, like it meant nothing, it reinforced all that I felt—unseen. A caterpillar still stuck in the ugly phase of its life.
Coming from his mouth, those full lips, I didn’t mind. I liked the way he had said it, with a roll of his tongue. Mariposa. He made it sound…special. Beautiful even.
“Mari, you asked me why you were here,” Rocco said, breaking through the fog surrounding me.
I nodded, taking another sip of water.
“Careful.” Capo grinned at me. “It seems the water here is thicker than normal.”
I narrowed my eyes. Smart ass. Then I turned from him, making a deal with myself not to look at him again until Rocco shed some light on the paperwork in front of him.
“Are you familiar with arranged marriages, Mari?”
“Arranged marriages?” I repeated, sounding as dumb as I was sure my face looked. Of course I knew what they were, but why in the hell was he bringing them up during this meeting? I expected words like sex submissive, or discussions about the price of flesh and what I would and wouldn’t do for a buck. But marriage?
“An arranged marriage is when—” Rocco started.
I lifted a hand, stopping his explanation. “I know what it is, but what does it have to do with why I’m here?”
“If you had known what you were getting into,” Rocco said, giving me a pointed look, “I wouldn’t have brought it up. However, since you were chosen by Capo for this arrangement and you were not previously made aware of the situation, I am here to make things clear. Arranged marriages are not uncommon in our culture, though usually both sides of the family are involved. That aside, Capo wants to take a bride. After spending some time with you, he chose you. That is why we are here, Mari. Capo wants to marry you.”
* * *
“Marry you?” I repeated, looking between the two men, able to look at Capo again since Rocco had explained why I was there. Neither one of them laughed or looked remotely like they were playing around with me. However, I laughed. Cackled like a witch.
Then I became quiet, realizing how serious they were being. “Fucka me,” I said, wiping my eyes. Then I turned them on Capo. “You really want to marry me?”
He nodded once, really slow, really sharp. “An arrangement.”
“I got that part.” I sat there for a moment or two, absorbing all of this. It started to come together.
He’d been vetting all of those women. Maybe playing the field to see which one he had a connection with. He blindfolded them so they wouldn’t see him and then recognize him on the street after.
Reclusive was the word Sierra had used to describe him to Keely.
He had the women who’d been flirting with other men escorted out of the party.
Sierra was one of his choices.
Marriage. He wanted me to marry him. He chose me for this arrangement.
I stood from my chair, refusing to look at him. I wanted to, just once more, but couldn’t. This was hard enough as it was. “I’ve wasted your time. You picked the wrong girl for this job. Marriage is not in the cards for me, not even for an arrangement.” I turned to go, but I stopped when his voice struck me like lightning in the back.
“You came to me looking for a job, and now that I’m proposing one to you that doesn’t include cheapening your morals for money, you’re going to walk out. At the very least, tell me what scares you about this arrangement—an arrangement with specifics that you haven’t even considered yet. Walking out without hearing the details doesn’t make you a champ, Mariposa. It makes you look like a scared child. Now sit down and prove me wrong.”
“Okay,” I said, turning around. I hung my bag on the chair again, taking a seat. Even though we were discussing marriage, there was no doubt that this was a business meeting. A merger of two lives brought together by
paper and pre-thought-out details. If I were going to do this, I had to become as business-minded as possible. Emotions had to be swept from the table, but I had something to air that demanded some feelings first. “Before this meeting officially begins, and all sides have been considered, you have to answer a question.”
Capo stared at me for a minute and then nodded once. He picked up the glass of water and took a sip, his eyes never leaving mine.
“Why me, Capo?”
His name felt odd on my tongue. I didn’t say it how Rocco did, with an Italian accent, but I did my best to give it its due. He had done the same for mine, so I wanted to give him the same respect. His face changed when I had said his name, though, and for some reason it brought me back to The Club, to the candlelit room. The intensity. The intimacy.
“Do you mind if I return a question with a question?”
I put my arm out, as if to say, go ahead.
“Why not you, Mariposa?”
I picked up my glass again, carefully taking a sip. When I set it down, I answered truthfully. No one in this room had time for lies. “I saw the other women at The Club. Your choices. Sierra was my sister’s roommate. I saw her first thing in the morning. I saw her when she was tired beyond what sleep could cure. But I never saw her unattractive.” I pointed to my face and then slid a finger down the slope of my nose.
His eyes went from relaxed to hard in a matter of seconds. I wondered if the outside world ever considered it a subtle change, something that happened in a blink and then was gone, but I caught it. Too aware of him already.
“Will you believe me if I dispute your feelings?”
“Yes,” I said. “You don’t seem like a man who has time for games.”
“You don’t look like the rest. You stand out. You could be a queen on a throne. One I’d feel privileged to call wife. You have the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen.” He steepled his fingers, watching me even more…intensely, almost studying me in a way that I wasn’t used to: with appreciation. “‘The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man.’ I’d be honored to call you bone of my bones; flesh of my flesh. My woman.”
It took me a moment to get my head on straight. His words were almost too blunt, but they were filled with so much truth, it made me a little faint.
Finally, I knew I had to say something, or he would see that he’d made me weak with a few words. “No one has ever…” What was I even saying? He made me too honest, admitting things better left in the darkness. He’s too aware of me already. Those eyes had too much light in them. I knew they were hiding darkness, too, but the contrast between the dark rings around his irises and the blue only made his light even brighter to me.
“Fuck them.” He waved a dismissive hand. “They don’t matter.”
“You do?”
“The only one,” he said. “Il capo.”
“I’ll accept your why,” I said, wanting to change the direction of the conversation. “But there’s more to this than looks alone. Give me other reasons why.”
Rocco and Capo exchanged glances before Capo spoke again.
“What if there are no other reasons? What if the only reason you’re sitting here with me is because I want to hear my name coming out of that pillow-soft mouth of yours, and for the rest of my life, I refuse to allow another man to have the same honor?”
I swallowed down a gulp of water, almost choking again. “That’s honorable,” I said, glad my voice didn’t waver. “But not the entire truth.”
“It’s not,” he said. “But don’t assume anything with me, Mariposa. That would be a mistake. I’m honorable, but only to a certain degree.” His eyes seemed to heat at whatever he thought. The color somehow became darker, a wild storm I could feel in the pit of my stomach.
He was using only a few words to insinuate something much more complicated. Honorable to a certain degree. The attraction between us felt like a living thing that couldn’t be denied. I wanted to touch it. I wanted him to touch me again. I was the numb sky to his strike of electricity.
“Mari,” Rocco said, and I turned to him. “Yes or no. Do you consent to go forward with this meeting? If you do, we will work out the terms, but the arrangement will be live.”
Ironic he had used the homophone “live.”
Holding Capo’s stare, I licked my lips and asked, “Live?”
“You will be my wife,” Capo said, his voice dipping even lower.
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “I say yes. I do consent. Let’s go forward with the arrangement.”
* * *
Before we could really get started, Rocco went over the most important reason Capo wanted to “take a bride.”
“His grandfather’s sick,” I repeated. At this point, they might as well have called me parrot instead of my name. At every turn, I continued to be shocked.
Rocco nodded and went into more detail. After Capo’s grandmother had died, all he had was his grandfather as a parental figure. His grandfather was dying, and one of his last wishes was to see his grandson married. Before I could even spit out the question, Rocco answered it—Capo would never bring a woman home to meet his grandfather and lie about marrying her. It was out of the question.
I nodded, meeting Capo’s eyes. They rarely moved from my face. Even when I paid attention to Rocco, I could still feel them. “I can understand that,” I said. “My—adoptive mother, she died of cancer when I was ten.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Capo said.
“You have no family, Mari, but it will be required of you to travel to Italy to meet Capo’s.”
“I do.” My voice came out strong. “Have family.”
Both men’s eyes narrowed.
“My best friend, Keely. She’s my family. Her brothers, too.”
Rocco looked at Capo, waiting for him to respond.
“I’ll meet them formally,” he said, “at the party her family is hosting. They’re celebrating her new job. Around two weeks from today. Sunday.”
“How did you know that?”
“I know everything, Mariposa. I know even more when it comes to you.” He ticked off her parent’s names with his fingers and then named each of her brothers and their ages. He gave me a second before he continued. “We know this is an arrangement, Mariposa, but the people in your circle won’t. I will not demand that you lie to your friend, but the truth will be bent. We met today for an interview for a possible position at my club. Once you realized I was the man from Macchiavello’s, we had our moment and things changed.
“I felt it was a conflict of interest to employ you. We had lunch, discussed things people in lust do, and you’d like to invite me to their family thing.” He waved a hand. “We’ll spend time together during the two weeks. I’ll pick you up from her place. Dating.” He seemed to hate the word, because he kind of spit it out. “Then during their family thing, you’ll announce that we’re engaged. We’ll be married at city hall in New York the weekend after. We’ll be married at the end of June in Italy, as well. A proper wedding. Your friends are welcome to attend.”
With all that he’d said, I could only concentrate on one thing. “You know everything about me, but what do I really know about you?”
He leaned forward, taking his hands together on the table, his eyes not absorbing me in a personal way anymore. “You mentioned other reasons for me doing this. You got the second main one, my grandfather’s wish. I hold one heart and more than one vein close to my chest, though. There are other factors at play here, Mariposa. I need you to give me time to bring them to light.”
“How many?” I asked.
“Scusami?”
I grinned. Even though I had no Italian, I sensed what he had said, something the equivalent of excuse me? “How many veins should I expect? The ones connecting to the main heart?”
“You want a number.” He leaned back in his chair, studying my face. “Two.”
“No,” I s
aid. “Pick another number.”
“You want me to make something up.”
“No,” I repeated. “But bad things come in threes. I don’t want you to make something up, but I challenge you to find something good about this situation after your two ‘veins’ are opened up to me. Give me three so we’ll come out with four, with the main heart.”
He stared at me for an intense five minutes, at least. Then he nodded. “I agree.”
Rocco wrote something down.
I liked this. I really, really liked this. Putting everything on the table beforehand. We were hashing our shit out before we committed to each other. Marriage was not supposed to be a business dealing, but in an odd way, I thought that maybe it should be sometimes. I expect this of you. You expect this of me. You do for me. I do for you. And neither of us will cross certain lines. It removed a lot of the weight that felt like it had come crashing down on my back when he had first made his proposal.
I sat up a little taller and really started paying attention when the mention of the police was brought up, how at all times I was to keep quiet, unless Rocco told me otherwise.
“Are you…involved in dealings you shouldn’t be?”
I didn’t expect Capo to be so candid, but he was. He nodded once without hesitation. “My hands are not always clean at the end of the day, Mariposa.”
“How deep?”
“Does the severity of the sin matter to you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Would it lighten your conscience to know that I only act out of vengeance and not for business gain?”
“I want honesty,” I said. “At all costs. If…if I ask. I need you to be honest.” In that moment, coming close to his honesty overwhelmed me. If I had too much time to think, I would want honesty at the table, and that might cut whatever we had going. I wasn’t sure what type of person that made me, to refuse to consider that he might do terrible things out of vengeance, and I would overlook them to have this.
Machiavellian: Gangsters of New York, Book 1 Page 10