DISHONORED
Chapters 1 - 2
Copyright © 2018 by Bethany-Kris. All Rights Reserved.
ONE
THERE WAS NOTHING that made Caesar Accardo happier than coming home to Philadelphia after fucking with another one of his father’s plans for him. This time it was a failed marriage arrangement between him and a daughter of a New York family. He’d hoped to have a bit of his own brand of fun—fucking up people’s lives in a way only he could while he was there—but he ended up having other things to focus on.
Like not getting married because his father told him to.
His father hadn’t stopped to consider that the Gallucci Cosa Nostra out east would have their own giant pile of steaming shit they were currently dealing with—a pile of shit that worked to Caesar’s benefit in more ways than one when it came to getting him out of the whole marriage deal.
Marriage was not for him.
Not one he chose.
Not one arranged.
It just wasn’t in his cards.
Honestly, this wasn’t the first time Angelo tried to pull this trick on his son. It probably wouldn’t be the last, either. Caesar was starting to believe he should wear a fucking sign on his back that simply read: Lucky little shit. If nothing more than for the amount of times he managed to somehow screw up everything his father planned for him.
As soon as the plane had taxied to the gate, the passengers in coach wasted no time standing, and getting their bags down from the overhead bins. They crowded the aisle soon after even with the cute flight attendant asking them all to remain seated for another few minutes.
Caesar didn’t even bother to stand.
What would be the point?
He was not like the rest of these people—he rushed for nothing, and no one. He didn’t push and shove to get what he wanted, or to be at the front of the line. That looked good on no man, but especially not one of his status.
His life had allowed him that privilege, and status. His appearance was everything and nothing all at once; sometimes he cared to indulge in maintaining his appearance, and other times, he preferred to stain it with just about everything he could.
The dark urge came on like an itch he couldn’t scratch. A whispered voice in his ear demanding he feed the shame that was ever-present in his mind. Like fingernails digging into his back, and pushing him into something awful.
And yet, it always made him feel better.
Never failed.
Funny how that worked.
He mulled over his shitty decision to take the earliest flight out of New York—which just happened to be a seat in coach instead of the first class he would usually fly. Soon enough, coach had been deplaned, and Caesar decided it was time for him to move his ass, too.
Maybe it wasn’t only flying coach that had him in a mood. After all, pretty soon, he was going to need to face his father, and let Angelo Accardo know that--yet again—Caesar didn’t follow through with one of his demands and plans.
Not that telling him would be the problem. Caesar would greatly enjoy that part—he always took pleasure out of upsetting or angering his father by doing exactly the opposite of what Angelo wanted. He’d always been a disappointment to his father, anyway, so he got his thrill from proving that theory exactly right.
Living up to my birthright, Papa.
That had never changed in all his twenty-seven years.
It was what might come after that concerned Caesar. His father was predictable in that way when it came to his son. Angelo only settled himself on working that much harder to put Caesar in his place, or to take him down a couple of notches.
To his father Caesar was … too arrogant.
Too undisciplined.
Too wild.
Too fucking everything.
And nothing a made man living the life of Cosa Nostra should be. Anyone who was asked would say, Caesar had no morals, zero honor, and a severe lack of care when it came to their life, traditions, and rules.
They would be right, too.
That was the whole problem, though—Angelo wanted Caesar to be something he couldn’t be. His father wanted his son to be him.
Twenty years ago, when Caesar was just a boy still, he would have been happy and pleased to be compared to his father. He wanted to emulate Angelo in every single aspect of his life. Except … he had been just a boy then—stupid, innocent, and naive.
He was none of those things anymore.
Someone had taken it away from him.
It all started and ended right there.
Tossing the leather messenger bag over his shoulder, Caesar headed down the plane for the exit, and gave the flight attendant a wink as he passed. The reddish tint that instantly colored up her cheeks at his gaze drifting over her pencil skirt and then lingering on the top two buttons of her unbuttoned blouse made him grin--satisfied. Had he been in first class, and she paid more than twenty seconds of attention to him during the flight, he might have seen just how long it would take before she snuck him into the bathroom to get a hand up that tight skirt of hers.
Another thrill of his.
Women, that was.
Caesar didn’t have much of a preference when it came to females, but he did have a kink, of sorts. Or that’s what his friend—his only friend—liked to call it. As if calling it a kink somehow made it slightly less unappealing or wrong. Married women, or those he shouldn’t be fucking with for one reason or another, were a particular favorite of his.
Maybe it was the shame they would feel after …
Or the forbidden that got his dick hard …
It could be any number of things.
It didn’t matter.
That’s what he liked.
Not today, though.
He gave the flight attendant another look—including the wedding band on her finger—and forced his gaze away before he disembarked the plane. He had other things to handle before he could worry about sticking his dick into something warm and wet.
Things like his father.
And his family.
Speaking of which …
Caesar had just come down the escalator at arrivals when the sight of someone waiting for him down below had his rage simmering damn near instantly. Of fucking course his father wouldn’t let Caesar come home to no one waiting for him.
He should have known better.
But shit, he was surprised to see the man who his father did send to wait for him. His half-brother—Daniele.
Was Angelo trying to start a war?
Because Daniele looked ready for it.
Caesar found that amusing.
That was half the problem.
“Caesar,” Daniele greeted when Caesar stepped off the escalator.
The hatred dripped from his half-brother’s tone. It almost made Caesar giddy—yet another person in his life that he had ruined in one way or another. Really, what Caesar had done to Daniele was just a by-product of someone else’s doings to him.
So was Caesar’s circle.
Vicious.
Cold.
And far too wide.
Everyone got caught in it.
Eventually …
“Papa sent you?” Caesar asked.
“Why else would I come? Others were busy.”
Or they made excuses.
“And you couldn’t be busy, too?” Caesar asked.
“I was told to get over what happened, and that starts with this.”
Right.
His half-brother was never going to get over what happened. Daniele was never going for forgive Caesar for what he did, or forget it. That was kind of the point, though. That was exactly why Caesar did it. He needed his brother to remember what he had done, and that he could do it again in a second.
Hell.
Maybe he would do it again.
Daniele’s gaze blazed with his blinding rage. “And unlike you, I make an effort to follow the rules our father sets out for us.”
Sure he did.
That’s why he was the favored one.
The golden Accardo son.
The honored.
The loved.
The perfect made man.
And Caesar?
He was the dishonored.
The despised.
The shamed made man.
And he fucked his half-brother’s wife just because he could—because like his father, Caesar enjoyed taking people down a peg or two, also.
He humbled people in a different way.
Caesar liked this way better.
***
The Accardo estate was set in a private, gated community just outside the Philly city limits. It was almost disconcerting how one could go from the hustle and bustle of cement and steel—something he preferred—to the quiet stillness of a rich suburb.
Most people tended to feel comfort, warmth, and nostalgia when they came back to their childhood home, but Caesar was not one of those people. He felt everything but those things, and all of it was negative.
Most notable was the anxiety that was ever present from the second he drove into the large circular driveway. He hid the slight trembling of his hands by shoving them into the pockets of his slacks. His clenched jaw couldn’t be contained, but his father was so accustomed to seeing Caesar in some form of scowling or displeasure that he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Inside the three-level, two-wing monster of a home, Caesar became slightly more agitated than before. His gaze was drawn upward—to a place that left him most haunted whenever he was forced to come here, and stay for longer than a breath.
Monster was a good word for this place, as it certainly felt like it could be a living, breathing thing. A tangible horror he couldn’t escape from that left him feeling tainted in far more ways than one.
Much like the people inside.
Or because of the people inside.
It was all the same now.
Daniele broke away from Caesar the moment he could, and without a goodbye. Likely to find his mother—a woman, Martina, Caesar’s father had married shortly after his mother died when he was only four. Soon after, Daniele came along.
Caesar remembered that day vividly.
And the years that followed.
All those fucking years.
His jaw clenched harder, and he felt the pain throbbing in his molars from the action. It was his go-to move to get the hell out of his thoughts and memories—pain, or sex. One or the other, because he wasn’t fucking picky.
Either one would do the deal.
Get it over with; see him, and get out.
His thoughts had the right idea, so he went in search of his father in the large mansion. Unsurprisingly, he found Angelo in his large office sitting behind his domineering oak desk. He never understood the need for a man to have a desk that size other than to show off wealth, or intimidate a man standing on the other side of it.
But who was he to say?
Caesar stood in the doorway until his father pretended like he noticed his waiting presence. Angelo knew his oldest son was there from the moment Daniele drove them through the gate. That’s what the half of a dozen fucking guards were for.
“There you are,” Angelo said, sitting straighter in his chair, and folding his hands on the desk. “Give me the good news, son.”
Yes, the good news.
That the marriage would happen.
That all was well.
That Angelo got what he wanted.
Caesar shrugged, and felt the tension in his shoulders loosening a bit at the promise of what was to come when he said, “A bit of a change in plans, I guess.”
Instantly, the happiness in Angelo’s expression fled. “How so?”
“New York had to back out for … reasons. Seems their daughter somehow got back to her Russian husband, and well, our marriage won’t be going ahead.”
It took a second.
Then, two.
Caesar waited with a small smile that he couldn’t be bothered to hide.
And then there it was.
Molten red dotting his father’s cheeks. Narrowed eyes as Angelo took Caesar and his gleeful disposition in all over again.
Rage.
Disappointment.
And for him?
For Caesar, it all spelled his triumph.
“What happened?” his father hissed.
“I just told you.”
“Did you help the girl get back to her husband?”
“Why would I do that?” Caesar asked innocently.
But yes, he had.
And he would do it again.
Angelo was quiet for a long time, and it gave Caesar the chance to observe his father more studiously while he was distracted by his thoughts. His father was all meat and girth—something Daniele had taken from the man. Dark hair, rounded face, and brown eyes.
Caesar, on the other hand, was grateful to have taken his features from his dead mother’s side of the family. From their strong jawlines, to the blond wavy hair that he kept a little too long for his father’s liking, and even the steel-blue eyes. Standing next to his father, Caesar’s lean runner’s form was a bright contrast against the Italian girth his father sported.
He liked the differences.
Liked that he was different from them.
He didn’t want to be the same.
“This is what, the fourth marriage you’ve somehow found your way out of?” Angelo asked. “I am catching onto your schemes, Caesar. You cannot ruin every single marriage arrangement I make for you—mark my words, one will go through.”
“Actually, it’s five,” Caesar said, “if you include the poor girl that took her life two years ago.”
By jumping off a goddamn bridge.
She had not wanted to be forced to marry.
Caesar understood that feeling well.
“Yes, well, you didn’t have any hand in foiling that one,” his father muttered heavily. Then, his gaze lifted to find Caesar in the doorway, asking, “Or did you?”
“I am not that kind of monster, Papa.”
“Hard to tell sometimes with the shit you do, figlio.”
“So says you.”
Angelo grunted, and slumped a little in his chair. “That … that right there, Caesar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have an attitude problem, and I will be damned if I don’t find a way to correct it before I have to kill you for it.”
He’d once been his father’s favorite.
He’d lost that when he fucked his brother’s wife.
Caesar lifted a brow, uncaringly. “I don’t have an attitude problem.”
“Oh, no?” Angelo laughed darkly. “How do you figure? Indulge me, son. Name one other man who would think your attitude is in any way acceptable for a made man in Cosa Nostra?”
“My attitude is fine. I rather like it. It’s you who has a problem with it. That kind of sounds like a you problem, and not a me problem.”
Angelo quieted.
A tic showed in his jaw.
Yes, this was making Caesar feel much better.
Soon, he would be gone, too.
All good things.
“Until I figure out what to do with you,” Angelo grumbled under his breath as he scrubbed a hand down his jaw, “things have changed here since you were in New York.”
That piqued his interest.
“How so?”
“The Camorra family on the west end—they’ve begun moving into our streets.”
Caesar nodded appreciatively. “Someone has big balls.”
Because the Accardo family was a force to be reckoned with in Philly. They were too large, and had far too much control of the area to be challenged by a rather small Camorra clan when put in to comparison. And the two criminal organizations were a world apart from one another despite both being Italian based.
One, structured like a pyramid.
The other, structured more like a horizontal line.
And when a family took one clan down, five more might pop up from the ruins because of their structure. Caesar had to give them that—Camorra clans were fucking resilient. That was just about all he knew regarding them, though.
Cosa Nostra was his thing.
Very little else.
“Yes, well, balls or not,” Angelo said, anger coloring his tone again, “they need to go. I won’t have them causing me these kinds of problems regardless of what they want. And until things are settled here—your brother and the rest of my men are still a bit sour with you from all the shit you pulled a few months back—you’re handling that issue.”
Caesar stiffened. “What, the Camorra clan?”
“Yes, get rid of them. Make them a deal. Wipe them out. Just … do something, Caesar. Be useful for once.”
He brushed that insult off.
One of many.
“I can probably handle that,” Caesar said. “Someone needs to have eyes on my streets—Capo business never stalls.”
Angelo smiled then—thin, and cold. “Someone has been, son. Daniele, actually. He’s really stepped up in your absence.”
Caesar kept his expression blank, but he still heard the underlying threat in his father’s words. He heard what the man didn’t say.
Daniele could and would replace him.
Easily, likely.
The fucker could try.
“But for now, I’m having a dinner tonight with a few of the men from the family, and your brother,” Angelo added. “I think you could make the effort to sit at the table, and be some version of pleasant. Can’t you?”
Caesar started listing names in his head.
Names of men in the family.
Names of their wives.
There was maybe three men whose wives Caesar hadn’t gotten to in his special way—it was likely he was going to sit at the table with men who knew very well that he’d at one point or another, got a taste of what was between their women’s thighs.
He enjoyed that.
Compromising them all in that way.
It was his only control.
He needed it.
“Dinner sounds nice; I could eat.”
Angelo cocked a brow, obviously hearing the slyness in Caesar’s tone. “Don’t pull any shit, figlio. You step out of line one more time, and so help me God, I will put you in the grave I should have given you years ago.”
“Promises, promises,” Caesar called over his shoulder as he left his father behind. “You’re always making those, and yet never keeping them.”
Death would be a gift.
His father would never give it to him.
***
Dinner was a fucking bore.
Caesar could barely open his mouth without his father glaring in his direction—a silent order for him to sit still, and shut the fuck up. His father hadn’t lied, though. Only a handful of men were there to eat and discuss the latest business in the organization, but Caesar was out of the loop in that regard.
Shitty by-product of being gone for so long.
Not that he wanted to talk business.
Caesar was downing his second glass of wine when the high-pitch, nasally voice of his step-mother resounded from the entryway behind him.
“Is the wife not invited to this party of yours, Angelo?” Her laughter felt like nails raking down Caesar’s back—a bloody trail of pain and hate he couldn’t escape. “I’m offended, mio bello.”
At the head of the table, Caesar’s father hid his displeasure at Martina interrupting his dinner with the men. She should have known her place after two decades of marriage to the man, yet she still kept pushing her boundaries.
Angelo let her.
That was part of the problem.
Well, that and the fact she was almost always drunk. And when she wasn’t entirely plastered, then she was pretty fucking close to it. Angelo did a good job of hiding his wife’s alcoholism, but not from his son. Caesar had gotten a taste of this woman’s vile vindictiveness one too many goddamn times.
Martina’s hand brushed Caesar’s shoulder as she passed him by at the table—her silent hello. She never offered very much more when others were around, and he liked it just fine that way. He did absolutely everything he could not to have a conversation alone with the woman, or get stuck in private with her.
She was the woman who replaced his mother.
She was shrill, and horrible.
He hated her.
Always had.
He only learned how to hate her more and in different ways over the years, but no one cared to hear about those details.
No one wanted to know.
“Ma,” Daniele greeted when Martina bent over his shoulder to kiss her son’s cheek.
“My boy.”
A pat to his cheek.
Soft, and sweet.
Then, she moved onto her husband, ready to put herself in his path, and in the spotlight for everyone else in the room. So was her way. Typical, and predictable.
Nothing fucking new.
Caesar was still trying to forget the way her hand felt on his shoulder, and how it left a heavy weight behind. He hated when she touched him.
It left dirtiness behind.
Caesar was up out of his seat before anyone even knew what was happening, and had tossed his napkin down to the table. He didn’t bother to turn and see his step-mother drop in his father’s lap, but her giggles were more than enough to send him the hell out of that dining room.
Those feelings her touch invoked still thrummed deep even as he half-jogged down the hallway, and came to the grand entry. They should have left him the moment he was out of the mansion, and calling for a cab. It always went away then, except for this time.
This time, it felt stronger.
It ate at him.
The dirty, awful feelings still lingered long after he reentered the city limits.
Only two things could fix it.
Pain.
Or sex.
He chose the latter when he told the cab driver, “Lucifer’s Den—the club downtown. Take me there.”
TWO
LIFE AND HAPPINESS were fleeting.
Those were the two details that had taught Aria De Rose the most about being alive in her twenty-six years. Fleeting because anything could happen that took away one’s simple happiness, and when a person’s joy was gone, their life was effectively over.
Her life had been over for a year.
“De Rose!”
Aria glanced up to find the guard behind the Plexiglas window was gesturing at her. All of the prison guards knew her well enough by face alone to pull the file on her visits to this godforsaken place. A few of them even felt like they knew her well enough to use her first name in greeting as though she cared to greet them back.
Although, she did greet them.
Politely, of course.
She had to for no other reason than the man behind bars here—her behavior to those that kept him safe while he was in this hellish place might make all the difference for him. She certainly couldn’t afford for him to think something she had done or said to one of the guards made a target on his back.
Standing from her seat, Aria fixed her dress with one hand, and kept a firm grasp on her diamond studded clutch in the other. She might have been visiting a prison, but she sure as hell didn’t need to look like it, too.
Her father—a long-standing Camorra boss—wouldn’t appreciate seeing her in anything less than her finest, anyway. So was the life of a Camorra woman, and Aria was proudly one of those.
Constantly sheltered.
Revered.
Harshly judged.
More dangerous than a man.
One didn’t choose this life—they were either born to it, or it chose them. There was no in between, she had found. And one could either make due with what they were given from the life, or they could struggle and drown trying to get out.
Because there was no out.
Aria made small chat with the guard as she went through the visitation process at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The security checks and paperwork were nothing new now that she had been doing it for a little over a year. Her once, and sometimes twice, weekly visits making her well-known to the guards shortened the time for her whereas it might take someone else far longer to get through the process.
“Enjoy your visit, Aria,” the guard said with a smile.
She sat down in the hard, plastic chair he directed her to and nodded back at the man. “Grazie.”
The guard went back to his post at the entrance door. She was grateful that, yet again, he had opted to seat her at the very far end of the block. A good fifteen chairs with their own private window made of Plexiglas and a telephone separated her, and the guard.
It gave her the illusion of privacy.
A camera was still at her back, though.
That couldn’t be helped.
Soon, the man she had come to check in with—as she did every week—came into view as he was shuffled through the metal doors on the other side of the visitation block. Jac De Rose could pull off any look including drab prison gray. His wide smile, and bright green eyes greeted her as he sat down opposite to her on the other side of the Plexiglas window.
Gesturing with his still-cuffed hands to the phone on the wall, Aria picked it up so she could speak to her father. “Papy.”
Daddy.
Jac’s smile softened. “How’s my girl?”
Aria tucked the strands of her copper-brown curls behind her ears, and said, “Pretty good, all things considered.”
“Things like what?”
Merda.
She still wasn’t very good at this whole visiting thing. She was constantly told by those around her to make sure she did everything she could not to upset her father during her visits. Any business talk—mafia, always—needed to be good, or great things. Certainly not something that would warrant him making a call or two so that he could rage at someone else.
No one wanted the boss upset.
Everyone answered to him.
“Nothing,” Aria said with a smile she hoped was enough to distract her father.
Beauty had always served her well even when it came to the man who gave her life. Jac appreciated a pretty face, and the reprieve it could provide in hard times. Aria had learned her beauty was enough to get her just about anything she wanted should she use it the right way. Or … most of the time.
Her father often told her that with her large, expressive green eyes, heart-shaped face, and delicate lips set atop the rest of her dainty features, she looked a great deal like her long-dead mother. That the only thing she had taken from him was her brown hair with the copper tint, and those unruly curls that she had to hope and pray every single time she tried to do anything with them.
Aria had seen enough pictures of Carina De Rose to know that was true, but not actual memories given her mother had died when she was a baby after an unfortunate run-in with a rival Camorra clan. Jac killed every single one of them for what they had taken from him—he never remarried after that, either.
“Nothing at all?” her father pressed.
He was reaching for something, and clearly, giving her the opportunity to come out and tell him whatever it was before he was willing to admit he already knew. This wasn’t an unusual game her father liked to play, and to be fair, she was pretty damned good at it, too.
After all, she was his daughter.
Manipulation was her forte.
She racked her brain to come up with whatever it was Jac wanted to know—she kept drawing a blank, though. A lot was going on in different areas for their clan. Business was good, but that wasn’t anything new.
Her father’s amused chuckle echoed in her ear through the phone before his voice said, “I heard you’re having some problems on the streets—you know he fills me in when he can, although he didn’t have much to tell me this time being he’s away. The Accardo family, or so I hear. They have quite a large organization, and not one that tends to intrude on smaller families.”
Oh, that.
Jac had posed the question as though it was their clan having the trouble. Like they had found themselves in a pot of stirred shit by-proxy. She assumed, just from that alone, her father didn’t know it was actually her who had started this street war with a rival family.
She had her reasons.
None she was willing to share.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Aria replied. “And I am—handling it, I mean.”
Jac nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. So was the way of a standing-boss, but even more so when she had a pussy between her thighs instead of a cock. It was fine and dandy for her to relay her father’s messages, or make an order because he gave it to her to pass along. But anything else, and a Camorra woman had to work ten times as hard as any man to gain the respect, and acknowledgement of those around her.
That was fine.
She didn’t mind the work.
“I’ll be out soon,” her father said. “Six months left, mia cara. In the meantime, work on peacefully settling whatever problema the Accardo Cosa Nostra has with us. Do not entice or incite them more. I don’t want to come out of this place to total chaos.”
“Whatever you want, Papy.”
Jac smiled. “Good. Now, how is Raffe?”
And just like that—with all of one question—she wished she could leave.
Except she couldn’t.
***
The thing about Camorra was that there was no real structure to their organization. There was, of course, what Aria’s father liked to refer to as the cielo coperto, and the cielo scoperto. The covered sky, and the clear sky.
Within their clan, the covered sky was anyone with a direct connection to the top, or a proper position that they were required to handle. Her father, obviously, being the boss even behind bars, and her, acting as the boss while he was away could be put in the cielo coperto. She, and her father, were il Vangelo of the Camorra—the gospel.
When they spoke, they were heard.
Any man who dealt directly with them—only a handful—were also under the designation of being protected by the covered sky.
The cielo scoperto encompassed the larger breadth of their clan, and held less loyalty to the Camorra succeeding as a whole. They were more prone to violence, and at times, were liable to attempt to break off and begin an entirely separate clan of their own.
It was exactly why clans often found themselves in the bloodiest of battles. No clan answered to another, and there was no hierarchy beyond an us and them situation.
Aria had always thought that given how long her father had managed to control and sustain his Camorra, Jac had been given every opportunity to clean up the ranks. To manage it better, or even, take their horizontal structure into a more pyramid style situation so that fewer problems came up with rival clans.
It meant cleaner streets.
Less spilled blood.
Fewer deaths.
But it was also not the way of Camorra, and the men who only knew the life that they had been taught for decades upon decades were not quite ready to give up the stronghold they had on old traditions.
Shame, really.
Camorra could be so much more.
Aria knew it.
She felt it.
Tasted it on her tongue.
It was all right there.
And she could do it.
If only …
For now, business was waiting.
“And what did the boss have to say about this fucking Accardo problem?” Simone asked.
Aria, from the head of the table, barely even turned her head to peer down the way at the man. A favorite of her father’s, Simone Bruno was sometimes like a stand-in son for the boy Jac never had. She figured that was part of the reason why the man was so goddamn mouthy a lot of the time, and tried to use more pull than he actually had.
“He’s not willing to bend to the Accardo organization,” Aria said, flicking a hand as if to dismiss any other notion that might come up about the topic. “He wants more streets—more territory to control. It’s about time we expanded. I see his point.”
Simone’s jaw tensed, and his wife—Giovanna—reached over to pet him like he was an angry puppy that needed stroked to be calm. It was almost amusing, if it wasn’t so fucking sickening, really.
“Did you explain to him that I lost four men in a month?” Simone asked.
“You, or him?” Aria countered, leaning forward a bit as she tipped her head to the side. “There is only one boss of this clan, Simone. You have nothing—it is all his. That’s how this works.”
The three other men at the table quieted in their conversation as Aria spoke. She didn’t need to raise her voice to cut someone down—she’d learned how to be as sharp as a knife without making a scene of herself.
It was a good talent to have.
An emotional woman, a man could handle.
A calm one?
She was frightening.
Simone’s jaw continued doing that thing it always did whenever he was pissed, and trying to hold it back. Aria wondered how long he would last before he exploded on her. It didn’t matter that he knew the rules of Camorra, and that her place above him was rightly done considering their current circumstances.
None of that factored to him.
She was a woman.
A daughter.
She had her place.
To him, this was not it.
“Fine,” Simone snapped, “then did you explain to him about the men that have been killed?”
She chose to ignore the way he phrased the question this time. Poking at that raw nerve of his wouldn’t get her anywhere good—at least not tonight.
He was probably going to have to go, though.
Eventually.
“I did,” Aria said.
“And?”
“Anyone in cielo scoperto are easily replaceable, Simone. They are our batterie. No one we can’t afford to lose, and frankly, we might find less trouble in the future considering how many from that side of our clan seem to step out to form their own organizations. Perhaps work on making those men loyal to you, and less loyal to the cash they’re making for you, and that might not be such an issue anymore.”
“That’s not even what the issue is!”
Red-faced, and with fists clenched, Simone raised from his seat at the table. Her table, actually, which just irked Aria even more. Disrespect was one thing, but disrespect in her territory was something else altogether.
Oh, yes.
He was certainly going to have to go in due time.
Aria raised a brow, and nothing more, in the face of Simone’s sudden rage. He was not the first man to get angry, or to try something with her. He could raise his fist, and she would probably smile at him and dare him to try it.
She didn’t frighten that easily.
“I want to speak with Jac,” Simone demanded.
Growled, was more like it.
Aria smirked a bit, and shook her head once. “No, that won’t be possible for a while. You know how this goes while he’s in lockup—the less visitation, the better. He doesn’t want names and records kept of our coming and going besides his immediate family. Me, I mean. If you have something to say, Simone, you are looking at the one woman you get to say it to. Otherwise, sit yourself back down in that chair. I’m starting to think my father has severely neglected some things when it comes to you.”
She was acutely aware of the gazes watching her. Of the other men at the table who would report back to whoever they needed to about her behavior, and how she handled this situation. That was fine with her. She needed people to know her name. She needed them afraid of the one and only De Rose woman willing to cut them down.
Power came to those who took it.
It was never given.
Simone scoffed, although he did sit down. “What exactly has he neglected with me, Aria? Nothing more or less than he neglected with your ignorant—”
“Watch your tongue, or I will cut it out.”
He blinked, silenced.
Aria smiled.
Simone’s wife was not quite as smart, though. Giovanna’s gaze narrowed as it turned on Aria with a burning rage that might shrink a lesser woman.
“Who do you think you are?” Giovanna asked. “You’re reaching a bit when you talk to him like that, don’t you think? Be careful, Aria. Your father isn’t going to be in prison for very much longer.”
Didn’t this stupid wife know?
Getting up from her seat with the slow grace she had been taught was most beneficial to a lady who wanted all eyes on her, Aria fingered the rim of the wine glass she’d emptied just before this meeting had begun. The wine bottle was all the way at the other end of the table, so no one seemed to think twice about her grabbing the glass as she moved down the table. All eyes stayed on her, and frankly, they should have known.
When it came to her, they always should have known.
Aria had just come to the back of Giovanna’s chair when she showed them she had no intention of going for the wine bottle. She smashed the wine glass overtop of the woman’s unsuspecting head before she grabbed a fistful of Giovanna’s hair, and yanked her head back so wide eyes were staring up at her. Chairs scraped, and warnings murmured along the table, but no one stepped in.
They did know better, then.
Or, they were learning.
Good.
Bending down to murmur in Giovanna’s ear, Aria’s smile stayed firmly in place when she said, “Check my bloodlines, cagna. You’ll find exactly who I am.”
She was a De Rose.
Camorra.
Vicious, violent, and vehement.
And she would bow to no one.
Not again.
***
It was only the click of a door closing that drew Aria’s gaze away from the mirror showcasing her painted-to-perfection features. All her delicate lines had been highlighted and contoured, and her eyes made demure with dark kohl. The red stain on her lips made them appear fuller, and accentuated her small cupid’s bow. Heavy, black mascara lifted, lengthened, and thickened her eyelashes enough to frame the green orbs.
She preferred it when her eyes were the first thing a man saw when he stared at her. And then, the man could get lost while he looked at everything else she had to offer, too.
That daze was dangerous.
She played it well.
“Well?” Aria asked.
Nico—the only man who had stayed entirely silent during her meeting with the others—sighed as he stepped closer to her vanity. “They’re gone. Not pleased, mind you, but gone.”
Aria went back to her reflection, and twisted one stray curl back into place. “I don’t care about their happiness, Nico, I care that they listen.”
“And what if one starts to question you, Aria? What if one decides to find a way to your father despite all the loopholes and barricades you’ve put up to keep him sheltered from them? What then?”
Oh, that seemed simple enough.
“Then, we kill them.”
Nico sighed again.
She almost smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re one step closer.”
One step closer to having it all.
To controlling Philly.
To gaining back her life.
“Real talk,” Nico muttered, “about Jac. What did he have to say?”
Aria met his gaze in the mirror. Nico stood behind her patient, silent, and waiting like he always did. Her most trusted companion, and the one man who had never hurt her. She’d known him since she was just a girl—young enough to still enjoy tales like gold at the end of the rainbow, and when puddle jumping was fun.
She was not young anymore.
Neither was he.
“Peace—my father wants me to make peace.”
Nico smirked a bit. “Not going to happen any time soon.”
“He doesn’t know that, though. Now, what do you have for me?” she asked.
“Information on the Accardos.”
“I love information.”
Nico laughed. “I know.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
She worked on fixing a couple of stray strands of her hair as Nico went in to details about the latest information he had gathered on the family they had been provoking for a while. Tonight would be one step closer to getting in on their inner circle.
Really in if it all worked out.
“The latest little spat we had with them worked, it seems,” Nico said.
By spat, he meant a drive by shooting of one of their restaurants. Closed, of course. Aria didn’t need innocents getting mixed up in all of this. Still, she knew a couple of the Accardo men held regular nightly meetings at the business.
One had died.
Shame.
“Worked, how?” she asked.
“Seems Angelo Accardo has finally put someone on the streets to try and handle us—his oldest son, Caesar. He’s been back for about a week now.”
“Where was he again?”
“I heard New York.”
Aria nodded. “So the difficult son is back, then.”
Caesar Accardo’s antics in his family were well-known … well, as long as someone had deep enough pockets to pay someone for the information. Seemed the guy liked to cause trouble, and couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, for whatever reason.
Aria figured she could use that to her advantage.
“And he is …?” she trailed off, allowing Nico to fill in the blank she had been hoping for.
“Caesar is at his regular haunts,” Nico said, making her grin. “At least in the evenings.”
Her plan was coming together.
It was beautiful, really.
The two of them quieted as Aria went back to putting the final touches on her look with a black velvet choker around her throat, and diamond studs in her ears. Sexy, and classic, but nothing that might take attention away from her face or her body.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
Nico raised one dark eyebrow. “What is?”
“How this has all shaken out for this clan of ours.”
He chuckled dryly. “It’s really only you who has done all of this. It’s you who wants to control Philly, and who is determined enough to burn down the city in order to get what you want.”
“And you who is willing to help me,” she shot back.
Nico nodded once. “We both know why that is, though.”
She did.
And it was not because he loved her. Oh, sure, he did love her, but like a sister. It was only because of those feelings that Nico noticed what her father hadn’t, and was the first to step in and try to help her in any way that he could.
If only it had worked …
Well, it was working now.
That’s what mattered.
“Had it been you that Jac demanded I marry a year and a half ago before he went into prison,” Aria said, “I would not have been happy, but I would not be this, either.”
Nico glanced away. “I shouldn’t have said no when he asked.”
No, she didn’t love him, either. He’d never touched her, and she never thought to try with him, either. It would be like kissing her brother, and that only left her feeling icky. Still, had it been Nico who tied her down, she would have at least been safe.
Instead, it had been—
“Raffe called just before the meeting started,” Nico murmured.
That name again.
That feeling in her spine again.
Heavy, hurtful, and too hot.
“What did he want?” she asked.
She didn’t let her voice shake.
Didn’t let it even tremble.
No, she kept it cool, cold, and detached.
That was all Raffaele Ferri deserved. The only thing she had ever been able to keep when her father married her to him was the last name she’d been given at birth. Sure, Raffe had one of his moments when she requested her surname remain unchanged, but her father had rather liked the idea.
What Jac wanted, Jac got.
A lot like Aria.
Even if it took a while.
“He wanted to check in,” Nico said.
Aria’s throat worked to remove the lump that had formed there. “He’s going to be away for two or three more months at the latest. The deal with the Cambria cartel in Italy will not be one that is easy going for him. I made sure of that.”
“Careful he doesn’t find out how many hands you have in the pot, Aria.”
Yes, that would be dangerous.
A danger she could not afford.
“And he said he would be sending Mae over in the morning for breakfast,” Nico added when she didn’t respond.
Aria did smile at that. “Oh?”
Nico grinned a bit, too. “She’ll keep your mind off of things for a bit.”
“Mae’s good for that.”
“She is.”
Nico couldn’t hide the fondness in his tone as he spoke about Raffe’s eighteen-year-old half-sister. The girl looked nothing like her brother with her light brown skin, and wild head of corkscrew curls that flew in every direction. A child born to a mistress of Raffe’s now-dead father, as far as Aria knew, although she wasn’t privy to a lot about her husband’s history. He was making his best effort to scrub the Ferri Camorra clan’s history clean, and then turning her father’s organization into his own while he had the time.
But Mae … she was nothing like her brother.
And next to Nico, she was Aria’s only friend.
Standing from the vanity bench, she said to Nico, “Help me get dressed. I’ll need you to zip this goddamn dress of mine up.”
“Are you sure this is the route you want to go?” Nico asked behind her.
Aria hesitated when she reached for the shimmering, tight gold number set out on the bed. “Why wouldn’t it be? It seems like the easiest way to trap one of them, doesn’t it?”
“One pro to how many cons, though?”
He had a point.
Camorra was … difficult.
Especially for a woman like her.
“Any improper behavior from you noted by anyone,” Nico said, “and it would ruin you if Jac or Raffe found out, Aria. What you’re planning to do is going to absolutely go far beyond improper.”
Yes, and a good reputation was everything to a Camorra woman. It was the only thing allowing her respect in their life, and giving her status. Should she lose that good reputation by doing something improper that might sully her name or family, then she would be nothing.
Worthless.
Unusable.
Dishonored.
Should she find herself in hot water because of her plans, no one would look at Aria and wonder why a woman of her name and status had done what she did—they would only care she that she had done it. That would be all that mattered.
“Then, give me another way,” Aria murmured. “Tell me another way to do this—to be free of him, and what he does to me. Tell me, Nico, and I will do it.”
Nico stayed silent.
Everything about her life—from her every day appearance to even her forced marriage because her father had been facing prison time—was about never breaking that perfect, unsullied image that Camorra demanded from a woman. A dishonored woman would be given nothing, and as it stood, Aria had already been made to give up everything for this person she now was.
She was going to have to take that risk.
Aria was not giving them more.
Not of her.
Aria nodded, and peered at him over her shoulder. “Exactly. There is no other way. This is how I get out—this is how I be free. Now, help me put on my dress, and let me try out my new name with you before I go.”
Nico shook his head. “What did you choose to go with?”
“Take a guess.”
“Your mother’s name?”
Aria shrugged. “I’ve always loved the name Carina. I think it works.”
“You think a lot of things.”
She gave him a look.
“Watch it, Nico.”
“Yeah, yeah. The prized rose with her thorns.”
“My thorns cut like knives. Don’t you ever forget it.”
“But who sharpened those thorns, Aria?”
Raffe.
Jac.
This life.
“Me,” she settled on saying.
It was still true.
Chapters 1 - 2
Copyright © 2018 by Bethany-Kris. All Rights Reserved.
ONE
THERE WAS NOTHING that made Caesar Accardo happier than coming home to Philadelphia after fucking with another one of his father’s plans for him. This time it was a failed marriage arrangement between him and a daughter of a New York family. He’d hoped to have a bit of his own brand of fun—fucking up people’s lives in a way only he could while he was there—but he ended up having other things to focus on.
Like not getting married because his father told him to.
His father hadn’t stopped to consider that the Gallucci Cosa Nostra out east would have their own giant pile of steaming shit they were currently dealing with—a pile of shit that worked to Caesar’s benefit in more ways than one when it came to getting him out of the whole marriage deal.
Marriage was not for him.
Not one he chose.
Not one arranged.
It just wasn’t in his cards.
Honestly, this wasn’t the first time Angelo tried to pull this trick on his son. It probably wouldn’t be the last, either. Caesar was starting to believe he should wear a fucking sign on his back that simply read: Lucky little shit. If nothing more than for the amount of times he managed to somehow screw up everything his father planned for him.
As soon as the plane had taxied to the gate, the passengers in coach wasted no time standing, and getting their bags down from the overhead bins. They crowded the aisle soon after even with the cute flight attendant asking them all to remain seated for another few minutes.
Caesar didn’t even bother to stand.
What would be the point?
He was not like the rest of these people—he rushed for nothing, and no one. He didn’t push and shove to get what he wanted, or to be at the front of the line. That looked good on no man, but especially not one of his status.
His life had allowed him that privilege, and status. His appearance was everything and nothing all at once; sometimes he cared to indulge in maintaining his appearance, and other times, he preferred to stain it with just about everything he could.
The dark urge came on like an itch he couldn’t scratch. A whispered voice in his ear demanding he feed the shame that was ever-present in his mind. Like fingernails digging into his back, and pushing him into something awful.
And yet, it always made him feel better.
Never failed.
Funny how that worked.
He mulled over his shitty decision to take the earliest flight out of New York—which just happened to be a seat in coach instead of the first class he would usually fly. Soon enough, coach had been deplaned, and Caesar decided it was time for him to move his ass, too.
Maybe it wasn’t only flying coach that had him in a mood. After all, pretty soon, he was going to need to face his father, and let Angelo Accardo know that--yet again—Caesar didn’t follow through with one of his demands and plans.
Not that telling him would be the problem. Caesar would greatly enjoy that part—he always took pleasure out of upsetting or angering his father by doing exactly the opposite of what Angelo wanted. He’d always been a disappointment to his father, anyway, so he got his thrill from proving that theory exactly right.
Living up to my birthright, Papa.
That had never changed in all his twenty-seven years.
It was what might come after that concerned Caesar. His father was predictable in that way when it came to his son. Angelo only settled himself on working that much harder to put Caesar in his place, or to take him down a couple of notches.
To his father Caesar was … too arrogant.
Too undisciplined.
Too wild.
Too fucking everything.
And nothing a made man living the life of Cosa Nostra should be. Anyone who was asked would say, Caesar had no morals, zero honor, and a severe lack of care when it came to their life, traditions, and rules.
They would be right, too.
That was the whole problem, though—Angelo wanted Caesar to be something he couldn’t be. His father wanted his son to be him.
Twenty years ago, when Caesar was just a boy still, he would have been happy and pleased to be compared to his father. He wanted to emulate Angelo in every single aspect of his life. Except … he had been just a boy then—stupid, innocent, and naive.
He was none of those things anymore.
Someone had taken it away from him.
It all started and ended right there.
Tossing the leather messenger bag over his shoulder, Caesar headed down the plane for the exit, and gave the flight attendant a wink as he passed. The reddish tint that instantly colored up her cheeks at his gaze drifting over her pencil skirt and then lingering on the top two buttons of her unbuttoned blouse made him grin--satisfied. Had he been in first class, and she paid more than twenty seconds of attention to him during the flight, he might have seen just how long it would take before she snuck him into the bathroom to get a hand up that tight skirt of hers.
Another thrill of his.
Women, that was.
Caesar didn’t have much of a preference when it came to females, but he did have a kink, of sorts. Or that’s what his friend—his only friend—liked to call it. As if calling it a kink somehow made it slightly less unappealing or wrong. Married women, or those he shouldn’t be fucking with for one reason or another, were a particular favorite of his.
Maybe it was the shame they would feel after …
Or the forbidden that got his dick hard …
It could be any number of things.
It didn’t matter.
That’s what he liked.
Not today, though.
He gave the flight attendant another look—including the wedding band on her finger—and forced his gaze away before he disembarked the plane. He had other things to handle before he could worry about sticking his dick into something warm and wet.
Things like his father.
And his family.
Speaking of which …
Caesar had just come down the escalator at arrivals when the sight of someone waiting for him down below had his rage simmering damn near instantly. Of fucking course his father wouldn’t let Caesar come home to no one waiting for him.
He should have known better.
But shit, he was surprised to see the man who his father did send to wait for him. His half-brother—Daniele.
Was Angelo trying to start a war?
Because Daniele looked ready for it.
Caesar found that amusing.
That was half the problem.
“Caesar,” Daniele greeted when Caesar stepped off the escalator.
The hatred dripped from his half-brother’s tone. It almost made Caesar giddy—yet another person in his life that he had ruined in one way or another. Really, what Caesar had done to Daniele was just a by-product of someone else’s doings to him.
So was Caesar’s circle.
Vicious.
Cold.
And far too wide.
Everyone got caught in it.
Eventually …
“Papa sent you?” Caesar asked.
“Why else would I come? Others were busy.”
Or they made excuses.
“And you couldn’t be busy, too?” Caesar asked.
“I was told to get over what happened, and that starts with this.”
Right.
His half-brother was never going to get over what happened. Daniele was never going for forgive Caesar for what he did, or forget it. That was kind of the point, though. That was exactly why Caesar did it. He needed his brother to remember what he had done, and that he could do it again in a second.
Hell.
Maybe he would do it again.
Daniele’s gaze blazed with his blinding rage. “And unlike you, I make an effort to follow the rules our father sets out for us.”
Sure he did.
That’s why he was the favored one.
The golden Accardo son.
The honored.
The loved.
The perfect made man.
And Caesar?
He was the dishonored.
The despised.
The shamed made man.
And he fucked his half-brother’s wife just because he could—because like his father, Caesar enjoyed taking people down a peg or two, also.
He humbled people in a different way.
Caesar liked this way better.
***
The Accardo estate was set in a private, gated community just outside the Philly city limits. It was almost disconcerting how one could go from the hustle and bustle of cement and steel—something he preferred—to the quiet stillness of a rich suburb.
Most people tended to feel comfort, warmth, and nostalgia when they came back to their childhood home, but Caesar was not one of those people. He felt everything but those things, and all of it was negative.
Most notable was the anxiety that was ever present from the second he drove into the large circular driveway. He hid the slight trembling of his hands by shoving them into the pockets of his slacks. His clenched jaw couldn’t be contained, but his father was so accustomed to seeing Caesar in some form of scowling or displeasure that he probably wouldn’t even notice.
Inside the three-level, two-wing monster of a home, Caesar became slightly more agitated than before. His gaze was drawn upward—to a place that left him most haunted whenever he was forced to come here, and stay for longer than a breath.
Monster was a good word for this place, as it certainly felt like it could be a living, breathing thing. A tangible horror he couldn’t escape from that left him feeling tainted in far more ways than one.
Much like the people inside.
Or because of the people inside.
It was all the same now.
Daniele broke away from Caesar the moment he could, and without a goodbye. Likely to find his mother—a woman, Martina, Caesar’s father had married shortly after his mother died when he was only four. Soon after, Daniele came along.
Caesar remembered that day vividly.
And the years that followed.
All those fucking years.
His jaw clenched harder, and he felt the pain throbbing in his molars from the action. It was his go-to move to get the hell out of his thoughts and memories—pain, or sex. One or the other, because he wasn’t fucking picky.
Either one would do the deal.
Get it over with; see him, and get out.
His thoughts had the right idea, so he went in search of his father in the large mansion. Unsurprisingly, he found Angelo in his large office sitting behind his domineering oak desk. He never understood the need for a man to have a desk that size other than to show off wealth, or intimidate a man standing on the other side of it.
But who was he to say?
Caesar stood in the doorway until his father pretended like he noticed his waiting presence. Angelo knew his oldest son was there from the moment Daniele drove them through the gate. That’s what the half of a dozen fucking guards were for.
“There you are,” Angelo said, sitting straighter in his chair, and folding his hands on the desk. “Give me the good news, son.”
Yes, the good news.
That the marriage would happen.
That all was well.
That Angelo got what he wanted.
Caesar shrugged, and felt the tension in his shoulders loosening a bit at the promise of what was to come when he said, “A bit of a change in plans, I guess.”
Instantly, the happiness in Angelo’s expression fled. “How so?”
“New York had to back out for … reasons. Seems their daughter somehow got back to her Russian husband, and well, our marriage won’t be going ahead.”
It took a second.
Then, two.
Caesar waited with a small smile that he couldn’t be bothered to hide.
And then there it was.
Molten red dotting his father’s cheeks. Narrowed eyes as Angelo took Caesar and his gleeful disposition in all over again.
Rage.
Disappointment.
And for him?
For Caesar, it all spelled his triumph.
“What happened?” his father hissed.
“I just told you.”
“Did you help the girl get back to her husband?”
“Why would I do that?” Caesar asked innocently.
But yes, he had.
And he would do it again.
Angelo was quiet for a long time, and it gave Caesar the chance to observe his father more studiously while he was distracted by his thoughts. His father was all meat and girth—something Daniele had taken from the man. Dark hair, rounded face, and brown eyes.
Caesar, on the other hand, was grateful to have taken his features from his dead mother’s side of the family. From their strong jawlines, to the blond wavy hair that he kept a little too long for his father’s liking, and even the steel-blue eyes. Standing next to his father, Caesar’s lean runner’s form was a bright contrast against the Italian girth his father sported.
He liked the differences.
Liked that he was different from them.
He didn’t want to be the same.
“This is what, the fourth marriage you’ve somehow found your way out of?” Angelo asked. “I am catching onto your schemes, Caesar. You cannot ruin every single marriage arrangement I make for you—mark my words, one will go through.”
“Actually, it’s five,” Caesar said, “if you include the poor girl that took her life two years ago.”
By jumping off a goddamn bridge.
She had not wanted to be forced to marry.
Caesar understood that feeling well.
“Yes, well, you didn’t have any hand in foiling that one,” his father muttered heavily. Then, his gaze lifted to find Caesar in the doorway, asking, “Or did you?”
“I am not that kind of monster, Papa.”
“Hard to tell sometimes with the shit you do, figlio.”
“So says you.”
Angelo grunted, and slumped a little in his chair. “That … that right there, Caesar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“You have an attitude problem, and I will be damned if I don’t find a way to correct it before I have to kill you for it.”
He’d once been his father’s favorite.
He’d lost that when he fucked his brother’s wife.
Caesar lifted a brow, uncaringly. “I don’t have an attitude problem.”
“Oh, no?” Angelo laughed darkly. “How do you figure? Indulge me, son. Name one other man who would think your attitude is in any way acceptable for a made man in Cosa Nostra?”
“My attitude is fine. I rather like it. It’s you who has a problem with it. That kind of sounds like a you problem, and not a me problem.”
Angelo quieted.
A tic showed in his jaw.
Yes, this was making Caesar feel much better.
Soon, he would be gone, too.
All good things.
“Until I figure out what to do with you,” Angelo grumbled under his breath as he scrubbed a hand down his jaw, “things have changed here since you were in New York.”
That piqued his interest.
“How so?”
“The Camorra family on the west end—they’ve begun moving into our streets.”
Caesar nodded appreciatively. “Someone has big balls.”
Because the Accardo family was a force to be reckoned with in Philly. They were too large, and had far too much control of the area to be challenged by a rather small Camorra clan when put in to comparison. And the two criminal organizations were a world apart from one another despite both being Italian based.
One, structured like a pyramid.
The other, structured more like a horizontal line.
And when a family took one clan down, five more might pop up from the ruins because of their structure. Caesar had to give them that—Camorra clans were fucking resilient. That was just about all he knew regarding them, though.
Cosa Nostra was his thing.
Very little else.
“Yes, well, balls or not,” Angelo said, anger coloring his tone again, “they need to go. I won’t have them causing me these kinds of problems regardless of what they want. And until things are settled here—your brother and the rest of my men are still a bit sour with you from all the shit you pulled a few months back—you’re handling that issue.”
Caesar stiffened. “What, the Camorra clan?”
“Yes, get rid of them. Make them a deal. Wipe them out. Just … do something, Caesar. Be useful for once.”
He brushed that insult off.
One of many.
“I can probably handle that,” Caesar said. “Someone needs to have eyes on my streets—Capo business never stalls.”
Angelo smiled then—thin, and cold. “Someone has been, son. Daniele, actually. He’s really stepped up in your absence.”
Caesar kept his expression blank, but he still heard the underlying threat in his father’s words. He heard what the man didn’t say.
Daniele could and would replace him.
Easily, likely.
The fucker could try.
“But for now, I’m having a dinner tonight with a few of the men from the family, and your brother,” Angelo added. “I think you could make the effort to sit at the table, and be some version of pleasant. Can’t you?”
Caesar started listing names in his head.
Names of men in the family.
Names of their wives.
There was maybe three men whose wives Caesar hadn’t gotten to in his special way—it was likely he was going to sit at the table with men who knew very well that he’d at one point or another, got a taste of what was between their women’s thighs.
He enjoyed that.
Compromising them all in that way.
It was his only control.
He needed it.
“Dinner sounds nice; I could eat.”
Angelo cocked a brow, obviously hearing the slyness in Caesar’s tone. “Don’t pull any shit, figlio. You step out of line one more time, and so help me God, I will put you in the grave I should have given you years ago.”
“Promises, promises,” Caesar called over his shoulder as he left his father behind. “You’re always making those, and yet never keeping them.”
Death would be a gift.
His father would never give it to him.
***
Dinner was a fucking bore.
Caesar could barely open his mouth without his father glaring in his direction—a silent order for him to sit still, and shut the fuck up. His father hadn’t lied, though. Only a handful of men were there to eat and discuss the latest business in the organization, but Caesar was out of the loop in that regard.
Shitty by-product of being gone for so long.
Not that he wanted to talk business.
Caesar was downing his second glass of wine when the high-pitch, nasally voice of his step-mother resounded from the entryway behind him.
“Is the wife not invited to this party of yours, Angelo?” Her laughter felt like nails raking down Caesar’s back—a bloody trail of pain and hate he couldn’t escape. “I’m offended, mio bello.”
At the head of the table, Caesar’s father hid his displeasure at Martina interrupting his dinner with the men. She should have known her place after two decades of marriage to the man, yet she still kept pushing her boundaries.
Angelo let her.
That was part of the problem.
Well, that and the fact she was almost always drunk. And when she wasn’t entirely plastered, then she was pretty fucking close to it. Angelo did a good job of hiding his wife’s alcoholism, but not from his son. Caesar had gotten a taste of this woman’s vile vindictiveness one too many goddamn times.
Martina’s hand brushed Caesar’s shoulder as she passed him by at the table—her silent hello. She never offered very much more when others were around, and he liked it just fine that way. He did absolutely everything he could not to have a conversation alone with the woman, or get stuck in private with her.
She was the woman who replaced his mother.
She was shrill, and horrible.
He hated her.
Always had.
He only learned how to hate her more and in different ways over the years, but no one cared to hear about those details.
No one wanted to know.
“Ma,” Daniele greeted when Martina bent over his shoulder to kiss her son’s cheek.
“My boy.”
A pat to his cheek.
Soft, and sweet.
Then, she moved onto her husband, ready to put herself in his path, and in the spotlight for everyone else in the room. So was her way. Typical, and predictable.
Nothing fucking new.
Caesar was still trying to forget the way her hand felt on his shoulder, and how it left a heavy weight behind. He hated when she touched him.
It left dirtiness behind.
Caesar was up out of his seat before anyone even knew what was happening, and had tossed his napkin down to the table. He didn’t bother to turn and see his step-mother drop in his father’s lap, but her giggles were more than enough to send him the hell out of that dining room.
Those feelings her touch invoked still thrummed deep even as he half-jogged down the hallway, and came to the grand entry. They should have left him the moment he was out of the mansion, and calling for a cab. It always went away then, except for this time.
This time, it felt stronger.
It ate at him.
The dirty, awful feelings still lingered long after he reentered the city limits.
Only two things could fix it.
Pain.
Or sex.
He chose the latter when he told the cab driver, “Lucifer’s Den—the club downtown. Take me there.”
TWO
LIFE AND HAPPINESS were fleeting.
Those were the two details that had taught Aria De Rose the most about being alive in her twenty-six years. Fleeting because anything could happen that took away one’s simple happiness, and when a person’s joy was gone, their life was effectively over.
Her life had been over for a year.
“De Rose!”
Aria glanced up to find the guard behind the Plexiglas window was gesturing at her. All of the prison guards knew her well enough by face alone to pull the file on her visits to this godforsaken place. A few of them even felt like they knew her well enough to use her first name in greeting as though she cared to greet them back.
Although, she did greet them.
Politely, of course.
She had to for no other reason than the man behind bars here—her behavior to those that kept him safe while he was in this hellish place might make all the difference for him. She certainly couldn’t afford for him to think something she had done or said to one of the guards made a target on his back.
Standing from her seat, Aria fixed her dress with one hand, and kept a firm grasp on her diamond studded clutch in the other. She might have been visiting a prison, but she sure as hell didn’t need to look like it, too.
Her father—a long-standing Camorra boss—wouldn’t appreciate seeing her in anything less than her finest, anyway. So was the life of a Camorra woman, and Aria was proudly one of those.
Constantly sheltered.
Revered.
Harshly judged.
More dangerous than a man.
One didn’t choose this life—they were either born to it, or it chose them. There was no in between, she had found. And one could either make due with what they were given from the life, or they could struggle and drown trying to get out.
Because there was no out.
Aria made small chat with the guard as she went through the visitation process at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The security checks and paperwork were nothing new now that she had been doing it for a little over a year. Her once, and sometimes twice, weekly visits making her well-known to the guards shortened the time for her whereas it might take someone else far longer to get through the process.
“Enjoy your visit, Aria,” the guard said with a smile.
She sat down in the hard, plastic chair he directed her to and nodded back at the man. “Grazie.”
The guard went back to his post at the entrance door. She was grateful that, yet again, he had opted to seat her at the very far end of the block. A good fifteen chairs with their own private window made of Plexiglas and a telephone separated her, and the guard.
It gave her the illusion of privacy.
A camera was still at her back, though.
That couldn’t be helped.
Soon, the man she had come to check in with—as she did every week—came into view as he was shuffled through the metal doors on the other side of the visitation block. Jac De Rose could pull off any look including drab prison gray. His wide smile, and bright green eyes greeted her as he sat down opposite to her on the other side of the Plexiglas window.
Gesturing with his still-cuffed hands to the phone on the wall, Aria picked it up so she could speak to her father. “Papy.”
Daddy.
Jac’s smile softened. “How’s my girl?”
Aria tucked the strands of her copper-brown curls behind her ears, and said, “Pretty good, all things considered.”
“Things like what?”
Merda.
She still wasn’t very good at this whole visiting thing. She was constantly told by those around her to make sure she did everything she could not to upset her father during her visits. Any business talk—mafia, always—needed to be good, or great things. Certainly not something that would warrant him making a call or two so that he could rage at someone else.
No one wanted the boss upset.
Everyone answered to him.
“Nothing,” Aria said with a smile she hoped was enough to distract her father.
Beauty had always served her well even when it came to the man who gave her life. Jac appreciated a pretty face, and the reprieve it could provide in hard times. Aria had learned her beauty was enough to get her just about anything she wanted should she use it the right way. Or … most of the time.
Her father often told her that with her large, expressive green eyes, heart-shaped face, and delicate lips set atop the rest of her dainty features, she looked a great deal like her long-dead mother. That the only thing she had taken from him was her brown hair with the copper tint, and those unruly curls that she had to hope and pray every single time she tried to do anything with them.
Aria had seen enough pictures of Carina De Rose to know that was true, but not actual memories given her mother had died when she was a baby after an unfortunate run-in with a rival Camorra clan. Jac killed every single one of them for what they had taken from him—he never remarried after that, either.
“Nothing at all?” her father pressed.
He was reaching for something, and clearly, giving her the opportunity to come out and tell him whatever it was before he was willing to admit he already knew. This wasn’t an unusual game her father liked to play, and to be fair, she was pretty damned good at it, too.
After all, she was his daughter.
Manipulation was her forte.
She racked her brain to come up with whatever it was Jac wanted to know—she kept drawing a blank, though. A lot was going on in different areas for their clan. Business was good, but that wasn’t anything new.
Her father’s amused chuckle echoed in her ear through the phone before his voice said, “I heard you’re having some problems on the streets—you know he fills me in when he can, although he didn’t have much to tell me this time being he’s away. The Accardo family, or so I hear. They have quite a large organization, and not one that tends to intrude on smaller families.”
Oh, that.
Jac had posed the question as though it was their clan having the trouble. Like they had found themselves in a pot of stirred shit by-proxy. She assumed, just from that alone, her father didn’t know it was actually her who had started this street war with a rival family.
She had her reasons.
None she was willing to share.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle,” Aria replied. “And I am—handling it, I mean.”
Jac nodded, but he didn’t look entirely convinced. So was the way of a standing-boss, but even more so when she had a pussy between her thighs instead of a cock. It was fine and dandy for her to relay her father’s messages, or make an order because he gave it to her to pass along. But anything else, and a Camorra woman had to work ten times as hard as any man to gain the respect, and acknowledgement of those around her.
That was fine.
She didn’t mind the work.
“I’ll be out soon,” her father said. “Six months left, mia cara. In the meantime, work on peacefully settling whatever problema the Accardo Cosa Nostra has with us. Do not entice or incite them more. I don’t want to come out of this place to total chaos.”
“Whatever you want, Papy.”
Jac smiled. “Good. Now, how is Raffe?”
And just like that—with all of one question—she wished she could leave.
Except she couldn’t.
***
The thing about Camorra was that there was no real structure to their organization. There was, of course, what Aria’s father liked to refer to as the cielo coperto, and the cielo scoperto. The covered sky, and the clear sky.
Within their clan, the covered sky was anyone with a direct connection to the top, or a proper position that they were required to handle. Her father, obviously, being the boss even behind bars, and her, acting as the boss while he was away could be put in the cielo coperto. She, and her father, were il Vangelo of the Camorra—the gospel.
When they spoke, they were heard.
Any man who dealt directly with them—only a handful—were also under the designation of being protected by the covered sky.
The cielo scoperto encompassed the larger breadth of their clan, and held less loyalty to the Camorra succeeding as a whole. They were more prone to violence, and at times, were liable to attempt to break off and begin an entirely separate clan of their own.
It was exactly why clans often found themselves in the bloodiest of battles. No clan answered to another, and there was no hierarchy beyond an us and them situation.
Aria had always thought that given how long her father had managed to control and sustain his Camorra, Jac had been given every opportunity to clean up the ranks. To manage it better, or even, take their horizontal structure into a more pyramid style situation so that fewer problems came up with rival clans.
It meant cleaner streets.
Less spilled blood.
Fewer deaths.
But it was also not the way of Camorra, and the men who only knew the life that they had been taught for decades upon decades were not quite ready to give up the stronghold they had on old traditions.
Shame, really.
Camorra could be so much more.
Aria knew it.
She felt it.
Tasted it on her tongue.
It was all right there.
And she could do it.
If only …
For now, business was waiting.
“And what did the boss have to say about this fucking Accardo problem?” Simone asked.
Aria, from the head of the table, barely even turned her head to peer down the way at the man. A favorite of her father’s, Simone Bruno was sometimes like a stand-in son for the boy Jac never had. She figured that was part of the reason why the man was so goddamn mouthy a lot of the time, and tried to use more pull than he actually had.
“He’s not willing to bend to the Accardo organization,” Aria said, flicking a hand as if to dismiss any other notion that might come up about the topic. “He wants more streets—more territory to control. It’s about time we expanded. I see his point.”
Simone’s jaw tensed, and his wife—Giovanna—reached over to pet him like he was an angry puppy that needed stroked to be calm. It was almost amusing, if it wasn’t so fucking sickening, really.
“Did you explain to him that I lost four men in a month?” Simone asked.
“You, or him?” Aria countered, leaning forward a bit as she tipped her head to the side. “There is only one boss of this clan, Simone. You have nothing—it is all his. That’s how this works.”
The three other men at the table quieted in their conversation as Aria spoke. She didn’t need to raise her voice to cut someone down—she’d learned how to be as sharp as a knife without making a scene of herself.
It was a good talent to have.
An emotional woman, a man could handle.
A calm one?
She was frightening.
Simone’s jaw continued doing that thing it always did whenever he was pissed, and trying to hold it back. Aria wondered how long he would last before he exploded on her. It didn’t matter that he knew the rules of Camorra, and that her place above him was rightly done considering their current circumstances.
None of that factored to him.
She was a woman.
A daughter.
She had her place.
To him, this was not it.
“Fine,” Simone snapped, “then did you explain to him about the men that have been killed?”
She chose to ignore the way he phrased the question this time. Poking at that raw nerve of his wouldn’t get her anywhere good—at least not tonight.
He was probably going to have to go, though.
Eventually.
“I did,” Aria said.
“And?”
“Anyone in cielo scoperto are easily replaceable, Simone. They are our batterie. No one we can’t afford to lose, and frankly, we might find less trouble in the future considering how many from that side of our clan seem to step out to form their own organizations. Perhaps work on making those men loyal to you, and less loyal to the cash they’re making for you, and that might not be such an issue anymore.”
“That’s not even what the issue is!”
Red-faced, and with fists clenched, Simone raised from his seat at the table. Her table, actually, which just irked Aria even more. Disrespect was one thing, but disrespect in her territory was something else altogether.
Oh, yes.
He was certainly going to have to go in due time.
Aria raised a brow, and nothing more, in the face of Simone’s sudden rage. He was not the first man to get angry, or to try something with her. He could raise his fist, and she would probably smile at him and dare him to try it.
She didn’t frighten that easily.
“I want to speak with Jac,” Simone demanded.
Growled, was more like it.
Aria smirked a bit, and shook her head once. “No, that won’t be possible for a while. You know how this goes while he’s in lockup—the less visitation, the better. He doesn’t want names and records kept of our coming and going besides his immediate family. Me, I mean. If you have something to say, Simone, you are looking at the one woman you get to say it to. Otherwise, sit yourself back down in that chair. I’m starting to think my father has severely neglected some things when it comes to you.”
She was acutely aware of the gazes watching her. Of the other men at the table who would report back to whoever they needed to about her behavior, and how she handled this situation. That was fine with her. She needed people to know her name. She needed them afraid of the one and only De Rose woman willing to cut them down.
Power came to those who took it.
It was never given.
Simone scoffed, although he did sit down. “What exactly has he neglected with me, Aria? Nothing more or less than he neglected with your ignorant—”
“Watch your tongue, or I will cut it out.”
He blinked, silenced.
Aria smiled.
Simone’s wife was not quite as smart, though. Giovanna’s gaze narrowed as it turned on Aria with a burning rage that might shrink a lesser woman.
“Who do you think you are?” Giovanna asked. “You’re reaching a bit when you talk to him like that, don’t you think? Be careful, Aria. Your father isn’t going to be in prison for very much longer.”
Didn’t this stupid wife know?
Getting up from her seat with the slow grace she had been taught was most beneficial to a lady who wanted all eyes on her, Aria fingered the rim of the wine glass she’d emptied just before this meeting had begun. The wine bottle was all the way at the other end of the table, so no one seemed to think twice about her grabbing the glass as she moved down the table. All eyes stayed on her, and frankly, they should have known.
When it came to her, they always should have known.
Aria had just come to the back of Giovanna’s chair when she showed them she had no intention of going for the wine bottle. She smashed the wine glass overtop of the woman’s unsuspecting head before she grabbed a fistful of Giovanna’s hair, and yanked her head back so wide eyes were staring up at her. Chairs scraped, and warnings murmured along the table, but no one stepped in.
They did know better, then.
Or, they were learning.
Good.
Bending down to murmur in Giovanna’s ear, Aria’s smile stayed firmly in place when she said, “Check my bloodlines, cagna. You’ll find exactly who I am.”
She was a De Rose.
Camorra.
Vicious, violent, and vehement.
And she would bow to no one.
Not again.
***
It was only the click of a door closing that drew Aria’s gaze away from the mirror showcasing her painted-to-perfection features. All her delicate lines had been highlighted and contoured, and her eyes made demure with dark kohl. The red stain on her lips made them appear fuller, and accentuated her small cupid’s bow. Heavy, black mascara lifted, lengthened, and thickened her eyelashes enough to frame the green orbs.
She preferred it when her eyes were the first thing a man saw when he stared at her. And then, the man could get lost while he looked at everything else she had to offer, too.
That daze was dangerous.
She played it well.
“Well?” Aria asked.
Nico—the only man who had stayed entirely silent during her meeting with the others—sighed as he stepped closer to her vanity. “They’re gone. Not pleased, mind you, but gone.”
Aria went back to her reflection, and twisted one stray curl back into place. “I don’t care about their happiness, Nico, I care that they listen.”
“And what if one starts to question you, Aria? What if one decides to find a way to your father despite all the loopholes and barricades you’ve put up to keep him sheltered from them? What then?”
Oh, that seemed simple enough.
“Then, we kill them.”
Nico sighed again.
She almost smiled.
“Don’t worry,” she said, “we’re one step closer.”
One step closer to having it all.
To controlling Philly.
To gaining back her life.
“Real talk,” Nico muttered, “about Jac. What did he have to say?”
Aria met his gaze in the mirror. Nico stood behind her patient, silent, and waiting like he always did. Her most trusted companion, and the one man who had never hurt her. She’d known him since she was just a girl—young enough to still enjoy tales like gold at the end of the rainbow, and when puddle jumping was fun.
She was not young anymore.
Neither was he.
“Peace—my father wants me to make peace.”
Nico smirked a bit. “Not going to happen any time soon.”
“He doesn’t know that, though. Now, what do you have for me?” she asked.
“Information on the Accardos.”
“I love information.”
Nico laughed. “I know.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
She worked on fixing a couple of stray strands of her hair as Nico went in to details about the latest information he had gathered on the family they had been provoking for a while. Tonight would be one step closer to getting in on their inner circle.
Really in if it all worked out.
“The latest little spat we had with them worked, it seems,” Nico said.
By spat, he meant a drive by shooting of one of their restaurants. Closed, of course. Aria didn’t need innocents getting mixed up in all of this. Still, she knew a couple of the Accardo men held regular nightly meetings at the business.
One had died.
Shame.
“Worked, how?” she asked.
“Seems Angelo Accardo has finally put someone on the streets to try and handle us—his oldest son, Caesar. He’s been back for about a week now.”
“Where was he again?”
“I heard New York.”
Aria nodded. “So the difficult son is back, then.”
Caesar Accardo’s antics in his family were well-known … well, as long as someone had deep enough pockets to pay someone for the information. Seemed the guy liked to cause trouble, and couldn’t keep his dick in his pants, for whatever reason.
Aria figured she could use that to her advantage.
“And he is …?” she trailed off, allowing Nico to fill in the blank she had been hoping for.
“Caesar is at his regular haunts,” Nico said, making her grin. “At least in the evenings.”
Her plan was coming together.
It was beautiful, really.
The two of them quieted as Aria went back to putting the final touches on her look with a black velvet choker around her throat, and diamond studs in her ears. Sexy, and classic, but nothing that might take attention away from her face or her body.
“It’s a shame, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
Nico raised one dark eyebrow. “What is?”
“How this has all shaken out for this clan of ours.”
He chuckled dryly. “It’s really only you who has done all of this. It’s you who wants to control Philly, and who is determined enough to burn down the city in order to get what you want.”
“And you who is willing to help me,” she shot back.
Nico nodded once. “We both know why that is, though.”
She did.
And it was not because he loved her. Oh, sure, he did love her, but like a sister. It was only because of those feelings that Nico noticed what her father hadn’t, and was the first to step in and try to help her in any way that he could.
If only it had worked …
Well, it was working now.
That’s what mattered.
“Had it been you that Jac demanded I marry a year and a half ago before he went into prison,” Aria said, “I would not have been happy, but I would not be this, either.”
Nico glanced away. “I shouldn’t have said no when he asked.”
No, she didn’t love him, either. He’d never touched her, and she never thought to try with him, either. It would be like kissing her brother, and that only left her feeling icky. Still, had it been Nico who tied her down, she would have at least been safe.
Instead, it had been—
“Raffe called just before the meeting started,” Nico murmured.
That name again.
That feeling in her spine again.
Heavy, hurtful, and too hot.
“What did he want?” she asked.
She didn’t let her voice shake.
Didn’t let it even tremble.
No, she kept it cool, cold, and detached.
That was all Raffaele Ferri deserved. The only thing she had ever been able to keep when her father married her to him was the last name she’d been given at birth. Sure, Raffe had one of his moments when she requested her surname remain unchanged, but her father had rather liked the idea.
What Jac wanted, Jac got.
A lot like Aria.
Even if it took a while.
“He wanted to check in,” Nico said.
Aria’s throat worked to remove the lump that had formed there. “He’s going to be away for two or three more months at the latest. The deal with the Cambria cartel in Italy will not be one that is easy going for him. I made sure of that.”
“Careful he doesn’t find out how many hands you have in the pot, Aria.”
Yes, that would be dangerous.
A danger she could not afford.
“And he said he would be sending Mae over in the morning for breakfast,” Nico added when she didn’t respond.
Aria did smile at that. “Oh?”
Nico grinned a bit, too. “She’ll keep your mind off of things for a bit.”
“Mae’s good for that.”
“She is.”
Nico couldn’t hide the fondness in his tone as he spoke about Raffe’s eighteen-year-old half-sister. The girl looked nothing like her brother with her light brown skin, and wild head of corkscrew curls that flew in every direction. A child born to a mistress of Raffe’s now-dead father, as far as Aria knew, although she wasn’t privy to a lot about her husband’s history. He was making his best effort to scrub the Ferri Camorra clan’s history clean, and then turning her father’s organization into his own while he had the time.
But Mae … she was nothing like her brother.
And next to Nico, she was Aria’s only friend.
Standing from the vanity bench, she said to Nico, “Help me get dressed. I’ll need you to zip this goddamn dress of mine up.”
“Are you sure this is the route you want to go?” Nico asked behind her.
Aria hesitated when she reached for the shimmering, tight gold number set out on the bed. “Why wouldn’t it be? It seems like the easiest way to trap one of them, doesn’t it?”
“One pro to how many cons, though?”
He had a point.
Camorra was … difficult.
Especially for a woman like her.
“Any improper behavior from you noted by anyone,” Nico said, “and it would ruin you if Jac or Raffe found out, Aria. What you’re planning to do is going to absolutely go far beyond improper.”
Yes, and a good reputation was everything to a Camorra woman. It was the only thing allowing her respect in their life, and giving her status. Should she lose that good reputation by doing something improper that might sully her name or family, then she would be nothing.
Worthless.
Unusable.
Dishonored.
Should she find herself in hot water because of her plans, no one would look at Aria and wonder why a woman of her name and status had done what she did—they would only care she that she had done it. That would be all that mattered.
“Then, give me another way,” Aria murmured. “Tell me another way to do this—to be free of him, and what he does to me. Tell me, Nico, and I will do it.”
Nico stayed silent.
Everything about her life—from her every day appearance to even her forced marriage because her father had been facing prison time—was about never breaking that perfect, unsullied image that Camorra demanded from a woman. A dishonored woman would be given nothing, and as it stood, Aria had already been made to give up everything for this person she now was.
She was going to have to take that risk.
Aria was not giving them more.
Not of her.
Aria nodded, and peered at him over her shoulder. “Exactly. There is no other way. This is how I get out—this is how I be free. Now, help me put on my dress, and let me try out my new name with you before I go.”
Nico shook his head. “What did you choose to go with?”
“Take a guess.”
“Your mother’s name?”
Aria shrugged. “I’ve always loved the name Carina. I think it works.”
“You think a lot of things.”
She gave him a look.
“Watch it, Nico.”
“Yeah, yeah. The prized rose with her thorns.”
“My thorns cut like knives. Don’t you ever forget it.”
“But who sharpened those thorns, Aria?”
Raffe.
Jac.
This life.
“Me,” she settled on saying.
It was still true.