Page 27 of Married to the Enemy

Vito Calvino burst into his house later that night, the heavy oak doors rattling against their iron hinges as he shoved them open. The grand entryway echoed with his fury.

His house was a fortress as much as it was a mansion. Built of dark stone and looming turrets, the exterior had been designed to intimidate as much as to protect. Inside, rich mahogany paneling lined the walls, marble floors hidden beneath antique rugs, and crystal chandeliers threw fractured light across vaulted ceilings. Gold-framed oil paintings frowned down at visitors from the walls—grim patriarchs and stern-faced women, reminders of legacy and power.

But it wasn’t the beauty of the house that mattered. It was the atmosphere and the fact that Vito hadn’t had to pay for the house. He’d simply “evicted” the owner one sunny afternoon.

Now, every man who walked through those doors felt the weight of Vito’s presence. The guards stationed at every corner—hard men with cold eyes—were more terrified of Vito than of any rival mobster. He had cultivated that fear carefully, reinforcing it with unexpected bursts of violence that left no question about consequences.

Tonight, his men stiffened as he stormed past them, his expression dark, his fists clenched. No one dared speak. No one dared breathe too loudly.

He’d thought about heading over to Evangeline’s place, dragging both the old bitch and his daughter back here, locking them up until they bent to his will. But instinct, that gut-deep whisper honed over decades in the business, told him to wait.

The man standing with Mia in court today didn’t feel right. The hair, the beard, the barely presentable clothes screamed unemployed body builder and gym rat. Men who walked around with those kinds of muscles usually weren’t particularly bright and were easily manipulated.

But the eyes—those eyes hadn’t belonged to a man with sub-par intelligence. They had been sharp, assessing. Dangerous. Whoever he was, he wasn’t just a bum Mia had plucked out of the gym to fool a judge. That fact alone had earned his daughter a flicker of respect.

Brief. Temporary.

Mia was still just a female and, in his experience, women were idiots, motivated only by one thing; money – and they could easily be controlled by fear and pain.

Unfortunately, his bitch of a daughter was proving to be the exception to that rule.

His thoughts turned to Evangeline. Once proud and infuriatingly strong, the bitch had withered quickly in the nursing home prison Barry Trello ran for Vito. But in the courtroom, he’d seen it—the flicker of life, the spark returning to Evangeline’s eyes.

He cursed. He should have drained her bank accounts while he had the chance, shifting her millions into his offshore tax havens. Now it was too late. The banks had frozen movement, notified of the court’s change in conservatorship.

Over one hundred million dollars! Money that should rightfully be his! It was just sitting there in the bank and investment accounts. And for what? She was seventy-five. Too old to enjoy it, too stubborn to die and let him have it.

He slammed a hand down on the polished marble credenza, rattling a vase worth more than most people’s annual salaries. Barry should have warned him sooner, or at the very least, realized what was happening so that Vito could have intervened and picked the old bitch up. But Vito had wanted the judge to see Evangeline, to witness the old bat’s frailness and inability to respond clearly for himself.

That had been a tactical mistake, one that Vito wouldn’t make again. Barry should have warned him that Mia was going to fight for Evangeline. The idiot nursing home manager should have handled the situation differently. Instead, Vito had been blindsided in open court, and left looking like a fool.

And no one made him look like a fool without retaliation.

The grandfather clock struck midnight, its sonorous chimes echoing through the cavernous hall. Almost immediately, the front doors opened and his capos filed in. There were six of them now—leaner numbers than before, after the bloodbath that had followed Bianchi’s stupid traipse down the highway where dozens of valuable men had been killed or arrested in the idiot’s desire to take over Chicago—but every one of his current team owed their current position, and their continued breathing, to Vito.

They gathered in the dining room, the long table carved from Italian walnut, its surface gleaming beneath the chandeliers. None dared to sit until Vito motioned them down. Then he let them squirm a full minute in silence before finally speaking.

“My daughter has returned,” he began coldly, his gaze sweeping the table. “One of you let her back into the country without informing me of her presence.”

A murmur of excuses rose. “We checked O’Hare—” “She wasn’t on the manifests—” “We’ve had eyes at all the airports—”

Vito slammed his fist against the table. The sound echoed like a gunshot, silencing them.

“I don’t want excuses. I want results. She was in Philadelphia. Now, she’s here in Minneapolis. And not one of you useless bastards found her before she walked into that courtroom and humiliated me.”

Their eyes dropped to the polished wood, shoulders tense, each man knowing that the wrong twitch could single him out for punishment.

“Find her,” Vito snarled. “Before she disappears again. And find out who the hell that man was standing with her. He’s no idiot. I want names, I want connections, I want answers. If he’s just a stupid gym rat, I’ll bury him so deep no one will even remember his name.”

The men nodded quickly, some mumbling oaths, eager to escape his gaze.

“Get out,” Vito snapped.

Chairs scraped back, shoes scuffed against the floor, and within seconds, the capos were gone, leaving only the echo of their retreat behind them.

Vito poured himself a glass of bourbon, downed it in one gulp, and gestured for one of his guards. “Bring me Trello.”

It didn’t take long. Barry Trello had been summoned earlier and had been kept “waiting” in one of the many closets this house contained. Vito wasn’t sure what his guards had done to the man over the past twelve hours, but the repulsive slug shuffled in, his shoulders hunched, his face slick with nervous sweat despite the cool night. His cheap suit looked even cheaper after having spent so long on a sweaty, nervous man. Even his tie was askew, his thinning hair plastered to his scalp with sweat and the man reeked of terror.