3. Chapter Three

“I never saw it coming,” I admit, sitting back in my chair and staring pensively into the near-empty glass of whisky I’ve been nursing for the past half hour. Dante sits across me on the long conference table in the Vitelli library, his usually laughing eyes somber. He’s a near-replica of me, aside from his flinty gray eyes and long hair.

Our father sits opposite Dante, his fingers steepled over his abdomen and a deep furrow between his dark brows. At sixty, Vito Vitelli still has a full head of hair, though it’s heavily streaked with gray now. The lines on his forehead and around his eyes are more severely etched than usual. His eyes, though, are clear blue, like mine and they don’t miss much.

“It’s perhaps all for the best that things unfolded as they did,” my father continues. “I know the burden of a friend’s blood on one’s hands; it is not one borne lightly.”

No, it isn’t. But it’s one I would have carried. By right, it should have been mine to carry.

“It is what it is,” I say as I stand up. “It’s not a mistake I’ll allow to happen again.”

My father sighs, looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it and just nods. These days, I literally have to drag things out of him.

I was shocked when he decided to retire three years ago, making me the Don at the age of thirty, but he had his reasons. While I hadnt expected to take over the empire so soon, I can’t say that having Vito Vitelli as my consigliere does not more than make up for it.

“I have some loose ends to tie up. I’ll be back in a few hours,” I say, downing my whisky and standing. I accept my father’s nod and ignore the glint of interest in Dante’s eyes. I turn and leave the room before he can offer to ‘drive me,’ in other words, tag along.

I usually don’t say no to those requests, afterall there aren’t many men alive who can do what Dante does with a car and a gun in tandem, but I’m not in the mood for company tonight.

Falzone, a giant of a man who has served my family for over three decades, is waiting for me at the front door with a legal-size envelope in his hand. His shoulders have begun to stoop with age, but even so, he’s still several inches taller than I am, at 6’4”.

“It’s all here, Signore,” he hands me the envelope, his fingers slightly gnarled with arthritis.

“Grazie,” I thank him, then leave without another word.

Outside, I drop the envelope on the passenger seat of my black Mercedes SUV and drive out through the Vitelli estate’s gates and across town to Maria’s motel, doing my damnedest not to think about Leo and his lifeless eyes that had stared up at me from the bar’s scratched wood table.

I park in front of the last motel door on the left and cross the cracked pavement to a weathered white door. I knock, using the signature rhythmic rap Leo and I have used right from childhood, knowing there’s no way that Maria wouldn’t recognize it.

Of course, Maria answers. She probably didn’t even stop to check the peephole. She’s barely five-foot-two, with brown hair and a roundish face, but when she smiles, it stretches from ear to ear and lights her up from the inside.

She isn’t smiling today. She looks up at me, and something in my eyes makes her whole countenance change. Her bottom lip quivers and her eyes fill with tears as her shoulders slump. She wraps her arms tight around her like she’s trying to hold herself together while her body starts to shake.

She knows.

And then she begins to cry. No, ‘cry’ isn’t the right word for it. She wails in great, gasping sobs that wrack her from head to toe as she stumbles further back into the room. I’ve never seen a human being crumple before, so thoroughly go to pieces right in front of me.

Four-year-old Victoria is asleep on the bed, but the moment Maria starts to wail, her eyes fly open. Her bottom lip quivers and her eyes fill with tears, and then the child, a near-replica of the mother, begins to wail too.

Fucking Christ.

I enter the room, close the motel room door behind me, and proceed to stare at the two wailing females waiting patiently and wait for the wailing to stop.

It doesn’t.

This is what Leo has left me with?

Maria drops down on the edge of the bed and pulls her daughter into her arms. I don’t think Victoria has the vaguest idea of what has happened; she’s merely responding to her mother’s distress.

I reach down and lift Victoria up off her mother’s lap, ignoring the pang in my chest when the tiny girl wraps her arms around me.

“It’s okay, stellina. Mamma just got some sad news.” I brush the wisps of hair back from Victoria’s forehead and make my way to the closet on the other side of the room.

With my free hand, I open the closet door and start pulling clothes off the hangers, dropping them down on the chair by the bed.

When the closet is empty, I tuck Victoria tighter against my side, crouch down on the opposite side of the bed, and retrieve the suitcases from beneath it.

“Was it… did you…” She forces out more words, but they seem to increase the rate at which the tears are pouring down her cheeks.

I shake my head, ignoring the pang in my chest. “It wasn’t me.”

Though it should have been.

Then, attempting a gesture I’m not entirely certain is the right one for offering comfort, I place my hand on her shoulder. “You need to leave. Now.”

Fucking women is my specialty; comforting them is most certainly not, but somehow it seems to be working because Maria leans her forehead against my arm and starts to take slow, shaky breaths.

“Would you like to go on an adventure, stellina?” I ask Victoria as Maria forces her thin body up off the bed and starts throwing their belongings into the suitcases.

“Sì zio Nico,” Victoria replies, but her voice is already sluggish from the pull of sleep.

“Bene,” I lower her to the bed. “You go to sleep for just a little bit while I talk to your mamma, va bene?”

She nods as her eyes drift closed.

I wait a moment, then signal for Maria to join me in the bathroom—the only area in the small motel room aside from the closet with a door.

Once inside, I close the door and hand Maria the envelope. “It has everything you’ll need, from new birth certificates and passports to your airplane tickets, new bank accounts, and cash,” I explain quickly. There isn’t much time.

Maria shakes her head as fresh tears well up in her eyes. “I have a plan. I can’t just—

“Sì, che puoi. In fact, this is the only thing you can do, Maria—for Victoria. And most important of all, no one can know, capito? You don’t tell anyone you’re leaving. You don’t give your real names or any details about your life to anyone. Ever. Your new life is in that envelope, and the only way you and Victoria stay alive is if you do exactly what I say.”

She nods, clutching the envelope to her chest, but there’s something in her eyes, something she’s holding back.

“What is it?” I ask as that prickling sensation ghosts across the back of my neck.

A fresh sob wracks her chest. “It’s too late,” she whispers, her voice trembling.

Fuck.

“What do you mean it’s too late?”

“Someone already knows. I mean, not everything. But some things,” she says, her words coming out in a rush. “But she won’t tell anyone. She can’t. I trust her.”

I scoff. “There are very few things people can’t do when properly motivated, Maria.”

The sobs come faster, their volume increasing. It won’t be long before she’s teetering on the verge of all-out wailing again.

Double fuck.

“Calm down, Maria. Who did you tell?”

She takes a deep, shaky breath. “My therapist, that’s all.”

Triple fuck.

“But she won’t tell anyone, not even the cops. She won’t say a word. Client-therapist confidentiality, right?”

I sigh. “Not if you wind up dead.”

Her eyes widen, as if she’s just getting that her therapist could be compelled to break confidentiality.

If I wasn’t so pissed, I would laugh. Leo had done far too good of a job keeping his wife sheltered from our life. She doesn’t seem to understand how our world works.

“When you and Victoria turn up dead, it’ll have her thinking about going to the cops and spilling everything you told her.”

She’s silent for a moment, the wheels turning behind her eyes. Then she licks her lips and shakes her head. “Then we can’t turn up dead. I already have a plan. I can—”

“No. This is the plan, Maria. There are two bodies in the trunk that will be trapped in this room and burned beyond identification in a fire that’s going to start in less than half an hour,” I explain patiently, not something to which I am accustomed. “So, you see, your client-therapist confidentiality goes out the window tonight.”

Maria looks up at me, silent, her face etched with grief and guilt. I have a feeling she’s told this goddamned therapist a lot.

“Give me her information,” I demand.

Her eyes widen. “Why? What are you going to do, Nico?”

“I’ll take care of it.” That’s all she needs to know.

She shakes her head and takes a step back. “No, you can’t do that. She won’t talk. I’m sure she won’t.”

Christ. Now the woman decides to grow a backbone?

“You do realize who your husband was and the things he did to keep you in the lap of luxury, right?”

She’s silent because, really, there’s no argument to that.

“Give me your therapist’s information and finish packing. We clear out in ten minutes,” I tell her, then make to leave the room, fucking done with this conversation.

Maria grabs my arm, pleading “Promise me you won’t hurt her.”

I give her a long, reproachful look, and without me speaking, Maria understands. She heaves a sigh of grief and resignation, then starts to cry again.

Maria realizes that her husband’s betrayal has backfired. Instead of subjecting her to the traitor’s treatment she rightly deserves—leaving her fate to whatever Romano plans for her—I’m going out of my way to protect her. Because of her lapse in judgment, an innocent woman will now have to die, a harsh lesson in why one must never disclose the secrets of our world.

“I’m so sorry, Nico. I tried to talk Leo out of what he was doing, but it was as if he had a fever in his head or something,” she explains, her voice a mix of despair and regret.

He wanted a way out, and he got it, one way or another. I nod curtly in response. “Finish packing up, Maria. You have seven minutes.” As I turn and leave, her resigned sigh echoes behind me, trailing me all the way back to the SUV.

I shake it off, mentally counting off the last couple of steps left to make things right again. First get Leo’s wife and child out of here. Once Maria’s ass is on a plane out of the country, mine has a date with a feelings guru.

Fucking wonderful.

“The therapist likely knows too much. She needs to go,” I say to my father as we contemplate which of our safe houses Maria and Victoria should be taken before arranging a permanent life for them.

“Send Fredo Batti instead,” my father’s tone is uncharacteristically sharp. Almost like a command, like back in the days when he was Don.

“No, Padre.It will go down as one of the most fucked up hits I’ve ever put out. I should do it myself.”

My father takes a deep breath, shakes his head, and gestures with fingers pinched together for emphasis. “No, Don Vitelli, this is something you shouldn’t do yourself. That’s the reason you have soulless men like Batti. They see and do the things you don’t have to, so that you can do your job effectively.”

My father sometimes addresses me as Don Vitelli. I’m not stupid enough to take it as a compliment. It’s his way of never letting me forget who I am—who he’s forced me to be by retiring early. He’s schooling me from behind, the sneaky fox.

Not that I’m complaining. Having the most influential man in the Outfit defer to me has its perks among my men and with the other families, especially in times like this, rife with rebellions and factions itching to make the Outfit like the setup they’ve got in New York.

“Father, it’s a woman. A civilian. I make it a point never to send men to do something I have not done before.” I can’t consign anyone to a hell I haven’t lived in.

Father scoffs, but I see the grudging respect in his eyes. “Honor destroys us all in the end.” He tips his glass of wine to me. It’s a saying I’ve heard all my life. But he’s sixty now, which is a ripe old age for a man like him, so honor can’t be all that bad.

I reply with a shrug, “Something ought to kill a man.”

He only smiles, shakes his head and mutters cryptically. “Yes, but self-awareness is a rare virtue, figlio mio. In any case, be sure to make it quick and clean.”

It’s my turn to scoff. As if he needs to tell me how to kill a man. Although I’ve never killed a woman before, so there’s that.

“I’ll get Pietro on logistics, otherwise, nobody will know of this,” My father says, all business again.

“Grazie, Padre.”

He stands to leave but not without a respectful dip of his head.

After I’m alone, I pick up the photograph of Dr. Sophie Kellan. It’s a headshot taken from a long-range camera this morning through an open window of her house. She’s sitting in front of an easel, but she appears to be lost in thought rather than actively painting.

I take in more of her features: dark hair slicked back into a bun, high cheekbones, and an interesting mouth with a perfectly bow-shaped top lip. Shes gnawing on her bottom lip, and I find myself almost reaching out to gently free it from between her teeth, curious to see what it looks like relaxed. Beyond her prim exterior, theres something earthy and raw about her. My cock stirs, and I grind my molars against the lust and regret surging inside me.

That she’s hot should not make any difference, you fucking horny bastard.

I slide the photo into my jacket coat and reach for my phone. I need to get laid. Bury myself in enough pussy to forget Sophie Kellan’s mouth, and what I’m about to do to her.