3. Dante #2
But his plan backfired in every possible way and Lorenzo has barely spoken to him ever since.
While I never wanted this legacy, it’s mine now.
For the first few years after he retired, I was so desperate to prove myself that I killed and tortured anyone who even dared to look at me the wrong way.
Maximo and I tore through Chicago, leaving a trail of bodies in our wake that would rival the bubonic plague.
And that was the side of me that my father admired.
A part of me craved his approval until I realized I no longer needed it.
And now time and experience have taught me there’s a better way to do business than the one he showed me.
“Whatever you wish you’d done, Papá, it’s too late now. You made me the head of this family, so you will hold your tongue before you ever dare to call me weak again.”
He narrows his eyes at me, and his face softens a little. “You are so much like your mother. She was a good woman. But you can’t be both — a good man and the head of this family. Those two things are mutually exclusive. You cannot be one if you are the other.”
He has drilled this into me from the moment he handed over his mantel to me. “I am not trying to be a good man, Papá.”
“No, but it’s inside you anyway. You have to suppress that part of yourself to be the man you are. For Lorenzo, it comes easily to him. He got none of your mother’s compassion.”
I shake my head and sigh. “How can you be our father and yet know so little about either of us?”
He frowns like he has no idea what I’m talking about. And before the conversation can continue, Sophia walks into the room with dinner.
* * *
The atmosphere remained awkward and we made limited, stilted conversation throughout dinner. My father eventually left and now I feel like I can breathe again as Maximo and I nurse a glass of Scotch in my study.
“You need to stop letting him get to you, D,” he says as he takes a sip of his whisky. “He rattles your cage like no one else can.”
I scowl at him. “Is that really surprising, Max?”
“No. But unless you’re ever going to confront him about everything you know, you need to find a way to not want to rip his head off every time you see him. It’s been six years.”
“I can’t confront him. You know I can’t,” I snap at him.
“Yeah,” he adds with a nod of his head.
“Anyway, it’s more than just that. It’s everything else,” I say with a heavy sigh. “He’s… a lot.”
“I get it, D. He’s the great Salvatore Moretti.” He smirks at me, and it breaks the tension.
My shoulders relax, and I sink back into my chair, letting my head fall back to ease the dull ache between my shoulder blades.
“You seen your guest since this afternoon?” he asks.
“No. I don’t think she’s left that room all day.”
“Maybe she’s plotting your demise?” He chuckles darkly.
“Maybe,” I laugh too, thankful for the change of subject. Kat Evanson is a much less frustrating subject to talk about. She makes my blood pressure spike for an entirely different reason.
“Any thoughts on what she’s gonna do around here?”
“Not yet. I’m working on it.”
“Well, I’d work fast because if she has too much time on her hands, she’ll be able to think of really cool ways to kill you. You might wake up one morning, step out of bed and” — he signals his hand slicing across his throat — “straight into a booby trap that slices your head clean off.”
“You been watching Indiana Jones again?”
“It’s a classic,” he says with a shrug before he downs his whisky. “Anyway, I gotta go. I want to stop by and see Fred and make sure they’re not running into any more trouble.”
Alfredo Farina has worked for me for six years, and he runs the warehouses for me.
We own enough legitimate businesses to justify the lifestyles we live and to keep the IRS off our backs.
However, if anything illegal comes into this city, then it goes through me and I take a percentage.
In addition, we take a cut from the casinos and the strip clubs in return for our protection.
It’s a lucrative business, but one that people always want a piece of.
“They had more trouble?” I ask with a frown.
“Nothing serious.” Maximo shakes his head. “They dealt with it, but Fred thinks there’s something going on. The Russians have been a little too quiet like maybe they’re moving operations elsewhere to keep us out of the loop.”
I scrub a hand through my beard. I don’t trust my Russian counterpart. Never have. But he had an alliance with my father, so we have an uneasy truce.
“While things are quiet, I don’t want to start a war for no reason, Max. Tell Fred to keep his eyes open and keep us informed.”
“Will do, D,” he says before disappearing out of the door and leaving me alone to go over the events of the day.
My father’s reaction wasn’t entirely unexpected, even if it did seem a little over the top.
Mostly I think about Kat and the fact that she is lying alone in one of my beds upstairs.
I brought her here to work off her brother’s debt, right?
So why can’t I get the image of me crawling over her and spreading her thighs wide open until I can sink inside her out of my head?