Chapter 7
DOMINIC
Iwent into my bedroom while I waited for the drug to work.
There, from inside the same drawer I kept Effie’s photograph, I pulled out a small box and opened it.
Inside was my ring, the one I’d worn when I was a Benedetti.
The one all the Benedetti men wore. I sat on the bed and studied it, ignoring the desire to slip it on my finger.
Shoved away the thought of how much I’d lost. How different my life was meant to be.
Isabella had called me late last night. I’d only spoken to her once after I’d left, when she’d called to tell me Salvatore had handed everything over to our uncle, Roman.
She hadn’t called when Effie had broken her arm.
I’d only found out about that when I saw Effie wearing a hot-pink cast in one of the photos.
She also hadn’t called to tell me about her engagement to Luke.
That too I’d seen when I’d spied the rock on her finger in another photo of my daughter.
Not that I cared about her marrying Luke.
They deserved each other. Where Isabella was concerned, I had no affection.
She was the mother of my child. That was all.
We’d always be connected no matter what, but that didn’t mean anything more.
No, she’d called to tell me about a body turning up.
The body of Mateo Castellano. I’d known Mateo.
He’d done some work for my fa—for Franco Benedetti—a few years ago.
He’d actually tipped me off about a deal being a trap, which had probably saved my ass, even though I hadn’t acknowledged that fact then.
Too fucking arrogant. We’d gotten along well.
He’d become a friend even. But then he’d disappeared, moved on, I guessed.
He, like I was now, was a nobody. He went where the money took him.
I didn’t get the reason for her call at first. People in our line of work died all the time. A side effect of mafia life. Hearing about Mateo’s death, though, had been a little like when I’d heard my brother Sergio had been killed. It made me pause.
There was more. Isabella said the killer had intended for the body to be found. It had been meant to send a message. Castellano had been worked over, which didn’t surprise me, then shot execution-style: bullet to the back of the head. But there was one more thing. Two more things, actually.
His tongue had been cut out. He was a snitch.
I had told her callously that I wasn’t totally surprised, considering he’d snitched before when he’d saved my ass.
But she’d told me to shut up and listen.
There’d been a mark on him. A brand. It was in the middle of his chest. She’d seen a picture of it.
How she’d gotten her hands on a photo like that, I had no idea, although she was incredibly resourceful.
Never underestimate Isabella DeMarco. Hadn’t I learned that yet?
She thought the mark would be of interest to me.
It was to Salvatore, apparently. The brand was a larger version of the Benedetti family crest, a generations-old symbol of power in our world, at least in southern Italy and the northeastern United States.
It was an exact copy of the one I held in my hand.
Mateo Castellano had been branded before his death, and someone wanted to get two messages out: one, that he was a snitch, and snitches were dealt with mercilessly.
Two, that it was a Benedetti who’d done the dealing.
But this wasn’t how Roman operated. It wasn’t his MO. I wouldn’t put it past Franco, but he had a different sort of cruelty. He was just as brutal but not medieval in his torture. I didn’t suspect Salvatore for a second.
That’s why I’d given Gia the pills.
Mateo was my age, or close to it. He had a kid sister.
I’d met her once, a long time ago. I think I’d been seventeen or eighteen.
It was at a party, which my father had attended, where a secret meeting had been held.
He’d brought me along. When they’d gone to talk, I’d wandered around the property, bored, annoyed at not being invited into the meeting.
A little ways from the house, I’d come across a little girl backed against a tree by two boys about twelve, I’d say.
They were apparently trying to take something from her, and she’d been putting up a hell of a fight, but she couldn’t have been more than seven.
I’d told the boys to piss off and leave the kid alone.
She’d given me a look. It wasn’t a “thanks for saving me” or anything like that.
It’d been a glare. She’d been just as pissed at me as she’d been at those boys.
I remembered I’d laughed when Mateo had found us there and told her to get back to the house and help their mother with something.
She’d spoken to him in Italian and thrown a sideways glance my way before running back house, the flash of her angry green eyes from beneath those thick dark bangs now unsettlingly familiar.
I didn’t know Mateo’s sister’s name. I’d never asked.
And I had a suspicion I wanted gone.
I needed to check the mark on Gia’s hip.
She’d be the right age. That party had been seventeen, almost eighteen years ago. If I was right about the little girl being seven, that’d make her twenty-four now.
Did I have Mateo Castellano’s sister trapped in that room?
If so, who the fuck had sent her to me? Did they know they were sending her to me?
And why the Benedetti brand? I knew all the workings Franco had his dirty hands in, and human trafficking wasn’t part of any of it.
He did some bad shit, but he didn’t sell stolen women.
That was why I needed her knocked out when I first saw the mark.
I couldn’t give anything away. She knew who had taken her, and it was personal.
I’d never bothered to ask more, because I didn’t give a fuck, and I didn’t want to know.
But now, having heard about the brand on Mateo Castellano, I needed to know.
After putting the ring away, I made myself something to eat, wanting to be sure she was out before I went back in there.
After waiting over an hour, I took the key out of my pocket and unlocked the door.
Light from the room I was in shone on her motionless form on the bed, tucked tight beneath the blanket.
I made my way to the bed to make sure she was out.
She was. From the locked chest, I took out a lightbulb and screwed it into the ceiling from where I’d removed it before Gia’s arrival.
I then switched on the light, not too bright but bright enough. Gia didn’t stir.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I pulled the blanket back, guilt gnawing at me when the scent of sex wafted off her. I hadn’t meant to do what I’d done earlier. I’d wanted to let her know I was back, and I was in charge. But then, watching her like that…hell, I had wanted her.
I guessed she hadn’t been able to shower before the drug had knocked her out.
She mumbled something and rolled onto her back.
Avoiding what I had to do, I went back to my room and returned with a clean washcloth, towel, and soap.
Remembering the toothbrush I’d picked up for her, I set it, still in its packaging, on the edge of the sink in her bathroom.
I then ran hot water over the washcloth and rubbed the bar of soap over it until it was sudsy.
After ringing the excess moisture out, I went back to her and gently cleaned her face, chest, and belly, rinsing off the cloth twice more as I washed her thighs and her sex until the scent was gone.
I patted her dry with the clean towel, all the while watching her.
I could tell myself all I wanted to that it was to make sure she didn’t wake up, but I knew it was a lie.
In a way, I felt something for her that I hadn’t for any of the other unfortunate girls who’d lain in this same bed.
I could usually put a wall up between myself and the job—whatever or whoever that job was.
With her, though, I couldn’t put my finger on any particular reason why that wall wasn’t staying up.
It had for all of five minutes when I’d entered this room the first time.
Maybe it was the physical attraction, the pull I felt toward her.
Maybe it was the mark on her hip. Maybe I subconsciously knew already, had felt already, that this was different.
I didn’t know. I just knew I needed to get on with it and see the damn thing once and for all.
After hanging both the washcloth and towel to dry in the bathroom, I went back into the bedroom and turned her onto her side, eyeing the scab that covered the healing brand.
My heart pounded. I touched the rough skin.
It had already begun to peel away at the edges, revealing pink skin beneath, a circle to contain the crest. Using my fingernail, I scratched away rough skin, exposing more and more, recognizing the ornamental F of Famiglia.
Because to the Benedetti, family came first.
Fucking joke.
The scab became harder to peel away once the edges were gone, but I didn’t need to go too much further.
I saw what I needed to see. The ornamental B of Benedetti, the tips of the spears crossing at the top, protecting the famiglia beneath.
I didn’t need to see the face of the lion at the center of the crest. His mane took shape around the edges, and I had no doubt once the scar had fully healed, I would see the Benedetti crest branded into her skin.
I stood quickly, looking down at the girl.
I squatted down again until my face was an inch from hers.
I pushed the hair back from her cheek, tucked it behind her ear, and looked at her.
At the pretty, unconscious woman lying in the filthy bed, eyes closed, lips parted, her breath shallow.
I tried to remember the little girl from the party, but the only image my mind had held onto was those eyes.
Gia had looked at me like that once, her glare from beneath her dark hair burning a hole into me.
But was she Mateo Castellano’s kid sister?
Had whoever killed him taken her? What had she had to do with anything?
Although it wasn’t like she needed to be involved at all.
This was the Italian mafia, after all. Families thrived together, and they were destroyed together.
Was this sleeping woman the girl I’d once saved from two overzealous boys at a party?
I stood abruptly and stepped away.
What did it matter if she was? She was a job.
That was all. Just because I’d saved her from some idiot kids years ago, didn’t mean we were connected, that I was going to be her savior again.
I had to remember I was no longer a Benedetti.
I no longer had an army behind me. I was Dominic Sapienti.
A nobody. Even if I fucking wanted to protect her, what the hell could I do?
It’s not like I had the fucking money to buy her outright.
I’d blown all the money I’d had when I’d bought Salvatore’s mansion, lock, stock, and barrel.
Everything in it now belonged to me, and it fucking sat there under seven years’ worth of dust because it wasn’t like I was ever going back there. I didn’t even know why I’d bought it.
And even if I hadn’t, what now? Buy her? Keep her?
Keep her.
“You’re a fucking imbecile, Dominic,” I muttered to myself. I stood, walked the few steps to the center of the room to unscrew the lightbulb from the ceiling, and plunged the room into near darkness again. It took a moment for my eyes to readjust.
Keep her, and do what with her? I’d question her about the brand. Find out who’d done it. Why they’d done it. Then what?
This was the drawback to my line of work. I never knew who hired me, and they never knew who they hired. An anonymous world of monsters.
I reached for the phone in my back pocket, closing the space between me and her, and began to dial a number I hadn’t dialed in way too many years.
I pulled the blanket back over her, taking in her sweet, innocent face—at least in sleep—and walked out of the room, locking the door behind me.
I looked down at the phone display. One digit more and the phone would start ringing.
My heart pounded, and my hands felt clammy.
I hit End. I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
Instead, I opened up my laptop and took a seat at the kitchen table, where I typed in Mateo Castellano’s name on the Google search field, already knowing what I’d find.