14. Dominic
14
DOMINIC
As we walk out of the clinic, I’m rigid with tension. Matteo looks ready to sag under this knowledge he’s kept from me for how long? Years. Twenty-two fucking years.
“Where do you want to do this?” I ask as we head to the back service road where our cars are waiting.
“It will have to be your place, Nicky. I can’t do this at mine.”
“Fine.” The Don’s house isn’t my fucking place, but Matteo used my nickname as if he’s already begging for mercy. Or forgiveness. I’m going to have to dig deep for that one.
He could take his own car, but when he clambers into the back seat of mine, I know my brother is struggling. Fuck. This life…
Stan hits the road, and we sit in stoic silence. Matteo’s bodyguard and driver follow our car. To kill time and to stop myself from going at him like a maniac and squeeze everything he knows out of him with my bare hands, I check my inbox on my phone. At times like these, I forget I forged a successful security company out of nothing and it deserves some of my time. Matteo has his own things on the side, but mine is clean. I’ve gone as pristine as I could have without becoming a fucking monk.
When we drive through the house’s gate and the security closes it behind us, I slide my phone back into my pocket. This place. If only we could burn it down and walk away. Disappear into another realm where we aren’t who we are, weren’t born to the Don, or haven’t become who we’ve become under his iron fist.
With a deep sigh, I get out of the car but slam my door, not waiting for Matteo. As soon as I’m inside, I spot Bruno where he is lying in the foyer and sink my hands into his fur. He’s been waiting for me to come home. I breathe, trying to find my equilibrium. Of all the things I can do to my brother, it’s going to have to be nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The dog doesn’t even acknowledge Matteo as he heads to the Don’s office, and I take the minutes I need to get a grip.
By the time I close the door, I’m calm but go over to the bar and pour two neat whiskeys. It’s only ten in the morning, but shit’s gone down already today, and I need a drink.
Matteo is slumped in one of the wingbacks facing the Don’s desk, opting not to take his rightful place. He’s cupped his face in his hands, looking completely defeated.
“How long have you known?” I ask as I hold out his whiskey to him.
He inhales a sharp breath and looks up to meet my gaze. “Since yesterday? Since Franco Fiore jerked my fucking chain?”
Jesus Christ. It hasn’t been years.
He takes his whiskey, and I sink into the other chair, facing him. “And we’re going to go on the word of a fucking lunatic?”
He shakes his head as he waves a hand at the Don’s desk. “Have you found anything here? Anything at all that could?—”
“Fuck it, Matty, no. I haven’t exactly been looking for information on a MIA stillborn sister.” I didn’t know this could even be a reality. “Why the fuck do you think Franco wasn’t just lying? And how would he know anything in the first place?”
Matteo drops his head back and stares up at the ceiling as if he is praying for strength, clinging to the whiskey glass as if it’s a lifeline. “That day the Don called me in to tell me he had cancer, he mentioned he had three loose ends he wanted me to wrap up before he died.”
Three? Matteo had shared only two with us, and we’d helped him with both projects: eliminating Don Emilio Randazzo and taking care of senator Peter Armstrong’s debts.
Then Tasha flung Matteo’s phone across the expanse of his apartment, and he gave her a fucking hickey. In that moment, I knew things were going to go pear-shaped. When Matteo defied the Don by marrying Tasha Armstrong, I was so relieved. It pleases me fucking endlessly that the exact opposite of what the Don had wanted happened with Tasha and Matteo.
“What did he say about the third loose end?”
As if a baby girl born to our mother is a loose fucking end. Whatever happened to our sister is a sacrilege I will never forgive anybody for. I will torture every capo who was in the Don’s service at the time until I know the fucking truth.
“He didn’t elaborate. He first wanted Randazzo dead and Armstrong dealt with, both with proof, before he told me his third and final command.”
“What happened when you came back from Cannes?”
The Don was sick, but he was still alive when Matteo and Tasha headed back with Stephano in tow, our younger brother as prickly and moody as a teenager who didn’t get the girl.
Matteo sighs, takes a deep sip of whiskey, then looks me in the eye. “I came to see him and lost my shit.”
I quirk a brow. Of all the things we were allowed to do, losing our shit was never one of them. Even Stephano learned how to deal with his own vice by starting that Fight Club gym of his. “Why?”
“Because I thought he was asking me to kill Tasha—” He breaks off, running his thumb along his forehead as if he could erase his frown lines. “I mean, what else was I to think with the amount of shit he’d already put her family through and then what he’d wanted me—us—to do to her?”
None of us endorsed what the Don wanted to do with Tasha Armstrong. The unwritten Il Consiglio’s rule for civilians is two for one. If you take out one of ours, we take out two of yours. The Armstrongs paid for Alex’s death. We had no business putting Tasha’s virginity up for auction, and I’m still not sure what the Don’s real reasons were behind those tasks he saddled Matteo with months ago.
“But that wasn’t what he’d meant.” He groans. “Fuck it, Nicky. His last words to me were about the girl. Alive. I couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t for one second think about Gabriella. I fucking strangled him before he could explain himself because I couldn’t listen to one more word.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I drop my head into my palm and try to digest this influx of information.
The girl. Alive.
Jesus. Our little sister has been alive for twenty-two years, and none of us knew it? How many more secrets walk the corridors of this house? No wonder I can’t shed this weird feeling that’s been trailing me for weeks now. It ghosts over me as if this house is haunted, and it is. With secrets. About Gabriella and what happened to her.
Not only do we have a Scalera sister unaccounted for, but Matteo just confessed that he killed the Don. Our fucking dad. The man whose fist I can still feel choking me.
My big brother did all of us all a hell of a favor. He might have left it a bit late, but here’s the thing: you can sense a man’s grip weaken, you can watch him wither away with age and then cancer, but if you grew up with his type of discipline, guarded yourself and your brothers against his wrath for doing anything against him, it takes immense courage to disobey his instructions, never mind killing him. I was never able to do it. Ever since the time Alex died and the Don put me in my place, I focused on protecting my brothers. Firstly from the Don, and then from people like me in other crime organizations.
I rub a hand down my face, and with a deep sigh reach for my whiskey where I parked it on the desk. I down the whole thing, stand, take Matteo’s empty glass, and get us each a refill.
With this new information, the scales have shifted from speculation to certainty. The Don’s third request to wrap up unfinished business must have been for Matteo to find our baby sister, dead or alive.
Suddenly, I don’t want to know. Not in this world where we hail from—and I’m the one trained to have the stomach for our cruelest depravity.
“How the hell are we going to find her, Nicky?”
Matteo’s voice is a guttural plead, and when I meet his gaze as I hand him his drink, he’s distraught.
“Mom’s gone,” he continues. “The Don is fucking dead. So is Franco Fiore?—”
“The retired capos will know something,” I say as I sit again. “And we have Ariana Morelli. Maybe she’s the real deal.”
Matteo smirks as he wipes his face and drops back in his seat. “And when last was something so fucking easy?”
Never.
“We don’t have time to lose, Matty. She could be anywhere, subjected to—” It’s time to be frank with him and tell him what I know. “Ariana has Randazzo’s seal tattooed on her stomach. She has scarification on her lower belly?—”
“What the fuck?” he growls.
“It was Franco’s handiwork, but who are we going to kill for doing that to her? Franco and Randazzo are both dead.”
“I should have fucking listened to what he wanted to say.”
“No regrets, Matteo. It’s done. It needed to be done.” My brother is gutted, but I stand and walk over to meet him halfway. “Any one of us would have done exactly the same. In fact, if I could kill him again for all of us, I would.” I squeeze him by the shoulder. “We have resources and the means to figure this out. It’s just going to be a matter of time.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“So let’s stop fucking around. How do you want to do this?’
“Pull in Luca and Benedict. Stephano is out for the count.” He rakes a hand through his hair. “Gigi needs to see Don Trapani and make sure he’s safe. Steph will fly out with them to Italy as soon as Carla can travel.”
Fair enough. “Okay. I’ll have to ask Gigi a few questions before they go, though. She might know something, if unwittingly. Vincenzo is still around for what he’s worth, and with his connection with Franco, he might know something if I ask the right questions.”
“Sure, but then he’s done.”
Yep. Matteo doesn’t need to remind me Vincenzo’s days are numbered.
“I’ll need help going through the Don’s paperwork. If there is any trail of what happened all those years ago, it will be here. At least we now have something to look for rather than going through endless papers, having to decide if they’re keepers or tossers.”
“Rosalia can help. Portia might know something, too.”
Great. To think Rosalia and her mom could be into some of the family secrets and never squeaked a word. We’re going to have to pull everybody who worked for the Don at that time into this investigation. Somewhere, someone must know something.
“I’ll get the DNA results and start asking questions.”
“Focus on Ariana Morelli,” Matteo says. “She isn’t a coincidence. Franco didn’t drag her all the way here for nothing.”
I drop my gaze. “She hasn’t been very talkative.”
“I’m not surprised. If she’s one of Randazzo’s girls—” A shudder runs through his body. “Truth be told, it’s a miracle we have one of his women in our care. I bet none of them make it out alive. Who knows what she’s been through.”
But we both know. Sex trafficking. Forced prostitution. Chemical submission until she can’t resist anymore and does whatever someone asks just for a hit. Except for the tattoo and those tally marks on her skin which appeared to be new, I haven’t noticed any track marks of injection scars to hint she’s an addict.
“I’m not wringing information out of her, Matteo.” Fuck knows, that’s the one line I haven’t crossed in my life. I don’t care who she is or what she’s done. I don’t need to torture a woman for information. I’d rather end her and myself before I go there. The next words could cost me, since Matteo is now the Don and I’m his to command, but I don’t care. “I refuse.”
Matteo draws his chin back as if he’s offended. “I never suggested you torture her like one of those Bratva wannabes we’ve locked in the basement.”
“Thanks for that fucking reminder,” I huff out. Another issue I still have to deal with.
“There are other ways to make a woman talk,” he fills in.
Fucking hell. He’s going there?
“Is that so?”
“For one, we can send in the calvary, now that we have one.”
“The calvary?” I ask, hitching my brows. What is he on about?
“Tasha and Gigi. Surely, Ariana will open up to them? Let the women talk. They’d like nothing better than a good chit-chat over a cup of tea.”
A chit-chat? Over a cup of tea? So it’s not… Never mind. I smirk. I’ve never heard Matteo use those words before, never mind in one sentence. “You think?”
“And if that doesn’t work—” he reaches for my shoulder to squeeze me in the exact way I squeezed him minutes ago, “—you of all people know best how to make a woman submit to you, don’t you, Nicky?”
Fuck. He was going there. He only took a detour.
A weighty beat of silence bounces off the walls of the office as I stare at him.
“What the actual fuck, Matty? Can you listen to yourself for a second?” I hiss, incredulous. My brothers know what I’m into sexually, but fuck, it’s not on the agenda for discussion—ever. I don’t prod and poke around their fucking sex lives, and the least they can do is leave mine the fuck alone. And now— “You’re calmly suggesting I seduce her—to the point of her begging me to fuck her—for information? A woman who has been prostituted, violated, used? A woman who could be our little sister?”
Matteo is already at the door and opening it to leave when he throws back at me, “We both know Ariana Morelli isn’t our little sister.”
Right. As if that makes anything better.