Chapter 10 – DARIO
DARIO
P osy is still asleep. I told Sal to wait in the hallway outside our room and phone me when she stirs.
It’s nearly noon, and no call. She must be exhausted.
I woke her up three times last night to make her come.
The last time she fussed like a drowsy kitten, mewling at me to leave her be until she got into it and wrapped her slender fingers around my wrist and held me in place.
I monitor the markets, idly flipping my attention from screen to screen. Everything is behaving as expected.
Well, everything except me.
I don’t care about other people’s feelings.
It’s not a philosophy. It’s a biological fact.
It’s generally expedient to pretend that I do, so I’ve learned how to fake it, but ultimately, unless it pertains to a project or work, I don’t consider what’s happening inside the other meat sacks in the room.
Maybe that’s why I’ve become fascinated with Posy. She’s an interesting aberration, the one person in the world whose feelings have life to me.
It’s a convenient explanation, but it doesn’t quite meet the facts. I don’t need her for anything. She’s actually causing me a great deal of consternation. And I don’t just wonder what’s going on in that twisty little brain of hers, I want her to—
I grit my teeth until my jaw aches.
I want her to stay, and so she has to believe she’s safe, and worse, she has to be happy.
My nails bite into my palm. I had her exactly where I wanted her, smiling, teasing, willing. I was the center of her world.
And then that damn video. Why didn’t I ignore it? Even if she was fucking around, why did I care? If I didn’t like it, I could’ve put Ray on her, found the guy, slit his throat. An easy solution and an effective deterrent.
But I lost my shit, and I needed her to hurt. I know her so well; I knew exactly what words to use. She’s always thought of herself as a whore. All I had to do to break her was confirm her worst suspicions.
But she didn’t break, and it turns out I didn’t want her to, either.
By the time I figured that out, I’d shown my hand and fucked everything up.
And now, I have a new obsession. I can’t make her smile anymore, but I can make her come.
It’s not hard. Simple mechanics: rate, pressure, friction.
Once she showed me, I could do it without looking.
As long as I rub her clit the right way, I can do whatever I want, and she falls to pieces.
I took her from behind, had her ride me, and the last time, I spooned her as she tried to wiggle away and conk out on me again.
Each time, I felt the tell-tale spasm of her pussy gripping my cock, and she softened a little more, letting it go a few minutes longer before her face shuttered with resolve.
She thinks running is the smart move, and it makes sense that she would come to that conclusion.
In a dog-eat-dog world, staying to fight is a losing strategy for a woman like her.
She’s prey. She was raised to be—the barely-tolerated daughter of a disgraced family who escaped that ignominy by becoming a party girl passed from bed to bed.
Flight is generally the better bet for a woman in her position.
Things are different now, though. She’s not defenseless anymore. She has me.
I don’t know why she’s the only one. Maybe it’s a biochemical coincidence, the universe flashing a giant arrow over her sweet pussy to point out that we’d make superior offspring. No doubt that we would. She’s as bright as I am in her own way.
An image of her round with my child flashes behind my eyes. She’d be fiercely protective, lavishing them with all the love and protection she’s been deprived of over the years. Would that make her happy?
I shove back from my desk in frustration. Why does it matter? As long as I have her with me, why do I care how she feels?
It’s bullshit—God or whatever flipping the script on me this late in life. Why her? Why is she the only person out of billions who matters?
If we had children, would I care about them?
I take care of what belongs to me—just look at my cars. But would this glitch in my brain for Posy extend to our babies? If it didn’t, she’d know. She wouldn’t like it.
I huff a sigh. I’m getting ahead of myself, and I’m distracted.
It’s not like when she was gone. I’m trading on autopilot, doing pretty well considering the piss poor jobs report that released yesterday.
The Fed is going to act, and I’m well-positioned.
I can see how it’ll unfold, but it doesn’t give me the usual satisfaction.
I’m bored with the market.
Is Posy going to sleep all fucking day?
I’m grabbing for my phone when there’s a sheepish knock at the door.
Ray. He’s probably going to slump around the office, working up the courage to ask about his precious Posy.
His attachment runs deep—some misplaced sense of responsibility due to the daughter he walked out on back in Sicily when he was young and ambitious.
The little girl died in a car crash with her drunk mother before Ray could establish himself and send for them.
I don’t begrudge Ray his infatuation. It’s an opportune weakness. He’ll protect her—even from me. Even though he doesn’t move as quickly as he once did, that makes him valuable. I guess I can tolerate him sighing and rustling the damn newspaper for a bit.
“Enter.”
As expected, Ray pushes open the door. But then he stands to the side. Lucca Corso strolls in, jacket unbuttoned, silk scarf dangling from his neck, the picture of a roaring twenties playboy from a novel they make you read in high school.
He flashes a smile and sinks into the chair across my desk. “Can I get an espresso, Ray?”
Ray grunts and shoots me a look. I jerk my chin, dismissing him. He shuffles off. Lucca had better not be holding his breath for the drink. The odds are not good that Ray remembers to pass on the request before he wanders off to find a quiet corner to listen to the game.
“To what do I owe this visit?” I shut my laptop and cross my leg at the knee. I can guess. I’m not getting away scot-free with the stunt at last night’s dinner, not when I rubbed their faces in how easily I can crush the entire organization.
Lucca shrugs off his jacket and folds it carefully over his lap.
“Please. Take off your coat. Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything? An espresso?” I raise an eyebrow.
Lucca chuckles. “Touché.”
“Did Renelli send you?” I cut to the chase.
Lucca nods. “That was a stupid move last night.”
I lift a shoulder. “I achieved my objective.”
“You looked like a man being led by his dick.”
“Do I?” I lean back and smirk. “Do I look like a man being led by his dick?” It’s a fascinating idea. Almost quaint. Am I supposed to be bothered by the idea?
“That’s Renelli’s read.”
“And what’s his remedy?”
“The woman has to go. Posy Santoro’s time is up. That’s a quote. You get rid of her now—today—or he will.”
Tension bunches my muscles. “And he sent you to pass on the message?”
“I volunteered.”
Now that actually surprises me. “I didn’t know you enjoyed playing the heavy.”
Even when he was brawling and cracking skulls at Saint Celestine’s, he was never a bully. More like a charming villain. Frankie was the asshole. Tomas—we all figured his grandma would get her way, and he’d go into the church.
And what was I?
The alien. A sentient machine.
Lucca’s casual smile doesn’t waver. “Do you remember school?”
It’s an abrupt change of topic and oddly coincidental. “Of course.”
“I hardly remember you being around. You were always hanging out in Father Andrew’s classroom.”
“He taught me how to trade.”
“Father Andrew?”
“He was a stockbroker before he was ordained.”
“No shit.” Lucca’s eyebrows raise. “That’s where you picked it up.”
I lift a shoulder. Father Andrew taught me the basics. I learned a little more at college, a whole lot on my own when I turned twenty-one and got access to the nest egg my mother put aside for me in a trust. Almost as if she’d known she wouldn’t make it with my father long enough to see me grown.
“Do you remember the day behind the bleachers?” Lucca asks. So that’s where this walk down memory lane is going.
He doesn’t have to specify which day. It was in March. Tomas had found me in the library, told me that Lucca was waiting for me. He wanted a word.
Lucca was cupping a cigarette as chill gusts of wind blew across the football field, the kind of blustery weather that ends in a torrential downpour.
Just the day before, Lucca had been to our house for the first time to visit his mother, my stepmother.
She’d started life Rosario Renelli, cosseted mafia princess.
She’d been married off to Guiseppe Corso at sixteen, had Lucca at seventeen, and by eighteen, Corso had thrown her out, accusing her of whoring herself to my father. Renelli turned a blind eye.
I doubt she acted on it, but she was madly in love with my father. Who knows what she saw in him? He was a cruel man, and he treated everyone beneath him like shit. Rosario Renelli got lucky though.
When Corso put her out, my mother had just passed, and my father needed a mother for his infant son. Unsurprisingly, Rosario never took to me, but she was never unkind. Just distant.
If my father hadn’t been in desperate straits—and if she hadn’t been a Renelli—my father would never have married Guiseppe Corso’s castoff.
He never let her forget her fall from grace. She could visit Lucca, but she couldn’t bring him in the house. And she was to keep herself out of trouble and out of the way. She was a specter in our house, the creak in the upstairs hall, the muffled cough in a room with the door closed.
She didn’t tell anyone when she found the lump in her breast. Or when the rash spread. By the time she passed out in the front hall, the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes and her bones.