CHAPTER ONE
The weight of a debt could crush a man. It was one of those things a person knew always followed close behind. It never really left, even if it seemed like it was gone.
Damian Rossi lived for a decade waiting to finally pay for the debt he owed. Dino DeLuca never once mentioned when Damian would be required to step up and answer for the dues he owed, but it still hung there … waiting like the anvil ready to fall.
“Come on over. It’s time to talk about paying up, Damian.”
Eleven words had never felt quite as heavy as those did.
For Damian, life was dominated by the mafia. Or rather, The Chicago Outfit. Being only twenty-seven-years-old meant Damian answered to everyone else before he ever got to give himself what he wanted. It didn’t matter that he had finally received his button—his in to the family—a little over a year ago. Nobody cared that Damian was just as made as they were in the Outfit. No, because he was still a fucking young gun to them.
If an older Capo needed an extra pair of hands and called on him, Damian had to go. If the boss wanted something from him, regardless of how seemingly unimportant it was, Damian needed to find it. It didn’t matter if he was running on four hours of sleep in three days, Damian didn’t get to make his own choices when it came to the Outfit.
The Outfit made those goddamn choices for him.
Always.
Most times, Damian didn’t mind. He chose the life, and he was good at it. But he also didn’t know anything different. After his mother and father died in an automobile accident when he was five, the only thing he had left was the Outfit and the people inside who raised him when his drunk aunt and uncle couldn’t.
“You owe me, D.”
Debts never went away in the mafia. They could disappear for a short time but someone always came back to collect, eventually. Damian supposed it was just his time to pay up. He didn’t exactly like that Dino hadn’t given him much of a reason why now was the time or how he could pay it back, but it just was.
That was how it worked.
Dino DeLuca’s home rested on a large estate of thirty well-protected acres outside of the city limits. After he’d been let in through the gate and parked his car, Damian pulled out a cigarette and lit up. He still had twenty-minutes before he needed to meet the Capo, after all.
“It’s windy for such a nice day.”
The voice came from the line of trees to Damian’s left. He turned on his heel in just enough time to see Dino emerge. The man swung a set of keys around his index finger and held a manila file with his other.
“Shit, make some noise, Dino.”
Dino chuckled. The sound surprised Damian considering Dino was serious in all things—business, family, and life. Lightheartedness and nonsense wasn’t in his game. Damian supposed he could understand that. He’d never been one for whims and fantasy, either.
“Aren’t you supposed to be the ghost?” Dino asked, his teeth flashing as he grinned.
“Wish they’d forget that name.”
“You earned it, D.”
Damian shrugged. “Whatever. That doesn’t mean I like it.”
Growing up without his parents meant Damian spent a lot of time under the feet of others. He’d been a small, scrawny kid. Instantly forgettable. The only thing that made living in his aunt and uncle’s house bearable was his cousins; Tommas, Lea, and Cara. Not that they had it any better. Laurent and Serena Rossi hadn’t been made to have kids. The four kids spent more time moving from family to family than they spent actually living with their guardians.
Yeah, easily overlooked.
A little ghost.
Damian ended up being raised by several people instead of the ones delegated to the task. When he should have been focusing on school, he’d been shoved knee-deep into the mafia and that lifestyle. Looking back on it all, he knew the reality was simple. He’d been groomed for the life. Numbed to violence and business. Accepting of the expectations and rules of their family and ways. He liked it, though.
Damian supposed that worked out well for him. Being forgettable as a kid ended up carrying over to his adulthood and his career in the Outfit. Not every man was cut out to be a killer. No one ever saw him coming. They didn’t get the chance to see him leave. Rarely was he suspected when a body showed up. He simply took the call, did the job, and moved on. No questions ever got asked.
“Figured you would be inside filling your face with food,” Damian said.
Dino eyed his large home. “Enjoying the outside while I can.”
“Trial is coming up, right?”
“A little over two months,” Dino said under his breath.
Getting in some kind of trouble was unavoidable when it came to the mafia. Dino refused to take a deal on the racketeering, laundering, and fraud charges that had been plaguing him for a couple of years. He wouldn’t plead guilty, either. The man had a damn good lawyer though, but everybody knew what he was looking at.
Twenty years max when totaled up.
Damian knew the bastards wanted the maximum and were going for it, too.
“Do you ever wonder why I liked you so damned much way back when you were a kid?” Dino asked.
Damian laughed. “No.”
“Life hasn’t treated either one of us very fairly, I suppose. I probably saw a lot of me in you when you were just a punk-ass kid following us around.”
“You’re not that much older than me.”
“Five years.”
“What is your point, Dino?”
“You never sat around waiting for your pity party, D. When your parents died, you got shuffled around from place to place. When my parents died, we had to pretend like they didn’t even exist. You just accepted the hand dealt to you; we were forced to. So, I guess I liked that about you and the fact we had a common loss helped, too. Made me sympathetic, if anything. Rarely does someone get that from me. Hell, even Theo doesn’t get a goddamn Christmas card from me anymore. You got an invite to the dinner table.”
Damian hid his surprise with a cough. Dino rarely spoke of his siblings. Even when Dino and his younger brother Theo needed to spend time in the same room together, the rival Capos acted like strangers instead of brothers. A five-year age gap separated the two men. Dino’s sister, on the other hand, had been MIA from the DeLuca family for a few years.
If Damian thought about it hard enough, he was pretty sure he could remember a blonde-haired, brown-eyed girl following Dino and Theo around way back when. Apparently, the majority of the girl’s teen years were spent at a private boarding school. Dino didn’t talk much about her. An even bigger age gap separated them, as far as Damian understood.
“Lily is your sister’s name, right?” Damian asked.
Dino cocked a brow. “Why?”
“Curious.”
“It is. She’s twenty-one, almost twenty-two. Her birthday is coming right up. She spent the last three years after she graduated gallivanting across Europe. Backpacking, mostly.”
“Kept out of trouble?”
“Yes, which I appreciate. Well, as far as I know. Lily isn’t … fond of me. She checked in once a month. It was my only demand.”
Damian was beginning to feel like this conversation might turn into some kind of therapy session. Nobody wanted that shit.
“What did you need me for today, anyway?”
Dino smirked, but it faded fast. “I wasn’t the only one who took a liking to you, was I?”
Damian didn’t know what the hell his friend was getting at. “Pardon?”
“Terrance.”
The Outfit’s boss.
“I do okay with him, if that’s what you’re dancing around,” Damian replied.
“Just okay. Right, Damian.”
“What?”
“You don’t even realize it, do you?”
Obviously not.
Damian was too tired to play word games. “I do what the boss wants, Dino.”
“Christ, Damian. If you spent the same amount of time paying attention to your surroundings as you do working to blend in, you would have it made.”
“It’s not killed me yet,” Damian said, grinning.
“Good thing.” Dino shoved his hands in his pockets. “Joel’s never gonna make it as boss, not under Terrance’s watch.”
“He’s his grandson. It would make sense for Joel to take over when it’s time.”
“So? Like I said, Terrance knows better. A good boss is partly made, but mostly born, Damian. Joel doesn’t have it. Terrance knows it. Hell, the Outfit knows it. What nobody really knows, is who will take it.” Dino barked out a laugh, adding, “Well, I think I know who Terrance is looking at for it.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at him.”
Damian turned to ice in the June air. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”
“Hey—”
“That’s not even funny, Dino. I’ve never wanted that or even suggested that I did.”
“I’m aware,” his friend murmured.
“So what the hell?”
“I didn’t say you did want it, Damian. That knack of yours, being invisible, wouldn’t work very well if you’re the boss.”
“Exactly,” Damian said. “And I like being able to come and go as I please.”
“But you don’t, not really.”
Damian didn’t challenge Dino on that because he knew it was true.
“Terrance has never mentioned anything of the sort to me,” Damian said, wanting to get Dino’s mind away from that.
Whatever plans the Capo was scheming up, Damian didn’t want to be a part of them. If someone got wind of that shit, he’d be six-feet under in a makeshift grave before he even got the chance to apologize for anything.
Damian liked being alive.
“He wouldn’t. You’re still young to him, but he’s looking at you. He’s watching you, D. Because to him, you’ve got it. You fucking listen instead of running off at the goddamn mouth. You follow the rules, take his calls, and do what he asks. Haven’t you wondered why you don’t have a crew of your own, yet?”
Damian avoided Dino’s heady gaze. “Sometimes.”
“Because you’re too busy with him. Why would he give you more than you’ve already got with everybody else and the boss put together? That would mean you would have less time for his bullshit. And he likes having you close. How many times do the guys call you for the boss, anyway?”
“A few.”
… times a day, Damian held back from adding.
“You know what I heard Ben say to Riley when he called for the boss the other day?” Dino asked.
Ben DeLuca was Dino’s older uncle and the right-hand man to Terrance. Damian didn’t particularly like the guy, but he gave him the respect he was owed.
“What did Ben say?” Damian asked.
Dino nodded at Damian. “Said the guy might as well call you on whatever it was first.”
Damian shifted on his feet, uncomfortable. “So?”
“So, Ben is Terrance’s main guy—always has been. The underboss, that’s important. Like how Riley is important as the front boss on the streets and to the feds. Terrance takes Ben and Riley to the Commission meetings, runs shit past them for a second and third voice, and all that other good nonsense.”
“Why do I hear a but in there?”
“But … he kind of does that with you, too, huh?”
“I haven’t noticed,” Damian said quietly.
“I think you have. You went along with them to the last Commission, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“How was that?” Dino asked.
Interesting and enlightening.
Damian had done passing business with the major families in New York, including the biggest and dominating Marcello clan, but that was his first time seeing them all together. He supposed he now understood why the families talked about the Marcellos like they were untouchable. They kind of were. Damian held a great deal of respect for the Marcello family. After all, it was better to know who your biggest rival was and admire their ability to be a challenge at all.
“Figured out Terrance isn’t fond of the Marcellos,” Damian said.
Dino shrugged like that didn’t make a difference. “We’re big time in Chicago. They’re big time in New York. Keeping the peace is better than starting a war with another family. Terrance knows that. Nonetheless, he invited you along. You’re the first person he’s done that for aside from Ben and Riley, of course.”
“It would make sense for Ben and Riley to go, Dino. Underboss and front boss, man.”
“But not you.”
“There were other lower associates at the meeting for the bosses.”
“Capos, likely,” Dino said. “Probably men who had a stake with one of the other families. Something to gain for their bosses. You, on the other hand, went there to learn. Terrance just didn’t tell you.”
Damian swallowed hard, feeling an invisible weight bearing down on his shoulders like never before. “I don’t want to be a boss.”
That was not one of his life goals. Being a boss meant constantly being watched. From officials, from your own men, and from the public. It never fucking ended. It also meant being one huge target for anyone that had eyes for your position. Damian liked being invisible when he wanted.
He liked being him, for fuck’s sake.
“Not even ten, fifteen years from now?” Dino asked.
“No.”
“Funny, Ben thinks you’re up to taking on the role, Damian. I wonder what gave him that impression.”
“Not me.”
“He doesn’t like it at all,” Dino added like it was an afterthought.
Well, that really caught Damian’s attention.
“Ben?” Damian asked.
Dino nodded once. “That’s what I said. Seems my uncle thinks you’re too independent for the job—you’ve got your own mind, you know.”
“A man with his own mind is a problem for him?”
“It is when he can’t manipulate the boss,” Dino said, chuckling. “God knows he’s tried for years to manipulate Terrance to his bidding and sometimes, he has succeeded. Most times, Terrance already has his decisions cemented before Ben DeLuca even gets thought about. Ben could be a boss if given the chance, but he prefers to sit on the sidelines and have others do the work, not actually be front and center doing it himself. That’s a problem.”
“Good bosses do their own work.”
“Ben just likes to manipulate,” Dino said, sighing. “Getting it, yet?”
Damian wished he wasn’t, but reality was starting to sink in, and fast. When a man was headed to somewhere another man didn’t want him to be in the mafia hierarchy, the best way to fix that situation was by ending the problem.
“Ben is going to come after me,” Damian said.
Dino’s quiet, cold stare didn’t waver as he replied, “It’s a good possibility. He only needs a reason to explain the hit away to Terrance. Something that would justify it in Terrance’s mind. Ben did it to my parents; you’re not even family to him.”
Damian wasn’t hearing Dino, not really.
“Because Terrance likes me.”
“Shitty world we live in when being liked gets you killed, huh?” Dino asked, humor coloring his tone.
Damian found nothing about this funny. Mostly, it bothered the fuck out of him. He wasn’t frightened of Ben, as far as that went, but it was something he’d have to deal with in one way or another. That wouldn’t be particularly easy considering Terrance held a fondness for old DeLuca.
There was also the little matter of Dino. The guy was Ben’s nephew, but he was giving Damian a major heads-up about his uncle’s possible plans. Dino had no reason to be doing that unless he was looking for something, or rather, wanting something from Damian.
Somebody always fucking wanted something.
“But what Ben wants with you isn’t important. He’s not on that path quite yet.” Dino sucked in a deep breath, glancing up at the cloudy sky. “I’ve had enough fresh air for the day. Let’s go inside and get some coffee.”
“We’re done talking about it? Just like that?”
“Oh, no. There’s a lot more left to discuss yet, Damian.”
Yeah, Damian figured that.
“Drink,” Dino ordered.
Damian tossed back the remainder of his coffee, still as silent and stoic as he’d been an hour ago when he entered Dino’s home. Dino sat across from Damian behind his large desk, drinking his own coffee. By the smell wafting from the drink, Dino had doused it with a good shot or two of whiskey.
“Why tell me?” Damian asked.
“About my uncle?”
What else was there?
“Yes.”
Dino shrugged. “I’ve got to get things in order around here before I can’t anymore.”
“Twenty years isn’t that long, Dino.”
“In a cell with bars for windows, cement walls for art, and God knows who for a bunkmate? It’s Hell.”
True enough.
“And I’m not planning on making it that far,” Dino said lower.
Damian passed a look Dino’s way. “I beg your pardon?”
Dino waved it off. “Nothing.”
“You still didn’t answer my question about why, man.”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.” Dino placed his cup to the desk before tapping one finger on the manila file he had with him earlier when Damian first arrived. “Family is important to me. Despite what the Outfit tries to project about la famiglia and all that bullshit, it means little to me. Because that’s all it is—bullshit. Every man in the Outfit is in it for him and he always has been. We’re greedy, we’re excessive, and we know it. Everybody is jealous of somebody else, Damian. You’re lucky you don’t give a damn enough to notice.”
Dino smirked, shaking his head as he added, “It wouldn’t take much at all for the Outfit to crumble in around itself, not with the way its run and all. My father, back when he was still alive, used to say the Outfit was better when they ran it with the old school rules.”
“Cosa Nostra rules, you mean.”
“Sure. Men didn’t steal from one another. Honor was held to a higher standard. Making money wasn’t the only important thing.”
Dino had a point. Even Damian had to admit the Outfit’s main focus was money, making it, and who had the most of it. But wasn’t that the mafia way?
“You can’t call something a family if we’re all enemies making nice at a dinner table,” Dino said.
Damian laughed. “Sounds exactly like my family.”
“Mine, too, as awful as that is. We put on a good show, of course, but we barely manage that.” Dino slid the file closer to Damian before he rested back in his chair and picked the cup again for another long swig. “Open it.”
Plucking the file off the desk, Damian flipped over the top and came face-to-face with the picture of a beautiful young blonde with brown eyes and a teasing smile. Underneath the picture rested papers filled with information on the smiling, carefree girl. Damian felt like he was intruding on the life of a woman he didn’t know, so instead of going through the rest of the documents, his attention was taken back to the picture on the top of the pile. The small photograph had been printed on what looked to be a postcard. Flipping it over, Damian read the words written in a messy scrawl on the back.
Wales, England.
The beer could be better. I’m loving the accents, though.
Checking in a different way this time.
Miss you, D.
Love,
Lily.
Damian took note of the full date written in the left hand corner under Lily’s name.
“Pretty, isn’t she?” Dino asked.
The question seemed innocent enough.
It rarely ever was where Dino was concerned.
“Sure,” Damian admitted.
Lily was beautiful. Wide, clear brown eyes with flecks of green and gold in her irises. Pretty pink lips curved high with her genuine happiness. Her blonde hair, waved and long, framed her features.
Damian looked away from the picture.
“She looks like our mother. Especially in that one there. Like nothing in the world could ever hurt her as long as she smiled back. I always remember that first about my mother. I’m glad Lily was able to carry it on even if she doesn’t talk much to me anymore.”
“Was this when she first started backpacking?” Damian asked.
“A couple of months into it,” Dino answered. “That is the only full-frontal picture I have of her that could be considered even remotely recent. She sent a few more after that one, but someone else was always in the picture and you couldn’t see all of her features. I wanted you to see who she was. She doesn’t look all that different, really, but I didn’t think asking her if I could take a picture after I forced her home would do me much good. She’s pissed off enough as it is.”
Wait, what?
“You asked Lily to come home?”
“Demanded, actually,” Dino replied. “Then, when she refused, I threatened to send someone after her. She chose not to challenge me, thankfully. I wanted her to make the choice.”
Damian snorted. “Doesn’t sound like much of a choice, Dino.”
“Lily’s twenty-one. I’ve let her have her fun. She’s gone and done all the exploring and learning she felt she needed to do before life came around to kick her in the ass and settle her down. I didn’t hold her back. At first, she’d call me once a week and send me a postcard whenever she hit a new place. I figured her doing the traveling thing, learning how to live off what she made by working small jobs and the goodness of other people was a good life lesson. Something to better her.”
Damian didn’t see anything wrong with Dino’s reasoning. “I get that.”
Hell, he would have killed to do something like that. Instead, he’d only left the state of Illinois a handful of times and always for business.
“It was more than Theo and I ever got,” Dino said, a hint of bitterness twisting his words dark. “Ben made sure my brother and I knew exactly what we were headed for. The Outfit was our destiny—in our blood, don’t you know?”
Damian wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he stayed quiet.
Dino didn’t seem to mind. “My father wanted out. Did you know that?”
“No. I thought he was forced into working with the officials, not that he wanted to.”
“Yeah, he wanted out and he tried. Worked with the officials on the low for a while, recorded some things for them with a wire, and got caught in the process. Ben found out my father was working with the FBI and took both my parents out. Anyway,” Dino muttered, rapping his fingers to the desk. “I never could figure out why Ben killed my mother, but the older I got, the more sense it made. She would have taken us kids and ran, I bet. Ben couldn’t have that.”
“He doesn’t have any of his own, yeah?”
“None. Good thing, because he’d probably sell off every daughter his wife gave him and manipulate his sons right into a grave.” Dino made a dismissive sound under his breath, but it felt laced with something Damian couldn’t understand. “Look at how well he’s separated my brother and me. We let him do it, too, not even realizing it.”
Damian was learning a lot of things he hadn’t known before. “It might not be too late to fix that, Dino.”
“Trust me, those bridges are good and burned. Nonetheless, I was old enough to be the one who looked out for my sister. Ben always tried stepping in at times. He wanted her in schools he picked; I let her choose her own. He wanted her back in Chicago the moment she graduated; I let her go on to do whatever the hell she wanted.”
That didn’t sound like a bad thing, necessarily.
“I had to keep my distance, though,” Dino continued, rubbing at his forehead. “Ben’s a nasty fucker when he wants to be. I let him believe my choices with Lily were about controlling my family how I saw fit. That, when I was ready, I would bring my sister home and do what he deemed appropriate for a girl of her status and name.”
“Which is what?”
“Marry her off to get her and us higher,” Dino said.
Damian wished he could be surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time the daughter of a made man was forced into a marriage she didn’t want because of her family’s ambitions.
“If Ben thought for one second I was letting her live the life she wanted because he took away everything else she had, my sister would have buried me, too,” Dino said. “When it comes to us DeLuca siblings, Theo’s the only smart one because he did everything Ben wanted and didn’t question it. I did, too, but I always had some underlying goal.”
It wasn’t like Dino to be open about his personal shit, but Damian was getting it from the man in the tenfold tonight.
“So?” Damian asked.
“Lily was the only one of us three with her head stuck in the clouds. I just yanked her back down to earth recently. Keep that in mind when you meet her.”
“Meet her?”
Dino grinned a wicked sight. “You owe me.”
Damian froze in the chair. For the majority of a decade, the non-monetary debt Damian owed Dino DeLuca hung over his head, ready to fall at any moment. As a younger man, Damian had been rash and reckless. He’d made more than one bad decision. A particularly stupid one where he took the life of a made man in the Outfit could have cost Damian his life.
Dino stepped in, gave an excuse to the boss, took the blame for the death, and then proceeded to make Damian an understudy of sorts. Mistakes like Damian had made were enough to put a man six feet under. It had, essentially, been Damian’s first real in to the Trentini crime family. Being close to Dino put Damian straight in Terrance Trentini’s path and got him noticed.
It also meant Damian was indebted to Dino for saving his life, even if that meant years of waiting to finally give his dues.
“You owe me,” Dino repeated as if he knew exactly what Damian was thinking.
“What do you expect me to do?”
Dino pointed at the folder. “Lily.”
“Lily,” Damian echoed, more uncertain than ever.
“I liked something about you back then, Damian. Time to pay up.”
“How?”
Dino smiled a cold sight. “I have to protect what is important to me, Damian. My sister and my brother, they’re important. Theo will do okay, no matter what. He’s fucking resilient like that—as long as he keeps his heart out of the game. Lily though, she’s not the same. She’s too stubborn for her own good and I don’t want to think about somebody taking that from her. When I’m not here, somebody else needs to be watching over her. And it can’t be Ben DeLuca.”
Christ. Dino made prison sound like a death sentence.
Maybe it was to the man. Damian didn’t know.
“And I come into this how?” Damian asked.
“You’re going to marry my sister.”
Damian’s thought process dropped off the radar.
Surely he was too tired and hadn’t heard Dino correctly.
Right?
Damian’s jaw fell slack. “What?”
“A life for a life, D. That’s how it works in this life. Besides, this’ll work out to your favor, too. We both know you’re a happy little fucker in your spot doing what you do, Damian. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I don’t understand,” Damian muttered.
Well, he got the marriage deal.
Yeah, he fucking got that shit.
Dino just smiled. “Like I said, you’re going to marry my sister. Sounds pretty simple to me.”