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No way I was doing that, and I told them so.
Well, they didn’t exactly take no for an answer, and I realized that day how powerless I was without Mateo to save me. It pissed me off, actually and I readied to fight, knowing I’d lose, refusing to return to the house empty-handed. At least Mateo would know I’d fought for him.
But I hadn’t had to because another boy had been there too. An older one, a friend of Mateo’s. Or at least someone I’d seen with Mateo a couple of times.
That boy…I stopped breathing.
That’s why I’d felt something, some sort of safety or protection around Dominic at the cabin. That’s why the strange feeling of familiarity.
He’d been there that day. He’d been at my house. At my brother’s birthday party.
Dominic Sapienti was Dominic Benedetti.
Dominic Benedetti had told those boys to take a hike and had given me the envelope back.
He had saved me that day, and later, his father had vowed to keep my family safe. Dominic knew this. If he didn’t, I’d told him on the drive from the cabin to this house, and he’d said nothing. And now, I wore his family’s brand on my hip, forever marked. They’d burned it into Mateo’s chest before they’d killed him. Dominic Benedetti or his family had killed Mateo. They had ordered my kidnapping, sending me to be sold as a sex slave. This from the man for whom my father had given his life.
I went downstairs to confront him, assuming he was behind the closed doors of the one room he’d told me I didn’t have permission to enter. When I opened those doors, though, I stopped dead at what I saw. The splattering of blood on the walls, the residue of red where blood had seeped into the marble floor. The bottle of half-drunk liquor on the table. Glasses with the residue of whiskey and dust as if someone were drinking now. As if that room had been frozen in time.
I realized nothing was covered in the dining room. No dustcloths, nothing. Two chairs lay on their sides, evidence of a night I knew about. Of the night that brought on the decline of the great Benedetti family. The night when one brother had almost killed the other.
I looked around the room and ran a hand through my hair, trying to make sense of this. I saw the large glass case to the side, and inside it, displayed and dusty, sat a book, the large, heavy tome of the Benedetti family. I opened the glass door and took it out, touching the carving of the family crest on the cover made of wood. I traced each of the grooves, every hair on my body standing on end. It took me a moment to open the book.
Generations of Benedetti were pictured inside. I didn’t care about those long gone, though. I turned the pages, working toward the end of the book, noticing the binding, knowing it was a book that would grow with time, adding more and more members as old generations died and new were born. I saw ancient-looking certificates of birth, of marriage, of lineage. I recognized names, unions made to bind families together, making the Benedetti one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, crime family in America.
At least the most powerful until that night. Until Franco witnessed the battle between his sons and nearly died himself from a heart attack.
That was when things began to fall apart for the Benedetti family.
I turned the book over, laying it so I could get to the later pages. I saw the photograph of Sergio in his parents’ arms. Saw the family grow with Salvatore’s birth, Sergio as a toddler.
Knowing what I would find on the next page, I flipped past it, not wanting to see just yet. I got to the photograph of Sergio and his wife on their wedding day. She’d been laughing so hard her eyes were screwed shut in the picture. Then came the date he’d died. Then the one announcing his son’s birth just months after his death.
He’d never even seen his son.
I flipped back the few pages I’d skipped, my heart racing, blood pounding against my ears, the noise unbearable. I found the page that pictured the third son. Dominic. His parents smiled, but I saw the strain in their faces, the effort it took. They didn’t look like they had with the other two births.
The most recent photograph of Dominic had to be at least ten years ago. He’d have been twenty-five. He stood beside his father at a party, his arm around his father’s shoulder, his grin cocky, everything about him carefree, as if he were the boy who would have it all. The girl by his side stared up at him, enamored with him, when he seemed barely aware of her presence.
