Chapter 8 – DARIO
DARIO
I ’m soaking wet, hard enough to pound nails, and I stink like flowers and soap.
I grab a change of clothes, rinse off in a guest room shower, and head for my office. I pop my head in the surveillance room and tell Ray to keep an eye on Posy. The lock on the door is flimsy, but all the hallways and the grounds are monitored by CCTV. She can run, but she won’t get far.
She was so tired, though. I wanted to play with her, but she wouldn’t have been any fun.
I open my trading software and adjust some orders. It’s a sluggish day at the end of a slow quarter. I click a few buttons, make a million bucks. I could do this with my eyes closed.
I work for a few hours, but I never get settled. My dick’s at half mast, and I’ve got too much energy. I’d go down to the gym, but I don’t want to miss it when she wakes up.
How much sleep does she need anyway? She’s got to be up by lunch.
I drum my fingers on the polished desk and then wipe the smudges with my cuff. Satisfaction and nerves war in my chest.
I got her back. She ran, I caught her, and she was terrified. I can’t stop my lips from curving. She hung up on me, and I stuffed her in my trunk. It’s a bit like bringing a gun to a knife fight, but when I win, I do like to go big.
Finding her wasn’t a foregone conclusion, either.
Before that conversation with her boozy friend, we were on the wrong trail.
But as soon as we had the name Nevaeh Ellis, we were golden.
We ran her through the system. Her license had been used on a rental application that had been declined.
That got us in the right town. The investigator found her in less than a day.
Posy’s so bright, but she constantly sabotages herself. She trusts people, longs for affection and acceptance. She gets lonely. She wants to please. She’s as vulnerable in this world as a snail without a shell.
Why am I fascinated by her weakness?
I didn’t like it when she was gone, and knowing that she’s upstairs in my bed is unaccountably…pleasing.
She’s going to try and run again; she’s not a fool. I can’t keep her locked away forever. It’s a problem. I’m not that concerned. I like solving problems.
Figuring out how to keep her isn’t what’s unsettling. It’s the change.
The common wisdom, as best as I can tell, is that being raised by Rocco Volpe warped me.
Or God just blanked when making me. Who could say?
It was an issue when I was younger. I had to learn that hurting people came with consequences—messes that needed cleaning, hush money.
My father was always pissed that I was wasting his time with my penchant for inconvenient violence.
It’s no wonder Lucca and his crew constantly whaled on me. I was a strange kid. I get the sense that the older men thought my quirks could be beaten out of me, and they encouraged their boys to put me in my place. A medieval kind of remedy.
It didn’t work. I grew stronger. The beatings taught me to fight, and except for Lucca and Tomas, the others learned to fear me. And then I showed an aptitude for making money, and no one concerned themselves with “why” so much anymore.
My messes became acceptable. The cost of doing business.
If I had to guess, I’d say I’ve always been this way. I can’t remember being any different. Until now.
Now, I want . I want Posy to wake up. I want to know what she’s thinking. I want to pick up what I broke and fit the pieces back together until she’s exactly the way she was—but I want her to still see me like she does now. The way I truly am.
It doesn’t make sense. Why should everyone else in the world be a Claymation and this one woman is live action?
She’s pretty. Bright enough. Her bastard of a father taught her to be obliging. Seen and not heard, that sort of thing. There’s nothing special about her except that for some reason, her feelings are real to me.
And I don’t function well when she’s gone.
That makes her my weakness. For the moment. This isn’t how I’m made. I’m sure it’ll pass. Familiarity will breed contempt. When we first met, she wasn’t any different from anyone else except she played chess well. And then, one day, she won a close match, and she screeched, and I felt it.
It wasn’t novel like a new smell or shade of color. It was like all the air in the world was suddenly tinted pink. Like a glimpse at a new dimension.
I can recognize feelings, but only Posy’s are real . Only Posy’s matter .
I click the mouse. One quick trade. Five hundred thousand.
When is Posy waking up?
Did she fall asleep too suddenly? Her head did bounce when it hit the pavement. She was making sense in the tub, but what if she has a head injury? A slow bleed of some kind?
That’s highly unlikely. She didn’t complain of any pain. She wouldn’t though, would she? She’s scared. Overwhelmed. Exhausted. She’s a feast of feelings, and I’m hungry.
I reach for the phone, but it rings before I can find the number I’m looking for.
It’s Renelli.
“Yes.” I level my voice to hide my irritation.
He clears his phlegmy throat. “She’s back.”
Fuck.
How does he know?
Ray cleared the house when we brought her in. I banked on some time before dealing with Renelli. He’s going to need handling. He’s not going to like rescinding an order.
I grunt.
“You beat me to it,” he chuckles. There’s no humor in it.
“Of course.” I was motivated. His men were not.
He laughs again. “You’re an arrogant motherfucker, aren’t you?” He doesn’t wait for my answer. “But with your skills, you can be.”
He’s speaking the truth, but he leaves part unsaid.
He needs me, and he hates me for it. Without me, he’s a dinosaur with a dwindling protection racket, waxing sentimental about the days when he ran the numbers.
But my Midas touch made the Renelli organization relevant again.
He’s in power because I have no interest in wearing the crown, and he knows it, and it galls him.
I don’t respond. It’s understood between us.
“The problem is taken care of. You need not concern yourself with it anymore.” He’s not going to fold and accept that immediately, but I want to be clear.
“It’s not that simple, son.”
“I think it is.”
He lets out a long-suffering sigh. “This isn’t a one-man operation. I can’t have bitches causing conflict between brothers.”
“There’s no conflict.” Frankie will pay, but I can wait in the interest of smoothing things over for now.
Renelli clicks his cheek. “That Santoro slut is trouble and no mistake. She wastes my time and money. Distracts you from your work. No, my son. She’s no good. Listen. Take a week or two. Fuck her a few more times. Get her out of your system. Then get rid of her.”
He pauses. Waits for me to show my hand. He thinks he knows me. That I’ll get hot because he called her a slut. Maybe I’ll lose my temper, and he can flex on me like he’s been wanting to do for a while now. He doesn’t know me.
“If you don’t, I will,” he says.
I tap my index finger on the desk and stare out the window at the pool. Before Posy swims, she stands at the edge with her toes curled over. Then she slowly dips a foot in, shivering, hugging her big, beautiful tits. She makes a face, and then all of a sudden, she jumps in and shrieks. Every time.
I love to watch her. The reluctance. The shivers that shake her thin shoulders. The flash of courage as she braces herself and leaps, eyes screwed tight. It makes me hard, and it makes me high.
Posy Santoro isn’t in my system. She burst into life in my empty shell and made it into something.
She is my system. Maybe I didn’t understand that before I lost her.
I’m a man. I can be a cliché. Still, it’s true, and I know it now, ever since the moment I caught her.
I don’t just get off on what she is—I need it.
“Do we have an understanding, son?” Renelli’s tone allows for no dissent.
“I understand you.”
“We’re agreed?” he presses.
“Agreed,” I lie. “In a week or two. I’ll solve the problem.”
“Good. We’ll see you Wednesday? For the dinner?”
“Yes. I’ll be there.” He asks me his usual questions about the portfolios, and then he hangs up. He doesn’t speak of Posy again. He cannot fathom that she is going to be his downfall, but if he forces me into a choice—it’s simple.
He’s the arrogant motherfucker to think he can tell me what to do. To believe the authority he wields is anything but an illusion. Money is power. He’s capo because until this moment, I had no other preference.
He thinks to take what’s mine? And his rats, scurrying to do his bidding, equally blind to the fact that they continue to exist because I don’t prefer otherwise? I think it’s time to clean house. Who told him?
Not the housekeeper or the cleaning staff. They came in after Posy was safe in our room, and they stick to the kitchen and their scheduled areas. Today is the gym, the media room, and the east and west parlors. Ray’s loyalty is unquestionable. That leaves Ivano and his wandering eyes.
I stand, cracking my neck.
Where’s that dirty snitch?
I stride from the office. The door flies into the wall. Maybe I’m a little amped up.
Ray pokes his head from the surveillance room.
“Go get Posy. Bring her to the gym.”
An idea is forming in my mind, a smile playing at my lips. I can kill two birds with one stone.
Ray stalks off to do my bidding.
“Be careful of her head,” I call after him. “She hit it on the pavement.”
I hunt my prey, steps light, an unholy excitement throbbing to life in my veins. I’ve been stressed these past weeks. This is going to feel amazing.
“Ivano!” I shout.
There’s the dashing of feet in the kitchen. The help are making themselves scarce.
Can they hear it in my voice? They must.
I find my quarry buffing his car in front of the garage, hair slicked back, gold chains dangling.
“Hey, boss.” He meets my eye, wiping his palms on his tracksuit. Totally unconcerned. Why would he be? He thinks Renelli’s the man in charge, and he’s been a good little rat.
“I want to spar.”
“Now?”