He slammed both palms on the table before him. “My only son is dead!”
My jaw nearly unhinged itself. I let it, playing on that shock to convince them of my innocence. I mean, I was innocent. And shocked. But I had no doubt in my mind who would kill Tommaso. Hint: He possessed the filthiest mouth, wielded an eight-inch dick, and had a name that rhymed with Spanky.
I shook my head. “My husband is dead?”
Piero scoffed. “Don’t play coy.”
“I was just with him in the chamber…”
“You were with Frankie Amato.”
How could they possibly know that? They’d left the room before we did. Someone had to have told them, and I doubted it was Frankie.
I feigned shock. “I… I didn’t know. It was dark. I thought it was Tommaso. We’d never had… intercourse before. I couldn’t have known it wasn’t him.”
No one was buying my excuses, least of all Piero. “You dirty whor—”
“Enough.” Uncle Vanni cast a firm look at my father-in-law. “We’re family now, Piero, and we do plenty of lucrative business together. Certainly, you value your relationship with the Vitali, yes?”
He swallowed his retort. “I do.”
“I believe my niece.” Uncle Vanni lifted a brow. “Do you?”
“I do.”
Despite Piero’s begrudging tone, I relaxed. This had gone the opposite of how I thought it would. I was safe, for now… but what about Frankie?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Frankie
I had a plan.
Lily would leave on her honeymoon today with her new husband, only poor Tom was dead, ashes dissolved in the Tyrrhenian sea. I would take his place. It was easy to bribe the pilot to allow me on the plane early, a stow away until the jet took off for Malta.
Then, we’d disappear.
Lily and me.
To a life across the sea in America, where we could carve out our own future.
I already had an in with an old friend of mine, Dante Salvatore, who’d recently set up shop in the Camorra outfit in New York City.
I was ready to leave the motherland and their old customs for the slick shine and more lenient moral bent of the New World.
Hopefully, Lily was, too.
My bag was packed, a small leather backpack with photos of Manuel and a cold million in cash I’d stolen from our cache in the family crypt.
I was seconds from leaving when a knock sounded at my apartment door. Frowning, I checked my 9mm handgun before tucking it back in my waistband and answering the door.
It was the last person I’d expected.
“Angelo?”
A grim smile split his face. “Can I come in?”
I hesitated, opened the door, and stepped out of the way to allow him entry. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lily’s plane was due to leave in three hours. I couldn’t miss the window to climb onboard.
Angelo fidgeted with his cuffs, then adjusted the angle of a family photo I kept on the fireplace mantle.
“Angelo?” I prompted, even as my belly clenched with foreboding.
We were not friends.
Not really.
It was impossible to have true camaraderie in a family where you were encouraged to step on the heads of your brothers in the quest for more power. Sometimes, I wondered if that wasn’t the problem with the Amatos. If we might’ve accrued more power like the Vitalis by encouraging our relations instead of pitting them against each other like gladiators.
He heaved out a dramatic sigh and wiped his sweating hands on his trousers, leaving behind slimy trails like a snail. “You need to prepare.”
“For?”
But fuck, I already knew.
Something had gone wrong. Something that meant all my well-laid plans would crumble to ash and dust just like Tommaso’s body in the flames.
“The Vitalis know you took Liliana’s virginity. Now that Tommaso Bruno is missing, they assume you are the cause.” Angelo paused, bit his lip, and shrugged. “They want you dead.”
I sucked a deep breath through my teeth, struggling for nonchalance to mark my turmoil. “I see. Given Liliana herself was the only person outside of the Amatos that knew about this, I’m assuming our family had something to do with it?”
Angelo hesitated and nodded. “Don Amato offered them my hand in marriage given I’m one of the last eligible bachelors. He suggested your head on a platter to appease them of this unfortunate situation.”
“Mmm,” I hummed even as my heart beat like a wild thing in my chest. “So, I’m the scape goat.” I noticed the way he shifted uneasily and swallowed the swell of dread that rose with the bile at the back of my tongue. “This was the real plan all along, wasn’t it?”
“It seems Don Amato never trusted you again after what your brother did,” Angelo admitted. “Two birds, one stone.”
“Clever old bastardo, isn’t he?”
Angelo blinked. “You seem… very unperturbed by this.”
“If the same thing happened to you, would you really be so shocked?” I countered, pushing off the wall to stalk toward him. “In a family like ours, do you really feel safe? I am guessing the answer is no, considering you’re here to warn me and get me out of town despite the fact that you’ve been jealous of me all our lives.”
“You’re a prick,” he spat.
“A prick who’s right,” I said with grim satisfaction. “Well, congrats, Angelo. Isn’t this what you’ve always wanted? To best me?”
“Not like this.”
“No… It’s better to earn your fate than have it force fed to you, especially when it’s poisoned like this. Still, I appreciate the heads up, and I hope you get a nice flexible Vitali girl to warm your bed and lay some more rungs on your ladder to success.”
“What’re you going to do?” He glanced out the window. “They’ll be here soon to take you away. I think…I think they mean to offer you the same choice as they did Manuel. The poisonous lily or banishment.”
I snorted. “You know, Angelo, I think I’ll choose both.”
EPILOGUE
Frankie
Three years later.
I fucking loved New York.
She was a woman, and she was a bitch of a female.
Dark, gritty, and ruthless. Wrapped in a flashy dress with good hair, so you didn’t notice how savage she could be until it was too late, and she caught you in her snare.
She was good to me, because I respected her.
I carried a gun on my person when I walked the dark alleys at night, doing work for the Camorra that I’d never been given the responsibility of in my first life as an Amato foot soldier.
In the New World with my new school crew, the Salvatores, I was consigliere.
Third man from the top and secure in my position, because I’d fucking earned it.
After I arrived in the city a broken man with a backpack of cash and a chest echoing from a shattered heart, there was nothing for me to lose in joining up with Amadeo and Dante.
And everything to gain, save one thing.
Liliana Vitali.
I fucked my way through New York’s glamorous women. The ones that wanted me to use my dirty money to wine and dine them at the best restaurants before taking them home to fuck them senseless with my hands over their throat like the animal they sensed I was.
Each woman was faceless, nameless, and gone from my mind the moment I left her bed.
There were a few who tried to tame me, but the three Salvatore men were confirmed bachelors and infamous for it in a dozen social circles. It was what made us so powerful.
No women to wrap us around their little fingers and twist us away from our prize.
We were powerful and rich, but truthfully, I was bored.
“Am I boring you?” Dante drawled, his low voice bringing me out of my thoughts.
I turned my gaze to him, my face infused with ennui. “Would you stop talking if I said yes?”
His big face (he was a big man) brok
e open into his charming bastard smile. The smile that had secured us many deals over the years and broken even more hearts.
“No. Sometimes you forget, it is me who is in charge of you, capisco?”
I tapped my cigar against the crystal ashtray on the table between us and looked out over the New York nightscape again. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, capo.”
He grunted, but it was amused, and he let it slide. Dante was the boss, no matter that Amadeo, his pseudo-father, was the figurehead of our operation. It was Dante that held the strings of our many enterprises and the fates of his many men in one hand like a master puppeteer. He did it without breaking a sweat and making enemies.
He inspired trust and love, because he was a good boss and a good man if you excused his piss poor morals.
It was no wonder we’d bonded intractably almost the moment we reconnected four years ago.
We were cut from the same cloth.
And we understood, as my dead-to-me family had not, that you could reign supreme without being a complete dickhead.
“I’ve got to meet Cosima and my brother for dinner, but before I stop ‘bothering you,’ I’ve got something for you,” D ventured, tone casual.
Too casual.
My instincts prickled, and my eyes narrowed as I looked over at him. “Do you?”
He leaned back in his chair and dangled the sweating glass of whiskey between two fingers. “There’s talk of a new player in town.”
I scoffed. “New players are a dime a dozen, and their currency goes just as far.”
He stared at me implacably, which made my heart drop into my stomach.
“Who is it?” I asked, quieter than I would have liked.
Afraid of my own question.
“I’m not sure. But I think they could be a high-risk rival. I need you to do your stalker thing and find out whatever you can about this woman. She’s quickly becoming one of the Romano family’s top distributors.”
The Romano family weren’t our rivals exactly. They dabbled in different enterprises than us for the most part, but they were dangerous nonetheless, and Dante liked to know everything about everyone, so I wasn’t surprised.
“I’m on it. Hey, maybe she’s hot and I can introduce her properly to New York society.”
The woman went by the name of Capulet.
A pseudonym if ever I saw one.
And not even a very good one.
Why anyone would want to bear the moniker of the heroine in one of the greatest romantic tragedies ever told was beyond me.
Though, I had to admit, it was a little badass.
Other than her street name, it was impossible to dig up information on her in the system. And I was good. In the intervening years since I’d come to New York, I’d made tech my bitch. Now I was a hacker in leagues with the best of them.
But this Capulet had no online files.
The only paper trail I could find was for a warehouse apartment she bought in Brooklyn with cash eight months ago.
I made my way there, dodging into the abandoned warehouse across from her. It was in the process of being renovated into luxury apartment like the one she occupied, smelled of wet paint, and possessed no furniture beside the folding chair I brought with me, along with my flask of grappa and night vision binoculars.
The lights blazed from the massive square windows, so the latter weren’t necessary.
I could see nearly every inch of Capulet’s apartment, so I leaned back, untwisted the cap on my engraved flask, and settled in for a boring night of spying.
Steam fogged the small window to the bathroom, so I gathered she was taking a shower. I adjusted myself uncomfortably in my jeans as I thought of the first time I’d watched Liliana in Gerosa, how sweet and innocent she had been in her room.
Three years later, and I still couldn’t get a handle on my desire for her. I’d looked her up countless times, but when Dante discovered my obsession, he’d put a swift end to it, calling me weak for lusting after a woman that would never be mine.
He was one to talk. I was fifty percent sure he held a serious torch for his brother’s wife, but that was a story even more complicated than my own.
Last I’d heard of Liliana Vitali, she was about to be remarried to some poor prick in Gerosa.
The woman in the window drew my attention as she turned off the bathroom light and moved into her well-lit bedroom, wearing only a white towel. She had long black hair. Italian hair. It swished in wet ropes over her slim shoulders. I only had the view of her back, but I knew she was beautiful just by the grace of her step.
My mouth went dry as the towel dropped without fanfare. The entire span of her golden tanned back was exposed to my greedy gaze.
Fuck me, she was more than beautiful.
Exquisite.
She bent slowly to retrieve something from the chest of drawers, thin thighs spread, plump ass tipped to the sky, so I could see the dark shadow of her sex even from a distance.
My cock was hard as a steel pipe.
I watched with my heart in my throat as she shimmied into a pair of black underwear that barely covered her ass. As she moved to the side of her bed, I noticed, with a shock like ice water dumped over my head, she had a vase filled with lilies.
Mind numb, I watched as she plucked a bloom and laid back on the bed to trail the silken petals over the small swell of her breasts, then down, down to her pussy, where she swirled the petals the way I was sure I’d once swirled my tongue.
“Holy fuck,” I breathed and stood up so abruptly my chair fell over and my flask dropped with a clang to the rooftop.
As if drawn by my expletive, the woman named Capulet, the woman I knew more intimately than God, rolled over on the bed so her face was in full view of the window.
Lily in hand, smile affixed to a face that had somehow grown even more beautiful, Liliana Vitali locked eyes with me across the street, across three years and a lifetime of regret, and erased all of it with a single wink.
Lily
Six Years Later
This was probably the last scene my husband would expect to come home to—homemade food spread across our kitchen island like I was some sort of domestic goddess. He would call bullshit, and he’d be right.
Lucy Black had made it.
My twins were on the balcony, fighting over the attention of her son. She stood in front of the oven, adjusting the temperature, wearing the apron neither I nor Frankie had ever worn in the six years we’d owned this Central Park brownstone.
(In my defense, New York take out is the best. Hands down.)
I cocked my hip against the island and watched her. “Smells good.”
“It’s lasagna.” She moved to the stove and tasted the sauce simmering in a pot. “Asher’s favorite.”
“I should’ve added pasta con le sarde to our menu.” A smirk curved my lips upright. “It’s Frankie’s favorite.”
Lucy scrunched her nose. “Ew. Pasta with sardines? Really? Sounds like cat food.”
“Well, he does like pussy…”
She swung to face me, jaw a little slack, before her head pivoted to the open balcony door to make sure the kids hadn’t heard. “Damn it, Lil! This is why I made the kids play outside!”
I tipped a shoulder up and nodded at the empty wine bottle. “I thought it was because you wanted to day drink.”
She erupted into giggles. “That, too.”
When I’d landed in New York, Renata had hooked me up with the Romano family. They were my suppliers, while I was one of their top distributers. An added bonus—I’d met one of my best friends Lucy. She was married to their former fixer, billionaire real estate and tech mogul Asher Black.
Frankie and I had carved out a nice life in New York, better than we could have ever imagined. He worked for the Salvatore family. I worked with the Romano family. And every night, we came home to our kids, barely able to keep our hands off one another long enough to feed the girls and help them with their homework.
&nbs
p; The front door creaked open. At the sound, the kids sprinted to the entryway. If they could hear the door open, they’d probably heard my pussy comment. In my defense, Frankie wasn’t any better at keeping it PG.
“A pussy is a cat!” I yelled out, just in case my kids decided to Google it.
Lucy groaned at the same time Asher said from the hallway, “Did she just say what I think she said?”
My husband, my dearest defender, replied, “Probably.”
“We’re in here!” I shouted out, stealing a red velvet macaroon from the counter.
Frankie entered, followed closely by Asher. He eyed the spread and nodded at it. “Thanks for the lunch, Luce.”
“Hey, I helped!” I picked up a Himalayan salt shaker, thought better of ruining one of the dishes, and gave up on proving my point.
“Sure, you did.” He plucked the shaker from my fingers and tossed it on the counter. Then, he folded me into his arms, copped a feel of my ass, and whispered in my ear, “Liars get spanked.”
I tipped my head up, rested my chin on his chest, and quirked an eyebrow. “Why do you think I lied?”
He squeezed my ass again and leaned back. “A pussy is a cat?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t wait to pet my cat tonight.”
Lucy hip-checked me out of the way and pulled the lasagna out of the oven. “You two are gross and no longer allowed around my son.”
She liked to pretend Rowan wasn’t a deviant in the making… Or maybe she genuinely believed it, but it didn’t change the fact that he’d had every girl fawning over him from a young age, which always meant trouble.
“Fair enough.” I tried and failed to hide my smile, but I couldn’t.
I was happy.
Completely, entirely, wholeheartedly… happy.
Because I wasn’t a virgin anymore, I served no real use to the Vitali family. They’d released me from a future of arranged marriages. Papà knew I’d be miserable, so he and Mamma had let me leave Italy. They even flew here to visit a few times a year.
I took a bite of another macaroon and tossed the remaining half to Frankie. “How was fishing?”
Tales of Darkness & Sin: An Anthology Page 13