22. Dominic
22
DOMINIC
For someone who has Randazzo’s seal tattooed on her lower belly, she blushes like a virgin while watching a man take off his shirt. And it makes my body react in places I’d rather it not given how?—
God just fucking help me here already. Ariana Morelli is the last woman on this planet I should think of sexually. Reminder: she could be my sister . And even if she isn’t, I have no business with a woman from Italy who has been trafficked to the States.
Our crime is ‘clean,’ and she is a stain that won’t come out.
Il Consiglio has steered clear from anything that level of illegal for years. The Don was never really into this type of shit to start off with. When it came to women, he was a real man-whore, and to say it straight, he was the last fucking guy who should have ever been let loose around women in the first place, but human trafficking? Nope. There are other jobs way less dirty, with easier money, less risk, and a better return on investment. And then came Matteo with bitcoin, Benedict with his hacking, Luca and Stephano with their e-commerce and clubs, all built on the foundation of the real estate empire the Don built. Money-wise, we’re untouchable.
We don’t traffic people, yet here I have a woman, in my bedroom, and she isn’t here of her own free will.
Brushing the thought away for now—because what the fuck are we actually going to do with her once those DNA results come back—I slide a light grey shirt from a hanger and dress again, making sure she only sees my good side. In the dimmed light and with my tattoos, she won’t see much to start off with, but I don’t want to show her the proof of my experience in the field of torture.
It’s quiet as we head back to the kitchen, but I observe her all the way. She’s trying to be subtle about it, but this one is on high alert all the time. She’s counting the doors, the steps from one place to the next, the light switches as we pass them, mapping the layout of the house as we go.
One thing is for sure, I can’t afford to take my eyes off her or let my guard down. Couldn’t leave her in the kitchen either. She’d probably wait for me around a corner with a knife and stab it right into a main artery. We caught her escape attempt on camera at the clinic, and Luca and I watched it a few times once we were done in the basement—we’d deal with Boris’s revelation soon enough, but first, our other guest. On the footage, she ran around as if she had her escape plan all mapped out. Something about this woman tells me we shouldn’t underestimate her.
When we’re back in the kitchen, I hand her a plate, and we sit down at the kitchen island. For several minutes, we’re busy dishing up from the various containers, and when I take a bite of my marinara, it’s already cold.
“Do you want to heat yours up?” I ask, breaking the tense silence which has stretched all the way from my bedroom.
“I’m good, thank you. This is delicious.”
She’s already two bites down, and my thoughts turn back to Franco and how she watched on as Stephano beat him to death. Then my mind flips over to the business this afternoon. She watched her tormentor being brutally killed, and I, in turn, became the monster who took photos of Igor Petrov’s long-lost fucking nephew where he hung strangled, before we let him drop to the floor. More photos. Evidence. Proof. To verify the other fucking Boris’s wild claim if we need to.
If I did kill a nephew of Igor Petrov, irrelevant how many times removed, I’ve fucked up. Badly. And there’s a kink in our armor. A weak link. One I’m going to have to fix.
I still haven’t spoken to Matteo, and Luca only raised his hands in a What the? and What the fuck now? and How fucked are we? gestures. We decided to defer admitting to the fuckup until tomorrow.
For now, Boris and Boryslav are in the walk-in fridge in the basement, but they can’t stay there indefinitely. Especially not once Petrov starts asking about the whereabouts of his two favorite Borises, one being his fucking nephew.
I’m too tired to figure it out tonight, but the question really is how do Fiore, Petrov, and this woman connect? It could all just be coincidence. Luckily, Vincenzo still has a tongue, and he will talk. Tomorrow is going to be a motherfucker.
Whether this woman is connected to this mess or not, she’s right in the middle of it, and it’s time I start figuring her out. If she really heard anything from what happened in the basement, she’d know better than to test me.
“Want to tell me how you know Franco Fiore?” I ask, taking my food from the microwave.
“We grew up together,” she says, without missing a beat. She glances up at me where I’ve frozen with my plate hovering above the counter. “Well, technically, he was already grown up.”
“You grew up together?” I repeat, shocked to my core.
If she grew up with Franco, she’s as Mafia as any of us. I don’t know why I was thinking she’s an innocent woman who got lured into a human trafficking ring run by Randazzo.
“My mom died when I was eight, and I was put into foster care in Franco’s uncle’s home. He was already twenty-two at that time and only around at random times.”
“I see, he’s fourteen years older than you. How old are you now?”
“Twenty-seven.”
See, no chance in hell this woman is our sister. She looks young, but it’s her slight build and delicate frame giving her the gangly look of a girl who hadn’t filled out her curves yet. I’m not sure if that’s because she’s been starved or just her genetics. Either way, Gabriella will be twenty-two years old now, so the ages don’t match.
“So Franco was forty-one when he died.” Not a bad innings for someone that fucked up.
“Yes.” She looks down and stirs the food in her plate. Mentioning his death could kill anybody’s appetite.
I wasn’t expecting her to open up like this. “Where in Italy?”
“Franco’s uncle had a small holding in Calabria. Between Vena di Maida and Cortale, literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“And what’s his name?”
She hesitates just a millisecond, signaling to me she isn’t sure she should share this information. “Antonio Mancuso. He lives on a small holding where he farms pigs.”
“Okay.” Why does that name sound so familiar? I make a mental note to get information on this guy. It might come in handy. “And who were your parents?” Her dad must have been dead by the time her mom had died for her to go into foster care.
“My mom was an international student from Finland who went to study Italian and Archeology in Italy. She fell in with the wrong crowd…or rather, she fell in love with the wrong man on an extended excavation in Sicily.”
I quirk a brow. That’s fucked up. And that explains her Nordic looks. “You speak Finnish, then?”
“Not really. My mom never went back to Finland because she fell pregnant with me and then she died?—”
“How?”
She puts her fork down and stares at me. “I feel like I’m being interrogated.”
You are. I shrug. “Just imagine you’re on a bad date with some douchebag you swiped right on when you should have swiped left.”
This makes her chuckle, but then her face falls. “She died in a car crash.”
Our eyes lock, and so many things hang in the air between us. Terrible. Sad. Heartbreaking. Sudden. Convenient .
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say as I put my fork down. “And your dad?”
She sighs. “Can I have some water?”
“Sure.” I get up and pull two chilled waters from the fridge, keeping my eyes on her, but she’s dropped her gaze to her plate and is thumbing a paper napkin as if she has food on her hand that won’t come off.
“Here.” I uncap a bottle and hold it out to her.
“Thanks.” She takes a deep sip and as she puts the bottle down adds, “Except for money, he wasn’t in the picture much. He’s dead in any case, so…”
So… Nice. She’s pulling one of my own on me by letting that hang. I bet it was deliberate.
Mom dead. Dad dead. Already in Franco’s uncle’s care. Antonio Mancuso. Now I remember. He’s one of Randazzo’s henchman if I recall correctly when Benedict scoured the dark net for anything he could find out about Franco. From her birth, this woman was on the slippery slide into prostitution. So why the blush earlier, then? Why did she cower when I stood in the room and came two steps closer, in the most non-threatening way I, with my size, could muster?
And why the fuck is she counting the number of knives on the knife block on the other side of the kitchen?
I know better than to believe anything she says to me, especially when it all comes out without a glitch.
Oh, sweetheart, we been paired up at birth already to dance this little tango. I can’t wait to figure out what game you are playing, and what your next move is going to be.
Except I don’t have the time or the patience for fun and games.
Time to test this little one.