Right where he’d leveled a gun at me on the airport tarmac.
Around her, the capos sat frozen for one long second, utterly shocked by her masculine audacity.
“It was so pleasant to meet you, Rocco,” she murmured in low, liquid Italian, her blood red mouth brushing his cheek as she spoke intimately to him. “Do not ruin it by insulting my people, mmm? I belong with my man as much as he belongs with me. No one will take him from me, not God or the devil himself. Not even you, the mighty capo dei capi of Napoli.”
Rocco stared up at her for an interminable moment, his eyes hot and cold with desire and wrath. He was shocked by his own arousal, to want such a bold woman seemingly went against his nature. He didn’t know, as I did, that he wanted her the way a leech wants a host, to suck her power straight from the source until he was plump with it.
“You dare to talk to me like that?” he asked gruffly, not as authoritatively as he might have liked.
I maintained my slightly slouched posture in my chair because some of the more astute capos were staring at me, but beneath the table, one hand dipped into my pocket around the folding knife I always kept on my person. Rocco had taken my gun, but he’d been too stupid to search for anything else.
“I dare many things,” she admitted in a husky drawl as she drew the gun down his neck, past his chest, to the seat of his pants where she tapped at the bulge there. “Most of which, Don Abruzzi, I do not think you’d like.”
“Try me,” he bit back, his grin feral with rabid lust.
This wasn’t a game he’d played with an attractive woman before and the perverseness of his nature made her all the more appealing. I knew he was already imagining how he could break her. What she might look like with tears in her eyes as he beat her or fucked her.
A growl built in my chest, fingers tightening around my knife. But Frankie caught my eye and stilled me with a subtle jerk of his chin.
The three of us would be dead if I acted on my jealousy and rage, and that would ruin everything.
“Abruzzi,” Pietro Cavalli snapped, the oldest man at the table taking umbrage with the entire situation. “Release Frankie Amato’s woman and let us get back to business.”
Rocco licked his lips as he took one long last look at Elena’s mouth, then patted her hip to release her from his lap. “Go with the women. I want to speak with your husband and his capo a moment more. But, beautiful, I am very glad you have come to my home. I promise to be a warm host.”
Elena didn’t hesitate. She stood from his lap without ceremony and walked through the doors Mirabella had disappeared through minutes before.
She didn’t even look over her shoulder at me as she went.
It wasn’t only Rocco, the stinking bastardo, who was aroused by Elena’s display of power, but it was easier for me to move on from it than the slightly panting Neapolitan Don.
Because I knew that the moment we left this place, Elena would be mine to do with as I pleased.
As she pleased.
And suddenly, the idea of a her trailing a gun down my body was hotly erotic.
“You heard me, Dante?” Rocco demanded. “I won’t have you thinking you’re the boss when you got no say here, understood?”
I smiled at him, a wolf hiding in plain sight among the sheep. “Of course, Don Abruzzi. I am merely a humble visitor.”
He stared at me suspiciously, but was quickly distracted by another capo who questioned if I would be invited to the funeral of a local capo.
He wondered why I was not properly insulted, effectively put in my place. How could I be so cool and self-assured when he had all the power and I would only exist here by his own grace?
He didn’t understand, as I did, that power wasn’t solely in action. It was in the timing of that action and the reason for taking it. He didn’t understand that he was showing his hand too soon, that now I knew just how unwilling he was to ever support my plans.
He didn’t know yet that his gauntlet had been properly thrown down and I was just waiting to pick it up when the time was right.
And then, he would know just how much power I had and how willing I was to wield it.
It was about more than just the politics of the Camorra.
He’d made it about Elena.
There was an old Neapolitan saying that perfectly suited the situation.
Chi vuole male a questo amore prima soffre e dopo muore.
Whoever is against this love, suffers and then dies.
Four
Dante
It was hours before the discussion finished.
Rocco wanted to posture, waxing fucking poetic about how much money he’d made in the years of my absence, how ruthlessly they’d gone after those who couldn’t pay their debts or refused to genuflect to his authority.
It was boring as hell.
But also, helpful. This was what happened with thugs rose to power, they prioritized bragging rights over mystery.
Mystery was what had kept me alive thirty-five years despite the risks I took every day in my position as the New York City capo dei capi.
Frankie stood against the wall with a few other lower level men, practically rolling his eyes whenever he could get away with it. Another mistake by Rocco. He tried to crush other men with power and ambition instead of cultivating them to strengthen his own objectives.
He disgusted me.
I kept that disgust from my face even when he gestured for me to kiss his damp, fleshy cheeks in goodbye.
“You’ll be in touch regularly,” he advised me as if I was some wayward nephew.
“Of course.”
“And the girl, bring her around,” he ordered, his eyes gleaming with lust and calculation as he assessed my response.
I shrugged coolly, checking my Phillipe Patek watch because I knew it would annoy him. “She has a mind of her own.”
“She needs a strong man to rid her of that bad habit.”
My brow hiked. “And you’re the man for the job? I think Frankie would take umbrage with you absconding with his wife.”
Rocco shrugged, but there was too much interest in his eyes. He was old-school. Women were things, commodities to be traded in marriage for political gains or used for pleasure, housekeeping and child rearing.
It was almost impossible not to laugh at the idea of Elena willingly consenting to any of that to the detriment of her own independence.
“Where is she?” Rocco asked. “I would like to say goodbye.”
“I think that’s enough for today,” I countered. “I’ll collect her and we’ll be on our way. Thank you for your…warm welcome, Don Abruzzi. It is one I won’t soon forget.”
He inclined his head like some king to his subject, but I was already turning on my heel to walk out the swinging door into the kitchen beyond where the women had congregated.
Only, Elena wasn’t among them.
Mirabella sat at a small, scarred wood table peeling potatoes with a woman I recognized as her elderly aunt and another younger girl barely out of adolescence.
“Oh,” she said, her mouth a round expression of shock.
I tipped my chin at her, irritated as I’d always been that she was terrified of me simply because of my size and position. Growing up, I’d only ever been kind to Mirabella, if slightly disinterested. She was pretty, with breasts that ripened before the rest of her could catch up, but I’d always found her meek and uninteresting.