Page 5 of Renata Vitali (The Five Syndicates)
It startled me how much control Papà had over people, even an ocean away. As the head of the Vitali family, Papà was il condottiero. The leader. In layman’s terms, if the syndicate territories across the world were states and their bosses were governors, the Vitali family would be the federal government. And Papà? He’d be president.
Still, he may have made the rules for the mafia underworld, but I made my own rules. Those included doing all I could to defy his. Like finding a phone. I scoured the room, optically tracing every inch.
My heart was calm as failure met my eyes. There was a neat stack of laundry on the desk, a journal that peeked out from beneath the pillow-top mattress, and a box with north of twenty-three grand worth of Gurkha Black Dragon cigars tucked away in a built-in humidor beside the Alaskan king-sized bed. But no phone.
Murmurs sounded from the hallway, and still, my heart was calm as I searched the room for a hiding place. Locked closet. Bathroom across the hall. Curtains tied so tightly together, even my thin waist couldn’t hide behind them. Four-poster bed with a bottom blocked off by 18th century wood.
Silly, naive Renata Vitali.
Would I ever learn to plan for the worst?
Yet, my heart was calm when the handle to the bedroom door twisted, and I realized there was nowhere to hide.
My heart was calm as I perched myself in the center of the bed, looking as ready for my first encounter with Damiano De Luca as I could in old designer sweats stitched for rebellion and a samurai bun that weathered the eight-hour private flight from Italy to Texas.
My heart was calm as I accepted the inevitability of discovery with grace.
My heart was calm.
My heart was calm.
My heart was calm.
Until I saw him for the first time, and it wasn’t.
Trust is like an eraser. It gets smaller and smaller after every mistake.
Unknown
I prepared myself to meet the Vitali girl, but I didn’t prepare to meet her in my room. My eyes landed on hers the instant I swung the door open. Surprise journeyed through my body, but I tampered it and studied her laying on my bed.
Shock flexed her fingers and widened her eyes, which told me all I needed to know. She’d never seen me before. Never even heard of me. This was confirmation that I was the De Luca syndicate’s best kept secret. If a Vitali hadn’t heard of me, no one had.
Renata’s lips parted, and the urge to slip my thumb between them and stroke her tongue had my fingers itching. This. This reaction to her was the opposite of what I needed. Not now, when everything in my plan was starting to come together.
This made no sense. Her dark roots stained the edges of her shitty blonde dye job, she wore designer sweats like she starred in one of those rich housewives shows, and she’d piled her hair up in a lopsided ball on top of her head.
Still, her beauty stunned me. The type of beauty that attracted the worst attention. The kind that saw this girl and thought nothing but the dirty things he wanted to do to her. And I could see why. She was suggestive. Risqué. Lips so full they were the first thing you saw. Demure eyes you wanted to taint. Skin so milky you wondered how red it’d look after you bit down on it.
With her head cocked to the side, her eyes crawled down my body, like she was trying to figure me out. Probably trying to decide why she’d never heard of me. My father didn’t want other syndicates to think there was a better alternative to him, and I didn’t want to draw attention before I seized power.
Yet, as Renata gawked at me, trying her damnedest to hide it, I knew I caught her attention. She looked her age—sixteen on the brink of seventeen. But normal sixteen-year-old girls didn’t stare at me like that. They stared at me with fear and lust, like they stared at a seven-figure handbag on the arm of today’s hottest starlet. Unattainable. Worth more than they’d ever see in their lifetime.
But her. She stared at me like I was a reflection, and she was a looking glass. Her eyes—a goldish-red color impossible to define—tangled with mine. They fought. She won. It took three seconds too long to rebuild my barriers, but I knew she’d already seen the toll this life had taken on me.
Hardened edges. Tired lines. Haunted depths. She bore witness to it all, and it was too much to expect me to be nice after I’d caught her snooping in my room and she’d caught too many secrets in my eyes.
I hardened my features and took her in, taking painstaking care to eviscerate her with my intrusive glare. The frumpy attire—a distraction. The shitty dye job. The un-plucked brows. The chipped nail polish on bitten nails. The giant holes in her Converse.
Distraction. Distraction. Distraction.
Lies. Lies. Lies.
My lips formed a sneer, and I eyed where her body pressed against my bed. “If you want to sleep with me, you’ll have to try harder, Princess.”
Not because she didn’t attract me. She did. More than anyone else I’d ever met. But because I’d have to be stupid to involve myself with a Vitali; she’d snooped in my goddamned room, where I concealed all my messages from The Benefactor; and the way she hid behind her clothes screamed liar, and I didn’t fuck liars. Hell, if my dick touch
ed a liar, it’d probably confuse her for my own hand.
