Ruthless Daddy (Chicago Dons #4)

Chapter 1

Pietro

It didn’t matter how fast I ran, I’d never escape the nightmares.

But you know, sometimes, when I felt the air bite my lungs and the burn in my legs, I could forget about them, even if it was only for a minute or two.

I ran the lakefront every morning before sunrise.

As always at this time, the path was empty, the city to my left grey and low against the sky.

It was always a little lighter over the water, a false dawn that tricked your eyes but not your clock.

Six weeks in and I still didn’t understand the weather in this place. Where was the sun? Where was the warm?

I kept my pace even. Not fast enough to burn out, not slow enough to let my mind wander.

My shoes hit the pavement in sets of four, measured against my pulse.

I ran without music. I needed to hear the world—the rattle of a passing bike chain, the shifting gravel under my step, the whine of a distant police siren.

Even the low slap of waves on concrete. All of it grounding me.

Fifty minutes. My watch vibrated at the interval.

I barely registered it. I had woken from the nightmare at five-twenty, the one where I was back in the Catania warehouse with the ammonia in my nose and the sound of a man’s teeth tumbling against concrete.

I got dressed before my hands started to shake.

I left the house without waking Sal or Tonio.

I only looked back once to check that the door had latched.

Running was a trick. You couldn’t think of two things at once. If you focused on your breath and your stride, you didn’t have room for memory. It worked, until it didn’t.

I noticed the man with the dog three hundred meters ahead before I saw the dog.

He wore a yellow jacket with reflective stripes, the kind construction crews used in Palermo.

The dog was old, big, black, shuffling just behind him on a slack leash.

They moved at half my speed. I adjusted so I would overtake at a wide spot in the path.

Farther up, a sedan was parked at the edge of Lake Shore, engine off, windows fogged. A couple inside, maybe. No lights. The car had not been there yesterday. I made a note of the plate. Illinois, standard issue. Most people wouldn’t have clocked it. Maybe that was the whole problem—most people.

Frankly, I wish I didn’t have to notice it. Didn’t have to clock every damn change to my routine, wasn’t constantly checking for danger.

A woman in neon pink shoes blew past me going the opposite direction. She ran with her mouth open, gasping, like she was being chased. I watched her in my periphery until she passed the sedan. She checked it, too. Her stride faltered, only a little. She was fine.

I passed the Drake at exactly six and turned inland, legs stiffening on the incline. The air changed here—less lake, more city, a sharp tang of oil from a bakery exhaust fan already running for the morning. I flexed my hands a few times. They were steady.

Six weeks in Chicago. Forty-one days of this route.

I’d hoped that this change, leaving Sicily for the states, might reset something in me.

When I stepped off the plane I’d thought maybe this would be a it, a way to leave the past behind and move into the future.

But it hadn’t worked. The nightmare always reset to the same moment.

The teeth on the floor, the sound of my own name from a mouth full of blood.

I jogged the last block to the house, lungs burning in a way that felt clean. I did not slow down until I was at the door. I tapped the lock code in with one finger. It was still early. I wondered if either of my brothers would be awake.

I let myself in, shoes silent on the tile, and stood in the entryway until I could hear my own heartbeat again. I stripped off my shirt and wiped my face with it. My arms were shaking after all.

The house smelled like strong coffee and wet dog.

Olimpo, Sal’s oversized spinone, sprawled under the kitchen table with his beard in a puddle of water he’d just transferred from the bowl to the floor.

He snored louder than Tonio, who was still in bed upstairs but whose breathing you could hear through the ceiling.

Sal sat at the end of the long table, a stack of papers spread in front of him and a mug steaming by his elbow.

He wore our father’s robe, thick wool and plaid, belted tight against his body like he was freezing from the inside out.

The light above him made the dark under his eyes look like bruises. Clearly, he had been up for a while.

He glanced up when I came in. His eyes took in the damp shirt, the state of my hands, the faint shake I couldn’t quite suppress.

“You slept,” he said. Not a question.

“Four hours,” I answered, which was a generous lie. Maybe two and a half, plus forty minutes upright on the floor at the foot of my bed, breathing until the memory passed.

Sal stared at me one beat too long, then went back to the shipping manifest. “Eat something,” he said, eyes on the page.

I poured coffee, careful not to drip, and leaned against the counter. I preferred to stand in the mornings. Sitting felt like defeat.

Olimpo lifted his head when I opened the fridge. He watched me with mournful brown eyes, ears dragging the ground, then thumped his tail and put his chin back on Sal’s slipper.

I drank my coffee black and took in the room.

Exposed brick, high ceilings, a row of windows along the courtyard that caught what little light there was.

The place belonged to Marco Caruso, one of the Caruso family’s many assets.

We were staying here while we completed our work.

I wondered how long we’d be stuck in this godforsaken place.

Outside, the windows were fogged at the corners, and the garden beyond was silver with frost. The city never really went quiet, but in these hours it felt less hostile. You could believe, briefly, that you were alone in it.

Sal moved through his stack of papers with the same precision he used on everything.

He turned each page with two fingers, squared the edges, made careful notes in the margin with a pen he had imported from Florence.

He was not a man built for mornings, but he forced himself into them every day.

Discipline was a religion in our family.

Tonio’s snoring hit a crescendo and stopped. A minute later I heard the pipes in the wall shudder—the shower starting, then a yell of complaint as the water ran cold. The thump of his feet on the stairs, fast and careless, shook the glasses in the drying rack.

Sal raised an eyebrow, gave me an amused look. I returned it. I finished my coffee, poured a second.

My brother noticed this, of course. And then, when I reached for the bread, his eyes flicked to mine. “You need protein,” he said, as if I had forgotten. “There’s eggs in the fridge.”

I shrugged. “Not hungry.”

“Doesn’t matter. You run, you eat.”

I looked at Olimpo, who wagged his tail in solidarity.

“You’re never on my side, hey Olimpo?”

Sal gave his dog a loving pat. “Unlike you, he’s smart.”

Tonio made his entrance at a quarter past seven, heavy on the stairs and heavier on the decibel count.

He wore nothing but black boxers and a gold chain thick enough to tow a boat.

His hair was smashed flat on one side from sleep, his eyes red but bright.

He came into the kitchen like a shot, yawned so wide I thought his jaw might pop, and dropped to one knee to maul Olimpo’s ears until the dog sagged against the floor in pure, obscene bliss.

“God, I needed that,” Tonio said, voice already too loud for the hour. “Did I tell you about my dream? There was a woman from Naples, blonde, huge—” he held out his hands in a way that suggested she’d have toppled over in a stiff wind— “but I can’t remember her name. Something with an L?”

Sal did not look up from his manifest. “Put on your fucking pants, Tonio,” he said, flat as concrete.

Tonio grinned. “You see this? Policing me before I even have coffee. It’s just my body, Sal, and I’m sorry if peak physical perfection disturbs you.

” He raided the fridge, took out eggs, and spun a carton of them from one hand to the other with the grace of someone who’d been breaking things since childhood.

I couldn’t help it—I snorted into my coffee, a half-laugh I tried to choke down. Tonio caught it and crowed, pointing at me like he’d won a bet.

“He laughs! Sal, he laughs. Write it down, today Pietro laughs.”

“He’s delirious from lack of REM,” Sal said, not bothering to look up. “Ignore him.”

Tonio set to work at the stove, singing tunelessly under his breath.

He cracked three eggs one-handed, thumbed out a bit of shell, and threw the fragments into the sink without looking.

He moved like someone who’d spent their whole life in other people’s kitchens and never once been asked to clean up.

The air filled with the smell of hot butter and onion.

Probably Sal’s leftovers, which Tonio had stolen. He always did.

I poured another coffee and watched the backs of my brothers. For a minute, I could imagine a universe where we were just like this. No ghosts. No obligations. Just three guys sharing a kitchen, arguing over breakfast and whose turn it was to walk the dog.

Olimpo, sensing food, stretched under the table and groaned up at Tonio, who grinned and flicked him a piece of something. The dog caught it on his tongue and drooled it back onto Sal’s slipper.

“Disgusting,” Sal said, finally looking up to give Tonio a glare. “I’d focus on that cooking brother. God forbid you get hit with food poisoning.”

Tonio cackled. “Eggs have to be soft, Sal. What’s the point if you overcook them? That’s the problem with this country, you know. They don’t respect the ingredient. Everything here is rubber.”

Sal massaged the bridge of his nose. “The problem with this country,” he repeated. “That’s your angle now?”