Mafia Captive (13 page)

What was she supposed to do? Pretend she hadn’t heard what Gemma said? Act too stupid to pick up on the innuendo? It was too insulting to pretend to be that idiotic surrounded by a bunch of men that looked like they’d stepped out of
Goodfellas
.

“Well, hell, why don’t we take an ad out in the paper, if everybody’s gonna know everybody’s business? It wasn’t like this when I was young,” Sal said.

If looks could kill, Faith would be swimming with the fishes. Wisely, she chose not to verbalize the cliché. It wouldn’t endear her to Uncle Sal, who had only just made peace with her heritage.

The ride back to the house was tense. Lily stared out the window while Gina quietly cried. Both women were trying, in their own way, to insulate themselves from the almost visible, demonic rage curling off Uncle Sal in the backseat.

“You’d better not become a liability to us,” Sal said.

Faith didn’t turn around. If she’d thought she wouldn’t die at the hands of a member of this family, she’d been kidding herself. What difference did it make if it was Angelo, Uncle Sal, Leo, or some random hired gun? She’d be dead no matter what. Yet something stupid inside her wanted to cling to the slim hope Leo had extended, that he was up to the task of saving her, that there was something in him that was good and decent and not like the others. Some noble instinct that had moved him in the direction of the Church and prayer instead of crime and death.

“Sal!” Gina hissed. “Of course she’s not going to be a liability. She’s Leo’s fiancée. She’s family. How can you say such a thing?”

“We don’t know her from Adam. Leo, you better keep your girl in line.”

“If you’ve got a problem, you take it up with Gemma. She’s the one who opened her big mouth,” Leo said. “And you will leave Faith out of this. I wasn’t kidding back there. Faith is
my
concern.”

“Are you threatening me, boy?”

Faith clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap. She wanted to scream. She wanted to blurt out the truth. Nothing would have felt better than to say: “No need to worry. I watched Angelo mow some poor guy down in an alley. Leo and I aren’t really together. I’m his prisoner to protect you assholes.” But she was too afraid of what Leo might do to her if she lost control and spoke her mind. And the situation was too dangerous with Sal at the moment. This wasn’t a family that made idle threats.

It was bad enough that she’d said what she’d said, admitted she wasn’t some naïve flower like she was supposed to. But Gemma had all but thrown the truth in her face. Even if she hadn’t known anything, it would be ridiculous to think she wouldn’t now. She’d rather they consider her a possible liability than a possible idiot.

Chapter Ten

This had to be the most fucked-up Christmas Leo had ever had. It took all his self-control not to blame Faith. The other women in the family probably knew more than they let on. They weren’t stupid. But they did their talking in private, away from the men. Never in public. It was the separation and division that was necessary for everyone to remain sane. Denial and pretending. And now it was shattered forever.

But then, why be mad at Faith? It was Gemma who’d been the one to crack. He’d been kidding himself since Emilio. He’d comforted himself with the idea that his sister wouldn’t suspect the truth. Emilio had been into some bad shit. That created a lot of enemies. The proximity of the time of his death to her worst beating could have easily been a coincidence. It was the lie he’d repeated to himself over and over. But the tension between them over the years had proven with little doubt that she knew. And tonight he couldn’t deny it any longer.

Once they got back to the house, Leo dragged Faith to her room. “Lock this door,” he growled.

“Wait…”

“WHAT?”

She shrank back at the evidence of his temper—the temper he’d inherited from Uncle Sal. Like Sal, he’d learned to keep a lid on it most of the time, to allow bits of steam to come off the surface. Sal’s outlet was crime. Leo’s was sadomasochism, but they were both treating the same disease. And lately Leo hadn’t been able to use the release valve.

He took a deep breath and said more quietly, “What?”

“Are you mad at me? Gemma was the one who…”

“I know. I’m not mad at you. I need to smooth this out with my family. Keep your door locked. I want you safe.”

Now wasn’t the time for trembling and a quivering lip from her. Even with his family in the house, his deepest urge was to take her downstairs and fuck morals. Fuck her consent. Fuck all of it. All he wanted was to bend her bare ass over the spanking horse and light into her until she was as bright red as a Christmas ornament, then take her from behind until he was too tired to care about any of this. He wanted to stay locked down there with her in their own world until after the New Year when the house would once again be quiet and peaceful.

Faith wrapped her arms around herself as if trying to still her trembling and nodded. “O-okay. I’m s-sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He shut the door behind him, and let out a breath when he heard the lock click into place. At least she was smart enough to listen to him and not defiant enough to challenge him. Right now he couldn’t handle either stupidity or willfulness.

The other women were sent off to their rooms to much protesting, like recalcitrant children. And the children were treated the same. The men retired to a large den Leo had created for privacy and quiet underground next to the wine cellar. They would never know that on the other side of the cellar was a locked steel door that led into a dungeon where he allowed his own brand of darkness to run free.

The den was a cave of a room compared to the rest of the house. If any place could calm the nerves of these men, it was this place.

He poured and passed drinks and cigars around. According to the clock on the mantle, it was past two in the morning. The kids would be up by eight screaming to open presents.

“Ange, might I have a word with you in private?” Leo said, piercing his brother with a glare.

Eyebrows rose around the room, but no one said anything. Although they were twins, Leo’s request for a word in private with Sal’s
capo
under the circumstances created a sense of greater intrigue.

Angelo handed his glass to Davide and strode out of the room ahead of Leo. Leo rolled his eyes at his brother’s posturing, but now was a stupid time to fight for the alpha title, even in his own home. Angelo had a lot to prove already in the minds of the other men, given his orientation. Leo would give his brother this one freebie.

He waited until they reached a far, private corner of the wine cellar to speak. With that much space and a closed den door they could be assured of some level of privacy while keeping an eye on the one exit so that nobody came out to eavesdrop, not that anybody would. Nobody in his family was that suicidal.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Leo asked.

“ME!? What does this have to do with me?”

“Oh let’s see… giving her to me for one thing. You could have killed her and never told me about it. Involving me was unfair. You shouldn’t have made her my responsibility. You shouldn’t have told me about her at all! Letting me think that I could save her… that if I didn’t it would be my fault she was dead… what is
wrong
with you? Do you hate me that much?” He looked down to find his hands shaking with anger, his fists clenching as everything inside him screamed to wrap those hands around his brother’s throat.

“
Marone!
Are you kidding me? You’ve always gotta be breaking my balls. Mother
fuck
.” Angelo took a slow breath to gain control of himself. “You’re my blood. My brother. But you’re so fucking uptight all the time. I wanted to give you what you wanted but didn’t have the balls to take yourself. And STILL don’t have the balls to take, it appears. She is your
slave
. Use her. She owes you her life. You should be collecting some form of payment. It’s such a waste giving you anything, you
fucking
Puritan. I don’t know why the hell I bothered.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Leo said. In his brother’s mind, this was still an appropriate Christmas gift. It was the recipient of the gift that was the problem. Not the gift itself. Angelo didn’t appear to grasp that giving someone a human being for Christmas wasn’t just immoral, it was gauche.

“Don’t worry, this is the last time I try to help you in any way. Go ahead and long for what you want but can’t bring yourself to man up and take while it’s right under your nose in your goddamn house.”

“Why did you have to tell Ma we were engaged? The family is mostly over the gay thing.”

“Ma’s not over it. This whole week would have been all about me and Davide and how I need to settle down with a girl and give her grandchildren to carry on the family name. You know it would have. It’s time you picked up some of that slack and nagging.”

“So now Faith is supposed to be the family brood mare because you prefer men? Even if I could use her like you suggest, you think I could ever be so cruel as to force her to bear children on top of everything else we’ve done to her?”

Angelo shrugged. “I’ve given up trying to figure out how your mind works.”

“Same.”

“Are we done here?”

“We couldn’t be more done,” Leo said. Had he expected an apology from his brother or any remorse or sign of guilt or responsibility for the way the holiday had been ruined? Of course not. Nothing was ever Angelo’s fault. There was always someone else to blame, or kill if blaming alone turned out not to be satisfying enough.

Leo slammed the den door behind him when they returned. He took a deep breath. He had to put this fire out before it got out of control.

“My brother thinks he’s too good for us. He’s always thought so,” Angelo said. “May as well rub our noses in it with this fine house, better than anything any of us have, because he can justify it with the IRS. All bought with his
honest
money that he flaunts at us every Christmas.”

On top of everything, Angelo had to bring the money up again. Well, why not? It was overdue. “I don’t think that. All I’ve said is that there are alternatives. Either own what you do, or don’t do it, but stop fucking whining about it and making excuses. But that’s not the point of this meeting, and you know it. Faith is not a threat. She doesn’t know anything more than what anybody can find with an Internet search.”

“And we know that how?” Leo’s Uncle Bernie asked. Uncle Sal had already voiced his issues.

“I’m too old for this shit,” Carmine interjected.

“Papi…” Leo said.

“What? It’s the truth. We need to move to the front business and forget the back business. It’s not like it used to be.”

“Right. Because there’s a ton of dough in carpet installation,” Vinny said. “How would we feed our families?” It was one of many businesses, and at least on paper, it was successful. The Raspallo front businesses ran more to casinos in Vegas and construction work in New York. It was hard to prove bids were rigged. And a little illegal gambling alongside the legal stuff was easier to paper over, especially given that most mob families had largely abandoned Vegas, so the heat was elsewhere.

“You work in Vegas at the casino now. You wouldn’t be doing installation,” Leo’s grandfather retorted, still remarkably sharp for nearing ninety.

“I just want to do the sandwich shop,” Fabrizio said.

“Oh, so you’re out of the business, now,” Angelo said. “Maybe
you’re
the liability.”

“Hey!” Leo said. “Leave him alone. Even if he ran a sandwich shop, you know he’s not going to sing. No more than I would. Aren’t we all self-employed in our own ways? Can’t we respect each other’s choices without acting like everybody who does something different has gone Judas?”

“I didn’t say I was out of the business,” Fabrizio said. “I’m saying if we all went straight…” Fabrizio must have rethought the extra connotation of that word and changed midstream. “…Honest… if we all went honest, I’d do the sandwich business. I’m just saying I’m not into carpet installation, all right?”

“Nobody is seriously considering doing carpet installation,” Angelo said, as if the idea turned his stomach.

“Papi is.”

Carmine cleared his throat from across the room. “When I formed this family, I mirrored what the
Ndrangheta
in Calabria does… keeping it all in the family or married in. It’s easier to keep the
omerta
and harder for the feds to work their way in.”

Leo’s gaze shifted to Davide. Davide wasn’t married in, but then he’d been in already. Papi had started the family with a few friends who weren’t related, and Davide was the grandson of one of those friends. Same with Vinny. But ever since then they’d been strict about who they allowed to join. A blood relation of one of the original members, or married to one of their women. There was no other way in, and Papi wasn’t wrong. It had made their organization harder to penetrate and kept most of them out of the system. And when they did go away, it was always for something relatively small.

Carmine took a sip of his drink and continued. “I wanted a tight ship, not all this fighting. It was the idea that eventually we’d get out when there were better opportunities, but even with what we do, we’re no more corrupt than most of the corporations of the world. Aren’t we doing the same things? Bribing the government to operate how we like? They call it lobbying. But we’re all using the same playbook. You think there isn’t crime and death in most large corporations? What about the pharmaceutical companies? You’re in medicine, Leo, tell me that’s not corrupt as hell. Tell me thousands or hundreds of thousands of people aren’t dying each year because of drugs rushed through the FDA that aren’t safe. Your Grammie almost died from one of them last spring.”

“I can’t argue with you, Papi,” Leo said.

“Damn right, you can’t. Their hands are stained with blood, yet it’s respectable, but what we do isn’t? And don’t get me started on the government. The government is mafia. Big corporations are mafia. They all screw the little guy, intimidate, threaten, and harm. They’re all out for money and power. The only difference is public tolerance. I want us to go honest to get out from under the law, but what does going honest mean? Everyone with power and money is mafioso. Every single person.”