5. Mia
5
MIA
“ T eo Vitale, OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR!” I yell because if I don’t yell, I might cry, and being angry right now is a lot damn easier than being sad.
It took me a long time to track him down. Longer than it should have, which is enough to tell me that he’s trying to hide. Especially as he seems to have locked himself up in the one place he presumed I’d never look.
The Candelabra was always empty this time of day, save for the cleaning crew resetting everything for the evening crowd. It’s always a bit strange seeing the stage drenched in sunlight.
The Guild’s office is usually only used as a private space to entertain honored guests during the show. But Teo has been known to work from it whenever the Guild’s base—a large industrial unit by the docks—gets too crowded.
A fact I assume he must have thought I’d forgotten.
“YOU CAN’T HIDE IN THERE FOREVER!”
I can hear someone shuffling behind it and wait another moment before pounding against the wood once more.
“I HAVE A MASTER KEY, YOU KNOW. I WILL MURDER YOU IF I HAVE TO GO GET IT.”
I don’t have a master key, but I am the manager, so it’s not out of the realm of possibilities.
Suddenly, there’s a resigned sigh and a click, and the door swings an inch inward.
Teo gives me an exasperated look through the crack. “There is no master key.”
I ignore him and push through the door.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” I state as soon as I get far enough inside to spin around and face him.
He mutters something suspiciously, like, “Can you blame me?” and then closes the door again. He takes heavy steps back toward the desk, where he seems to have been poring over several documents.
Teo picks up a thin file and hands it to me. “Here. You may as well see what you accomplished.”
Curiosity momentarily overriding my anger, I take the file and examine it. I stare at the name signed at the bottom for a beat too long. “It’s happened, then?”
“For the first time in recorded history, the Italian mafioso of Brooklyn and Manhattan have committed to an alliance. If people knew of the importance of such things, they’d probably hang that,” he gestures to the file, “in a museum.”
I snap the file closed and place it back on the desk. “You must be proud of your legacy,” I say sarcastically.
“ Your legacy. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for your…”
I save him the trouble of finding the word. “Sacrifice?”
“I was going to say commitment. ”
“That’s funny because the last time you asked me to commit to the Guild, it didn’t involve blackmailing me with my father’s life.”
Teo does a double-take at me. “I what ?”
I’ve known Teo Vitale for a long time. Too long, really. The genuine surprise on his face causes my anger to cool briefly.
“I’m only going to ask you this once.” I hope the seriousness of my tone infers that I expect an earnest answer. “Did you or did you not threaten my father’s life if I did not go ahead with the marriage?”
Teo does not drop my gaze for even a second. “I did not. I would have never.”
There’s a moment of silence as I assess his words, his intonation, his most minor facial expressions.
Leon Natali may have claimed he hadn’t threatened my father’s life. But I don’t know him like I know Teo. And there is nothing about Teo Vitale that indicates that he’s lying to me right now.
The realization hits me a second later.
Leon had lied.
He’d lied, and then I’d slept with him.
The dam my anger had built against the onslaught of my misery began to crack. I blink away the tears in my eyes.
“Right,” I say, deflating away from discussion of the don. Suddenly, I’m very aware that I had threatened his life only a few moments ago.
Teo is watching me infuriatingly closely. “Did he threaten you?” His voice is cold, measured. Calculating.
I shake my head. “It was just something my father said.”
He swiftly picks up the thin file again and pushes it between us. “I will rip this contract in two?—”
I snatch it from him. “Don’t be so fucking dramatic. You said it yourself: this is a momentous occasion.”
Teo only stares at me, unwilling to back down until I give him something more.
“It’s worth it, isn’t it?” I remind him. “This fight against the Cartel, Amos Rubio…you need the Prince’s Hand. It’s me marrying him, or it’s the lives of everyone else. I’m not comfortable having their blood on my hands.”
Slowly, his gaze softens. “I didn’t want to ask this of you.”
“But the Guild was already asking you to do something about me, right? It makes sense,” I allow. “I hate it, but it makes sense. Your hands were tied.”
He runs said hand through his hair in exasperation. “Speaking of…”
I sit down heavily in one of the armchairs, already bracing myself for the worst. “Oh God, what?”
“You’re not a part of the Guild anymore. Not that you were before, but now that you’re on the more…Manhattan side of things, we think it’s best you step down from your position here.”
“You mean…”
“I will write your recommendation personally. Anywhere you want to go, I’ll put a word in.”
Something horrendously numb threatens to swallow my entire body. I’ve worked at the Candelabra since I was old enough to serve a drink. Now, even that was being taken from me.
“Right.”
“Word of adVitale? Stick to something managerial. The Guild barely tolerated your more mercantile activities, even with your father always there to defend you. I doubt the Prince’s Hand will take so well to it.”
Through the fog of numbness, a single dreadful thought pushes to the forefront. “How am I supposed to afford rent?”
Teo gives me an odd look.
I suppose it would have never really occurred to him that I would ever need my job in that way. My father remains Teo’s master of finance and loans, supplementing Guild activities with the generosity of his own vast estate.
But living on the blood money of a mafioso was never something I wanted. Working as a server, a bartender, and a manager was my sole source of income. It was enough to keep me afloat, to lead an honest life.
Well…
Except for those moments when that wasn’t exactly true.
Dire moments when my father asked me to collect on a loan. Or there was a particularly interesting job listed on the dark web that required someone with my particular skill set.
That was where the money I had used to get myself through college had come from. I promised myself that after I graduated, I would stop.
And I had, for the most part.
Only now…
Teo interrupts my thoughts with a confused sort of expression. “You understand that Leon Natali is your husband, right? Even if you didn’t want to live with him, he’s a billionaire, Mia. You are a billionaire now.”
Like that’s any better than accepting blood money from my father. But it’s not a discussion I felt like having right now when I could feel the dam crumbling more and more by the second.
I changed the topic entirely, suddenly very eager to leave before I fell apart. “Leon said he’d send you his new address.”
To his credit, Teo doesn’t ask why he didn’t send it to me himself as he swipes up his phone to forward it to me.
I nod as my cell pings with the notification and turn to leave. “Sorry for threatening to kill you,” I murmur over my shoulder.
Teo begins to say something, then stops himself. Then pushes through anyway. “I’m sorry that it was you. I hope…I hope you can find something good in all of this.”
I can’t reply for fear of the sob that threatens to burst from my chest.
I’m not entirely sure how I got here. One second, I was getting into my car, the next, I was getting out of it.
The front door is unfamiliar but overwhelmingly grand as I stand before it. I feel so ridiculously fragile that even the act of knocking feels like it could be enough to tip me over into my misery.
I hear footsteps and use whatever is left of my resilience to brace myself for what comes next.
The door opens, and…
“Mia?”
Cassandra’s eyes are wide with concern, matching, with almost scary similarity, the infant balancing on her hip.
I swallow hard. “Can I?—”
I’m cut off by my friend slamming into me, her free arm pulling me in close.
The dam breaks.
The sobs tear through my body like a freight train, unrelenting in their brutality. There are more than a few moments that I think I might completely collapse if it wasn’t for Cas propping me up.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” she says soothingly as she rubs my back. “Come on, come inside. That’s it.”
I let her lead me in, somewhat dizzy from the effort of dispelling a horrendous amount of water from my eyes. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I might have felt slightly embarrassed.
But Cas remains, first and foremost, my best friend, and perhaps the only person on the planet that I feel comfortable enough to be comforted by.
“Denise!” Cas calls out, and the stern British woman seems to materialize out of thin air. “Will you take Cory back to his room?”
The sweet-faced baby makes grabby hands at his mother as Denise extracts him, and Cas leads me to a couch.
I can’t look her in the eye as she sits next to me, mainly because I’m still crying, but also because I know as soon as I look at her again, her sympathy will only make it worse.
“I’ll get you some water,” she says after a moment, going to stand. “Or do we need something stronger?”
“Water is f-fine,” I manage to choke out.
She says nothing more as she leaves me there on her far too comfortable couch. Alone in her new living room, I find myself picking up my legs and lying down properly—covering myself with a blanket.
Never have I ever felt sorrier for myself. Everything that’s happened these last few days batters me over and over again.
The Guild catching up to me. The threat against my father’s life. Agreeing to marry Leon Natali. Agreeing to have his children. The lying, then sleeping with him. How good it felt in the moment and how awful it felt in the morning.
I can’t help but look back and try to come up with a scenario where none of this happened.
If I had been more subtle with my mercenary work…if I’d stepped away from this life when I had the chance, none of this would have happened.
At some point, Cas returns with both water and whiskey and sits on the end of the couch, lifting my head up to rest it on her knee.
Her fingers softly stroke through my hair as the tears continue to flow and flow and flow.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers over and over.
“It’s not your fault,” I manage eventually. “It’s my fault.”
Her fingers stop their soothing motions. “Well, that’s absolutely not true.”
“It is, though. If I’d just agreed to join the Guild before all of this, I would never have been forced to marry that lying asshole. I can’t even think about being in the same room as him again, let alone…” my breathing catches, and I cry again.
“If you want to blame anyone for this, blame Teo,” Cas counters. “Better yet, blame Amos Rubio for forcing the alliance in the first place.”
I sniff into her lap, and the hair stroking resumes.
“I know you don’t like him.” There’s no need for me to ask who she’s talking about. “But I don’t think he’s so bad, really. You remember he saved my life once? His sister speaks quite highly of him, too. Plus, he’s not the worst-looking guy in the world.”
I groan a little. “You’re seriously comforting me by saying, ‘at least the guy you’re forced to sleep with is hot’?”
“Silver linings?”
“He threatened my father’s life, Cas,” I explain bitterly. “He can parade about his glowing reputation to everyone else, but he lied to my face so that we would consummate our marriage.”
This is news to Cassandra, who immediately sits me up and demands the full story. So, I tell her. I tell her about my father’s words, the night in the penthouse, and my conversation with Teo. By the time I’m finished, Cas looks absolutely furious.
“I could kill him,” she seethes. “I will kill him.”
“He’s integral to the alliance,” I point out, suddenly feeling utterly exhausted.
“I’m going to think about killing him really, really hard.”
This makes me laugh for the first time in what feels like days.
Cas watches me with a new kind of determination in her eyes. “You need to take back control.”
I lean back on the couch. “How the hell am I supposed to do that? This is already so out of my control. I’m already drowning.”
“He might have won the first match, Mia, but this is a long game, and you still have a chance to win the upper hand. You still have me and Rocco and Teo on your side.”
“I don’t know if I can do it,” I whisper. I thought I was out of tears, but one drips down my cheek anyway.
“You can,” she leans in to wrap her arms around me. “You’re going to be a mother. You will be a mother on your own terms, and he will not take that from you. Do you hear me?”
I feel something in me break a bit at her words. “What kind of mother lets something like this happen?”
“You, Maddison, will be an incredible mother. How many times have you been there for me? Hell, you walked into that wedding willing to put everything on the line for your father. Your child will be so, so lucky to have you. So fight for them.”
Not for me, not for Leon. For my child.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Let’s take back control.”