“So, it’s true?” I quiz Dad.
“It’s a topic for another day.” He steps forward, stopping before his black dress shoes collide with my boots. “Are you sure you want him? Has he not proven to be a complete fuck-up time and time again?”
“Thanks, Tony. Appreciate the love.” Matteo snags me around my waist, pulling my back to his front. “She’s already made her choice.”
I’m starting to question if my father knows me at all, because if he did, he’d know his continued outspoken dislike of Matteo is only going to push me further to him. It’s a good thing I genuinely love the man behind me and his fondness for showing possessiveness.
Daddy just better not try to stop me from marrying Matteo. I’ll elope if I have to. Matteo is mine, now and forever.
Ignoring Matteo’s words, Dad stares at me, a seriousness fueled by anger transforming in front of me. “What happened tonight? Who took you?”
“Also, a topic for another day, Dad.” I force my eyes to widen the slightest bit, hoping he sees that we need to talk about this privately, and not because I’m going to spill the beans that I killed a man. I still agree with Dom. Dad doesn’t need the knowledge that another one of his kids’ hands are tainted in blood.
“It’s been neutralized,” Dom says in a much calmer tone than what mine would be if I had to admit what I did. I still believe he got what was coming to him. He deserved it, but I’m not sure I should have been the one to pull the trigger now that it’s really sank in.
I didn’t come to that resolve because I regret the outcome. The opposite actually. I liked it. I liked the powerful feeling the adrenaline rush offered. I killed a man that meant to do me harm. I could have kicked his ass or saw to it that he went to jail, but that isn’t what we do. Right or wrong, I took his life, and I’d do it again.
He punched Kennedy in the face without so much as a kernel of guilt. Who knows if he’s hurt other women before us? The likelihood is there, so what if I took one less pathetic excuse for a man off the streets. Dead men can’t hurt women, or the innocent.
“Good. I wouldn’t expect anything less of you, Domenico. But that doesn’t tell me who took my daughter. Or who scared Brooklyn. Why he had her in the first place.”
“I want the details too,” Matteo chimes in, his arm tightening around my waist and his other going to my hip, anchoring my body to his.
“Sienna, I want to know if this was about Matteo’s fight tonight or something else,” Dad states.
“Fine!” I throw out. Pushing Matteo’s hands off me, I step to the chair next to the one Brooklyn is curled up asleep in on the other side of the coffee table and sit down on the edge, my forearms braced across my knees. Then I spend the next ten minutes telling the room what I know, sans the small detail about my grandfather being the mastermind behind it all. I plan to tell my dad, but I can’t do that with my brothers present. I made him a promise the same as I did Dom. I’ll keep both a secret; at least for now.
I honestly don’t know if Rafe’s sole purpose was to take me out of the picture, or if it had more to do with Matteo’s fight and I was just a bonus. I know my grandfather hates that I am so involved with the family businesses, that I handle all the finances. I do know that organized crime has always had a hand in professional fights, fixing them, and then betting on the fight to pull in revenue. I imagine before Dad took over, his father was heavily mixed up in those sordid affairs, and I’m sure a lot more than I even know about.
“You sure Vin never mentioned who he was working for?” Dad inquires for the third time, asking the same question in a different way; same as when he questioned if I was raped. Talk about awkward, especially with someone I don’t know in the room.
“Positive,” I lie. Standing, I say, “Daddy, can we pause this topic until later? I’m tired and dirty and I just want a shower and then bed.”
“Yes. Dom, Giovanni, and I have things to do.” Dad flips his gaze to Matteo’s. “We may not return tonight, so you aren’t to leave this house until I get back. Is that clear?”
“If Si is staying then I am too, but don’t assume you can order me to do shit, Tony. That won’t fly with me.”
“Boy, you’re about to get a crash course in this family,” Giovanni directs to his nephew.
Dom stands, his eyes beating down on the man to my left. “Before we go anywhere, someone is going to tell me why he’s here, why he seems to think he has any say in our family business. I can accept my sister’s choice in a shit-for-brains husband. What I won’t accept is someone walking in here thinking they run shit or have a say. Why the fuck is he here, Dad?”
“Domenico,”—my brother’s name comes off Dad’s tongue in a warning—“he’s here because he is family. Maybe not through blood, but through other ways. Mostly, he is here because I allow him to be. Make no mistake, Son, I have the final say in everything involving this family. Giovanni is here because I appointed him as my consigliere.”
“What happened to the other one?” The wheels in Dom’s head are turning. He knows there are only a few reasons Dad would be stripping rank from a member of the family.
“He’s being forced into retirement.” Dad’s voice can’t hide the hatred behind his tone, or the blaze roaring in his eyes. He’s planning on killing him tonight. I’d bet everything I own on that. Fuck! Should I tell him?
“Oh, I’m going for this. I want to see the look on that old fuck’s face when you tell him he’s been demoted to the old folks home.” Ren jumps to a stand, a shit-eating grin on his face. Neither one of us, Dom included, have ever liked our grandfather.
Ren is in ignorant bliss.
Dom suspects something, but he doesn’t know what our grandfather has done, and Domenico does not like being out of the loop.
“He’s not going to a nursing home, stupid,” Dom chastises. “He’s going to a wooden box. Or the bottom of the ocean.”
“Domenico . . .” our father draws out, his patience wearing thin. “Was that—” A chime sounds, stopping Dad’s words. Someone entered the house without knocking or ringing the bell.
“Let go of me!” Sasha’s voice pierces my eardrum before she and Krishna step into view.
“You’re late,” Dad says, his statement directed at Krishna as the lumbering Russian drags his sister into the living room.
Mischa is next to step into view. “That was my fault, Antonio.”
Ren’s body steels, his back becoming a steel rod. “I suggest you take your hands off her,” he orders Krishna.
Raising from his seat on the couch, Dom places his hand on Ren’s shoulder and forces his backside to meet the cushion of the couch. “Sit down. Mind your own business, little brother.” Flipping his eyes to Dad, he says, “Care to enlighten us more? Why are they here?”
“What the hell is she doing here, Dad?” I push up from my seat. “Like Dom asked, why are they here?” She basically kicked my ass tonight. I don’t care to see her face; not today, not tomorrow, not ever, unless it’s meeting the flesh and bones of my knuckles.
Ren stands, and when Dom tries a repeat of his actions, my twin shrugs him off, elbowing him in the process. “Let her go or it’s going to become a problem,” he snarls, barely holding himself back from challenging Sasha’s brother.
“Why do you even care, Lorenzo?” I ask, my anger getting the better of me. Suddenly, Sasha isn’t the only person I’m itching to ram my fist into. Ren is right up there on the list, making his way to the number two spot.
He turns on me, his lips curling. He shoves Dom to move him from his direct line of sight to me and Dom lands on the couch behind him. “Because she is my goddamn wife and no one touches her but me!”
I suck in a shocked breath of air, and I’m not sure if it’s mine that’s audible or Domenico’s. He hasn’t moved from where his tumble landed him, his mouth agape, his eyes wide.
“Ex-fucking-cuse me?” I say.
“Your fucking what?!” Dom yells.
“That better be a godd
amn joke,” Krishna seethes, his eyes taking on a look that’s a cross between feral and lethal.
“Fuck!” Ren’s head tips back, his eyes on the ceiling before his chin drops, his hand lifting, and his fingers pinch the crease between his eyes.
“Way to fucking go, Ren.” Sasha’s head shakes in slow succession, her lips pursed.
“Dad . . .” Ren says, his voice defeated.
“Sit down, Lorenzo.” Flicking his dark eyes to where Krishna has a tight grip around Sasha’s wrist, he says, “You go sit next to your husband.”
When she doesn’t move, Mischa’s calm voice says, “Do as you’re told for once in your life, daughter.”
Snatching her arm from her brother’s grip, she marches the couple of steps to where Ren and Dom are and takes a seat at the opposite end, across from Dom with Ren in the middle of them.
“Happy, father?” He nods but I swear he also rolls his middle-aged eyes. “Good. That’s so my mission in life.”
“Are you just going to stand there after hearing this and not do a damn thing?” Krishna directs his question at his father. “How about a bullet in the head? I think that’s at least warranted.”
“Motherfucker,” Dom spouts. “Anyone so much as touches a hair on my brother’s head and their life will cease to exist before they know what hit them.”
“Matteo, take Brooklyn upstairs before another curse word is dropped in this house,” my father orders.
“If it’ll get me away from this shit show, then yes . . . yes I will.” After he picks her up, laying her head on his shoulder, he peeks down at me. “You want to follow?”
I stare up, not saying a word. Like hell am I leaving this room. I want answers, and then I want to beat someone’s ass. Maybe more than one. Shaking his head, Matteo leaves us.
“No one is being killed,” Dad declares once Matteo is out of sight. “They’ve been married for two years. At this point, it’s a done deal. There is no undoing it, so all of you will have to learn to accept it. Capiche?”
“You knew?” Ren eyes Dad like he’s seeing him in a new light.
“We both did, boy,” Mischa answers instead.
“What?” Sasha and Krishna say simultaneously while Dom and I eye one another, both of us silently agreeing on our brother’s betrayal.
“You’re my goddamn twin and you kept that from me?”
“Honey, he keeps a lot from you,” Sasha sneers like the bitch she is, and that’s when I leap in her direction only for Dom to jump into action, catching me midair and then hauling me back to the seat I was in seconds ago.
“Sasha, shut the fuck up. You aren’t helping this situation,” Ren tells his ugly as sin whore of a wife. Jesus! Wife? Does she even know the meaning of the term?
“Kiss my ass, Ren. And go to Hell while you’re at it,” she throws back as she crosses her arms and looks away from us all.
“May as well get this out of the fucking way too,” Dad voices, his eyes roaming to each one of us. “Welcome to the New American Mafia, kids. This is your new family; everyone in this room and the two that just went upstairs.”
Dad’s announcement stuns us all speechless. The room is so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
“Suddenly,” Giovanni speaks up. “I’m thankful I never had kids. I don’t know how either of you put up with all of their bullshit,” he remarks, his eyes going from Dad’s to Mischa’s, his lips curled in disdain.
“No one asked your opinion,” Dad tells him. “Now, I get that you all have questions, but I’m tired and I have shit to do tonight. Dom, you stay here. Giovanni, you’re with me. Mischa, you do whatever the fuck you want. Come or go home.”
“Tony, I have a plane to catch. I’m sure you can handle your shit without me,” Mischa informs him.
“Of course, you fucking do,” Dad says, his jaw moving from side to side.
“Whatever you’re doing with him,”—Dom says, his chin jutting in Matteo’s uncles direction—“I’m going too. He isn’t your second. I am. And that isn’t motherfucking changing.”
“I think I’ll come too,” Krishna adds.
“Fine, Son, I’ll allow it.” Only dad isn’t talking to Dom, he’s speaking to Mischa’s son.
“Not your son, Caputo.”
Dad throws his head back, a hard laugh rolling off his tongue all while I continue to sit where Dom placed me not having the first clue what to say to the most bizarre, fucked up night of my life.
Kidnapping.
Proposal.
My twin is not only married but did so in secret; two years ago!
Apparently two enemy families just merged.
Oh, and let’s not forget Grandpa is getting taken out tonight. Can’t forget that.
What in the fuck is going on?
“Sienna, do not start shit with Ren or Sasha while I’m gone. If I come back to blood all over my living room or anywhere else in the house, I may shoot someone else tonight.”
“What in the fuck just happened?” Sasha pipes.
“You’re coming home, baby, right where you belong,” Ren answers her.
“Go fuck yourself, Lorenzo. I’m nobody’s bitch to be ordered around.”
“Actually . . .” Tony steps in front of her. Lifting his hands, he cups her face like the loving father I know him to be. “You signed your name on the dotted line then you sealed your marriage with a kiss. Welcome to the family, Sasha. You’re Caputo property now.” He leans down, placing a soft kiss on one side of her cheek, then the other. Her jaw drops and her eyes round. Dropping his hand to his side, he steps around her, walking away from all of us. “Ren, have your bride moved in by this time tomorrow. Dom, G, follow.”
With those words, he walks out, the others following, including Mischa.
Matteo rounds the corner as they exit, our eyes locking. “What’d I miss?”
That’s all until Dark Prince.
Ren and Sasha’s story is coming next in the series followed by Dom’s. The storyline that ends in this book will continue throughout the series. As of now, I only have plans for three books. I know I didn’t give you guys closure on a few things, and that’s because some will come out in the next book and the rest in the conclusion of the series.
I hope you enjoyed reading the beginning of The New American Mafia. Whatever history you know about the Mafia, please remember, this is fiction and I’m changing things up. That’s why the series name is what it is.
Thank you for reading! — Nancy
Also by N. E. Henderson
SILENT SERIES:
Nick and Shannon’s Duet
SILENT NO MORE
SILENT GUILT
MORE THAN SEIRES:
Can be read as standalones but not recommended
MORE THAN LIES
MORE THAN MEMORIES
DIRTY JUSTICE TRILOGY:
DIRTY BLUE
DIRTY WAR
DIRTY SIN
STANDALONE BOOKS:
HAVE MERCY
BOXSETS / COLLECTIONS:
Silent Series
More Than Series
Dirty Justice Trilogy
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Acknowledgments
Writing acknowledgements are hard. I cry every time; the type of tears that forces you to blow your nose, but I’m going to try to keep this short.
Readers, thank you so much for reading my stories. Without you, I wouldn’t be able to do something I enjoy so much. I love meeting and hearing from all you and I love reading your honest reviews. Thank you.
Charisse Spiers, with you I don’t know where to begin. You’re more than a best friend and editor. You’re more than a fellow author. You’re my soul sister and I thank God that he brought you into my life. I love you!
Tesha, you are always my first set of eyes, editing and beta reading the raw script. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for helping make this
book better. Thank you for your friendship. It means more than I can say. I love you!
Maddy, thank you for falling in love with this story and your continued messages. You really are the reason I finished this book. I needed you for this story more than I can say.
Kita, Amber, Elizabeth, and Rosa, thank you for proofreading this books and being extra sets of eyes to help polish it to what this story now is.
With all of you, I feel like I’ve finally found my tribe. Thank you for the bottom of my heart. — Nancy
About the Author
N. E. Henderson is the author of sexy, contemporary romance. When she isn’t writing, you can find her reading some form of romance or in her Maverick, playing in the dirt. This is Nancy’s ninth book.
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Bad Princess: A Mafia Romance Page 33