Chapter 3
COSIMO
My neck cracked as I rolled my head from side to side.
The heat in the sauna was thick and engulfing, and I’d been in here long enough for a layer of sweat to coat my skin.
With each inhale, the scent of eucalyptus and pine filled my lungs, and it was as familiar as the feel of a trigger beneath my finger.
This was my church. The one place where my mind usually shut the hell up.
Today, it refused.
When I was a kid, my father often took me hiking along a trail in the Palisades. I’d come home with my ankles red and burning from the nettles crowding the path. They looked harmless, but every leaf was covered in thousands of microscopic needles, ready to sting the moment you got too close.
That was Fabiana Messero.
A nettle.
My mother—the architect behind this entire arrangement—would never have paired me with someone she couldn’t use against me. To some people, marriage was sacred. To Vita Ferraro, it was an opportunity. A way to permanently place a woman she owned in my life.
Did Fabiana know what she was to my mother? Was she a willing accomplice, or just naive enough to be steered where Mother wanted? After that meeting in the gallery, I wasn’t quite sure.
But I’d find out soon enough.
The sauna door opened.
I scowled at Alessio and Romolo as they took their time walking in wearing only towels wrapped around their waists. “You’re letting out all the heat.”
“No wonder you never have any company if that’s how you greet people.” Rom deposited a bottle of whiskey and three stacked glasses on the bottom bench.
I wiped the sweat off my forehead. “I don’t remember inviting you two.”
“We’re your brothers. We don’t need an invitation,” Les said, shutting the door behind him. “But you know, you might want to invite the capos over one of these days.”
“What for? I see them enough.”
He settled on the bench below me. “Yeah, to bark out orders and remind everyone how busy you are. Did you have to chew out Spina like that today?”
I glared at the back of his head. “Is the family’s enforcer really telling me to go easy on a guy?”
Alessio shrugged. “He’s young. Hardworking. A little patience would go a long way.”
“If I’m patient with him, how’s he going to learn? My job isn’t to coddle. My job’s to get results.”
Rom took a seat beside Alessio. “I’m with Les. Just admit you were cranky because you were going to ambush your fiancée after the meeting. How did it go, by the way?”
“Fine.”
“Just fine?” Rom lined up the tumblers and poured.
“I saw pictures online,” Les said. “She’s stunning.”
“Good to know that while I’m scheduling my day in fifteen-minute increments, you somehow have the time to look up women on the internet.
” I kept my voice dry to play off the fact that he was right.
Plant or not, Fabiana was beautiful. Full cheeks, wide mouth, emerald doe eyes that appeared innocent.
But I knew better than most how deceptive appearances could be. To the world, Vita Ferraro was the perfect mother, but if anyone bothered to peel back her polished veneer, all they’d find was rot on the inside.
“She’s not your type?” Alessio asked.
“Of course she’s not,” Rom butted in. “You heard Mom talk about her. Fabiana’s by the book. Knows how to shut up and do as she’s told. Cosimo prefers women with a backbone.”
“Since when are you an expert on what I prefer?” I cracked my neck again, chasing away the irritation Rom’s little speech had sparked.
I didn’t really have a type. Not really.
The reason Rom thought I preferred women with some backbone was because of the woman who’d been at my side for the last three years.
Rom was the man in the family who uncovered everyone’s secrets, and yet somehow, after all this time, he still hadn’t uncovered mine.
In any case, he was wrong about Fabiana. She wasn’t a doormat. Sure, she’d come home when Messero summoned her, but she’d held her ground with me, even after she’d found out who I was.
I had always known that one day, when I became don, I’d have to take a wife and start a family.
But over my dead body was I going to let Mother dictate who I married.
She had spent my whole life trying to keep me under her thumb.
When I was a boy, I was powerless. As a teenager, I began to rebel.
By my early twenties, her strategy for getting to me evolved.
I guess if I did have a type, it was women who could be bought. And Mother had. She’d gotten all of them to talk. To spy, eavesdrop, and snoop through my shit.
Eventually, I got so fucking sick of it all, I set a one-date limit.
That way, no one got too close. But I had to stop even that when I caught one of the women I’d picked up trying to get into my phone.
My mother had studied my schedule and put her like live bait in a hotel bar she knew I’d be passing through.
After that, I decided it was time for some offense. I talked to Rosa and laid out my terms. She agreed. For three years, it worked. No matter how Mother tried to get to Rosa, she couldn’t.
I guess she got tired of failing and decided to find me a wife.
“The alliance makes sense,” Alessio said. “Especially with Morales leading in the polls. Have you gotten anything on him yet?” he asked Rom.
Carlos Morales was a guy running for mayor. He’d made it clear that his first agenda item if he won would be putting us behind bars.
“Not yet.” Rom took another sip. “His background is so clean it makes me sick.”
“If he wins the race, we’re in trouble.” Alessio removed the tie from his hair and redid it.
“He talks a big game, but let’s see how brave he’ll be once he’s in office,” I said.
“He’ll have to think twice about taking us on once we formalize our alliance with Messero,” Romolo said.
I glared at the bottom of my glass. The alliance itself made sense.
Over the last few years, most of the other NY crime families had disappeared due to outside threats or infighting.
By joining with the Messeros, we were buying ourselves longevity that had eluded all the other once-powerful families.
What didn’t make sense was Mother convincing Dad that marriage was the only way to do it.
If I’d been allowed an opinion, I could’ve given them better options.
Options that tied us to the Messeros through shared incentives, not a contract wrapped around my neck.
But by the time I was told, the papers were already signed.
Refusing outright was impossible. Dad was the don, and his word was law.
I tipped my head back and exhaled a heavy breath. Fuck. With Fabiana back in town early, Dad wasn’t going to tolerate another delay to the wedding. I’d been kicking the can down the road for as long as I could, but now I could feel the walls closing in around me.
I had no choice but to make time to sort this out, once and for all.
Rom noted my empty glass and held out the bottle. “More?”
“No.” I placed the tumbler on the bench beside me. “I’ve got work to do.”
A knock sounded against the door. It was Tim, my butler. “Mr. Ferraro? You have a visitor.”
“Who is it?”
“Ms. Delgado.”
I looked down at my watch. We’d agreed to meet tonight, but she was early.
Rom arched a brow. “I thought you had work to do.”
“I do.” I got off the bench. It was going to be a late night. Then again, most nights were.
“A quickie then.” Rom snapped at me with a towel. “Enjoy it while you can. Once Mrs. Ferraro moves in, I doubt she’ll be happy with Rosa coming around.”
I wrapped my palm around the door handle. “Good thing Mrs. Ferraro’s happiness is the least of my concerns.”
Rosa sat in one of the two leather chairs across from my desk, her profile bathed in dim-yellow light from the corner lamp I rarely used. She didn’t look up as I came in, she was too busy typing something on her phone.
“You couldn’t wait?” I said as I walked past her. “I was with my brothers.”
“I’ve got a plane to catch in six hours,” she mumbled, still typing. “I’m checking in right now. Lucy and I are staying at the Ritz in Mykonos, and I’m not risking missing the flight because of you.”
I leaned over, swiped her phone out of her hand, and dropped it face down on the desk. “Cancel your trip. Fabiana just returned to New York, and I need you to start digging.”
“You want me to cancel my vacation,” she said in a flat tone. “Are you insane?”
“I need you here.” In my position, there were always problems to deal with, which meant until something was both urgent and important, it sat on the back burner.
The engagement had always been an important problem to deal with, but it hadn’t been urgent until now.
“You knew what you signed up for when you took the job. I never promised you work-life balance.”
Rosa pinched the bridge of her nose, doing a piss-poor job at hiding the fact that she wanted to strangle me. “Lucy will dump me on the spot. She’s already so very close to being over my shit.”
I waited for her to come to terms with it. We both knew she wasn’t going to refuse my order.
Rosa could be a pain in the ass, but she was useful and loyal to a fault.
I’d met her at a poker game where a marked-deck con had gone catastrophically wrong.
The Albanian drug trafficker she’d been fleecing finally caught on, and if I hadn’t shot him first, she would’ve ended the night with a bullet in her skull.
I saw potential in her. She was quick, fearless, and very good at making people underestimate her, so I gave her a choice—work for me, or wait for one of the Albanian's associates to come looking for revenge. She took the job.
At last, Rosa sighed. “What’s the plan?”
“I can’t back out of the arrangement. That means the only option I have is to convince her to back out.”
My father had made it clear he wanted the marriage to happen, but if it was Fabiana who pulled out? There’d be nothing my parents could do.
Unlike my parents, I suspected Rafe wouldn’t force his sister into a marriage she didn’t want.
The problem was that right now, she appeared to be committed to it. I needed her to uncommit.
“And how do you intend to do that?” Rosa asked.
“I need to know everything there is to know about her so I can figure out what levers I can pull. I want you to dig into her life in Geneva. Friends. Coworkers. Prior boyfriends. If she’s got any skeletons in her closet, I want to know about them.”
Rosa let out a humorless laugh. “Geneva? Cosimo, it’s one thing to play your fake girlfriend so I can waltz into the right rooms and eavesdrop on people who think I’m too pretty to be paying attention.
But finding dirt on your fiancée who lived in another country most of her life, a country where I have no established contacts?
I’m good, but I’m not that good. For all we know, there are no skeletons to dig up. ”
“We won’t know until we try to find them.” Sure, it was possible Fabiana was completely clean, but I didn’t buy it. I knew my mother. She always liked to have something she could use if the situation demanded it.
“If the goal is to get her to call it off, why not just parade me in front of her?”
I shook my head. “Too obvious. It can’t look like I’m trying to sabotage the match on purpose. The situation is delicate.”
Rosa sighed and dug her car keys out of her purse. “I’m booking a five-star hotel in Geneva and ordering room service every night. Every last cent is going on your card.”
“Send me the receipts. And don’t test me by slipping in extras.”
She had the gall to look offended. “If we were really together, you’d be buying me a lot more than those tiny diamond earrings I had to buy myself.”
“You have a very inflated idea of my generosity.”
Rosa huffed. “That poor girl has no idea what she’s getting herself into. If I do find something and it convinces her to cancel the engagement, I’ll be doing her a favor.”
My gaze narrowed. “Careful.” We might have developed a certain rapport over the years, but we weren’t friends.
I didn’t have friends. My brothers were family, and even they didn’t know about the arrangement between Rosa and me.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. I just liked to keep my life compartmentalized.
No one person was allowed the full picture.
She stood.
“Close the door on your way out.”
She slammed it behind her.
I shook my head at the door. Rosa had an attitude, but she was effective. If luck was on our side, she’d have something for me before I saw Fabiana next.
I dragged my palms over my face and yawned. Fuck, I was tired. Sleep tugged on me despite my day being far from over. There were contracts to review, a call to a capo who’d been slacking that couldn’t wait another day, and that request from…
I shut my eyes.
Just for a minute or two.
Instead of the usual inventory of tomorrow’s problems, the film reel in my head began to run the other way.
Back to the green-eyed girl in the yellow silk dress who had stood in front of me, furious and beautiful, and told me she pitied me.
Amusement tugged on my lips at the memory. That little Nettle should have bored me. Girls like her usually did. Pretty, polished, and raised to smile through whatever men like me demanded of them.
But Fabiana hadn’t smiled. She’d pushed back.
I could still feel the brief press of her palm over my fingers when she took the ring box from me. Still hear that small hitch in her breath when my hand lingered too long against her chest.
I’d done it to unsettle her.
I hadn’t expected it to unsettle me.
And I sure as hell hadn’t expected to feel that brief spark of attraction. The kind I hadn’t felt in years.
The sooner I dealt with this problem, the better. While Rosa searched for something I could use against Fabiana, I needed to focus on the part of the plan already within my control. If my fiancée was determined to do her duty, I’d make sure that duty felt like a life sentence.
I’d be cold. Dismissive. Impossible to please.
The kind of man no woman in her right mind would choose to marry.