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She tells me she knows I’m mafia who has killed. What does this little thing know of mafia and death? On one hand it is a relief I would not need to hide my true nature. On the other someone as sweet as she is should be blissfully unaware of the things that go on in the dark.
Shit. I had no idea Carlo Toro has a daughter. And there goes me enjoying her like thezefirshe reminds of, sweet, delicate, and soft. I cannot touch the daughter of my ally without severe repercussion. He would demand marriage and I would pay for it with everything he could get his greedy hands on.
An odd relief comes over me to hear her speak of no man in the Outfit asking for her. Usually marriage contracts in the mafia were set at sixteen then fulfilled as soon as the girl became eighteen or finished high school. The women went straight from their father’s home to their husband’s.
Her disappointment at not being able to continue her education is a stark and palpable thing. I am not in the least bit surprised when she tells me she wants to be a veterinarian. Being surrounded by small animals who adore her is a fitting place for her.
Fucking hell. Nineteen years old. I turned thirty-four my last birthday four months ago. I do not fuck girls and she is a girl. Of legal age or not, if I encountered another man fucking what amounted to a girl, I would be disgusted with him. That she is the daughter of the underboss of the Outfit should have been enough to keep me away from her, as the only way I could have her would be to marry her.
While I am aware I should marry at some point, no one has appealed in the slightest. Even though my wife will be for the purpose of heirs and to give me the picture of a respectable family man, someone who will not complain when I take a mistress, I have not found a woman I could imagine enduring for longer than a month or two.
Just last week Aleksander was teasing me for finding a woman leaving my condo at three in the morning when I was done with her. Calling me an ass for fucking her until she couldn’t walk a straight line, yet not allowing her to recover, instead dismissing her so I could sleep alone.
Her smile down at the kitten…fuck. I hold her coat in front of me to hide my hard cock. Decision made, I will take the kitten if it gets me her attention.
A deeper blush as her eyes fall from mine. Ahh, she is a virgin. It shouldn’t make my cock harder—it never has before. I kept away from women who had to be shown what to do in bed. They were there for a reason—to get me off then leave. Yet despite only moments ago reconciling she was too young for me, I find myself wanting to be the one to introduce her to all the pleasure to be found in her body.
Everything was going as I wanted it to until the moment the word “trafficking” slipped from between my lips.
Revulsion is in every line of her small body.
She tries walking away from me. This woman—girl, has no damn self-preservation. It’s fucking freezing, and how the hell was she born in Chicago and doesn’t have a damn hat?
One last time, I pick her up and put her into the back of the vehicle.
I have never forced myself on a woman and I never will. If she wants to live in her little fortress of naivete, then so be it. I am not going to try and tear down her walls.
Christ, this was a waste of time. What the hell had I been thinking? I am not usually so taken with a pretty face. I have learned my lesson.
Chapter17
Milos
As Danil drivesme to my office, I consider her accusation. How her words had mirrored Dominic Sabatini’s. The Outfit did not deal in trafficking and refused to work with those who did. While they did deal in the sex trade, it was only for women who wanted to work.
Only now, alone, can I admit I am ashamed of the trafficking. In the beginning I accepted it as a part of business—people have been bought and sold ever since one man could buy another. We feed appetites no one else can, drugs, sex, booze, power—that is Bratva, mafia. All of us who deal in the things people cannot buy at their local store. If we did not, someone else would. Why not us?
While I received deliveries of drugs, guns, liquor starting at fifteen, I never handled a single shipment of human cargo until I was twenty-three. Human cargo had almost the same value as drugs—sometimes even more depending on the drug. Due to its value, my father preferred to handle it as well as the sex work part of our business. The only reason I was there to accept the shipment was because my father was ill.
Before I opened the doors I was warned some of the cargo was sick and some might have died, but the drivers didn’t know for sure.
There were men as well as women. Not all were for sex, some would be sold for factory and farm work. Almost half of the one hundred and twelve cargo were dead.
I had killed before that day, so many men I’d already lost track of the number. The first time at seventeen. At eighteen I was taught torture. Blood and violence did not bother me, my only refusal then and now was I would not kill a woman.
My father raised us always to be the strongest in the room, not only physically but mentally. As Bratva there were always others out for what was ours, so we needed to do what was necessary to protect it as well as our family. We presided over the weak, as we should. We took what was ours as our right for being the strongest. I believed every word my father spoke and lived it to the best of my ability. He was a good, caring father, not violent or sadistic as his own father was. I wanted to make him proud—to be everything he wanted me to be.
Then Peter, who has been at my side since I was fourteen, opened the back of the truck. There was not a single woman, all were girls, none could be older than sixteen. Those that weren’t dead were broken as they shivered in the container in the freezing cold. The men, bowed but not completely broken, had raped some of the girls. Seeing it so starkly in the headlights of the trucks around us, I fought not to vomit.
There was ruling the weak and then there was what we were doing. I could not, would not put a girl who barely had breasts to work in a brothel. Rage flowed through me—at my father, then myself for never daring to question what I was told for so long. To this day I do not remember pulling my guns; all I know was by the end of the night, all the men in the back of the truck as well as the two drivers were dead. Peter had not hesitated to act with me, reading me clearly. My three other men who were to take the cargo to its final destination accepted my instruction that as far as they were concerned, we lost the cargo.
I ordered Peter to split the three hundred thousand dollars in cash we brought for the last payment among the twenty-seven girls still alive and help them disappear. Then I walked away, promising myself it would be the last shipment of human cargo my family would ever have a hand in.
With blood and gunpowder still on me, I went straight to Dominic Sabatini. I told him that I was ready to work with him if he was still willing. As long as I had his agreement I would go to my father and get him to agree to end the trafficking and sex work we dealt in. He agreed. I told my father the deaths that resulted and loss of cargo were because someone attempted to hijack us. We needed to get out of it, and by working with Sabatini we could make double what we were now. If my father weren’t so ill he would have likely refused, but he believed his time was coming to an end. He agreed so there would be no issues of discontent at the changes I made when he passed the reins to me.
While I handled the freeing of the women from our brothels, I did nothing beyond telling them they could go. If anyone wanted to stay they could and earn money. Tony said money made from women who wanted to work was higher than those forced. He was right. Within a year after cleaning up the women and the brothel, we were making three times what we did before.
Who the hell am I to be angry at Celia for having the same reaction to the things I’ve done that I had when I realized what I was a part of? The arguments I had with my conscience before I opened the truck were nothing compared with seeing it firsthand. And wasn’t that a part of the reason I hated her judgement? There were next to no arguments with my conscience. It was done because it had always been done. After a brief tussle with the question of it being right when I was fifteen and my father laid out all the pieces of our kingdom, I shrugged it off.
