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

  I wonder if my father choked on his final breaths the way Umberto is choking right now. His misery pleases me enormously.

  I wink at him jauntily as I head to the door, with Claudio and Rocco. He tries to murder me with the heat of his glare, and fails.

  We hurry downstairs to my car. I need to be at my bar in time for the delivery of my new toy.

  Chapter Three

  Donata

  I’ve been in a stupor of denial ever since I was confronted by my father yesterday evening.

  Even now, even after I’ve been told that I will be delivered to Diego like a piece of furniture dumped from a moving van, the full awful reality of my new circumstances hasn’t really hit me.

  We’re minutes away from Diego’s bar, Capri. Apparently, my father has been ordered to make the drop off himself, to add to his humiliation. I haven’t been allowed to say goodbye to Margherita, or to my brothers. I was marched through the house and out the front door without my purse, without my phone, without my clothing. I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen to me, but I know that my old life as I knew it is over. Any hopes and plans that I had for the future have just been snuffed out like the flame of a candle.

  I won’t go back to college in September. I won’t ever find out what life would have been like as a married woman, away from my father’s suffocating rules – I’ll never taste the freedom I’ve dreamed of for years. I won’t see my friends again. Sarah and I were supposed to get together tonight, actually. She’s my best friend. Will she miss me? What will she be told? What will she think when I disappear forever?

  It’s unlikely I’ll ever set foot in my own house again, the house where I grew up as a child, the house where I snipped herbs from the garden that my mother planted before she died. Margherita and I planted fresh herbs there every spring. My past, present and future have been ripped out of my hands, and it’s only my stubborn pride that keeps me from bursting into tears as my father lurches furiously through the city.

  Was what I did so terrible? I went down in the basement to look for a soda because there’s a pantry down there. And I saw a young man who had been beaten within an inch of his life, sobbing with terror. He was sitting in a chair on a tarp. The implications of that were obvious – both to me, and to him. He was facing a table full of tools to be used for torture.

  In our world, the women are raised to be precious little statuettes to be displayed and admired and protected, because we are so delicate that a single tap might shatter us. We’re told to be good girls, to be sweet, to be moral. So why, then, would I be expected to be as hard and evil as the men in the outfit? Why would they demand that I accept that a man was going to be tortured to death in the basement of my father’s house?

  But I know better than to argue. To beg. To plead. My father has raised me to believe that we Rosettis are a breed apart from others, and that begging is beneath us. And for that one lesson, I am grateful. My pride is all I have left now.

  I stare blindly out the passenger window as buildings blur by us. My right cheek is stinging with pain where my father slapped me before dragging me out of the house. I taste blood in my mouth.

  Last night, when my father found out what I’d done, he told me that he was sending me back to Italy, and that I’d be married to a man who would keep me in line. A man who was “mature” enough to handle a spoiled brat like me. Mature being another word for “much older.” I’d been sick with panic and sorrow at the thought – but this new plan – I have a feeling this will be a million times worse.

  Funny, I used to have kind of a thing for Diego. There was always something a little scary, a little thrilling, about him. He moved with an air of danger crackling around him like heat lightning. His ice-blue eyes would burn me with their indifference, and I manufactured a chaste crush on him, and sometimes I let myself imagine him kissing me, like the girls I’ve seen in movies at my friends’ houses.

  When he grabbed me and shoved me up against the wall at my father’s house…I fought, and I pretended to hate it, because that’s what good girls do. But I didn’t hate it at all. His brutal kiss sent a tidal wave of arousal and terror washing through me, and I never wanted it to stop. The fact that he was forcing himself on me? To my shame, it made me burn even hotter.

  But I also have heard the whispered rumors about him. I know that he is capable of great cruelty, and I suspect that after I made a fool of him yesterday, he will feel the need to make a very public example of me.

  “We’re here.” My father’s harsh words slice through my reminiscing and spell out my doom.

  The neighborhood that we’re in is a dive. Broken windows glare down at us like malevolent eyes, trash overflows from metal garbage cans, the rusty skeletons of stripped cars hunch in weed-choked lots. My father wouldn’t have let me within a mile of this place before. But everything’s different now. And I’m about to find out exactly how different.

  He pulls up in front of a bar called Capri, a hole in the wall in an old brownstone, which doesn’t even have a sign out front. It’s a bar for regulars – for Diego’s crowd. Oddly, there’s a shiny brand-new Subaru parked out front, with not a scratch on it. It must be Diego’s.

  My father walks me down a set of stairs with a rusted curlicue iron railing. – it’s below street level. Seems appropriate for my descent into hell.

  I’m immediately hit with a cloud of cigarette smoke and beer sweat. I blink in the dim light. It’s only five in the afternoon but it feels like midnight here, I think it must always feel like midnight. Bleak and dark and lonely even in a crowd. No sunbeams seep in from the outside world; this place swallows light.

  This is my new life.

  90s music blares on a jukebox. There are six pool tables in the far left corner of the rectangular room, along with several dart boards. Half a dozen men are playing pool. I recognize most of them; they’ve worked for my father or for Uncle Riccardo at various times, or I’ve seen them at various family functions. There’s a big party at the North Chicago Italian Social Club a couple of times a year – summer, Christmas – and they’ve all been there.

  The bar is on the right, and a surly, pretty barmaid with her black hair scraped up into a bun is mopping the bar with a dirty rag.

  Another girl, with bleached blonde hair and heavy eye makeup, is cleaning tables. She’s wearing a blue shirt that’s tied in a knot at the bottom to expose her flat belly, and tiny shorts with half her butt hanging out. I can already imagine the look of disdain on my stepmother’s face.

  Diego is standing by the bar with his back to us, talking to a silver-haired man in a suit.

  He obviously knows we’ve arrived – he probably knew the minute my father left his house. He’s just putting on a show of utter indifference and disrespect. The sight fills me with fear – not for myself, but for my father, and my family. Mobsters sniff weakness like blood in the water.

  My father is standing at the top of a very high flight of stairs, and he’s about to take a deadly tumble. And there’s nothing I can do to help him.

  “What are you waiting for? Go to him!” my father snarls at me. Before he was acting grimly resigned, but now he’s furious, and I realize that the true direness of his new situation is really sinking in on him too. He’s taking it out on me, shoving me violently because he wants to get this over with.

  I can’t move. I’m rooted to the spot. The minute Diego looks at me, he will claim ownership of me. Ownership. I will become a thing. But I know I can’t hang here forever in this haze of in-between, with my old life behind me and a nightmare waiting twenty feet from me.

  My father grabs me by the arm and marches me up to Diego, his fingers sinking so deeply into my flesh that I cry out in pain. Diego turns around, his gaze flicking to my father’s hand, and he grabs me by the arm and roughly yanks me away.

  The jukebox suddenly quiets and all conversation hushes. Rough men and women are staring at me with hungry eyes, eager to dine on my degradation.

  The sil
ver-haired man stares at me, and a jolt of terror ripples through my body. It’s Angelo Calibri, my father’s boss. Ugh. I hate it when he comes over to our house. His little black eyes always rove over my body with a creepy fascination – and the first time that happened, I was twelve. He stared at my budding chest for so long that my face flamed scarlet, and I showered for an hour afterwards. From then on, whenever he came to the house, he’d ask my father to send me to bring him food and drinks, and he’d pat my bottom appreciatively, hands lingering too long.

  My father would pretend that he didn’t notice, and he never said a word. It occurs to me that for all his tough talk, for all his threats and bluster, he never protected me when it counted. Like right now.

  Diego looks at my face, eyes lingering on my right cheek, where my father left a hand-print bruise. “You slapped her?” Diego says harshly to my father, with an edge of anger to his voice.

  “I did. What of it?” Umberto glares at him with red-rimmed eyes. He’s a proud man and being humiliated like this is almost as bad as losing me.

  Diego’s brown eyes blaze with sudden fire. “You damaged my property. I can punish her as I see fit, all day long. And I will.” My heart stutters in my chest at his words. “But you don’t lay a hand on my property, ever.” And his fist lashes out and he punches my father in the nose. It makes a sickening squelching noise, and I stifle a cry, clapping my hand over my mouth like some stupid horror movie heroine.

  My father utters a strangled cry of pain and rage. Blood streams down the front of his face and drips onto his white shirt and splashes on the floor. He is visibly shaking with anger as he turns and hurries from the bar, his shoulders hunched up around his ears.

  He’s gone. I’m completely alone. Everyone is staring at us so avidly, this tableau of cruelty playing out before their eyes. I want to weep with terror, to vomit on the floor, but I won’t give them the satisfaction.

  Diego’s gaze roves over my body and his upper lip curls in scorn. I’m wearing a light pink cotton sweater and a matching shell, and a pleated silk skirt that falls past my knees. I look ridiculously out of place.

  Angelo walks over to me, and I freeze in terror. His hand shoots out and his fingers snake through my hair, and with his other hand, he grabs my left breast and squeezes so hard that I let out a startled shriek of pain.

  Still squeezing, he holds my head perfectly still as he leans forward and runs his tongue along my neck. It feels like a wet slug sliding up my skin, and I swallow a cry of revulsion. “Mmmm,” he whispers, his hot breath burning my flesh.

  Then he releases me and steps back, licking his lizard lips. He grins at Diego. “You can have her for a month,” he pronounces loudly. “And then I’ll take her. She’d better be well trained by then.”

  “Of course, sir,” Diego says, without so much as the blink of an eye, and my foolish heart breaks. I thought Diego was going to claim me for himself, even if it was just as his mistress. He’ll give me to Angelo? How could he?

  Angelo winks at me. “See you in 30 days, little girl. I’ve been dreaming about this for a long time,” he says. His tongue darts out and slowly sweeps over his lips, and I drop my gaze and stare at the floor. He turns and walks out, jauntily, and I don’t breathe until the door shuts behind him. 30 days? No. I’ll never submit to such a fate. He shouldn’t have warned me. That means I have 30 days to think of a way out of this. 30 days to escape.

  Diego strolls over to me, hands shoved in his pockets, the picture of indifference. “Got anything to say for yourself?” he asks.

  “I’m sorry you had to turn to kidnapping to get a date,” I say icily, raising my voice so everyone can hear. I’m going to go down, all right, but I’ll go down swinging. A low, eager chuckle rumbles through the crowd; they can’t wait to see what happens next.

  He throws back his head and laughs.

  Then he snaps his fingers at the blonde waitress, who’s standing by a table with a rag in her hand. She drops the rag, and he grabs her and kisses her, hard. His hand clutches the hair on the back of her head and a thick sludge of rage rises up in my throat.

  The kiss goes on and on, as he grinds his mouth into hers without passion. It looks almost painful, what he’s doing to her, and it’s nothing like the way that he kissed me the other day. Still, there is a sick feeling in my stomach. He spins her away from him, and suddenly I can breathe again. She stands there for a minute, staring at him wide-eyed and hopeful, until he shoots her a look of contempt and she turns and walks away.

  “Princess, I get all the action I need,” he smirks at me.

  He grabs me by the upper arm, firmly but not as painfully as my father did, and spins me around so I’m facing a table.

  “Now you’re about to find out what happens when you mouth off to me. Things have changed for you, sweetheart. I’m the boss, and you treat me with respect or suffer the consequences. Bend over the table, legs apart,” he barks.

  “Are you kidding me?” I squeal, shocked.

  He grabs my arm and bends it up behind my back, forcing me face down onto the scarred wooden table. “The first five smacks are for talking back to me. The next five are for disobeying me. Say anything else, I’ll flip your skirt up, pull down your panties, and spank your bare ass in front of the entire room.”

  Shock and fury roil through me. I have never been spanked in my entire life. I never gave my parents cause to punish me. Not until yesterday.

  I squirm madly, trying to yank my hand from his grasp, but I don’t have a chance against him.

  “Count out loud!” he calls to the crowd.

  The first smack is a shock, a hot flare of sensation on my right butt cheek. It’s not too painful; the worst thing is that it’s accompanied by an explosion of pleasure, wrenching a surprised squeal from me.

  “One!” men and women yell gleefully.

  The second and third smacks sting, but I know he could hit me much harder. I think he’s doing this on purpose; this is a man with intimate knowledge of the human body. I know that he hurts people for a living, so if he knows how to deal out agony, it stands to reason that he also knows how to force delirious pleasure onto my flesh.

  My skin is pulsing with an intense heat, and I moan and struggle against his hand, praying fervently that he will mistake my moan for pain.

  “Two! Three!” they yell.

  His hand descends on my rear end again and again, and now it’s starting to hurt. He moves his hand around as he smacks, always finding virgin flesh, until both of my cheeks are pulsing with sensation from top to bottom. Every smack sends a jolt of electricity right to that shameful button between my legs, the ones that I must never touch.

  “Four! Five! Six!” They shout. The skin of my butt is hot, and my heart is racing. I squirm wildly, panting into the table. His hand is still moving as he deals out my punishment, never striking the same place twice.

  “Seven! Eight! Nine!” Oh, God. Please, don’t let me climax here in front of everyone!

  “Ten!” The last smack is the hardest, laid down on top of a spot where he struck me before, and I cry out in pain and anger.

  I’m panting with humiliation and utterly shameful arousal when he releases me and I stagger to my feet. Tears trickle down my cheeks and I glare at him, fists clenched by my side.

  His eyes blaze with challenge. “Now come with me. You screwed me over royally, princess, and I’m about to return the favor.” The roar of approval from the crowd makes me want to murder them all.

  He picks me up and throws me over his shoulder, heading for the back of the room. My legs kick and thrash, and I claw at his back. My skirt flips up, exposing my panties, and I’m mortified; cool air from an overhead fan blows on my legs. He takes me down the hall, past a kitchen, and then up a staircase that winds around to an upstairs apartment.

  “Hold still, unless you want another spanking,” he snarls at me. I stop struggling and lie there limply as he slaps his palm against a high tech lock. I hear a click.

 
“So, you can obey orders. That’ll come in handy,” he says cruelly, as he strides through the door.

  He dumps me on the floor, and I stagger a few steps and then catch my bearings.

  This is really happening. To me. There’s nothing I can do about it.

  He can do anything he wants to me. As much as I resented my father sometimes, I knew that I was mostly protected by him. The worst I’d ever have to endure was a pat on the butt or a gross leer by some of his older compatriots.

  Now my protection has been snatched away from me and I feel terrifyingly vulnerable. It’s just me, up against a man who’s a solid wall of muscle and easily 8 inches taller than me, a man who kills people for a living.

  He grabs me by the arm and steers me into the apartment, which seems to take up the entire upper floor. The front door opens into a living room, lots of black leather and steel, and big framed pictures of race cars and mob movie posters on the walls. There’s a door on one end leading to the kitchen, an open door in the back of the room leading to a hallway, and a couple more doors which are closed. The book case is well stocked with both paperbacks and hardbacks, and there’s an enormous TV hanging on the wall, and a black leather sofa with an arrangement of matching chairs grouped around a steel and glass coffee table. I’m surprised to see modern art scattered about, twisted metal sculptures bent into abstract forms.

  Diego pushes me towards a glass coffee table. A pair of shorts and a t-shirt are folded up on top, next to a hardcover photography book. They look like what the waitress was wearing downstairs.

  “Strip, give me your clothes, and put these on. You’re going to be bussing tables.”

  I look around. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  He snorts in contempt. “You’re funny. I’m giving you ten seconds to get those clothes off. Ten, nine…”

  “I’m not going to take my clothes off in front of you!” I cry out indignantly.

  I see the flare of anger in his eyes.

  Fear quivers through me. I can’t get away with open defiance, but maybe if I just try to reason with him?