Diego: A Dark Mafia Hate Story (Chicago Crime Family Book 1) Read online

  Diego: A Dark Mafia Hate Story

  Copyright 2019 by Ginger Talbot

  This book is intended for readers 18 and older only, due to adult content. It is a work of fiction. All characters and locations in this book are products of the imagination of the author.

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Diego Costa

  Compassion has no place in our world. Compassion will get you killed. Donata knew that, and yet she freed the man that I was sent to torture.

  And delivered herself right into my hands.

  I’m the enforcer for the Rosetti family. I’ve always wanted her. Watched her from afar. But she was protected, that little princess, the spoiled Versace-wrapped daughter of a made man. Now that she’s violated our code, though, her father has no choice but to deliver her right into my cruel hands.

  Donata’s too innocent and good for a man like me – which is exactly why I want her. I want to put my hands on her and stain that pure soul, and make her see the world for the corrupt, filthy sewer it really is. Because how else will she survive?

  She thinks that she’ll be able to change me. She thinks she can weaken me with kindness and decency. She’s about to find out that you can’t melt a man’s heart if he doesn’t have one, and darkness swallows light, every time.

  Prologue

  Donata Rosetti

  “Donata Maria Rosetti! Are you going out in that outfit?” my stepmother calls out from the front steps as my bodyguard and I head to my car.

  Names aren’t just pretty sounds or identifiers; they carry meanings. My first name, Donata, means “gift”. I think it should mean “curse” instead. My mother died giving birth to me.

  My last name, Rosetti, means “Don’t even look at her too long if you don’t want your eyes gouged out”, in the city of Chicago. Daddy is a made man, and I’m his little porcelain princess. I exist to be the shining jewel in his collection, to be pampered, and most importantly, to be protected, until he selects an appropriate husband for me.

  I know why Margherita, my stepmother, is griping about my clothing. And using my full name. This blouse hugs my curves too tightly and I should have some kind of cardigan over it. I wasn’t thinking when I got dressed. I was distracted this morning, my head kind of fuzzy, a weird anxiety scraping along my nerves, although I can’t imagine why.

  But she’s right. If anyone sees me and my friends at the mall today, and word gets back to my father that I’m wearing a less than respectable outfit, I’ll never hear the end of it. And for that matter, neither would Margherita, for permitting it.

  The limo is parked in the brick roundabout in front of our house, engine running, chauffer behind the wheel. I signal my bodyguard to wait, and hurry back up the steps, my low-heeled pumps clacking on the marble.

  She shakes her head as I approach her, and holds out a light blue cotton sweater which matches my pale blue shirt perfectly. I needed it anyway; this summer has been a cool one so far. I air kiss both of her rouged cheeks. I’ve never seen her look less than flawless, and today is no exception. Ropes of pearls around her neck, shiny black hair twisted into an elaborate chignon and speared with a mother of pearl pin, proper pink Chanel suit flattering her reed-slim figure. She does my father proud; of course, Umberto Rosetti would accept no less.

  “You’re the best,” I say to her.

  She smiles fondly, as I quickly shimmy into the cardigan. Her critical eye roams over my body, doing a quick inventory to make sure that I haven’t overstepped any other boundaries. I imagine what she sees.

  Slender; my boobs are too big, but I wear a minimizer bra that kind of squashes them down uncomfortably. Only the lightest makeup; nude eye-shadow, clear gloss on lips that I’m told are too full, no mascara on my thick dark lashes. My dark blonde hair is swept out of my face with a white hairband. I’m wearing Marni white silk slacks; my father likes it when I wear Italian brands. And white. It makes me look pure and virginal. I’m not crazy about it – I spend all day long desperately trying not to spill anything on myself – but it’s a small price to pay to keep my father happy.

  I won’t cry about living in a gilded cage. Every life has its blessings and its curses. Margherita told me that. She said that life is a gallery of experiences, and as we wander through the gallery, we can choose to admire the good and the happy and the beautiful, or we can fixate on the ugly. Given such a choice, why would we choose anything but happiness?

  She’s one of my blessings, actually. She’s the opposite of the wicked stepmother cliché. I’m closer to her than to dear old daddy. She’s the reason that I was able to go to college – a private all girl’s Catholic college, with a not very discreet bodyguard by my side at all times, but still, not many daughters of made men have that privilege. She’s the reason I don’t have to get married until after I graduate. Since she blessed my father with four sons, she can wheedle him into bending his iron-hard rules every now and then, as long as I still play the part of dutiful, respectable daughter.

  Oh, my father loves me in his own way, I know that. But the Rosetti brand of familial love is different than most. It comes with a crushingly heavy weight of obligation and the very clear threat of reprisal for the slightest transgression.

  “Call me when you get to Sarah’s house!” she yells after me as I climb into the limo, and I wave airily and shut the door. Sarah’s one of my closest friends, and her father is a dirty senator who’s on my father’s payroll. So she’s sort of in the life, although in a different way.

  Suddenly, a fit of violent shivers makes me hug myself. The a.c. hasn’t been turned on, and it’s actually stiflingly warm in the back of the limo, so why are goose bumps pebbling my arms?

  Chapter One

  Diego Costa

  The kitchen’s sliding glass doors are open, and a warm spring breeze blows in, rustling the curtains. Claudio and I are leaning against the counter, nursing cold beers and looking out across the lawn at Lake Michigan.

  I smell her before I see her, and quickly set my beer down on the granite counter.

  Donata Rosetti always wears lily of the valley perfume, a strong, sweet smell that announces her presence before she enters the room.

  Me, I would never pick a signature scent. When you torture and kill for a living, you live your life as invisibly as possible.

  Claudio and I are in the kitchen of Umberto Rosetti’s lake house, north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, and she’s not supposed to be here. Not that I could get away with telling her that, of course. But Umberto told me to do him a little favor at this house, specifically because none of his family would be there.

  And yet here she is.

  Good thing the basement is soundproof.

  Claudio, my right-hand man, scowls as she strides through the doorway at the far end of the enormous kitchen. She’s alone; her bodyguard nodded hello at us when they first showed up, but now he’s outside grabbing a smoke and shooting the shit with her driver. They know she’s safe with us; we work for Umberto Rosetti, and that means that the life of every single member of his family is worth more than our own.

  And flirting with the virgin princess? Fuggedaboutit. Umberto would have his men cut off our nuts and feed them to us if we ev
en looked at her sideways.

  Donata, her body-guard, and her chauffer have been there for an hour already. Claudio and I have been skulking in the kitchen, hoping they’ll leave. One of us is going to have to make some polite chit-chat with Her Royal Highness, and figure out if she’s going to be here all weekend. Because if she is, that’s a real problem. I’ve got a guy named Vinnie tied up down in the basement who I’m supposed to dismantle, piece by piece, and if she walks in on the middle of my torture session, I’m screwed.

  Which pisses me off. Umberto sent me here to deal with Vinnie, so he should fucking well have kept his family away. But he’s the North Chicago underboss, who answers directly to the Capo Angelo Calibri, and criticizing the shitty way he runs his operation is an excellent way to get up close and personal with a wood-chipper. Today, for instance, he was supposed to be schmoozing with some out of town Russian big wigs to talk about maybe forming an alliance. Instead, I happen to know, he’s at a hotel across town, balls-deep in his latest mistress. But if I ran my mouth about it? I’d drown in my own blood.

  But that’s the job. There’s generation after generation of made men, and their spoiled wives and kids. The kids are automatically handed the reins when they’re old enough, barely having to prove themselves. Then there are the soldatos, the foot soldiers who do their dirty work. My father was one. Was. And despite what happened to him, or rather because of it, so am I. The fact that I’ve risen to the rank of “enforcer” doesn’t mean that I’m any less of a peasant in the eyes of the outfit’s elite.

  Claudio sees Donata walking towards us, and with a mumbled obscenity, he sets down his beer and stalks away. It’s just as well. Claudio sucks at making conversation. He’s brutally blunt and when he bothers to talk at all, he offends most people. I value his honesty, but at the moment, honesty is the last thing that’s needed.

  Dealing with Donata requires restraint and diplomacy. That’s in my wheelhouse. That’s one of the reasons that I’ve risen as far as I have, why I’m the captain of a crew of several dozen loyal soldatos, why I’m the one who reports directly to the higher-ups.

  She’s headed straight towards me, actually looking at me for once, and my body does that thing that it always does when she’s nearby. Blood leaving my brain, rushing south. Cock getting hard. It’s a total disconnect, because I don’t actually like her, or any member of the upper ranks for that matter.

  And it pisses me off, every time. It gives her power over me that she doesn’t deserve. After I run into her, I always go hook up with one of the girls from the bar I own, and try to fuck away the memory of Donata.

  And here she is, wearing a sweater that barely hides her luscious curves, staring up at me with her big blue eyes. Her honey-colored hair pours over her shoulders in a silken waterfall, begging for fingers to tangle in it. I want to grab her by the hair and force her to her knees.

  Fuck. I have to stop thinking like that. Not about her. She’s not some little puttana to be stained and made filthy by the likes of me.

  “Hey, Diego, how are you?”

  First time she’s ever addressed me by name. I see her subtly checking me out. I know a lot of girls like what they see. Tall, crazy-intense blue eyes, I keep myself in top shape.

  “Fine, thanks. How can I help you?” I keep my voice neutral, but I move back a couple of steps to deliver a not-so-subtle message that she’s crowding my personal space. Her smooth forehead pinches in a tiny frown and she slides back half a step. Message delivered.

  She glances out the back door at Claudio, who’s standing in the herb garden with his back to us. “I hate to bother you, but would you guys mind helping me move a chest of drawers in my room?”

  “Can’t your bodyguard do it?” I can’t openly refuse, but I don’t want to be in the same room as Donata and a bed. And Claudio’s liable to say something to her that will get him in a world of trouble.

  She widens her eyes a little and draws in a breath. “He’s got a bad back.” Wow, she sucks at lying. She sucks so bad.

  “Your dad wouldn’t like me being alone in a room with you, frankly,” I say.

  She rolls her eyes like a little girl who’s been told she can’t watch a tv show because it would be too scary. “I’m alone with my bodyguard all the time. I can be alone with a man as long as it’s someone my father trusts. It’ll take like two minutes. And there would be two of you.” She’s clearly not going to budge on this. She’s standing there, head cocked to the side, waiting with the entitled air of a girl who knows exactly where she stands in the world, and exactly where I stand. Which is very far beneath her.

  Claudio’s walking away from us now, headed towards the lakefront, and I’m torn between going to fetch him and risking him insulting the princess, or being alone with her.

  “I can do it,” I sigh. “I don’t need Claudio. Lead the way.”

  She instantly brightens, her face lighting up in a gorgeous smile. Spoiled little bitch who pouts until she gets her way. But my God, that mouth of hers. How can I get any work done today, when all I’ll be doing is picturing those swollen lips wrapped around my cock?

  “Thank you!” she sings out. Fuck you, I think so loudly that I’m almost afraid she’ll hear me.

  She’s taking her time as we tramp through the house, walking way slower than necessary, at least it feels that way to me.

  “Isn’t that an amazing picture?” She stops to admire a landscape that’s hanging on the wall. “My mother painted that, the year before she died.”

  “Very nice,” I say, barely flicking a glance at it, as I walk by.

  “You didn’t really look at it,” she says, her voice gently chiding. She’s standing there in front of the painting, and it’s obvious she’s not going to move until she’s ready.

  Seriously?

  I turn and stare at it, very deliberately, for a good twenty seconds. “It’s beautiful,” I say, and I’m not lying. “Do you paint?” I add, not because I want to make conversation, but because I don’t want her to run and tell daddy that the help was rude.

  “Not often. What I really love to do is cook,” she says, then she gives a little laugh. “I actually love to bake and then paint on the cakes, with food coloring and cocoa and things like that. Daddy gives them as gifts to his friends sometimes.”

  “That’s great.” I could not possibly fucking care less. “Let’s get that chest of drawers moved, shall we?”

  “Oh, sure!” she says, looking surprised, like she’s forgotten she even asked me. And I’m starting to worry. I never thought of her as the type who likes to play games, and I certainly never imagined that she might try to come on to me, but she’s acting so weird that I can’t imagine where else this would be heading.

  Unless she’s just bored and wants somebody closer to her age to talk to. She’s 19, I’m 24, her bodyguard’s easily forty. But I don’t think she’s lonely. She has friends from college, I’ve seen her bring them to her house. I work security there sometimes.

  “So, your dad didn’t mention you’d be dropping by,” I say, as I follow her up the stairs.

  “Oh, I was supposed to spend the day shopping with my friends, but one of them bailed and the other one had to leave early. It was such a nice day out, I thought I’d come hang out by the lake. I didn’t know anyone would be here, I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “Not at all,” I say. As we walk into her bedroom, I’m trying to figure out a polite way to ask her how long she’ll be there without making her think that I’m inviting her to stay longer.

  Her bedroom is too frilly for her, with all kinds of frothy lace on the bedspread. How can she even sleep with all those heart-shaped pillows piled up? There’s a white fluffy rug on the hardwood floor, like someone skinned a hundred Persian cats, and puke-pink pastel paintings of scenes in Italy on the wall. The bedroom of a 12 year old girl. Typical of Umberto Rosetti; she’s 19, but she isn’t allowed to pick out her own furnishings, or her clothing, or even her shoes, for that matter. I’m s
ure of it. Like all the made men’s women, she is not really herself; she is only who daddy allows her to be.

  And fuck, now I’m alone in a bedroom with Donata Rosetti. This is bad. Despite what she said, I doubt daddy would like it.

  And I can’t help but think of poor Alberto. Dead six months now.

  He had the misfortune of being employed by one of the other Chicago made men, Riccardo. Riccardo has a fat, horny little bitch of a daughter named Fausta, who likes to climb all over daddy’s employees. She’s had her hymen sewn back up three times at least that I know of, by the shady doctor that all the really slutty mafia girls go to before they get married.

  Alberto was a good guy. He had a wife and a baby daughter. Too bad for him, he was also a pretty boy with a jacked body. He confided to me that Fausta had her eye on him, and I told him to put in for a transfer, immediately. He said he’d asked, but he couldn’t come up with a good enough reason, and Riccardo turned him down. In this job, resigning isn’t an option.

  Alberto never stood a chance. If he said yes, or if he said no, he was fucked. One of Riccardo’s employees had turned Fausta down when she came on to him, and she went crying to daddy that he’d pinched her ass. He vanished the next day.

  So Alberto was a dead man from the minute Fausta decided she wanted him. From the way I heard it, Riccardo walked in on him and Fausta making out in the pantry, and Fausta immediately jumped away from him and screamed that he’d tried to rape her.

  Fausta was rushed to the gyno to make sure she was still a virgin. As for Alberto? Pieces of Alberto floated to the top of Lake Michigan for weeks. The body parts were covered in cigarette burns and acid burns. It was front page news; one of Riccardo’s men anonymously called all the papers. His wife fled the city with her baby; they took nothing but the clothes on their back, and went into hiding. I still sneak money to her parents to give to her, which is probably a dumb risk on my part.