Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

DANTE

T he meeting room isn’t filled with men yet. We’re the first to arrive.

As Alyssa hugs Brynne on entry, I hear ungodly squeals. I watch them giddily bounce up and down, which looks absurd as two prominent leaders of a New York City crime family.

“The fuck is that about?” I ask Slate, standing beside him, where he’s pouring coffee from the metal carafe into his mug.

Brynne arranged and catered to the meeting within the short time frame she had to get both sides together.

“Probably about the engagement ring,” Slate says offhandedly, sipping his black coffee and wincing from the heat.

“What?!” I say a bit too loudly and gain the quick flick of Alyssa’s eyes.

Slate chuckles and nods. “Gave her Mama’s ring, fits her like a glove.”

I swallow. That’s huge for him to propose.

I grin. “Is that how you’re going to merge the families?”

He shrugs one shoulder in the Ardesia Ricci way. “It would’ve happened anyhow; we might as well speed the process and use it to our advantage.”

“What would’ve happened? You would have married her either way?”

He pins me with a stare that says he thinks I’m being dense. “Yes, Dante. I would’ve married her anyhow.”

I smile, clapping him on the back as I congratulate him.

“Keep it to yourself for the moment. Brynne wants to break it to the men at the right time today.”

I nod. “You think this is going to go well?”

He laughs. “Hell no, but we’re ready. Whether either side likes it or not, these families are merging, so they’d best deal with their feelings on their own time.”

I sigh as Bianchi men file in, along with the odd Ricci man who snarls at them.

“Well, let’s get this shit show on the road,” I tell Slate, turning to take a seat directly across from Alyssa.

Even though I showered and brushed my teeth this morning, I can still taste her. I still smell her on my skin, like she’s tattooed there permanently.

Brynne starts the meeting by getting right down to the reason for it and pulling no punches about the merger.

“So, you’re telling me,” Lorenzo starts, “that we will work together. Like...closely?”

I pipe up, “Yeah, what about territory?”

Alyssa eyes me with an edge that would cut a lesser man, and I grin at her.

I can learn all I need to know from Slate later after the meeting, and she knows that. She knows I’m just egging the men on for entertainment.

“Yeah, what about territory?” Lorenzo says.

Slate looks at me with a glare that tells me to cut the shit , and I grin, hiding my face from view as I pretend to pick lint off my button-up.

“Yes, you’re going to work together as one. The territory will belong to both sides if Mr. Ricci agrees, that is…” Brynne trails off, looking at Slate for confirmation.

The entire room looks to Slate, even the Bianchis under Brynne’s command.

The air in the room gets tense, and frustrations are about to boil over. I wish like hell that Brynne hadn’t taken my weapons at the door.

“Listen,” Slate finally speaks, seeing Brynne getting furious with the etiquette in the room. “You’re acting as if this will be a bad thing. We’ll outnumber the other three families tenfold and have more territory. We need you all to agree not to kill each other as we merge powers. There will be a shift in how both sides are doing things already, as you got new bosses.”

I shift uncomfortably in my chair, not knowing where this is about to go but cracking my knuckles out of habit just in case.

Alyssa’s eyes scan the table, finding mine. There’s a speck of fear in them—one she locks down when she realizes I’ve spotted it.

I wish I could assure her this will work, but I can’t.

This hasn’t been done in many years. It’s going to be hard, and there will be growing pains.

“So, you’ll be marrying soon, right? The transition needs to happen quickly so we can get politics in order,” Antonio—one of Brynne’s men—says, eyes darting between them.

Smart cookie, that one.

Brynne juts her chin up in fake strength as she locks her eyes on her soon-to-be husband. “Yes. It will be next week. You all can see to hiring someone to get it together. We don’t want a big spectacle.”

Lorenzo scoffs at this, crossing his arms over his chest. “It needs to be.”

He says it low enough that Brynne can ignore it and do what she wants, but everyone hears him.

How she reacts will set the tone for how she handles a world of mafia men.

We know she can kill, but can she hang when the men are stubborn?

“If you’re going to voice your opinion, do so a little louder,” she replies, her tone hard as stone.

I cough to cover a laugh, and no one pays me any mind.

Lorenzo drops his arms to the table, straightening as if fortifying his defenses. “I was only saying that for this to work and for all of us to be appeased with the transition and see the results we want from the merge, the wedding needs to be a big spectacle. It’s an Italian wedding, for fuck’s sake.”

She looks at Slate, and something unspoken passes between them.

“Fine.” She sighs. “I know you’re right. But how will we have something so massive in only a week?”

“Don’t worry, Boss,” Antonio says, standing and looking at Lorenzo. “We’ve got this.”

Both men stand and shake hands, and the feeling in the room lightens.

The room stretches in a collective sigh of relief that there’s no blood on the table or entrails leaking from anyone, and I sit back in my chair, tension releasing out of my body.

I hung around after the meeting to discuss my part in this wedding planning. I’m to secure the priest, and I have just the man for the job, but it’ll take some convincing.

Alyssa moves off with Lorenzo and Antonio, who’ve taken up the task of wedding planners for some fucking reason.

“You ready?” I ask her, and she shoos me away.

“I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”

“I’m going to my place, minaccia.”

She stops, eyeing me as something passes on her face. “Alright, then. Have a good night.”

That’s that, then, I guess.

There had been a palpable shift in her mood in the car ride over, and I don’t know what prompted it.

After the night and morning we had, I thought we made progress.

Or maybe that’s the entire problem.

She can’t handle how things went down with us. My admission that I don’t kiss yet love kissing her might’ve been the nail in the coffin of our no-strings-attached verbal contract.

It had only just begun, too.

On the way back home, I instructed the driver to drop me at St. Andrews Cathedral. I check my messages from Slate to make sure I don't have any current outstanding orders he needs me to carry out before I shut my phone off and talk to the priest.

I don’t, so I power my iPhone down and shove it inside the breast pocket of my suit jacket.

When the Suburban comes to a stop, I get out and look up at the massive church towering above as light wisps of rain brush my face.

“Here goes nothing,” I tell myself aloud, knowing this is going to be a tricky thing, walking back into a church I haven’t stepped foot inside since her funeral.

“God, give me strength,” I mutter, bounding up the steps before opening the door.

It smells, as I remember, like warm incense and higher power. If you breathe deeply enough, you can almost smell the mints everyone sucks on to get through service when it’s running long.

I wander toward the confessional, knowing no one’s inside at this late hour, but stepping inside, nonetheless.

I sit and let the dim silence wash over me, clasping my shaky hands as the feelings I had last in this building flood me.

I don’t hear him enter, but his voice comes from the other side and startles me. “Would you like me to hear your confession?”

I sigh. I know it’s Luca, but I don’t want to ruin this moment I’ve waited so long for.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been years since my last confession. Hell, it’s been years since I stepped foot in this place. Sorry, Father,” I say when I realize I’ve cursed in such a holy place.

A chuckle comes from the other side of the screen. “It’s alright, Dante. Also, I don’t think God admonishes those of his children who hide away from pain. Grief strikes us to the marrow, especially when it blindsides us.”

Tears burn my eyes, and I tip my head back to fight them.

I’ve dealt with her death. At least, I thought I had.

“She’s been gone how long now?” Father Russo asks me.

“Eight years.” My throat burns as I let go of the tears and let them fall silently.

“Eight years without your love. It has to be hard. People say that watching the world go on is the hardest part. Thinking that they’re no longer with us to experience each thing we do. Not there to share things with or to hug.”

“I told her I’d move on, Father. I broke that promise to her. I fell into my grief and couldn’t swim my way back out to save my life,” I admit to him when I haven’t admitted it to anyone else before.

A sigh comes from the other side of the partition. “She understands. Have you come to confess a sin tonight?”

“I have.”

“Go ahead.” I hear Father Russo shifting as if he’s getting ready to bear the weight of whatever I’ll say next.

“I’ve moved on,” I say, confusing myself and the priest.

“Ah, and now your tears make so much more sense.”

I wipe them away, not understanding how he’d even heard them falling.

“Then you haven’t broken a promise to her, but maybe yourself?” he asks.

I narrow my brows. “I don’t understand.”

“When someone close to us dies, someone we cherish above all else, we can make pacts and promises subconsciously without even realizing it. Perhaps you made one such promise that you wouldn’t move on? That you would hold her in your heart for the rest of your days?”

I hang my head, enlightenment battering me over the head. This is why I stayed away from him for so long.

“I hate you,” I sob.

Another chuckle. “I’ve heard that before, and I forgive you.”

“How do I do that? How do I forgive myself for feeling what I’m feeling for this person? When Anna is...gone.”

Fuck, that was hard to say.

Father Russo sighs. “That is the question, isn’t it? Forgiveness is a tricky business. It is a game of intentions, sort of. You need to just do it. Give it all the intention, and forgive yourself. Let yourself feel it.”

I laugh. “Fake it until you make it?”

“Kind of. You could put it that way. What would Anna have wanted?”

Fuck him for being good at his job.

I let my head fall back and hit the confessional wall. “We promised one another we’d move on if something ever happened. We knew how dangerous this life was. This life doesn’t care if you’re in love or if you have a family; any one of us could die bloody and alone every time we step foot outside.”

“Mm, I see no sin in anything you’ve done, but I understand your need for council tonight. If you need anything more, you know where to find me. Would you like me to close with a prayer?”

I tell him I would and bow my head as he prays for my new relationship—already doomed before it begins—and prays that Anna’s soul is at rest.

I take a moment after he exits to collect myself. When I walk out of confession, he’s waiting on the first pew.

He stands when I approach, opening his arms as he embraces me in a hug that warms my soul.

Luca Russo has that effect.

He’s eye to eye with me at six-foot-four, with all-white hair and dark eyes. He’s only in his late thirties but has had silver hair since I’ve known him for over ten years.

“It’s good to see you, old friend,” he says, clapping me on the shoulders when I pull back from his hold.

I nod. “Sorry I stayed away so long.”

He started as a young priest when I met him, and he was the one who led Anna’s service.

“It’s to be expected.”

We sit and idly chat, catching up on the last eight years before I finally ask him if he’ll officiate Ardesia Ricci’s wedding to Brynne.

It takes some convincing, but when I leave the cathedral, I have a venue and a priest booked for one week from today. Some favors are owed to the good Father Russo for him having to deal with the angry couples we bumped from their wedding dates, but I got the job done. That’s all I care about.

The ride home was different than the ride there was. I’m lighter.

That is until I turn my phone on and read the messages from Ardesia.

“Pauly, change of plans. Take me to Slate’s apartment.”

“Got it, Boss.”

The car turns around, a few others honking in annoyance as we head back toward our destination.

It seems I have a little menace to pick up.

I know she’s going to love her new arrangements, too.