CHAPTER 2
DARIO
I was exhausted as I walked into the boardroom late that night, for the family meeting that Rafe had called.
I knew it had to be important for him to call us all together at such a random time, but that didn’t really narrow down which of the many problems we were in the midst of trying to manage simultaneously, it would be about.
I had rushed up there because I was late, but when I walked in, Rafe was the only one there, seated in his usual seat at the head of the long table. He’d taken off his tie and suit jacket, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, a couple of his top buttons undone.
“You look as knackered as I feel,” I laughed as I walked over and took my own usual seat to his right.
It was where I had sat since the day he took power of the De Santis empire eleven years earlier.
I was what they would have called his ‘second’ in the old days.
I had his back in all things, because he was my brother, not by blood, but in every way that mattered.
Ever since Rafe had been handed the reins of his family business at twenty years old, he had worked hard to drag it from the depths of criminality that his grandfather and father had lived within, and to instead make as much of it as possible legitimate.
Now I’d say the De Santis empire earned eighty percent of its money legitimately.
The other twenty percent was still earned through the fact that the family still operated the docks.
That meant that anything that came through there that wasn’t legitimate, we had a hand in and a cut of.
Rafe wanted us to get out of that too, but there was a balance there that we needed to be cautious of.
If we simply let control go, it would create a power vacuum for the other crime families, gangs, and other lowlifes that still operated in modern day London, to leap in and take that power.
Problem with that was, anyone else having that power was going to cause issues that could lead to war between everyone and leave us open as a target too.
The situation had to be handled very carefully and we were still trying to figure it out, but we would.
“Long day,” he sighed. I hated how beaten down he looked, but it had been that way for a long time.
Rafe had never recovered from losing his sister, Cara.
Years earlier he’d been forced to send her away with their Mum to keep her safe from the wrath of Marcello De Santis – Rafe’s father.
His plan had been to send them both where he would be able to keep in contact, and go to collect Cara eventually, when things were safe, but Rafe’s crazy bitch of a mother had run off the moment the plane touched down in America, and disappeared with Cara.
Rafe had never stopped searching for them, because he wanted Cara back home with us, where she belonged.
But by some miracle his mother – Isabella - had pulled off a pretty effective vanishing act, and in eleven years we had never found so much as a breadcrumb about their location.
It had broken Rafe and I knew not a day passed where he didn’t beat himself up for sending Cara off, and worrying about what had become of her alone with no one but Isabella to look out for her.
Isabella had never been a mother to her kids.
I was pretty sure she had hated them to be honest. The only reason Rafe had sent Cara with her was because he had little choice, and because it was only ever supposed to be short term.
Now Cara would be nineteen years old and he had never heard a word from her.
I knew he feared she was dead. I did too.
Cara had loved her brother so much. If she weren’t dead, surely she would have tried to find him by now?
It cut me up inside just to think of that beautiful, bright, happy little girl gone from this world because of the sins of her evil parents, so I could only imagine what it did to Rafe.
He’d aged thirty years in the last ten, and he swore he would never stop looking for Cara, so nothing would change unless he finally got some closure.
“Are the others coming?” I asked as I looked to the empty offices outside the glass walls of the conference room and saw no movement.
“Said they were,” he nodded.
“What’s going on?”
“Gary called me. He said the police have been sniffing around the docks, asking about multiple containers brought in last month,” he explained.
“Do we know which containers and who they belong to?” I asked.
“Yeah. Two that belonged to the Russians. Apparently some young girl turned up dead in East London last week and police traced her to a container that came in to our docks.”
“Those fuckers” I snapped. “They’ve been bringing girls in again?”
We’d had this problem with the Russian family we dealt with – the Kozlov’s.
They liked to bring girls in from Eastern Europe to work in their clubs.
The problem was that most of these girls came against their will, usually drugged to the eyeballs and thrown into the containers with a bucket to piss in and a few bottles of water to keep them alive.
We drew the line at human trafficking – a point that we had made very clear to every single client we dealt with.
The fact that the Russians had ignored our warnings and our threats was going to call for some very affirmative action.
“Looks that way. I want Dante and Arran to start looking into the dead girl and see if it leads them to the Russians too. If it does, then we need to deal with them. I can’t have them making me look weak.
I already have people questioning my power in the city now that I’ve gone legit.
I don’t want anyone doubting that this family is still very much a major player in the running of this city. ”
“We’ll handle it,” I told him easily, I had no doubt in my words.
Ever since Rafe changed the structure of the family, and how things ran, we had built a very tight circle of men we trusted.
Closest to us were our family - the family we had built and surrounded ourselves with.
It started with Rafe, his other little sister – Gia, me, and my Mum – who was also our housekeeper.
Dante came soon after. He saved Rafe’s life and chose our side when it mattered most. Then Arran came crashing into our lives.
How he got there was a long story, but Rafe instantly felt a kinship with him, and he took both Arran and his kid brother, Callan, in when they had nowhere to go.
Now Arran worked with Rafe, Dante, and I, and was part of our inner circle.
He and Callan also lived with us. We were an odd family, but it worked for us. .
I opened my mouth, about to suggest I call the others and hurry them the fuck up, when Rafe’s mobile started to ring where it sat on the conference table in front of him.
The caller ID said ‘Front Desk’ which was odd, since it was late and the offices - where we mainly ran the legitimate side of the businesses - closed hours ago.
“Yeah?” Rafe answered impatiently, he set the phone down and set it on speaker, then rose to his feet and moved behind to where the dry bar was.
“Mr. De Santis. I’m sorry to bother you sir, but someone has called the office looking for you,” Graham, one of our security guards explained. I knew his voice because he had a thick Yorkshire accent that was tough to mix up with any other person we employed.
“Who is it? It’s after hours,” Rafe said. He poured heavy measures of whiskey into two tumblers and handed me one, sitting back down with the other in his hand.
“I know, and again I apologise sir, but it’s just…I thought…”
“Spit it out, Graham,” Rafe snapped. His temper was shorter than usual and I knew he was pissed the Russians thought they could fuck us over. I was too, and I would be first in line to handle it if those pricks needed to be taught a lesson in manners.
“She said she’s your sister, sir. She was upset and it’s hard to understand her, but I’m sure she said she’s your sister.”
“You mean Gia?” Rafe clarified, but he had set his glass down and was leaning forward closer to the phone, as was I.
Everyone in the building knew Gia. She’d practically grown up there, and if she had been calling, Graham would have known her voice, not that she’d call the office.
She’d just call Rafe, or me if she couldn’t get through to him.
“No. Not Gia. I….I didn’t recognise the voice,” Graham replied.
Rafe and I shared a look of astonishment before we both shouted at the same time, “Put her through!”
CARA
I don’t know how long I sat there. I knew I had to move, and still I couldn’t.
The night went on forever, and still I sat frozen, shaking and gasping to breathe through my panic.
By the time morning came again I was too exhausted to gasp for breath and my heart had slowed somewhat, but still I was frozen.
The blood on the floor around me had started to dry and my leggings felt crusty with the blood that had soaked into them and dried there.
Whoever had done that to my Mum, had to have been long gone, because no one came out to attack and mutilate me in the same way.
The apartment around me stayed silent except for my own breathing and the street noise coming from outside the windows.
At some point in the early morning my exhaustion won out and I dropped off to sleep, waking soon after with a panicked start, only to find my mother’s head still sat there opposite me, staring at me.
Her eyes had clouded over and her skin was a shade of grey I would never ever forget.
The lake of blood remained but it was cold, the smell surrounding me, of blood mixed with something putrid, even stronger now.