Page 3 of Renata Vitali (The Five Syndicates)
He raised his finger and waved it at me. “Now you watch your mouth, you little slut.”
I looked down at my attire, my body language clearly uninterested and unfazed. “I don’t think slut means what you think it means, Angelo.”
He opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, and closed it. When he opened it again, he was no less calm, but he had a satisfied smile on his face as he seethed, “You’ll share the bathroom with my son, Damiano, whose room is beside yours.”
Wait.
Angelo De Luca had a son?!
Whether it’s a friendship or relationship, all bonds are built on trust. Without it, you have nothing.
Unknown
Like any sane person, I spent as little time as possible in Angelo’s mansion. It used to feel like mine, too, back when Mama was still alive. Nowadays, I spent more time at the local strip club than I did in my childhood home. Not that strippers were my thing. Networking with the people who worked there and those who enjoyed their services, however, was my thing.
Miriam stood in front of me, clad in cheap lingerie and too many bruises to count. I eyed them, cataloging each and every one of them before meeting her eyes. “He’s hitting you again, Mir.”
Miriam had become my dad’s consiglieri’s mistress around the same time my balls dropped. Angelo’s advisor beat his wife, so the eggplant-colored bruises lining Mir’s tanned skin didn't surprise me. Expecting this didn’t mean I accepted it. It pissed me the fuck off, but one day, I’d be in charge of the De Luca syndicate, and these problems wouldn’t exist.
“Don’t worry your handsome face about me, Damian. I’ll be fine.” She normally never spoke this freely, but the private room in The Landing Strip gave us some protection from Angelo’s goons, which I’d hoped would open her up.
“Why’d he hit you?”
Her head lowered, another punch to my gut. Battered women reminded me of my mother—and every time I stood by and watched her get trampled by my father and come back begging for more. Helpless to stop it.
I stepped forward, placed two fingers beneath Mir’s chin, and tilted her head up as gently as I could. In her glassy powder blue eyes, I examined my reflection. Neat gentleman’s cut. Dark eyes. Aquiline nose. Sharp classic Italian features. A hint of stubble I’d shave tomorrow.
My muscular six-two frame towered over her, too, so I worked to soften my expression as I spoke to her. “You can trust me, Mir. I’ll protect you.”
“Your father—”
“My father is a dinosaur. Have you seen the arms on a T-Rex? They can’t reach far. He can’t touch you, Mir. I won’t let him.”
She smiled and breathed out a short laugh. “You’d make a great boss for the De Luca syndicate, Damiano.”
That was the plan.
She shook her head, and fear widened her eyes. “I shouldn’t have said that.” She looked around. “I-I didn’t mean that. It’s so easy to forget what to say when you’re so nice.” Her eyes closed before opening again. “Angelo De Luca is a wonderful boss. You won’t tell y-your dad I implied otherwise, r-right?”
“Mir, I’m not my father. You don’t need to watch your words. You don’t need to be scared. I don’t like seeing bruises on your skin. I don’t like the way your hands shake when you speak to me. None of this is right. Do you understand that?”
She nodded her head. “I don’t know what to do, Damian. I can’t run away. My whole family lives here. I can’t leave them!” Her father was a low ranking De Luca, but a loyal one who’d never leave De Luca territory. “I can’t do anything.”
Pressing her would do neither of us any good. So, I nodded my head and put a comfortable amount of distance between us. “If you need anything, you can come to me, Miriam.”
“Thank you. You’ve been a good friend.”
That was the point. Don’t get me wrong. I genuinely cared for Miriam, and her safety genuinely concerned me… but despite being low ranking, Mir’s dad had a wide network of friends in the De Luca syndicate. He’d be the perfect ally to help me dethrone my father.
Miriam patted my cheek and left. I stayed a few minutes in the room, ruffled my hair so it looked like I’d fallen out of bed, and scrunched my plain t-shirt in a few places to form wrinkles. One task down. Another to go.
Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a Gurkha Black Dragon cigar, unrolled it, and pulled out the sheet of paper hidden in it. A twelve-hundred-dollar cigar ruined. Just like that. An unknown benefactor had been sending me cigars with hidden messages in them for the past year. Did I like being uninformed? Hell, no. But I wasn’t in the position to deny help.
This time, I read the message, my feelings more mixed than normal. Befriending Miriam to use her later felt dirty. Necessary, but dirty. Would it have felt less dirty if it hadn’t been a suggestion from The Benefactor? Probably. Either way, I couldn’t change these things, so I focused on my next task.
Unseat the consiglieri.
I rolled my eyes. Not as easy as it sounded, but hell, I’d try. Anything to get my dad off that throne and away from my people. People who deserved better than the best Angelo could give them, especially since he gave them the worst.
