Chapter 6
DOM
I had to stop for fast food, and after a week of eating dirt and gnawing on half-cooked venison, it’s doing a number on my intestines. The drive to Turi’s house is long enough that if I didn’t grab something, I’d complete my transformation into a giant, hungry, hairy man-beast. No one wants that.
“Hey, Dom! Where’s my deer? I’ve been going hungry over here,” he calls out over the dark lawn.
The image of my new wife with that hunk of raw venison in her bare hands flashes in my mind.
“Better not let Conchetta hear you say that!” I let out a slightly forced laugh and grab my dick, thrusting in his direction. “But don’t worry, buddy, I got a mouthful for you right here.”
Eduardo bursts into laughter as I enter the house.
I like Eduardo. He’s a simple, reliable man. If a joke involves farts or dicks, he’s going to laugh.
I follow my nose into the kitchen for a quick detour before I check in with Turi.
Conchetta, the tiny, ancient grandma Turi employs as his head chef, drops a ladle into a big soup pot with a splash when she sees me.
Tonight, it’s just her and the other cook, Nola, which means the rest of the men must be out on the streets.
Nola gives me a beaming smile and a friendly wave before returning to the huge bowl of garlic in front of her.
Conchetta scurries down from the step stool she uses to reach the stove and darts over to me.
“Little Dom!” she says in Italian, even though she comes up to my nipples.
I lean over so she can pull me into a hug, and as I stand back up, she snipes a sharp pinch on my belly fat.
“You’ve lost weight,” she says in the same tone a parent would use to admonish their kid for getting a tattoo.
“Yeah, Mother Nature’s a cruel bitch sometimes.”
Conchetta swats me. “Language!”
I gesture to one of her huge pearl earrings. “You got a man, Conchetta? Or just one of your many admirers?”
She touches one of the earrings fondly. “A gift from Marisol. She’s a sweet girl.”
I glance over at Nola, who’s also sporting a new set of diamond earrings. Figures Turi’s foodie wife would set herself to bribing the kitchen staff. I can’t tell if I’m impressed or pissed I didn’t think of it first.
Conchetta waves me to the stools at the kitchen bar. After all that shit at dinner, my soul rests a little lighter knowing Aldo died in this very kitchen. Junior died in Turi’s basement, but sometimes in life, you gotta accept compromises.
“I made your favorite, fava bean soup,” she says, although she literally says that about every meal she cooks for me, and she’s never wrong. “Sit down, I’ll bring you a bowl.”
I know better than to disobey her, so I pull out a stool and balance on top.
Conchetta’s only supposed to be getting me a single bowl, but I don’t argue as she loads a big plate with cut meats, bread, and cheese to snack on first. She reminds me so much of my own mom that way—using food as a love language.
“Eduardo said you were bringing us back fresh venison,” Nola calls to me without looking up from the delicate garlic skins she’s peeling away.
Thankfully, Conchetta brings over my plate at that moment to distract me from thoughts of the woman and the deer at my house. I just ate, but my stomach growls again at the sight.
“I bet that wife of his is hoarding it all,” Conchetta says without malice.
I choke on my first bite and have to cough to clear my throat.
“That’s what I’d be doing. Is she a good cook, Little Dom? I’m a little worried you’re so hungry after coming back. If she needs to learn, bring her here, and I’ll teach her. That’s what happens when you marry for looks—empty bellies.”
Nola nods solemnly behind Conchetta’s back, even though she’s also stunningly beautiful and recently got engaged to one of Turi’s soldiers, Camillo, and I know that bastard will never go hungry with her around.
I think of the focaccia and steak steaming off my plate back home and that cold, cold beer dripping with condensation. I fix on a grin and point it at Conchetta.
“She’s a great cook, but you know I always save room for you, bella.”
Conchetta rolls her eyes, but a blush colors her wrinkled cheeks as she turns back to her cooking.
Once I have a belly full of good food, I head upstairs to Turi, with a huge bowl of perfectly cut strawberries in hand, “for that sweet angel wife of Turi.” I don’t bother knocking as I key the code into the door of the nerd lair he calls his watchtower.
Inside, the room is cool, and a couple of skinny lamps light the corners.
Most of the light comes from the thirty computer monitors hanging over Turi’s huge desk.
From the opposite side of the room, about a dozen monitors hang over his wife’s desk—no, thirteen.
She adds a new one every time I visit. On the last wall, instead of windows or anything that could remind you that you weren’t stuck in a dark cave, a huge network of beige interconnected cat towers threads together against the wall.
Marisol’s asshole orange cat Buck narrows his eyes as I enter. I shoot him the middle finger.
Marisol hunches at her computer chair like a gargoyle, reaching past her legs to move her mouse around.
Instead of the usual sixteen bags of candy littering the top of her desk, she’s got a few bowls of fresh fruit that she occasionally stabs at with a single chopstick.
I will never understand why Turi obsessed over her so hard—she’s such a little freak.
She raises her hand in greeting without turning to me as I drop the bowl of fruit at her desk.
She still suspects I’m a rat for following Turi’s orders at that dinner and letting Barbara take her to the basement while I saved his daughter, even though she was never in any real danger. Leave it to a woman to hold a grudge over something you haven’t done. She’ll get over it eventually.
In contrast to his wife, Turi stands in a perfectly straight military posture as he stares at his computer monitors.
He must have come back from a meeting because his black tie is tossed on his desk.
The shape is suspiciously noose-shaped. I glance at Marisol, whose hair is messed up, and there are a few overturned trinkets on her desk.
Ugh.
“Is there a single square inch in this room that’s safe from a black light?” I ask as a greeting.
“No,” Marisol calls over her shoulder.
Turi doesn’t even blink. “How was the trip?”
“Good, I only got diarrhea twice.”
Turi’s jaw twitches, which is as close as I’ll get to a laugh from him. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”
“Yeah, well, turns out there’s a whole home invasion situation going on. Why the fuck is Serafina in my house?”
“She’s your wife.”
“She’s a little girl.”
Turi’s untouched. “Barbara said she wanted to live with you, and you said you’d protect her.”
I throw my hands up in the air. “Yeah, from Junior and Aldo! But they’re dead now, so why the fuck is she with me? Her sister’s dead. She needs therapy, not another old man pawing at her.”
“You’re not that old.”
“I’m pushing forty. She’s twenty.”
Turi does that stupid, annoying thing he likes to do when he wants to distance himself from an argument and turns away from me to change the images on a few of his computer monitors.
I recognize the inside of Red’s bedroom, the Capital, the street outside my house, and the camera that shows my own penthouse interior—the entrance to the elevators, the one I installed myself.
I wouldn’t admit under torture that I’m a little disappointed not to see Serafina.
“I imagine she was scared,” he says. “The Family deals with instability through marriage, and the beautiful, virginal daughter of an established consigliere is a powerful bargaining chip. She knows you, and better for me to strengthen the Family from within than look to outsiders. Unless you’d prefer we marry her to one of the New York capi?
Nico?” A flash of annoyance crosses Turi’s face at the mention of his younger half-brother, and I have to admit I do get a little sick bubble of amusement from that.
“Better for her to marry a known factor than a strange man who might disrespect her.” Turi turns and makes eye contact with me. “Where’s your wedding ring?”
“I don’t have one.”
“You can cheat—with an outsider. You can put Serafina in a new apartment, you can keep her and find her a hobby, you can do whatever you’d like, but wear the damn ring. That’s an order.”
Goddammit.
I exhale. “Yes, boss.”
“You doing your rounds today? You should rest after your trip.”
“Yeah, well, if I don’t get a heavy dose of cigar smoke and cheap whiskey, I risk going feral.”
Turi shrugs, turning back to his monitors and changing a few more images. “I’ll fill you in.”
As he talks, my gaze drifts back to the camera in my penthouse, searching for a glimpse of the woman inside.
Turi’s suggestion of finding her a hobby chafes.
She’s not my kid. Why do I have to find her a fucking hobby?
If I’m wrong and it really is Serafina, I don’t even know what she likes to do.
Serafina was always into flower arrangements, piano, and ballet.
Everything in favor of looking beautiful—not that I can blame her, really.
She’s been training to be someone’s trophy wife since she was a kid.
It was Annetta I could understand. She did piano and ballet, too, but she also cooked. She could sew. She babysat. She liked photography.
When Annetta was sixteen, I’d come over to her house for dinner with her family.
I’d thought nothing of her absence through the entire meal until I stepped outside for a smoke with Barbara, and I spotted her.
She was lying perfectly still on her stomach on a blanket across the lawn, a big camera in hand, and peering through the lens without moving an inch.
I remember being impressed that a kid could be so patient and thinking it was a shame she hadn’t been born a man. She’d make a great hunting partner.
It was also then that I decided I’d stay away from her. Nothing good came from a man wanting to befriend a girl, and besides my lapse of judgment on her eighteenth birthday, I’d held to that.
“You get that?” Turi asks, one eyebrow raised.
I nod. He thinks the old-guard capos are conspiring against him—which, of course, they are.
They’re not going to appreciate our quick, violent change of power, and the only reason Turi isn’t on the chopping block is because he had the full support of his dad and the rest of the Commission in New York.
“Some of Aceto’s men are meeting for drinks,” I say, which is hardly intel. They meet for drinks almost every night. Aceto was the most vocal in favor of Turi’s promotion to don, so I’m curious to hear if he had anyone try to sway his vote behind the scenes. “I’ll go see about that.”
“Thanks.”
I glance back at the cameras.
“Can you send someone to trade shifts with Mauro? He’s old as fuck, and I’ll have to kill him if he can’t keep his eyes open.”
“I have two guards cycling to watch her, but I’ll add a third to the rotation,” Turi says with a stupid, private look of amusement.
I resist the urge to ask for more. We don’t need to waste resources to watch one girl cook dinner in a penthouse.
I do voice my other concern, the one that’s been nagging at me since…
since that dinner at Turi’s house when Serafina bit me.
She left a crescent-shaped wound, too. I resist the urge to pick at the still-healing skin.
“Turi, how closely have you been following Serafina in the past few weeks?”
“Seeing as how she seems to have little intention to overthrow me, not very.”
“What’re the odds the girls have switched?”
Turi throws me an annoyed look. “The odds that my consigliere has been lying to me and instead of marrying his virgin daughter, you’ve been tricked into marrying Chiarelli’s widow?”
A widow, huh? I didn’t realize her spineless husband had kicked the bucket. “Let’s say I got a gut feeling.”