Chapter 9 – POSY #5
Everyone knows that Lucca is favored by the men, but Frankie is Renelli’s favorite and chosen one. There is always speculation about what will happen when Renelli finally loses his edge. Who becomes capo? Lucca or Frankie?
Neither man will play second to the other. Dario is the goose that lays the golden eggs, but even he can’t get away with killing the heir apparent while Renelli lives.
So what is Dario doing in there?
And why doesn’t he want me to see?
I sit on the toilet, but I don’t have to pee. My panties are a sloppy mess. There’s a sink in the large stall. I could rinse them out. Or just toss them. Dario would be pissed, but I don’t think he’d be surprised.
He won’t expect me to leave it be. I kind of want to see what happens when he realizes I did what he asks.
I go to the mirror, wash my hands, and try to fix myself. It still looks like I was rolling around in bed. I’m running wet fingers through my hair when the door swings open.
Jen Amato strolls in swinging a small crystal purse from her thin wrist.
“Hi, porn star,” she says, sidling up to the sink beside me. “Is your asshole still gaping?” She purses her lips at me in the mirror.
“Fuck off.”
There was a time—a long, long time ago—that Jen Amato and I had sleepovers at her Nonna’s house. We’d watch cartoons and make marshmallow crispy treats. That was before Uncle Marco and the skimming. Before a lot of things.
I want to ask her what’s going on out there, but I’ve got some pride left. Precious little, but some.
“What’s it like knowing that all the men in a room have jerked it while watching you cry?”
I can’t help it. I gasp from the blow, and the sound echoes off the tile.
Jen rounds her eyes. “I mean, I would be absolutely humiliated. I could never show my face again. But you always would sink a little lower than everyone else, wouldn’t you? It’s that Santoro blood.”
I don’t have to stand here and listen to this. I stride for the door, but she steps in front of me and blocks it.
“Bad enough that you threw yourself at my boyfriend—” she says.
“—You and Frankie were split.”
“We were on a break . But that didn’t bother you. Nothing does, does it? You’ll do anything.”
“Get out of my way.”
Jen widens her eyes even more and flashes a carnivorous smile. “Do you get off on it? Being with a man who killed his own stepmother? You sick, sick bitch.”
What? My brain flips through old memories. My family was cut off from the social scene after Uncle Marco, but we still went to Saint Celestine’s with everyone else, and my mom still visited her friends in their kitchens. There just were no more lunches or spa days.
I vaguely remember when Rosario Volpe passed. She wasn’t killed. It was cancer.
“You’re talking out your ass.” If Jen doesn’t move, I’m gonna shove her.
“Oh my god. You didn’t know?” Her voices oozes delight. “You didn’t know that your twisted boyfriend did his own stepmother? No one told you?” She turns down her lower lip. “Maybe if you weren’t such a dumb slut someone would have cared enough to warn you.”
“Move, or I’m going to move you.”
“How do you sleep next to him, knowing he could murder you in your sleep?”
I’m speechless. Reeling. What she says—it has the ring of truth. It explains why the others don’t chase Dario like they do Lucca, Frankie, and Tomas. And I’ve had a front row seat to what Dario is capable of doing.
I don’t fool myself. I was born into a circle of violent men. In the room I just came from, no one has clean hands. But this—it’s unspeakable.
Hold up. No. He couldn’t have done it. I always forget but Lucca Corso is Dario’s stepbrother. Lucca lived with his dad—they weren’t a family or anything. Regardless, Lucca wouldn’t sit across the table from the man who killed his mother. There’s no way.
Jen’s full of shit, spreading old rumors like a ghost story around a campfire, trying to get in my head. And succeeding.
I need to be done with this bitch.
“I sleep like a baby,” I answer her question. “How do you sleep knowing your boyfriend liked watching me so much he had to share it with all his friends?”
She snorts. “He was doing everyone a favor, letting them know what a dirty skank you are.”
Her lips are moving, but my brain is off. The whole video scandal is rearranging itself in my mind. We’re not in high school anymore. There are millions of dollars at stake in the other room. Jen Amato doesn’t follow me to the bathroom to play mean girl for shits and giggles.
Something’s going on here.
The pieces are sliding together, forming a shape. This wasn’t another tragic episode of Santoro misfortune.
I don’t think leaking that video was about me at all.
No one in the organization actually cares about Posy Santoro.
Except Dario Volpe. He’s the power behind the throne.
He doesn’t interest himself in the gossip and machinations that my dad would drone on and on about.
All he wants to do is be left alone to make money.
But that doesn’t mean everyone else is equally disinterested in him.
Whoever has Dario controls the money. Money is power. And Dominic Renelli is getting old.
I can almost see it. The outline is there, but I can’t quite make it out.
Whatever the game is and whoever is playing, they think I’m a key piece.
It’s not out of casual maliciousness or jealousy that Jen Amato is trying to mind fuck me in the ladies room. It’s strategy. I bet Frankie knows she’s here. I bet he sent her. Does Dario know?
Of course he does. He has more information than I do, and he knows this particular game better than I ever will.
Is he using me as some kind of sacrificial pawn? Set me up as if I’m important to him to distract his adversaries?
My head throbs. I’m hungry, and I can’t bring myself to eat surrounded by sharks. And this bathroom smells like bleach. I’m done with this.
“Move.”
Jen opens her mouth, no doubt to drop another bomb, but I’m at the end of my patience. I slam an elbow into her side and shove her as hard as I can into the sink. Her heels are even higher than mine. She staggers and trips like a drunk baby deer. I duck past her and head out.
The emergency door beckons, but nothing has changed. I’m still broke, and Dario’s no more of a monster than he was when I walked into the bathroom.
I have no choice but to head back to the piranha tank.
Before I step through the doorway, I stiffen my spine and plaster a bland look on my face.
Frankie is going to expect me to walk in looking shaken, and I really want to disappoint him.
I put an extra sway in my hips as I rejoin Dario.
He’s furiously tapping on his phone, and he doesn’t even look up when I sit.
Everyone is drunk and having a good time. There’s no awkwardness. No broken chairs. I guess part of me thought Dario sent me to the bathroom so he could have it out with them—defend my honor—but from the sly and smirking glances I’m getting, that didn’t happen.
Why did Dario send me to the bathroom?
Maybe he was disgusted. Maybe he thought if I left for a while, everyone would move on, but the video is too juicy. People aren’t even bothering to lower their voices anymore. Jen’s sister Rina is cackling so loud over a joke I can hear her halfway down the table.
I hate this. I hate them.
“I want to leave,” I mutter into my lap. Dario either ignores me, or he’s so absorbed by his phone he doesn’t realize I spoke.
“So afterwards, we get to see a live version of the entertainment?” the man with the accent calls out. Oh god. While I was gone, someone showed him the video.
I’m going to puke. I shift to stand, but Dario grips my knee and squeezes. “No. Wait.”
For what? For me to disappear into the ground in a puddle of humiliation. Is Dario getting off on this? Is this my punishment for embarrassing him?
I shove at his hand, but he’s too strong. I can’t budge him.
And then there’s a ding. And another ding. Then a few more phone alerts like a tornado warning or a flood watch. Carlo and Miles check their phones. So do Lucca and Tomas. Miles rises from the table, almost tipping his chair over, and stalks from the room. Carlo’s face blanches and he follows.
What’s going on?
Miles and Carlo are money guys. If they’re freaking, it’s something to do with the markets. Why isn’t Dario even looking at his phone? He’s set it face down on the table beside his plate.
He tops off my wine glass.
“Drink,” he tells me. “You look pale.”
There’s a panicked muttering among the men at the table. They’re showing each other their phones. Tony has gotten up to whisper in Renelli’s ear. The Russian guests are obviously confused. So am I.
Only Lucca Corso is relaxed in his chair. He’s watching Dario, a sardonic smile playing at his lips.
“You have something to say, brother?” Lucca asks.
I can pick some words out of the whispers now. Five million. Loss.
Hands are moving to hover at waistbands and tucked under jackets. My stomach clenches. Shit. What’s going down? An air of expectancy fills the room, and conversation peters away until there’s silence.
Everyone’s looking at me. No. They’re looking at Dario.
“You have our attention now,” Lucca says.
Dario finishes chewing his last bite of steak, swallows, and takes a sip of wine. The room feels as if it could erupt in gunfire with a word. We’re hanging on some kind of precipice, and Dario’s fastidiously placing his knife just so across the top of his dinner plate.
“If you have that video on your phone, delete it. If you feel the urge to bring it up, don’t.” His voice is unaffected, matter-of-fact. He glances over at me. His hand is still heavy on my thigh. “If anyone mentions that shit in your hearing, Posy, you tell me.”
What’s happening?
A raspy throat clears at the top of the table. As one, everyone’s gaze turns to Dominic Renelli. His craggy face is inscrutable. Everything seems to balance on the head of a pin.
“You heard the man,” Renelli says. “Get rid of it.”