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Regina
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I can’t believe this is my life, sitting beside a man who is telling me he’s been a killer and psychopath since he was fifteen years old as if he were discussing the weather. No wait, he’s a sociopath—he has a conscious, he just ignores it. And he’s asking me to go quietly, meekly, into a marriage with him. Please, please wake up now. I squeeze my eyes so tight I see stars. Nope, still living this nightmare. For a few minutes he had seemed so nice. Actually, he’s still nice. And that’s what makes him so dangerous.
Him being nice and that kiss, that kiss that felt like I was touching a live wire. A current ran through my body, so strong even now I ache from it. It was the moment I put my hand in his all over again, yet this time I didn’t want it to stop. I stare blindly out the window. Dominic Sabatini tasted like sin, and sex, and all the things that dirty dreams are made of. I shiver at how badly I want to taste him again, at how I hadn’t wanted it to end.
Nothing in my entire life has ever felt as good as his kiss. For an all too brief moment I forgot everything; nothing existed but Dominic. The heat of his body against mine, the taste of him. The sensation of his velvet tongue sweeping into my mouth, slow and almost gentle, at odds with the growl that rumbled out of his chest. Then reality came crashing down, and I’m wondering if I dare to open the car and throw myself out of it.
Rolling my eyes, I shake my head—don’t be stupid. Dominic promised he wouldn’t hurt me. I just have to wait for the right moment to escape all of this. Eventually, I can escape and find a new home.
Home. “Where do you live? Do you live with a woman?”
“In the building where I have my club. There was a woman, she overstepped today and she’s been removed.”
“Removed?” I’m uneasy at how cold he is.
Dominic chuckles. I hate the way he laughs at me. It’s really annoying the way the sound sends heat up my tummy. “She didn’t want to leave. Have no fear, she’s in one piece and walking and talking just fine.”
“How did she overstep?”
“She wanted to meet Pop.” He says it as if she were asking to meet the Pope.
“Why was it overstepping?”
“It was the second time she’d asked to meet him. She wanted to be my girlfriend.”
The word girlfriend is muttered like it’s offensive to him.
“She wasn’t, she was my mistress. My rules are simple: you don’t ask questions about what I do, any of it. Where I go, what I do, who I do it with. If I want you to know, I’ll tell you. I told Serena that the first night and she agreed.”
“Are you going to have a mistress?” I can’t say the words “once we’re married.” I can’t allow my mind to go that far.
He shrugs. “We have to seal our marriage, there’s no way around it. I’m also not going to force you to fuck me. I have no problem finding women who want to fuck me. If you don’t want to be a real wife to me, I’ll have a mistress. Sex is a normal appetite that needs to be fed. This marriage will be what you make it. I’m willing to put in the work, if you are too. I won’t ask you to give more than I do.”
The idea of him with someone else sends an ache shooting through me. How dare he tell me he would touch another woman while he was married to me. “That’s bullshit. Let me guess, I don’t get to fuck another man?”
“No other man touches you.” The words are a growl that reverberates around me, sending a shiver up my spine. “If you aren’t fucking me then you aren’t fucking anyone else. You have more control of your life and what happens in it than you’re acting like you do.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Go passively into a forced marriage, lay back and think of the good of the family and allow you to fuck me. Shut up and smile and be a good girl with no thoughts or feelings of my own.”
“How the fuck do you have such an attitude? This wasn’t the way you were in that Catholic boarding school. I won’t believe it. Also, how do you not have an accent after living in Italy for so long?”
I shrug. “I didn’t speak for the first four years I was there.” I shake off the embarrassment of admitting it out loud.
“When I started to speak, I was told by Mother Superior that Johnny didn’t want me to speak Italian more than English. One of the attractions of the school was for the students to learn English, so even though I didn’t understand Italian, there were two teachers who spoke English and some of the older girls knew English too.”
“As for the attitude. No, I wasn’t like this before I came to New York. What can I say? Moving to New York and being around Johnny and his men changed me. When I first got here they weren’t very nice. Any time I was in the least bit timid they made fun of me and laughed at me. I got over it real quick.” The men had taken enjoyment in my blushes and shyness, often going out of their way to make me uncomfortable around them.
“Francis and Danny dropped more curse words in a single week then I had heard in my entire life up to that point. Danny was willing to show me New York and let me hang out with him and his girlfriend. His girlfriend was nice, she talked me into standing up for myself.”
Dominic shakes his head and punches his phone, changing the music from the blues that had been playing.
“Eminem?”
“Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts their cakehole.”
I laugh against my will. “You did not watch that show.”
A chuckle fills the car. Dang it, butterflies appear in my tummy, trapped and fighting to get free. “Yeah, I did. I’m more surprised the nuns let you watch the show.”
“Oh it wasn’t easy, and I didn’t get to watch until after season five. Mother Superior received the box set as a gift from her sister in America. We were snowed in and running out of things to watch. It was out of sheer desperation we put the first disc in. Within two weeks we were done with all five seasons. Best Christmas ever.”
“That was your best Christmas?” His deep, rich voice is heavy with sympathy.
I shrug. Feeling his eyes on me, I become fascinated by the fast-moving stretch of highway outside my window. “It was a girls’ boarding school run by nuns. There were never more than forty girls there from five to sixteen. What would you expect?”
“What was the second-best Christmas?”
“When Mother Superior told me they would pay for me to go to university so I could become a teacher and go back to the school to teach when I was done. I didn’t have to return to Chicago. It was the best present I have ever received. The assurance I could stay home.”
“But it wasn’t your home. It was where you went to school.” He doesn’t understand.
“It was the only home I knew. Johnny sent me there when I was six years old, only four days after the death of my mother. I talked to him once on the phone two weeks later and then I didn’t have any contact with him for seven years. There were no birthday cards, no Christmas presents, no letters, not a single fucking phone call. Then one day out of the blue he shows up at school when I was thirteen and told me it was time to come home to Chicago.”
A shiver goes through me remembering how angry he was when I clung to Mother Superior, begging her not to make me go with him. “He exploded when I told him that I didn’t want to go with him. Threatened to stop paying for school, I wasn’t in New York a day before he brought it up. How it was my fault we didn’t have a relationship because I didn’t come home when he went to get me. I was the one who fucked everything up. Not the adult who ignores a six-year-old kid for seven damn years.”
All the anger over how fucking unfair Johnny was, still is, comes pouring out of me.
“Out of sheer coincidence, he came the day of my birthday. He had no idea what day it was. I expected, I don’t know, a present, a visit, not for him to demand I pack up my life and go with him now that his wife was finally dead. He refused to listen when I told him that the school was my home. I didn’t know anything else but the school. A school he sent me to without any fucking warning. He didn’t even take me to Italy, let alone drive me to the airport. Some guy took me to the gate, I flew all by myself. A nun picked me up at the airport and explained everything to me.” I take a deep breath, trying to get myself under control, embarrassed at the way I’m trembling.
A soft curse word is an exhalation of air from Dominic.
“I finally talked to him two weeks after I was there crying every day. He comes to the phone and yells at me to shut up and stop crying. Yelled at me that I needed to be a big girl and knock it off. He didn’t want to hear about me crying and begging to come back. I was there to stay, so get over it.”
“That’s when you stopped talking.” It’s not a question.
I nod. “He told me to shut up, so I did.”
A hand goes into his hair. He smacks the dashboard, the music goes down to barely audible. “Why in the fuck did you come to America?”
“He told me he was dying. Told me he wanted to get to know me before he died. He went on and on about how he thought he was doing the right thing by me. There was a part of me who wanted to have a father. The school was a boarding school, but most of the girls left during the holidays to spend time with their parents. Fathers came, mothers came to see their daughters and I envied that. Even though I long ago told myself I didn’t care my father didn’t want me, deep down I cared.” It’s only because he’s not looking at me that I can admit it.
“I wanted to know who he was. Even when I was in Chicago, he wasn’t much of a father, from what I remembered. It was about him and my mother. I was told to go play, my mom turned on the television and told me to stay in my room when he came over. I thought...this was my last chance if he was dying. I was afraid I would regret it if I didn’t come.”
A bitter laugh escapes me. “In the end I felt so stupid, like I should have known it would be a disaster. I’m not here half a day and he’s already listing my every fault and failure: I’m too fat, I’m ugly—okay, he didn’t say ugly, but he kept going on and on about how I’m not nearly as pretty as my mother. The way I dress, how it’s taken me so long to come home and be a good daughter. Then he’s taunting me how he knows I really only came back for his money, and if I don’t behave he won’t leave me a penny.
“I was on the verge of going back to Italy when I met Richard. If it weren’t for him this would have been the worst two years of my life. Richard is the only person besides my mother who has ever cared about me, who loves me, and no matter what you threaten me with I’ll never forget that.” I shake my head as I remember how Richard made me feel loved for the first time since my mother died.
Dominic’s quiet for a long time; he shakes his head. A press of the button and music fills the car. “Get some sleep.”
***
Regina
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I can’t sleep. I retreat into my thoughts as I watch the city give way to dark, endless flat land and highway. Maybe an hour into the drive Dominic’s phone rings. He hits a button then puts it on speaker.
“Yeah, Mary.”
“I have you checked into a hotel in Youngstown, it’s right off the interstate. You have the room for tonight and tomorrow so you don’t have to check out until you want to. They have the kind of setup you were wanting. The room is ready for her and I’ve notified the men.”
“Efficient as always, I don’t know what I would do without you. Tomorrow, you’ll need to work on planning the wedding. Johnny won’t last long, but I have no doubt if we go small he’ll lose his shit. With family and business, put the estimate at three hundred guests.”
“I’ve already made inquiries, Father Carmichael will make Our Lady of St. Catherine’s available two Saturdays from now, but it will create an issue in transportation from the church to a hotel large enough to hold the reception. The wedding already scheduled for St. Catherine’s is not an issue to reschedule. The Holy Cathedral downtown will only be blocks from several hotels for the reception. However at the Holy Cathedral, a significant inducement may be required to reschedule that wedding. Personally, I think St. Catherine’s is much prettier. What do you think?”
“I think I don’t care about which one looks prettier. I’ll look at everything tomorrow. Go to bed. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond, just hangs up.
“Two weeks?” The words fly out of my mouth. That’s too soon—it’s fine, I won’t be here.
A sigh. “I told you, Johnny doesn’t have long. The sooner this is settled the better, not just for us but in the family.”
“What happens when Johnny dies?” I don’t for a single moment think he’ll agree to a divorce. In the mafia, marriage is forever, no matter what. Divorce is not an option. Which is exactly why I need to escape Dominic before the wedding happens.
A small shrug. “His underboss Carlo Toro becomes Don. Carlo will likely name his nephew Salvatore underboss.”
“But people don’t like Sal.” The men who came to the condo had been vocal about their dislike of him.
Another shrug. “No, he’s too bloodthirsty, too willing to shoot first and clean up his mess later. Carlo is a good underboss, he will make a good Don. The only other person he would be willing to put in would be his other nephew Luca Toro, a capo in Vegas who has been doing good things since he took over his father’s place last year. I haven’t met him but his reputation is solid. He’s a good earner and works well with the other mafia out there.”
“I just don’t get the difference between the mafia and the Outfit. Isn’t it all the mafia?” I had been too afraid to ask the question of Johnny and his men.
“We’re all the mafia, but not all mafia is the Outfit. The Outfit is separate in that we have different rules—not many, but enough that matter. We run Chicago, and no other mafia, except the Irish, are allowed to operate within our city. There are some Russians we allow to keep going because they keep the worst Bratva fuckers in line. Maryland, Philly, KC, Vegas, and Boston, they take orders from New York. No one tells us what the fuck to do.”
“So what do you do, exactly?” I can’t keep the fear out of my voice. I’ve heard he has no problem with murder, that he doesn’t order deaths, prefers to handle it himself despite the fact that as a capo, he has several men under him willing to do it for him. What does that make him, that he doesn’t hand off killing another man?
“For the most part we take care of our neighborhood. Pop and I don’t allow drugs harder than weed, haven’t for more than fifty years. We’ve run off developers who want to tear shit down and build places the people who were there couldn’t afford—it’s how Pop and I came to own so much real estate.”
He shrugs. “I run liquor out of a family in the backwoods who have been doing it since they were making bootleg in the twenties. I slap a fake label on it and charge for what the label says it is and make double off it in and around the city. Mainly I run a club with gambling in the lower level, poker, craps, roulette, all that shit. That’s the illegal side of it. I also run a legit real estate business, selling, leasing property in our area, and I started importing high-quality home finishes from Europe, mainly Italy, wherever the best of the best comes from.”
“That’s all?” I can’t keep my disbelief out of my voice.
His voice is cold now, almost robotic. “What? You want me to tell you about the tweakers who tried to move a meth lab into another neighborhood and it became family business to remove them? How I grabbed two and tortured them to get all the info on who funded it, where it was going and who benefited before killing them? Or about the fucking MC that keeps trying to move in, and I’ve killed three of their men so far over the last few years?”
I’m shaking my head, wishing he would stop, but he keeps going.
“You need to know about the damn Bratva bastards me and my men took out for bringing in a shipping container filled with women? Do you need me to tell you about the gamblers I’ve had to work over, breaking bones, making sure they needed stitches when I was done with them when they didn’t pay me on time? I’m not saying death doesn’t happen. I’m just saying it doesn’t happen every day. None of those men deserved to keep breathing for the shit they did, for the lives they were willing to ruin.”
Cold, so very cold. And why do I agree with him? Does it make it okay that those men were animals? I sigh as I close my eyes, yes and no and then yes all over again. The nuns, they knew who Johnny was. They knew the money coming into the school and church to pay for me was bloody. It didn’t bother them in the least. Mother Superior and I spoke once. She told me angels were not the kind, benevolent things of lore. They were warriors, they did god’s work good and bad, they slayed the demons man could not and sometimes they slayed men. Dominic is no angel; he’s a man who just looks like a fallen angel.