Chapter 3
3
DOMENICO
“ D omenico.”
I paused in giving orders to one of my guards and turned my head toward the open door to Rafa’s office. “ Che ?”
His brow furrowed as he read something on his cell phone, then looked up. “When you’re finished, come in and shut the door.”
I nodded and turned back to Aldo. “I want Tynzlee sent to the ranch in North Carolina tomorrow.”
Aldo snorted. “Foisting her off on Giovanni? You better sleep with a knife under your pillow, amico .”
He wasn’t completely wrong. Giovanni Dominici was Rafa’s Capo di Provincia of the North Carolina branch. Only the De Angelises had been part of The Family longer than the Dominicis. They’d joined forces when Lorenzo DeLuca had married Camilla Dominici, after his first wife died. They’d been old money, owning an extremely profitable shipping business. It was a family mystery as to whether they married for love or the merging of their empires.
Like Lorenzo, Giovanni was known for being a fucking tyrant. He was extremely logical and had no patience for dreamers or people who played games. He was going to be pissed at me for sending him a problem child. Hopefully, his anger would burn out before he showed up on my doorstep with a roll of duct tape and a body bag.
Giovanni had been born and raised on a horse ranch, and they were his first love. He bred and trained horses as one of The Family’s “legitimate” businesses. “He’ll get over it. She’s one of the best exercise riders we’ve hired. Her talents are wasted on the horses here.”
The stables at Magnolia Crest were for family use, not business. So the staff didn’t have to be the best, though our standards were still high.
Aldo shrugged. “It’s your funeral,” he muttered as he walked away.
Rolling my eyes, I entered Rafa’s office and shut the door behind me.
“ Che mi dici ?” I asked, wondering what was on his mind. From his demeanor, I was guessing someone was about to be given their last rites.
I dropped onto one of the comfy chairs in a sitting area near the door. It had a good vantage point, but since the doors and windows were bullet proof, I could relax more than usual.
“Oswald is going to be a bigger problem than we expected,” he growled, angrily tossing his phone onto the desk.
“You knew he’d be pissed when we poached his biggest client,” I reminded him. The little shit had been boasting about encroaching on DeLuca territory, and we decided we needed a little show of force to warn off any other small crime organizations from thinking they might have a shot at The Family. We’d annihilate them of course, but it was always better to spray for bugs rather than wait and crush them one by one.
Practically owning every precinct within a few miles of our town, as well as having a few cops on our payroll throughout the rest of the state, was useful in many ways. We’d not only taken Oswald’s biggest client for weapons smuggling, but we’d also set up a sting with the police that sent his supplier of heroine to jail for-fucking-ever.
“Our plant inside Douglas Snyder’s operation just met with her contact, and the report is fucked up.”
I frowned and leaned forward, placing my elbows on my knees with my arms hanging between my legs. “I thought my dad was handling that shit.”
My father, Carlo De Angelis, was the Capo di Provincia of the Florida branch, where I’d grown up—which was why Rafa and I hadn’t become more than acquaintances until college. Although I was the oldest, I’d never had any ambitions to lead a territory. When Rafa asked me to be his personal bodyguard, and eventually his head of security, it had been the perfect fit. My brother, Leo, who was currently Rafa’s captain—overseeing the crew—was being groomed to take over for our father someday.
“It’s become more complicated. Douglas is still in a rage over losing Opal. It seems he was more than a little obsessed with her. Which answers our question as to why he was willing to enter into an alliance with Oswald’s group.”
“And now he’s gunning for us?” I asked incredulously. Could he really be that suicidal?
Rafa shoved up from his chair and stalked over to one of the large windows overlooking the garden. “In a roundabout way, I think that’s his endgame. He’s threatening to decimate Oswald’s operation, then skin him alive and hang his carcass on a fucking flagpole.”
“You know he’s not being hyperbolic, right?” I muttered, my voice dripping with disgust.
Rafa nodded, his eyes blazing with fury. “He’s a sadistic motherfucker. No way in hell was I going to let any woman be subjected to his twisted shit. Even if it means we’re at war with his syndicate. But he’s tomorrow’s problem.”
I got to my feet and wandered over to stand next to my friend. “How so?”
“Douglas has Oswald flipping his shit, and he’s grasping at straws to keep his place and stay alive. Unfortunately for us, one of those straws just happens to be the truth.”
My brow furrowed as I absorbed his words. “He thinks Opal is alive?”
“Somehow, he found out that she met with Gabriella the morning she went missing.”
“ Merda ,” I swore, shoving my hands through my hair.
“He did some digging, found out about the Hounds and convinced Douglas that we faked her kidnapping and murder.”
“How the fuck…” I trailed off, speechless for a moment. The odds of Oswald latching onto a theory that just happened to be the truth were unbelievably low.
“I truly think he’s running on pure speculation, but we need to know for sure.”
Rafa’s phone pinged, and he strolled back over to his desk to pick it up and read the text.
I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the wall on the side of the window. “And if he’s got proof?”
“Then we tie up the loose ends,” he answered, his tone every bit the ruthless leader people called The King of the South.
He typed out a quick text before raising his eyes to meet mine. “Well, well. It seems Franco just received a request from Oswald to meet with me.”
“To what end?” Rafa’s assistant wouldn’t have given him the request unless he thought Oswald had information that was worth listening to.
Rafa shrugged. “Does it matter? Whatever it is will be nothing but bullshit.”
His cell went off again, and he frowned at the message before responding.
“The timing on this is too perfect,” I grunted. There was no way his meeting request was coincidental.
“I don’t disagree,” Rafa murmured as another text came through. After reading it, he nodded with a satisfied expression before slipping his phone into the pocket of his suit pants. Then he rolled down the sleeves of his white dress shirt. He’d met with the owner of a small boutique we wanted to acquire this morning, so he was already dressed for business. His expensive, perfectly tailored suit projected wealth and sophistication, adding to the intimidating air of danger surrounding him. He had a reputation for being ruthless, and when faced with him in person, I’d seen plenty of men crushed under its weight.
“But however improbable, it needs to happen, so I’d rather get it over with. He’s agreed to meet at Cypress & Sangiovese in an hour.”
“He’s coming to a restaurant owned by the family?” I was shocked that Oswald would agree to meet on our turf.
“I told him it was nonnegotiable. If he wanted to sit down with me face-to-face, in public, it would be a place of my choosing.”
“An hour?” My mind suddenly caught up to the other bomb he’d just dropped on me. “ Che cazzo ?”
Did he say an hour? What the fuck? I yelled again in my head.
“Relax, Franco got a list of the people Oswald will be bringing with him and sent it to Marco.”
Rafa’s brother, Marco, was a genius with anything electronic, but even he wouldn’t be able to tell us much about these guys in the short amount of time we had before the meeting.
“Thanks so much for making my job easier today,” I said sarcastically as we walked out of Rafa’s office and down the hall to the kitchen.
“Are you saying I’m difficult?”
I didn’t comment.
“Stop whining,” he muttered.
“Domenico whining?” Vivienne piped up as we entered the kitchen. “That would require him to actually speak, wouldn’t it?”
“He doesn’t have to, cara ,” Rafa teased as he made a beeline for his pregnant wife. “His pout says it all.”
Dio santo. I didn’t bother to stop, choosing to meet him in the garage rather than be subjected to all the love and happiness.
I was happy for my friend to have found the love of his life and start a family. But sometimes, it just twisted the knife in my chest, reminding me that I would never have the same experiences.
A box next to the door held several sets of keys, all belonging to vehicles parked in the six-car garage, including a Kawasaki Ninja H2R. My father sent it to me for my birthday last year as if I was still a teenager and needed him to buy me a car. That didn’t stop me from accepting the gift, which had my mother on her knees saying Hail Marys on my behalf. She was married to the Mafia, her sons were fucking Mafia, yet somehow, she still seemed to think I had a soul worth saving.
If that were the case, I’d have considered a few of those Hail Marys to make me worthy of Gabriella. But I’d waded through too much crimson to believe redemption was within reach. Damnation had already claimed me.
The door to the garage broke through my thoughts when it opened, then slammed shut. “Ready?” I asked as I grabbed the keys to the Maserati Levante.
“Let’s get this shit show over with so I can get back to my wife.”