21. ~Caterina~
21
~Caterina~
I was seething internally as I read over the contract my father had shoved into my hands just moments after I’d walked in here.
Angelo had informed him that he’d let the reason for this meeting slip, so he’d just gotten right down to it.
I looked across the desk at the almighty Santino Leone lounging back in his leather chair as he typed rapidly on his phone, not paying my review of the contract any mind.
“You’re sentencing your own daughter to a life of abuse, degradation, and humiliation?” I finally spoke after almost ten minutes of silence descending over the room while I’d read over the despicable details and terms laid out in front of me.
“I warned you that there would be a price to pay for severing ties with the Family.”
“Your sadistic side is showing, Father.” I shook my head. “I just never thought it would be directed straight at me. Your blood.”
“You’re no longer my blood, as far as I’m concerned.” A twisted smile curled his lips. “But you are a bargaining chip, a pawn to be used as I see fit.”
“Has Dante seen this? Matteo even?”
His smile slipped, giving him away easily.
“I didn’t think so. This has Angelo’s vindictiveness all over it.”
“Show some respect,” he ordered.
“Why? You’re already condemning me. You also just told me you don’t consider me family, so I’m not one of you, not bound by your rules.”
He shot from his chair and rounded the desk toward me.
I straightened in my seat and braced myself as he leaned in threateningly, slapping his hands down on the arms of the chair and bringing the full Santino intimidation to the surface. “You’ll do this. You’ll solidify this alliance for me, this new day for both families, by marrying Nico Marchetti. Should you refuse, the consequences will be dire indeed, my dear.”
“What consequences?” I demanded, staring up at him.
“I’ll destroy everything you’ve built. Firebomb that club of yours until it’s nothing but a fucking cinder box. I’ll send my soldiers in to rape every single woman in your all-female lounges, ripping apart the notion that it’s a safe and empowering place for them. And then I’ll bury your fucking mother alive while you watch, standing there helplessly as she chokes to death right before your eyes.”
Rip his throat out.
My eyes darted to the letter opener on his desk.
It would be so easy, especially because he wouldn’t be expecting it, to lunge forward, snatch it up, then drive it into his carotid artery. He’d bleed out all over me, begging for his miserable life, a life that would be beyond saving.
“You’d really do that to Mom?”
“I’ve kept her around because she provides a certain level of legitimacy to me, being the respected figure she is throughout the city. Her skills also come in handy now and then. Her charity work diverts attention away from certain other activities and it’s beautifully convenient to launder our dirty funds through too. However, there’s no mercy for betrayal.”
“What betrayal?”
“A few weeks ago, I had a medical emergency that I needed her assistance with. A woman had been injured, somebody who was important to my business dealings. Your mother pretended that a hospital visit was needed rather than her fixing the woman up herself. And then she used the shift in location to help the bitch escape. As if that wasn’t bad enough, a facility housing many more of these bitches was compromised. It didn’t take much to put the pieces together. She hired some sort of militia to pull that off.”
Fucking shit. “Mom is away on a long and well-earned vacation.”
“Then she obviously put it in place before she left.”
“No. She wouldn’t betray you like that. Not to mention, she keeps out of your affairs and is very much focused on her own career and her charity work.”
“You hold her in too high regard. Her loyalty is obviously broken, just like yours.”
Well, if cheating on her repeatedly over the years hadn’t done it, her discovering his human trafficking enterprises certainly had.
“You’ve had countless affairs, yet her loyalty is in question?”
He slapped me across the face, the force of it making my head snap to the side.
I gritted my teeth at the insult of it, as well as the bitching sting. Nothing compared to getting stabbed, but still.
“I’ll call her back here off her vacation right the hell now, Caterina. And as soon as she steps foot back in the city, I’ll have Angelo bury her. Or you submit to this marriage between you and Marco’s boy and everything laid out in that contract.”
“This family, the Leone name, it used to mean something. But you’ve destroyed it. You’ve destroyed everything. In your greed and thirst for ultimate power and supremacy over the other two families.”
He backhanded me this time, and I hissed as I felt his chunky rings scrape across my cheek. Before I could catch my breath from it, he clamped his hand around my throat, cutting off my airflow and squeezing like a real bitch.
“You will submit to the will of the Leone Family, my girl,” he hissed in my face.
The door flew open all of a sudden and I heard footsteps coming in behind me.
My father released me abruptly and moved away from me.
Choking, I turned to see none other than Nico standing there in the doorway alongside Dante Rivera, the Underboss of the Leone Family.
Dante shoved a hand through his shaggy salt-and-pepper hair, his leather jacket pulling taut across all that broad muscle with his every slight movement.
His gaze flicked to me briefly, and I saw concern there in his deep-blue eyes. Concern I remembered from my childhood when he’d been one of my main guards, long before he’d been promoted.
As for Nico, he didn’t look at me at all.
His gaze was trained on my father and completely unreadable.
He was stiff as a board, though. Definitely on edge, but doing an admirable job of hiding it from my father, who didn’t know him as well as I did, given my close observations over the years during our little war.
“Sorry, Boss,” Dante offered. “He insisted on seeing you right away. Given the nature of our new arrangement with the Marchetti Syndicate, I was certain you’d want to accommodate him.”
“Yes, of course. Leave us, Dante,” my father spoke, while gesturing for Nico to enter.
He did, and Dante closed the door behind him.
“What can I do for you, Nico?” my father asked in a fake pleasant tone, shoving all his bubbling rage down in an instant, like the psychopath he truly was.
I rose from the chair and stepped away from the desk, needing to be free of it and the trapped position I’d been forced into. I wiped the blood from my cheek with my fingers, then sucked in several deep breaths, trying to fight off an attack from the claustrophobic nature of it all. As if it hadn’t been bad enough to endure that limo ride with Angelo earlier.
“I’ve come to cement my commitment to our plans.”
“It was clear to me that you are already committed.” He thumbed me over his shoulder. “Caterina was about to do the same and sign the contract. Her resistance is becoming tiresome, however.”
“Clearly, she needs a reality check. Something my father asked me to come here to provide.”
Before anything more could be said, Nico walked to me and dropped to one knee.
In the next second, he was pulling a diamond engagement ring from the pocket of his leather jacket.
I studied him, my mouth agape.
This hadn’t been part of the plan.
What was going on?
He wasn’t supposed to propose like this.
It was meant to be well-choreographed and set a few days from now.
“Be my wife.”
No question to it at all.
It was a demand.
Worse, it was a certainty.
Already set in stone.
Already having been decided for me.
My fate had been sealed by men who believed themselves to be my betters, and the weight of it all settled over me in the most awful way.
My betters?
What a load of bullshit.
That was just something they couldn’t be made aware of yet.
Nico caught my eye discreetly while my father was stunned into inaction and trying to absorb the scene before him.
It was a warning, a reminder that this needed to be done, to play along, for my sake as much as his.
Shit. Sometimes you had to play a long game in order to win.
And some victories were worth everything.
Every fucking sacrifice.
So, I steeled myself, plastered on my best fake and sugary sweet smile and bowed my head while holding out my left hand. “Yes,” I told him.
Nico’s eye twitched, and I briefly saw his mask slip.
“Good,” my father spoke, as he rounded his desk and snatched up one of his Montblanc pens.
Nico slipped the ring onto my finger, blood from my skin smearing it. That was about right.
He rose to his feet, then winked at me while my father was distracted.
Unfortunately, that asshole was back all too soon and shoving a pen into my hand, while he then held out the contract on the signatory page, Nico’s signature already there.
I stepped forward, then scrawled my signature across it.
Triumph shone from my father. “Now then, Nico, if you don’t mind, I have a few more things to discuss with my daughter.”
“Actually, I do mind. I’d like to drive her home.” A twisted smile played on his face, but it didn’t reach his eyes. There was no expression there at all. It was the mask again. “Prepare her for what this marriage will entail.”
Sadism lit up my father’s face as he realized what Nico was saying, obviously referring to the things outlined in the contract. “Hmm, I approve. Very much so. But ensure you don’t sully the merchandise before the wedding night, yes?”
My fists clenched white-hot.
“Of course not,” Nico actually managed to tell him with a straight face.
Jeez, he was something else. He and Julian both when it came to this sort of thing.
“Go then,” my father said. “Make haste.”
Nico turned and headed for the door.
As I followed him out, dragging my feet to portray my reluctance, my father called out, “You’re bound by this now, Caterina. Remember what I warned you about. Fall in line.”
I gritted my teeth and then Nico opened the door and ushered me out.