Page 2 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
There’s a degree of deception in silence.
Don Lemon
Sixteen Years Old
Sometimes, you know when catastrophe is about to strike you. A screech of tires. Oxygen masks shooting at you from above your airplane seat. The numbness spreading across your face before a stroke.
There were no warning signs for me.
My heart was calm when Angelo De Luca turned the corner of the East Wing hallway, seconds after showing me what would be my room for however long Papà’s punishment for me lasted.
My heart was calm when, not a minute later, I darted to the room next to mine, and my fingers twisted the door handle without a moment’s hesitation.
My heart was calm as I eased my way into the bedroom. The one that belonged to the secret De Luca son. Damiano, his dad had called him, not an ounce of affection in his voice.
I should have known better.
In this world, there was only one reason to hide a child if you were a mafia boss for one of the Five Syndicates. The thought of learning firsthand what was wrong with Angelo De Luca’s secret son should have scared me.
But in the rare moments I’d seen my father, he had taught me that fear was weakness, and weakness was death. It wasn’t a quaint lesson, nor was it a father’s honorable attempt at keeping his daughter safe.
It was a warning.
Against him.
He was the threat in my life. Always would be. I’d been here less than an hour, but every second I spent in Devils Ridge, Texas reminded me of that.
Don’t be weak.
You’re a Vitali.
Vitalis don’t feel fear.
Christ, a whole continent away, and Papà’s voice still plagued my mind. Usually, he inspired anger. Today, determination darted from my head to my toes as I began my search for a cell phone or landline in Damiano De Luca’s room.
Like my room next door, this room felt un-lived in. Unlike my room, someone had been living in this one for longer than all of one point two seconds.
Telltale signs of neglect painted the room. Crisp, clean sheets—untouched for who knew how long. Aged air—stale with a fading hint of aftershave. A sole eighteenth-century dresser, coated with a fine layer of dust.
I should have considered what that meant. That even the maids hadn’t entered this room in some time. I didn’t. Maman deserved to know that I’d seen Papà pounding into his secretary before he sent me to Texas to live with the De Lucas—without a phone and beleaguered by explicit instructions never to be in contact with one, lest I be given an opportunity to tattle to Maman.
I wasn’t the type to listen, but people were like scampering rats when it came to my family. Or maybe they were cult followers—frail and obeisant, followers begging for a command, all too happy to hide the electronics from me. This meant searching for a damn phone in foreign territory proved nearly impossible.
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 grand worth of Gurkha Black Dragon cigars tucked away in a built-in humidor beside the Alaskan king-size 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.
