Chapter 6
SALVATORE
Ileft.
I walked out of the house and to the six-car garage, a building separate from the main house.
Taking the keys from the locked box by the door, I chose the Bugatti and climbed inside.
I turned the key, the engine crisp and sharp in the early morning quiet.
The gates opened, and the tires squealed as I left the property and drove onto the lonely single-lane road.
I opened it up then, enjoying the rush as my body pressed back into the seat, the car’s powerful engine roaring, taking the turns tightly, my foot pressing harder and harder on the accelerator.
Who the fuck was I? What in hell had I just done, humiliating Lucia like that? Hurting her. Christ. Fuck.
I was a monster.
I inhaled and exhaled short, audible breaths, my stomach tight, the muscles of my arms clenched as I fisted the steering wheel hard.
She got under my skin. This barely twenty-one-year-old woman whom I fucking owned got under my fucking skin every single fucking time.
I needed to control her for so many reasons.
But I couldn’t do it this way. Fuck. I’d scared the piss out of her, literally.
Her eyes—they hadn’t accused me. No. They’d been terrified of me.
“Fuck!” I punched the side of my fist against the steering wheel.
A car turned a blind corner, surprising me, his horn honking, waking me from wherever the fuck I was. I jerked the steering wheel, and the Bugatti swerved onto the side of the road, missing the car by inches.
“Shit!”
The man in the other vehicle flipped me off.
“Fuck you!” Not that he heard me. My windows were up.
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket as I slowed to a full stop.
The display on the Bluetooth said it was Roman.
I got out, rubbed my face with both hands, and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.
The phone stopped, then started again. I dug into my pocket and fished it out.
“Roman,” I said after sliding the Talk button. I walked a few steps away to look over the deserted road, the dewy grass sparkling in the sun, the morning quiet apart from the birds chirping in the trees.
“Morning, Salvatore.”
“You’re calling early.”
“I wanted to talk to you. I tried to call last night but couldn’t catch you.”
“What is it, Roman?” Was this about the meeting? Luke DeMarco?
“Your father wants to be sure you’ll be attending his birthday dinner.”
“You’re calling me about that?” It was at the end of the following week, and of course I’d be there. There was no way for me not to be. Unless I wanted to give Dominic ammunition.
“He wanted to invite you and Lucia to spend the night.”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll drive home.”
“He insists.”
I took a deep breath. The party was going to be held at the house in the Adirondacks, but I’d have driven four hours each way rather than spend more time in that house with him.
“Of course,” I said, understanding.
“Listen, there’s one more thing.”
I waited.
“Your brother.”
He paused, and I could hear him measuring his words.
“I just thought you should know he met with your father late last night.”
My father had gone back to the house in Calabria after I’d left for New Jersey. “So?” I asked, not surprised. He’d been pissed to have been left out of our meeting.
“He’s stirring the pot, Salvatore.”
“What’s new with that?” I’d known my uncle all my life. He was an intelligent man. He was also a businessman. He knew what would happen if Dominic, rather than I, took over the family. And he somehow had a calming effect on my father. Sergio had trusted him. And I trusted Sergio.
“Nothing is new, but now that you’re…distracted…with your houseguest, he’s suggesting he take care of the DeMarco problem.”
“Take care of it how?”
“Take out Luke DeMarco. Make an example.”
I shook my head, although Roman couldn’t see. “Fucking typical. This is my problem to deal with. Not his.”
“He’s got your father’s ear.”
“That’s not news.”
“It’s different this time, Salvatore,” he said heavily.
“When are they flying home?”
“Late afternoon. I’m flying with them.”
Silence again, but I could tell he had something to say.
“Franco won’t give the word just yet, but you need to know what’s going on.”
“Thank you, Uncle.”
I hung up and pocketed my phone. I didn’t want to deal with Dominic’s jealous aggressions right now. I had other things on my mind. I needed to get back. Talk to her. Explain that I wasn’t a fucking monster.
She’d said she had no friends and refused to see her family. Well, we had more in common than she knew. She’d learned to hate my family over the last five years. Learned to hate everyone, maybe. I just, stupidly enough, didn’t want her to hate me.
I got back into the car, started the engine, and drove an hour to the cemetery.
I came here more often than I probably should.
Parking close to the family plot, I got out.
The heat and humidity seemed to want to suffocate me after the air-conditioned drive.
I stopped and picked up a dozen white Calla lilies from the flower store a block away, my mom’s favorite, and headed up the small hill.
The ground beneath my feet felt soft here, damp and covered in moss.
A small gate surrounded the plot of land housing many of the Benedetti family.
I walked my usual path, reading off the names of the dead in my head, noting the number of years each had lived. Too many damn lives cut short.
But this was what we did. We killed. We died. And for what?
I reached the spot where my mother’s and brother’s headstones stood side by side.
I tossed the dying flowers, the ones I’d brought the last time I’d come, and replaced them with fresh ones.
I pulled out some weeds and scraped dirt off the inscriptions on both their tombstones, noting the year of birth and death on Sergio’s grave.
He’d been a year older than I was now. Married.
His wife pregnant when he died. It wasn’t fucking fair.
When it had happened, I’d been broken. He was my one ally, my friend.
He’d known how to become boss. Our father loved him and yet, Sergio wasn’t like him.
Not at all. He’d been gunned down at a gas station.
A stupid, cowardly drive-by. He’d deserved a better death than that. And he’d deserved a life first.
My father had retaliated, but something didn’t sit right with me.
In fact, the whole thing stank. They’d blamed a smaller family from Philadelphia, one that was supposed to have been loyal to us.
Somehow, evidence had turned up incriminating them.
But it didn’t make sense, not then, not now.
My father had been crazed, though. He’d loved Sergio, and he’d simply reacted, killed off the boss’s sons. Effectively ending the family.
I was supposed to have been with Sergio at the meeting he was coming home from, but I’d been sick. In a way, it felt like I’d cheated death, but then, if I had been there, maybe Sergio wouldn’t have died. Maybe things would have gone differently.
I never said much when I came to the cemetery and never stayed long.
Just showed up. Wanted them to know I hadn’t forgotten them.
I got back in the car and headed toward Natalie’s house.
Natalie was Sergio’s wife. Apart from her friendship with me, she’d cut off ties with the family after his and my mother’s deaths.
She hated my father and brother. She hated the life.
But she had loved my brother, knowing the cost of that love.
My father hadn’t really allowed her to walk away, though.
Not with her bringing his first grandchild into the world.
Jacob Sergio Benedetti was born six months after Sergio’s murder.
Natalie had purposely not given him an Italian first name, which had pissed off my father.
Jacob was one and a half years old now. I knew she worried about what demands my father would put on her as Jacob grew older, but she kept those mostly to herself.
My father supported them financially. As much as I knew Natalie hated it, she needed the money.
And as long as she took it, Franco gave her the space she wanted. I guess he figured he owned her anyway.
I dialed Natalie’s number on my cell phone. She answered after the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
“Natalie, it’s me, Salvatore.”
“Hey, Salvatore. How are you?”
“Okay.” Not really. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine. Just playing with Jacob.”
“Can I drop by?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” I said quickly, then added, “you know.” Natalie was the one person who knew me for who I really was. I trusted Marco, my bodyguard, but he didn’t know this side of me. I didn’t trust anyone enough to share this vulnerability. Too many people ready and waiting for weakness.
“Come on over.”
“Thanks. See you in twenty minutes.”
I drove to her house, a two-story brick home about forty-five minutes from mine.
Her parents lived nearby, and she’d moved here specifically to be close to them.
When I rang the doorbell, Natalie answered with Jacob perched on her hip.
He still wore his pajamas and held the stuffed animal I’d given him on his first birthday.
He gave me a huge gummy smile. He only had three teeth, although I could see the fourth one was working its way in.
“Wow, haven’t you grown.” I took Jacob from Natalie’s arms. He wrapped his arms around my neck and planted a wet kiss on my face.
“Nice,” Natalie said. “You look…not so good.”
She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek after wiping off the mark Jacob had left.
“Come in.”
I put Jacob down on the floor among his toys, which seemed to be everywhere.
“Espresso?”
“Please.” I took a seat on the couch and watched Jacob play while Natalie made espresso and then joined me in the living room.
“How was the funeral?”
“Shitty.” I took a sip of the espresso she handed me, dark and rich and bitter as hell, just the way I liked it. “He’s got Sergio’s eyes,” I said, taking the toy Jacob held out to me.
Natalie stroked the little boy’s hair. “And his stubborn streak.”
“I don’t know. I think you may both be responsible for that one.”
She smiled. “You could be right on that. What’s up, Salvatore?”
“Lucia’s home with me.”
Natalie nodded, knowing the situation. “How’s that going?”
“Well, she’s been there less than twenty-four hours, and I think I’ve fucked it up pretty well.” I drank the last sip of espresso.
“Want to talk about it?”
What could I tell her? What could I tell her that wouldn’t make me sound like a monster? Like my father. Hell, he would have been proud of me this morning.
“She hates me, as expected. She is battling me at every turn. Stubborn as hell.”
“She’s only been with you since the funeral?”
I nodded.
“Then you must really be pissing her off.” She winked. “Just give her some space. It’s a huge change for her, and her father just died. Suicide, right?”
“Looked that way.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t believe anything unless I see it with my own two eyes.”
She studied me but dropped it. “What’s she like?”
“Pretty. Young. Scared. She spit on my father at the funeral. Or tried to but missed.” I chuckled.
“Tough too, then. I like her already.”
“And full of hate for us. Rightfully so. I guess that’s where I’m torn. She can’t get out of this. Neither of us can.” I paused. “Until death do us part.”
“That’s not too creepy.” Natalie looked away for a moment.
“That’s the wording in the contract. Like a marriage contract, but different. And if I die before her, Dominic inherits her. Like she’s a fucking thing. My father has a sick sense of humor, as you know.”
Her lip curled at the mention of his name. “Do you want to get out of it?”
Her question startled me. I answered without hesitation. “No.”
“You like her.”
I studied Natalie and felt the need to correct what she said. Whether that correction was for my benefit or hers, I wasn’t sure. “I feel some obligation to her.”
She snorted.
“Besides, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t get out of it. And she certainly couldn’t. I don’t want her to hate me.”
“Give her some space and some time, Salvatore,” Natalie said, touching my hand. “She just needs to really see you, like I do. She only sees the Benedetti name right now. The Benedetti family, the one that destroyed hers.”
She was right.
“Maybe you could…”
Natalie shook her head. “I’m sorry, I can’t. I can’t be a part of that anymore.” Tears welled in her eyes.
“I understand. It’s okay. I just think she needs some friends or something.”
“I’m sorry, I just—”
I touched her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
An awkward silence hung between us.
“Do you need anything?” I finally asked.
She shook her head. “No, we’re fine. We’re good.”
“You’ll call me if you do, right?”
“I promise.”
“I miss Sergio.” My eyes felt hot.
“Me too.” Natalie wiped hers before leaning against my chest. I hugged her, rubbing her back.
“Hey, I’m going to take Jacob to the beach a little later. Why don’t you come with us?”
I nodded, not really having to think about it. I didn’t want to go home. I’d bury my head in the sand for a little bit longer. “I’d like that.”
“Good.”
Jacob stood then, holding out two of the farm animals he was playing with. Both were a little wet from drool, but I took them. He stood leaning against my legs, babbling.
“That so?” I asked, not really understanding a word he said.
Natalie chuckled and stood. “More coffee?”
“Sure.”
“Hey, Jacob, Uncle Salvatore’s going to come with us to the beach. What do you think of that, honey?
Jacob leaned his face into my leg and smiled, still “talking.” I made out the word beach then something sounding like uncle in there before he gave me a cuddle. I cuddled him back.
I’d spend the day here. It would be good for me. And I’d think about what Natalie said about giving Lucia time and space. I could do that. It would help me get my thoughts figured out.