Page 8

A groan leaves me. A soldier never says no to his Don.

“Give me a minute,” I growl with my finger still on the button of the intercom.

I don’t wait for Dino’s reply, my forehead pressing against Kaya’s as I allow my breath to return to normal.

“Stefano,” she murmurs.

“Shh. It’s okay. I have to do this.”

She gulps, and it’s audible in the quiet of this soundproofed room.

“We need to talk,” she continues.

“Yes,” I sigh. “But not now. I have to go see the Don.”

She’s worked for him, even though she hasn’t sworn Omertà to him. Many think it’s just a vow of silence the Mafia stick to, but it’s so much more than that. It includes a code of silence, yes, but it’s also a pledge of allegiance, a vow on our life and to give our life should we need to for the one we pledge fealty to—our boss, our Don. So she must know what it means to be called in. No one delays that beyond the utmost necessity.

She lets me disengage from her, and after I’ve put myself to rights, I clasp her cheek and drop a kiss onto her lips.

“I’m not engaged, Kaya. There’s no one but you.”

I hope this will help buoy her and keep our pending talk at bay for the foreseeable future. I recall Dino saying he needed to talk to me when I got in. Does he know something? As the Don’s bodyguard, he sees and hears a lot of things. Was he trying to warn me? Of what? Don Giacomo hasn’t given me a hint that he’s displeased with me lately.

My mind full of these questions, I force myself not to turn back and look at Kaya as I exit. Doing so will only make me want to stay, and I can’t have this right now. I need to know what the Don wants.

Once in the corridor, I halt Dino with a chin-nod. “What is it you wanted to talk about?”

He sighs. “Are you marrying Lorena Bruno?”

“Hell no!”

Dino raises his eyes to the ceiling. “ Grazie a Dio ! Doing that, Stefano…” He shakes his head.

I get it, and he gets it, too. We’re the new generation, men who have been brought up to respect women, and most of us somewhat do this though some turn into chauvinist pigs occasionally. Lorena is eighteen. Robbing the cradle isn’t the mark of machismo it may have been thirty or forty years ago, like for men of my father’s or Cesare Bruno’s generation. Some of them married girls as young as fifteen with the bride’s parents’ blessing.

“I hear she caused a scene,” I say.

“You have no idea. These little girls playing at being grown women.” He sighs again, and by this point, we’ve reached the staircase leading to the mezzanine floor.

Dino nods up, and I take it as my cue to ascend and that we’ve dealt with what he wanted to talk about. Thank the Lord it’s nothing worse. So the summons from the Don may be a coincidence, coming from the mere fact I’m here tonight. Or he also wants to talk about the Lorena debacle. I roll my eyes at the sky and take a deep breath before knocking on the door.

When he bids me to enter, I go in and close the door behind me. In these lofty yet ultimately closed confines, I can smell the heavy whiff of sex on me. For fuck’s sake, I still have Kaya’s scent on my hand, having just used some tissues to wipe them dry before going out.

“I didn’t interrupt the fun, I hope.”

Don Giacomo’s lips are twitching slightly when he turns to me. So he’s going to take the piss. Fine by me.

“Just about done,” I reply.

“She came first.”

“Of course.”

It may sound odd to be speaking so freely of our sexual adventures, but my godfather is also my mentor. He took me to my first woman when I was sixteen, a girl from one of his brothels, and he told me in no uncertain terms my pleasure always came after I’d made my lover come—we owed it to a woman, he’d stressed.

“Good.”

His face transforms then, and a rush of ice climbs up my back. More than the tightness gripping his craggy features to make them even more fearsome, it’s the lack of whiskey glass in his hand which alerts me to the fact something dire is happening and I’m about to find out.

“Your father is retiring,” he says quietly.

This is something I’ve always appreciated about Don Giacomo—he doesn’t beat around the bush.

But then it registers.

“ Perché mai …”

The words leave me before I can rein in my disbelief and utmost surprise. I think I would know if my father were about to retire, seeing as he’s, well, my father even though we’re not really on speaking terms right now.

“Abrashi is the name of the man Aldo’s crew has taken down in San Raffaele Cimena.”

I nod. It’s the cazzo running the marijuana, hashish, and cocaine network that woman whistle-blew on.

“Abrashi and Daku are associates,” he continues. “And when your father was interrogating him, he found out what Daku had planned next.”

I don’t like the chill that’s coming over me. I know my godfather—my Don—is a scary man to be feared, and I’ve also seen him in action. But the cold rage radiating off of him feels like it can bite and burn harder than frost on warm, unprotected skin.

“That was early yesterday morning, Stefano. I didn’t hear from it until just now, when Aldo called me to check on the follow-up regarding this intel since no order had been issued yet.”

It’s clear he’s pissed off. “What did the intel say?”

His face grows even harder. “That Jasir Daku wants to put a hit out on Kaya Norton.”

Sounds stop computing when I hear her name. It seems to me the Don has also stopped talking, watching me parse through my shock.

“He wants to kill Kaya?” I finally blurt out when the question remains stuck so long in my throat, it starts to choke me.

The Don nods.

“Over my dead body!”

He nods again.

“What do you want to do?” I ask.

He quirks an eyebrow. “What do I want you to do, you mean…”

The penny drops, then, and all his words so far come together. My father is retiring…because my father failed to report this intel right away, and this in turn put Kaya’s life in danger. My father is the Don’s enforcer, his left-hand man, the one he trusts implicitly. But Gennaro Beccario has let his Don down—I’m repulsed to think he may even want Kaya dead, because, according to him, she’s standing in the way of this marriage he’s arranged for me with his good friend’s daughter; it doesn’t matter what I say. And in doing so, in putting his interests first, he’s lost the trust and good regard of Don Giacomo Rossi.

And in turn, I’m to step up into his shoes, as this was always meant to be my destiny someday, sometime. But the time has come.

My breath catches in my chest when I try to inhale. I’ve been on missions with the crews. I’ve shadowed my father on his jobs. However, I’ve never gotten my hands dirty. Not yet. The protection of a Don for his enforcer covers just the man in question. I’d need the title to also warrant this absolution.

I’m about to now.

But something else is at the forefront of my mind. My father having lost his Don’s trust, this can only mean…

“My mother,” I croak out.

“Rosa is my friend. Nothing was going to happen to her. Nothing will happen to Gennaro, either. But he’s started having chest pains on this mission, and he has to step down.”

I read between the lines. It’s only because of my mother and her close bond with the Don that my father is coming out of this betrayal with his life still intact. He’s also protecting her honor—and not my father’s—by putting this retirement on account of made-up health woes.

I’m assuming Aldo is also in on this. He’s proven his loyalty to Don Giacomo by coming up to him when my father was supposed to keep the Don apprised.

A shiver racks through me. This is it. My time has come. Becoming an enforcer is one of the highest honors a Borgata soldier can be given, but it is also a title that comes with a death knell attached to it. By taking on the Don’s dirty business, it’s the enforcer who puts himself in the crosshairs, who takes all the risks. Many leave their lives in the line of duty.

Yet, this is also what I’ve been groomed for all my life. My upbringing, my training, even my studies have all been geared to make me Don Giacomo Rossi’s enforcer. He’s a new generation of dons, and as such, I’ve been encouraged to be a new type of enforcer, too.

The time has come to prove my mettle.

With a gulp, I nod. “I need to assemble my crew.”

“Good. Do it. How long should it take you?”

I shrug. “An hour. Two, tops.”

I have a few men I’ve recruited and primed for joining my team. They’re just a phone call away in municipalities all around Metropolitan Torino.

Then my thoughts veer to the most important topic tonight. “There’s a threat to Kaya’s life?”

“ Si . It needs to be snuffed in the egg.”

“It will be done.” I bow a little in acknowledgement. “How do you want it to be done?”

The Don chuckles. “It’s your prerogative. As long as it’s a strong message.”

“ Va bene .”

Already, ideas are swirling around. We’ll need to do a reconnaissance, then figure out how best to strike with the least possible damage and collateral on our side. I smell a stake-out in my immediate future. I need a shower and a change first, and also to grab all the intel we have on Daku as well as my work kit.

A shudder goes through me. I’ve been building my work kit for a couple of years now. Using it was always in the distant future, and reckoning I will be putting it to its frightening uses sooner rather than later is chill-inducing.

“Take Valentino with you. It will be good for him to see how things can and will be done from now on.”

I acquiesce with a nod. Valentino may not be a Don or ever to become one as his family, although prominent, isn’t of the usual pedigree to ascend to such lofty heights, but he will be leading a Borgata one day, and men like Don Giacomo and myself are the future of this age-old world that’s the Mafia. It will be good for my cousin to get a broader perspective regarding what the future of our kind may look like.

“I know you won’t let me down, Stefano. But make me proud, too.”

“Yes, Don Rossi.”

“Kaya, she is precious.”

She is.

“No one comes after what’s mine and gets away with it,” he continues.

The subsequent nod is my cue to leave, and I take it and exit the room.

As I’m coming down the stairs, these last words are replaying in my head. The object of tonight’s discussion has clearly been Kaya. More than me taking on the mantle as the Don’s enforcer, he knows I have a vested interest in this issue. Kaya, I have feelings for her. I want her. I need her.

But the way the Don said ‘mine’ rankled something inside me. Does he see her as his? It’s true he ‘gave’ her to me, yet does it mean she’s no longer his? I frown. He wouldn’t do that, would he? Take her back after… No.

When I lift my head, my gaze snags hers where she’s standing across the lounge. Her eyebrows furrow, cheeks hollowing as she purses her mouth. I can see it on her face, all the questions. What did the Don want, where do we stand, where do we go from here and are we even going somewhere?

Are we? I never really pondered the way Kaya came to me that first night in the club. Yeah, my godfather had ‘given’ her to me just minutes earlier. But ultimately, she was doing his bidding. Just like she must’ve been doing every time she went up to his office and emerged close to an hour later. I doubt they were enjoying a nice conversation over a drink. Plus she doesn’t drink. It can only mean…

She was his before she became mine, no doubt about it. The scent of her arousal, the Don smelled it before me, was intimate with it and with her body for months prior to her coming to me. And should he ever want her back, she won’t be able to say no. Nor will I be able to stand in the way. I’m his enforcer, he’s my Don, period.

Then again, all this is a moot point if she’s dead. A shiver courses through me. I can’t let that happen. The world needs her in it. I need her in the world. So this is what I’ll do—I’ll protect her, in the best way I know how. I’ll be the Don’s enforcer, and I’ll be a fucking good one, too.

My feet are eating up the ground without me having torn my eyes from hers. When I reach her, I grab her and pull her into my arms. Everyone here knows we’re together, and fuck them if they’ve got a problem with it. I have to have her in my arms, to feel her alive and warm and solid against me. This woman…

“Stefano?” she asks softly, so much confusion in her tone.

This might be the last time I hold you, ama. An enforcer never knows if he’s coming back from any mission. But I don’t tell her this. She doesn’t need to worry overmuch. She deserves only brightness and laughter and orgasms and…I gulp. Yeah. Love. She deserves love.

Am I the man who can give it to her, all things considered? Or will my Don, the man I see as the father I’ve always wanted, take her from me just when I fall?