“Why do you think this man is acting this way toward you now?” I asked curiously.
She winced as if she had hoped I wouldn’t ask that. “It’s tough for me, you know? Even though he’s doing some…bad stuff, I care about him.”
Growing up, many of the girls I’d gone to school with had ended up married to Camorra foot soldiers, and many of those had gone on to be beaten, raped, or neglected by their husbands. I hated the thought of pretty, sweet Bambi under the hands of some thuggish creep.
She hadn’t said it was her boyfriend, but it was easy enough to read between the lines. Only powerful love would keep her from turning him in even though she knew what he was doing was wrong.
The thought hit a little too close to home, so I smiled thinly and pressed on. “I understand but, Bambi, you and Aurora need to come first. I’m going to call my friend Tilda at another law firm and get her on your case. She practices family law, and she was one of the top in our class at NYU, so she will take good care of you.”
“You’re taking good care of me,” she corrected, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “I can see why Dante admires you so much.”
“I could say the same thing,” I offered, pushing that pang of jealousy aside because Bambi was a good woman, and I wanted her to know she deserved more than this schmuck of a boyfriend.
Her answering smile was weary as she waited for me to go through my phone. I had just hit send on Tilda’s number when Bambi chilled me to the bone by adding, “Oh, ask her if she knows how to draw up a will, okay?”
DANTE
I loved New York the second I arrived in the city, and that appreciation had only deepened over the years. The place was teeming with humanity, not just the bodies in the streets but the countless thoughts and actions of men made into towering buildings and cultivated parks. It was such a mortal city, riddled with flaws like cramped alleyways filled with crime and sin, and glories like the sunsets that spilled through the cracks of the manmade cityscape, illuminating even those dank hovels in its golden light from time to time.
Much like the red-headed Italian woman who haunted my thoughts, she was a chaos of contradictions I wanted to spend my life untangling.
When something interested me, I threw myself into the pursuit of knowing it as deeply as I could. I was in the middle of one such endeavor now with Elena, but I’d already spent years delving into New York City’s quirks and histories to better understand them.
To better use them.
I was standing in a place that was the fruit of that research currently, deep beneath the parking garage at the base of my Upper East Side apartment building. I hadn’t picked the apartment for its character or the neighborhood for its good schools.
I’d chosen it because of its history, the thing that made it precious to me.
The defunct subway station Track 83 had been one of the first stations built in the early 1900s, and service was closed in 1954. There were many such old metro stops forgotten to history beneath the city, the Old City Hall and Track 61 beneath the Waldorf-Astoria being two of them that still allowed some degree of public access for spectators.
No one knew about Track 83 beneath the Smith Jameson Building except the previous owner of the building, who was now deceased, a man at the city planning record hall I had on payroll, and me.
It was my sanctuary, an outlet from the cage of my apartment so many floors above. It seemed fitting to own the penthouse, my own personal Mt. Olympus, and the subterranean tunnels that threaded through the entire network of New York City’s underworld.
This was where I conducted the business the probation office didn’t see, and Elena couldn’t hear.
The curved high ceilings with their faded frescos were appropriately Italianate and created lovely acoustics for the sounds of a man’s scream.
My fist thudded dully into the bones of Carter Andretti’s face, the skin splitting open like overripe fruit at the force of the blow. His head went careening to the side, bloody spittle flying in a wide arch across his prone body and my black suit.
This was why I wore black. Not because it cut a dramatic image, but because blood was impossible to get out of anything else.
“You have thirty seconds to start talking again, figlio di puttana,” I growled as I reared back to deliver another fierce jab to his other cheek, evening out the pain. “Or I’ll string you up from the ceiling, put on my brass knuckles, and use you as a punching bag.”
He groaned weakly as his head slumped between his shoulders, blood dripping down his torso.
“Even if he does talk, I’m not convinced.”
The voice that spoke belonged to one of the most infamous sinners in the city, a man with a reputation so notorious it was said women just handed him their panties when he entered a room.
Caelian Accardi.
The son of Don Orazio Accardi.
Usually such a familial tie would guarantee him a place of prestige, but Caelian was the black sheep, his father’s greatest disappointment. Caelian didn’t care about learning the family business, but he did care about dabbling in the entertainment of it—the girls, the drugs, and the gambling.
No one in the Accardi borgata gave Caelian a second look.
But I had, and I did again as I turned to face one of the two men I’d brought down there that day.
He was young, late twenties, and the youth still in his face and the bright sheen of blond hair that hadn’t gone burnished yet with age. Still, there was a certain quality about him, that athletic form held very still, those blue eyes too placid. It was the look of a man whose still waters ran very deep, very dark.
I was counting on that.
“You’re an idiot if you doubt him,” Santo Belcante scoffed from the opposite side of the room. “The di Carlos have always been greedy bastards.”
Santo was no one’s son. He had been taken in by Monte Belcante as a boy and had been groomed as his successor until Monte died of cancer last year. For reasons I didn’t know, Nario, Monte’s brother, had taken over the family instead of Santo.
I was counting on the very bitterness I heard in Santo’s tone.
Frankie had discovered who had tried to run Elena off the road in Staten Island.
The motherfucking di Carlos.
Traffic cameras had captured Agostino di Carlo, Gideone’s older brother and one of the two men contending for the throne, climbing into the GMC SUV at a restaurant the family owned in Brooklyn an hour before the chase.
The fuckers were coming for me and mine.
It wasn’t just about the fact that Cosima had killed Giuseppe and that she was a known associate of Tore and me (though no one but the three of us knew to what extent).
It was about kicking a man when he was supposedly down.
They wanted control of my operation.
More, they wanted control of the entire city.
Carter Andretti had been only too happy to explain in the early hours of the morning that Agostino di Carlo had paid him to shoot out Ottavio’s deli.
Not to get rid of Cosima.
But to get rid of his uncle.
He’d orchestrated the entire damn war between our two families so that he could use the opportunity to take power for himself. It was the kind of selfish, unthinking act that had led to pure chaos in the 80s and countless Made Men being put behind bars.
It was idiotic and foolish.
Especially because Carter Andretti had told me they wouldn’t stop at the Salvatore borgata.
The motherfucker di Carlo brothers wanted it all.
Which was why I had brought the two looked-over members of the Accardi and Belcante outfits into my confidence. If I could convince them the di Carlos were a threat to their own organizations, that meant allies, and I knew well enough that the older generations were just as happy to see me dead as the Cosa Nostra.
Without warning, I reeled back and threw another punch at Andretti. His cheek crumpled under my heavy fist, the bones crumbling.
; “Fermo!” he groaned, head lolling.
“I’ll stop when you tell us what I want to hear,” I offered reasonably as I wiped his blood off on his equally dirty shirt.
“It’s true,” he whimpered softly through his split lips. “They paid us to hit Otto’s. Agostino and Gideone. It was the first step.”
“And the second?” I pressed, flipping a knife out of my sleeve to scrape the blood out from under my nails.
His eyes darted madly between the knife and my face, then over to Accardi and Belcante. “They were gonna kill you and go for the others.”
“How?” Santo demanded, stepping forward until he was at my side, looming over him. “You tell me how, or I’ll use Salvatore’s knife to skin you alive.”
“They were gonna blow up your deal with The Fallen MC,” he panted, bloody spittle drooling down his chin. “Apparently, they got an in with the New York chapter.”
Santo cursed savagely.
“And the Accardi family?” Caelian drawled from behind us as he began to saunter forward, lighting a cigarette.
Carter went quiet.
Caelian sighed, took a drag of tobacco, and then leaned over to blow it out in Carter’s face. “You have one chance to tell me.”
The sharp, acrid scent of urine perfumed the space as Carter pissed his pants, the heavy steam dripping from the chair he was tied to.
Still, though, he didn’t talk.
He was a decent foot soldier.
But no match for three furious capos.
Caelian shrugged almost casually, then reached forward to grasp Carter’s face in one hand while he put the cigarette out with the other…straight on the inner corner of the di Carlo soldier’s eye.
His scream echoed throughout the cavernous space.
“He was gonna take Ravenna,” Carter shouted, neck straining as he fought his bonds. “Take her and rape her and marry her.”
Anger rolled through Caelian, and for the first time since I’d known the bastard, he looked every inch the ruthless mafia don his father was.
“I’ve heard enough,” he decided, looking over his shoulder at me. “What are you suggesting, Salvatore? I imagine you have a plan.”
I grinned at them both. “I do.”
After they’d left, I’d let my inner crew into the sanctum and given Adriano a crack at Carter to make sure there wasn’t any information I might have missed. I was pleased. The shit show my life had become in the past year was slowly beginning to untangle itself.
I had a plan for the di Carlos.
A plan for the Irish fuckers.
And a plan for Elena, even if she didn’t know it yet.
“How could you trust those bastardi?” Jacopo muttered from over my shoulder as I surveyed the trunks of weapons we kept stored in one corner of the abandoned station.
I straightened gradually before turning to stare down the few inches into my cousin’s face. We weren’t blood relations, but I’d always treated him like a brother, a close confidant. Sometimes, it meant he wasn’t as respectful as he damn well should have been.
“I have my reasons,” I said opaquely even though I knew it would frustrate him.
Life itself seemed to frustrate Jaco, which was why everyone called him Grouch. It irritated me that he was always the victim, whining about his lot in life when he’d been born with a silver fucking mafia spoon in his mouth. His father had loved him before he was killed by the Ventura Mexican cartel for attempting a side hustle outside of the family’s schemes on their territory.
We hadn’t gone to war with them over it.
Emiliano had made his bed when he went against the family interests, and he had to lie in it, six feet beneath the ground.
Jaco hadn’t liked it, but then, I couldn’t blame him.
If anyone hurt Tore, I’d rip him apart with my bare hands. But the difference was, Tore would never be so stupid as to act against the borgata.
So, I put up with Jaco’s surliness and his need to badger me about every single fucking thing I did because his parent had been killed, and that was a wound that didn’t heal.
I knew from experience.
“I wanna know them,” he pressed, pushing his overlong black hair behind his ears. “Those are fucking rival capos, Dante. Maybe this house arrest has made you pazzo….maybe that woman has.”
“That woman?” I asked quietly, my entire body coiled.
He didn’t sense the threat I posed, as always, too riled up by his own antics. “Si, quella donna. You’ve been goin’ crazy for her since the first. She’s a goddamn lawyer, D. They’re one step up from scumbag cops. You can’t trust the bitch, and I’ve stayed quiet about it long enough. She’s fucking living in your place? Where the magic happens? You’re asking to be put away for life and then this stunt with Accardi’s reject son and the Santo bastardo?”
He was shaking his head so he didn’t notice me lash out at him, grabbing the thick column of his neck in the palm of my hand and squeezing as I lifted him to his toes. His eyes bugged out with shock, hands flying to scratch at my grip, mouth flapping like a dying fish.
None of the other men in the station made a single move to stop me.
I brought Jaco’s face to mine so I could sneer softly, just for him. “You call Elena a bitch ever again, Jaco, I’ll carve the word into your forehead with my blade, capisci?”
I dropped him unceremoniously, turning my back to finish my inventory of the guns.
Behind me, he choked and sucked in breath. “What the fuck, Dante? I’m your cugino. We’re fucking blood. Yet you treat me like this for calling it like it is? You’ve gone mad.”
“You’ve gone mad if you think you can talk to me like this,” I informed him coldly as I replaced the lid on the trunk and turned to face him again. “You forget I am capo dei capi of this outfit. Not you. I’m open to hearing what you’ve got to say, Jaco, but only if you can say it like a man and not a whiny troia.”
“Vaffanlo,” he cursed, gesturing rudely with his hand as he told me to fuck myself. “I’m just trying to look out for you. For this family. It’s all I got left, and I want to protect it.”
I softened just slightly, stepping forward to clasp him a little too hard on the shoulder. “I get it, cugino. You just have to remember, all I do, I do for this family.”
He deflated a fraction, but a petulant frown still dented his brow. “Not her.”
“No,” I agreed because that was true. “Elena is just for me.”
“’S stupid, D,” he argued again, but he knew he’d lost the fight.
“Forse,” I allowed that maybe it was. “But our biggest successes have come from my most daring gambles. I’m willing to stake a lot on this one.”
“You always said women ruin a man,” he reminded me perniciously. “They make them weak.”
I cocked my head, my hand squeezing his neck painfully. “Did I? I think you misunderstood. Maybe it was my accent, mm? What I said was that a man in love has one weakness, his woman. It’s his Achilles’ heel. But that same love makes the rest of him impenetrable, strong as a god.” I clapped my free hand to the other side of his throat and strangled his neck for one brief moment so he could feel my strength. “What do you think, Jaco? Do I seem weak?”
His pale brown eyes swarmed like the surface of a swamp with mixed emotions, his pride tangling with his love and loyalty. Finally, he reached up and planted his own hands on my shoulders in a show of brotherhood and dipped his head slightly. I bent forward to kiss his head and let go of my hold on him.
“Va bene,” I told him, dismissing both our argument and his presence. “Go pick up my niece and Bambi. Give them my love.”
He nodded almost to himself, then shot me a sheepish grin. “Grazie, D.”
I lifted my chin at him. “Vattene.”
He left.
I watched him go with my hands crossed over my chest, brain whirring. I wasn’t surprised when Frankie stepped up beside me and adopted the same pose.
“You think
we got a problem with him?”
I sighed, scrubbing my hand over the sharp stubble at my jaw. I wanted to be upstairs with Elena, preferably inside her, discovering more of the ways I could make her come for me. Instead, I was deep underground dealing in the shadows I’d lived in my entire life.
“I find it hard to believe he’d risk a business he stood to inherit if something happened to me. He’s a man motivated by his family name and the success attached to that. We’re doing well despite the RICO case. As long as we bring in money, Jaco should be loyal beyond the ties Tore gave him. But after Mason, I’m not sure about anyone. Wouldn’t be sure of you if you didn’t owe me your goddamn life.”
Frankie nodded. “If I ever thought of leaving, Liliana would kill me.”
I laughed because that was the truth. His wife was not to be trifled with even though she was just a slip of a thing.
“Elena’s got it too,” he continued as if picking up the thread from a conversation we’d been having before.
“What?”
“What it takes to be donna.”
I blinked because even though Elena had been on my mind, in my fucking blood, for weeks, I hadn’t thought hard about our future. Maybe because I knew logically we couldn’t have one.
She was too proper, too upstanding and moral. Too disgusted with the details of work that made up my entire existence. There was no way we could ever have a…relationship beyond the walls of my apartment, beyond the scope of this case.
Yet the idea of giving her up made me mad. Crazed as a beast gone feral, foaming at the mouth.
I was the only man who had ever made her come.
The one to make her curse and make her beg.
The one she allowed to care for her even though she hated to seem weak.
How was it possible there could be a time when she didn’t seem like mine?
But donna.
Boss.
The queen to my kingpin.
A partner not just in this case against me but in crime.
In my shadowed underworld.
It should have seemed ridiculous, but a part of me could picture her there under the faded frescos, checking guns and ordering soldati coolly, efficiently.
When Heroes Fall Page 29