Page 10 of Sins of the Orchid

Santino stepped aside but remained close, his strong presence providing protection. Part of me wanted to keep him close to me forever. His protection could have saved us in the jungle.

Father sat next to me and took my face in between his hands, and this time his touch was tender, fatherly. Like George’s used to be.

“I’ll fix this, Amore,” he vowed in a low voice. His thumbs wiped my tears away, the same way Santino did earlier today. His dark eyes softened, and he shook his head. “We’ll start over. I’ll do a better job, I promise. I’m your father, and you’ll stay with me. We’ll keep you safe.” He pressed a kiss on my forehead. “Your brothers and me. She won’t be there to hurt you again. Okay?” Today was the first time he had shown tenderness, and my throat hurt from the emotions I tried to swallow.

My eyes flickered to my brothers. “That’s right, Amore. We’ll handle it,” Luigi concurred. “You are our baby sister. We protect our own.”

Elena was their mother though. She was their own too.

Dad wrapped his big arms around me. “It didn’t start well, but we’ll end it great. Yeah?” I nodded silently, and my heart squeezed in my chest with memories of hearing those words before. “Your mom’s favorite saying. I borrowed it.”

He remembers Mom.

He pressed another kiss on my forehead, then stood up and walked over to Mr. Russo. Santino strode over to stand by his father’s side, as Luigi stood by Dad’s side.

Lorenzo’s eyes returned to me. “Pà will take care of it. Trust him.”

My eyes flashed to the group of men. I couldn’t see how, not unless Dad moved us somewhere else. “Is he going to get a divorce?” I asked.

Lorenzo and Adriano chuckled, though I failed to see what was funny.

“Don’t worry about that,” Lorenzo assured me. Dad and Mr. Russo spoke in rushed Italian, while Santino looked pensive. I couldn’t even guess what they were all so vividly talking about, but they all seemed tense. Then they nodded and Dad’s eyes returned to me.

“Amore, you stay here with your brother and the Russos,” he said. “I’ll come back when it’s safe.”

He shared a glance with Mr. Russo and headed out with Luigi, Uncle Vincent, and Santino.

CHAPTER3

Amore

THREE YEARS LATER

“Get off of your high horse, Bennetti.” Grandmother’s voice carried through the foyer. “Amore is my heiress. She’ll inherit the entire Regalè Enterprise and needs to know how to run it. Your goddamn criminal underworld is too small for her. She will head the business, not serve some little man that will never measure up.”

“You have a big goddamn mouth,” Dad hissed back, trying to rein in his anger. Those two bickered like cats and dogs.

“And you are blind if you think you can hold her back.”

Santino and Mr. Russo stood next to me, all of us in the large living room. I shifted back and forth between my feet, fidgeting with my hands while tension built in the room. I threw a silent apologetic glance at both of the powerful Russos.

Dad was in the middle of speaking with the Russo heads when Grandma and I interrupted their meeting. Grandma brought me home late, and it went south from there. I begged her to remain in the car or just leave. Grandma never listened to anyone. She followed me into the house with her bodyguards rather than just dropping me off. She said it was for my own safety, but sometimes I truly believed she just liked to agitate Dad.

You’d think at sixteen I would have at least some freedom. But the older I got, the more protection Dad and Grandma assigned to me. And since I was under both my father’s and the Russo's protection, it didn’t matter where I went in New York, the eyes of the Cosa Nostra watched. It was almost suffocating.

“Goddamn it, Regina. If you can’t follow my rules—”

“Oh crap,” I muttered under my breath. Grandma was notorious for doing what she wanted and not following anyone’s rules. “Here we go.”

Santino raised his eyebrow as the cackle of laughter happened. Grandma loved doing everything that upset others—namely Dad.

“You measly, little man. She’ll be running a billion-dollar empire someday, and you want her to learn it sitting in your living room.” I could hear Dad’s grumble even from here. “Or would you prefer to marry her off and hand over her inheritance to one of your despicable, worthless associates?”

To say my grandmother was disapproving of Dad’s title as the boss of the Bennetti crime family was the understatement of the century. But it was how Dad met my mother. She went to his restaurant, the one he co-owned with Mr. Russo, on Madison Avenue, before the Russos and Bennettis had their fallout. She was significantly younger than him, fifteen years, but he said they fell in love. Unfortunately, he was married. Then Mom got pregnant with me and never told him. My mother lived in a penthouse tower on 5th Avenue, and Dad ran the underworld. Well, part of it anyhow. The Russo family ran the rest of New York, the bigger part, and several other territories.

I smiled awkwardly at the highest members of Cosa Nostra. “She doesn’t mean it,” I grumbled in a low voice to Mr. Russo. “She just likes to agitate him.”

“You don’t say,” he answered goodheartedly. The crinkle around his eyes softened his features. Despite the knowledge that Mr. Russo was one of the most feared men in the mafia, right along with his son Santino, I liked them. I liked all three Russo men. Their kindness three years ago changed my life in this city.