My father begins to sputter, his face going red.
Vincenzo watches with an amused expression, and I suspect I do, too.
Mother grabs Father’s elbow. “Let’s go, Leonard. Now.” She must sense the danger, the coiled adder that is Mateo Milani, because she doesn’t give Father a chance to be indignant. Instead, she half pulls him from the table, then leads him from the room. Not a word to me, not even a backwards glance.
Then again, they’ve only ever cared about self-preservation. That’s why they sold me to the madman who just dismissed them as if they were nothing more than common fools. The madman who ordered Leonard and Carmen Fontana from his presence in a way that made my heart soar higher than it has in a long, long time. A sobering, and terrifying, feeling.
12
MATEO
“Stop torturing the poor girl.” Vincenzo smokes a cigar as I swirl my whiskey. “She has no idea about your parents.”
“It doesn’t matter if she knows, Vince.” I take a drink.
“It does matter.” He sighs. “I’ve told you this from the moment you hatched this plan—she’s not to blame for who her parents are, just as you’re not to blame for what happened to yours. Really, kid, I don’t understand why you can’t see that.”
“Maybe I do.” I stare into the fireplace, the blackened wood smoldering and popping. “Maybe I just don’t care. Making a Fontana suffer—any Fontana—is good enough for me.”
He leans his head back and puffs his cigar, making smoke rings rise toward the ceiling. “I don’t think that’s true. I saw the way you looked at her.”
“Like I want to break her neck with my bare hands?” I ask.
“No, more like you want to break her back.”
I shrug. “She’s my wife. Fucking her is a given.”
“But you haven’t yet?”
I shrug again.
“Mmhmm.” He smiles faintly.
“What the fuck is that?” I finish my whiskey and pour another.
“Nothing.”
I want to roll my eyes at him the same way I did when I was a teenager and he was my father’s best friend. They used to let me sit in on business meetings starting when I was thirteen. They were so goddamn boring. I wanted to be doing anything but listen to them talk about balance sheets and ducking the feds—though I rather enjoyed when they detailed how they dealt with threats to our family or our business. Those talks weren’t too bad.
Vincenzo was one of the more powerful bosses back then, and he did a lot to help my father come up in the world. Until it was all taken away. By the Fontanas. The whiskey burns as it goes down.
“Lucretia is just a tool. That’s it. I have the only Fontana heir. I have the name. They don’t have shit for holdings, but that doesn’t matter anymore.” I stare into the fire again. “I have their child, and I’m never going to let her go.”
“Are you still set on this plan?” he asks, his tone almost sad.
“Yes.”
He sighs. “Killing them won’t bring your parents back.”
“No, but it will make me feel really fucking good.”
“How will it make her feel?” he asks.
“Doesn’t matter.”
Another long-suffering sigh. “I think you’ll find that it does.”
“Giving me marriage advice when you’ve never been married?” I fire back.
He stares at me, something inscrutable in his eyes. “Fair point.”
“Come on, Vince. Did you come here to give me shit or to talk about plans?”
He shrugs. “Both. But I’m not talking plans until you fix me a whiskey.” He glances around. “Where are the boys, anyway?”
“Sonny’s balling some strange downtown, Benny is gambling, and Red’s fucking around with the DEA at the border.”
Vince whistles. “DEA?”
“Red and his damn drug subs. You know, when he first came to me with the idea, I thought he was joking. But he’s made it work.”
“Not this time though?” he asks.
“No, but it’s Red. He’ll come through.”
He sips his whiskey.
The fire continues to crackle, and I find my gaze wandering to the door, and then upward toward the ceiling. She’s in our room. I wanted to fuck with her more after dinner, but I also needed to talk business with Vincenzo, so I had to let her go. She practically ran from me, her hair flying out behind her, fear in every step. I catch myself smiling at the memory of it.
“Mmhmm.” Vincenzo raises his glass to me. “Just as I thought.”
“Shut up, old man.” I finish my whiskey. “Now, let’s get down to it.” I sit across from him. “Sarita and the meeting. I’m ready to finish this. All I need is your commitment to back me, no matter what.”
He turns his glass in his hands, the firelight glinting off the crystal. “I’ve always backed you, kid. No point changing that now. So how’s this going to go down?”
I give him the answer he’s already expecting: “With a lot of blood.”