Page 19 of Forsaking All Others

And so I conquered it.

I made friends with most of the members, but specifically a group of older gentlemen who also loved to ride motorcycles, one of whom was actually a member of an outlaw motorcycle gang called The Fallen, and who all thought the USA was the best damn country in the world. It amused me to argue with them and, surprisingly, it amused them too.

Booker, Hank, and Walter were all invited to Edgemont House for my dinner. They looked incongruous in their leather chaps and vests, with unusual facial hair like Booker’s handlebar mustache and Walter’s long goatee, but I also thought they looked right somehow, gathered around the table shooting the shit with some of the other motley collection of guests I’d gathered.

Like Lily Winchester, the editor of Notable, the city’s number-one fashion magazine, and one of the most famous matriarchs of Chicagoan high society. If I wanted to know anything going on in the city, Lily was my first source of information.

We met only weeks after I arrived in the city when I realized none of my Sicilian clothes would be fitting for the descending cold. Bonnie suggested I go to the Gold Coast neighborhood and peruse the boutiques, which is where Lily found me, trying on a gold suede trench coat that was entirely impractical but I had fallen in love with.

“If you don’t get it for yourself, I will,” she’d declared, peering at me through her wide-framed glasses. “I’m serious, it would be criminal to pass that up.”

I had never been shopping with a girlfriend before, something I let slip when Lily insisted on showing me some of her other favorite shops along the street, and she had adopted me on the spot.

“A woman,” she said, “should never shop alone.”

And I never did again.

Beside Lily sat Katya, a girl I met when I joined a local English as a Second Language club. She had immigrated with her parents at seventeen years old, and two years later, her English wasn’t great. I bonded with her instantly because we both had thick accents, hers distinctly Russian.

I liked Katya, but there was another reason I’d become close with her. Next to the Outfit, the Russian Bratva were the biggest organized crime group in Chicago, with their Slavic fingers in nearly as many pies as my husband’s. Katya skirted the edges of the organization, mostly because she had a particular taste in boys so bad they were truly dangerous, and happily, she was a wonderful source of gossip.

Across from them, Bonnie sat with Gertie because I had insisted they both take the night off for once. They were more than just the help at Edgemont. They had, as Bonnie had reassured me the first day they would, become my friends, and I wanted them to feel that. Servants, I’d also learned, were fonts of knowledge about the inner workings and scandals of powerful Chicagoan families. Most wealthy folks were so self-absorbed they didn’t even notice when their staff was in the room or think to curb what they said around them. Bonnie and Gertie together probably knew enough scandals to rival even Lily’s knowledge.

Katya was busy flirting with the three men I’d met when I enrolled for a self-defense course last winter. Akira owned the martial arts studio, having taken it over from his elderly father, Aoto, who still haunted the place regularly. He was a striking Japanese American man with perfect bone structure and a lethal kind of grace that made most women stop and take notice. Katya had clocked him the moment he stepped through the door. Gertie seemed besotted with both the tall, dark-skinned, and handsome Elijah and his foil Finn, who was auburn haired, fair skinned, and forever smiling like he’d never hurt a fly even though he was nearly six foot five and had a body like a linebacker. Elijah worked in private security, and Finn was a private detective, both of them bright minds behind their big capable bodies. They also had enormous tender hearts that had been easily won over by my wide-eyed, new-girl-in-America innocence.

I was surprised Renata and Alessia, my two dearest friends from the Chicago Outfit’s large society of wives, girlfriends, mothers, daughters, and sisters, had not claimed any of the handsome single trio for themselves, but then Renata was a thirty-seven-year-old widow who was happy to be widowed because her husband had been abusive, and Alessia was currently divorcing her husband, a foot soldier in Dario’s operation, to pursue a relationship with Dario’s closest advisor, Cesare. Alessia had been my first friend in the city, thanks to the introductions made by Carla, and she was also my best friend. We did most things together, partners in crime, and I trusted her more than I had ever had reason to trust anyone before. I felt almost possessive of our friendship because it was so sacred to me and such a novelty. Happily, she was as enamored of me as I was of her or else I might have felt insecure.

Last, but not least, was Bryson, one of my next-door neighbors who I had casually started talking to when I noticed him walking his gorgeous Doberman one day. He had been dressed impeccably in a designer suit and overcoat, his sharp loafers cracking across the asphalt as he walked briskly to Lincoln Park on the other side of the street from me, but when I’d crossed the road with a smile to greet his dog, and he turned to face me, I thought I might finally have found someone as attractive as my unwanted husband.

Bryson Wateree was a British expat with thick blond hair that reminded me a bit of my deceased, beloved Niccolo’s, and warm brown eyes. He immediately invited me to walk with him, and now, nearly a year later, I made time every day to meet him at 7:00 p.m. for his after-work walk with Maya, his sweet Doberman.

My crew, the one I’d cobbled together all by myself in the twelve months I’d been forced to live a new life in a new country.

Without them, I would have succumbed to the depression that dogged my every step like a shadow for the first few months of my marriage.

So I stood from my place at the head of the long mahogany table in our formal dining room and lifted my glass of wine, waiting for everyone to quiet naturally as they noticed my attention.

“I just wanted to say,” I started, surprised by the burn of tears at the back of my throat. “I just wanted to thank you all, deeply, for accepting me into your hearts this past year. As some of you know, moving to a new country where the language is not your first can be difficult. There were times I felt the loneliness down to my bones, times I felt I would rather throw myself off a building than wake up to face another day so separated from everything and everyone I’d ever known. I wish I could go back and tell myself everything would work out because I would meet each of you and, through you, I would find a new strength inside myself. I would discover exactly who I was meant to become. So . . .”—I paused to swallow the emotion tangled in my throat and grinned as I made eye contact with each of my friends—“on the anniversary of my coming to America, please raise your glasses to the Americans who have made a home for me here. Salute!”

“Salute!” they echoed enthusiastically.

Hank raised his glass so passionately, he sloshed white wine over his happily empty dinner plate. Everyone laughed, not with rancor, but in a friendly way that made my heart warm. I hadn’t known how bringing these different worlds together would go, but I could not have dreamed it would go so well as this.

So, of course, deep in the midst of gratitude and warmth, my mood had to be ruined by the arrival of the one person I desperately did not want to see.

Dario appeared in the open archway to the hallway like a shadow, his massive body blocking out the light from behind him and casting him in silhouette. Sometimes, when I hadn’t seen him for a moment, I forgot just how big he was, large enough to pick me up and run down the cathedral steps with me, so broad through the shoulders and narrow through the waist his proportions would have seemed ridiculous if not for those thick thighs and high round ass.

I hated him, sure, but it could not be denied that my husband was an absolute beautiful beast of a man.

And by the various female gasps around the table, I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

Of the guests gathered there, only Renata, Alessia, Bonnie, and Gertie had met my husband because they were the only ones who operated in his world. I had tried to invite the security team who worked at the house, too, but Dario had a strict no-fraternization rule. They could risk watching a movie with me or playing cards over beers when they knew Dario would be out of the house for long stretches, but accepting a dinner invitation from the boss’s wife in his own home without his explicit say-so was forbidden for them.

The men’s reactions were distinctly different from the women.

Hank slammed his wineglass to the table so firmly that more wine spilled over his knuckles and the tablecloth. Bryson subtly angled his chair closer to my side as Akira, Finn, and Elijah all sat even straighter in their chairs, ready for anything.

They were the kind of men who sensed a threat, one predator scenting another.