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“Do you know who I am?” I ask, and the question holds weight. I’m asking so many questions with just six words. Do you know I’m Delilah Turner? Do you know I’m a Russo? Does Dante know I’m a Russo? Do you know Dante’s been fucking me for weeks?
“You’re sweet, Lilah. Hasn’t been a burden working with you,” he says, turning toward the door again. “The best part about you is you’re fuckin’ smart. You know the answers.”
And then he walks out, the door clicking and locking behind him ominously, leaving me to stew in my thoughts and wait for Dante.
Or Junior.
Jesus Christ. What have I gotten myself into?
Twenty-Nine
-Dante-
Seven weeks earlier.
“Who’s the new girl?” I ask my nephew, watching a blonde attempt to slide down a pole over the CCTV. Curves for days and hair a man wants wrapped around his fist, but she’s clumsy. She looks fine on stage, flipping her hair and shaking her ass, but it’s clear she hasn’t been in the profession for long.
“Told you,” my nephew, Paulie, says, kicking his shoes onto my desk and unwrapping a piece of gum. “Mayor down in Ocean View’s daughter. Cut a deal with her.” Ah, yes, I remember. The deal he made while pretending he was the owner of this club instead of just an employee, sitting in my office while I was out of town for two fucking days.
My first day back, I added a lock to the door that only my right hand, Marco, and I have a copy of.
Paulie tosses the scrap of paper to the floor, and I stare at it, then back at him.
Fuckin' gavone.
“She’s not a dancer,” I say, moving my eyes back to the black-and-white computer screen.
“The fuck she isn’t.”
“I mean, she hasn’t been doing it long. She’s not a stripper by profession.”
“I’d fuckin’ hope not, politician’s sweet, innocent daughter and all. Her father got tied up with Carmine. Tables and horses, owed a fuck ton that he couldn’t pay for, put the older daughter on the line for it.”
“The drama with Johnny,” I say, moving closer to the screen to watch thick hips move across the stage, a sultry smile hypnotizing everyone in the vicinity, including me.
Fuck, she might not have been a dancer for long, but the way she moves, she was born to please a man. Born to intoxicate one, to distract him until he hands over his wallet, his checkbook, the keys to his home, his heart.
“Yeah, the drama with Johnny. Fuckin’ idiot, losing his damn mind over some stupid puttan’, trying to take her in broad daylight. Have we heard what’s going on with that?”
What’s going on with that, not that my nephew needs to know, is that even if Johnny Vitale gets out of New Jersey state prison in this lifetime, he won’t be leaving state prison in this lifetime.
Confessing to wacking the sole heir to a rival family in an effort to take over both families will do that to you. My hand hovers over the mouse, moving it until the controls pop up. Marco installed this damn program with way too many buttons and options, but if I ask the asshole for yet another tutorial, he’ll make fun of me for being too old to understand it.
As if he’s not just two years younger than me.
Ahh, zoom. There. I click the little plus sign and wait.
“The fuck do I know? He’s dead to me. Dead to us,” I say, moving my eyes back to the dipshit in front of me, scuffed dress shoes still on the mahogany desk as I wait for the screen to load.
I’d like to get a better look at this hypnotist, this siren calling men to their own demise.
“Over some puttana who turned him down, we’re just tossing him to the side? He’s been loyal to grandfather for some time.”
I nearly forgot that’s the story we spun to the family—that he tried to get payment from Lola Turner, Shane Turner’s oldest daughter, in a non-monetary way, and when she turned him down, he lost his fucking mind.
Giving the capos the idea that they could build a bridge between the families could cause issues, my father and I decided. And the way Paulie is looking at me, knowing that over the next few years, he and I will be neck and neck in the battle for Don, I decide that was a wise decision. The boy has hunger and greed in his eyes, but not in a way that’s admirable. Not in a way that is good for the family. In a way that could take us all down.
Just like his father almost did.
