Page 18 of Rescued By the Mafia

Leandro’s hands twitched.

“Or would you prefer to bury her, and survive knowing you sacrificed your wife all because of your own failings?”

“N-no!” Leandro wheezed, reaching up awkwardly to try and pull the chain from Dante’s grip. “Please, don’t kill me. I swear I’ll pay more attention in the future. I-I’ll report the car as stolen! I’ll say he pointed a gun at me or something and demanded that car. Just, please, don’t touch my family.”

Dante held his stare for several long, silent seconds before releasing the chain.

Leandro dropped to the floor, coughing and gasping for breath.

“I’ll let you live,” Dante said, “but I’m setting the terms. If you violate them, even once, every adult in your family will burn.”

“Y-yes, of course, whatever you say…”

“Look at me.”

Leandro lifted his head again, his body trembling. Tears leaked from his eyes.

“Your life belongs to the Dragon now,” Dante said. “You will prioritize any member of the De Salvo family who comes to your garage, at a deep discount. And you will never mention having been held by me. I don’t care what story you have to give to justify your disappearance as long as it doesn’t involve my name. You do not lean on me, you serve me. Is that clear?”

Leandro swallowed hard and pushed to his knees, pulling his hands to his lap. “Yes. I understand.”

Dante inclined his head. “Good. You will call your contact if you ever see the man who took that Corolla again, at any point.” He turned and motioned to the nearest man. “Let him go.” He needed to get home and take a hot shower to wash off the grime of the day.

six

A Look Inside

Iris sat in the employee restroom, staring down at her phone. Her shift was done and sooner or later her escort would come searching for her if she took too long—she probably already had—but she couldn’t help herself. Megan had been weird all day. As if she were afraid. And Iris could only think of one reason Megan might have felt that way, so at the end of her scheduled shift she’d excused herself to the restroom and taken the opportunity to turn to Google.

She’d felt a strange combination of conflicting guilt and self-loathing as she searched for information on Dante De Salvo, and then on the De Salvo family. She owed Dante a debt, absolutely, but she refused to ever turn a blind eye again. And he had gone out of his way to label himself not just as mafia, but as the head of a large mafia organization. Iris had a guess as to what that should mean, objectively, but she owed it to herself to do at least a little research.

That had been her thought.

The internet hadn’t exactly provided her much in the way of helpful answers.

Dante De Salvo was known, publicly, as the thirty-five-year-old heir of DS Industries—a well-established, international, billion-dollar company with New Jersey roots. He’d been on the covers of several notable magazines in the nine years since he’d taken over as CEO in the wake of his father’s sudden passing. And in addition to the main business, he owned a handful of smaller, seemingly disconnected but all successful businesses—all branded by the internet’s favorite thing about him. His love of dragons.

A brave paparazzo had even captured a photo of Dante, over a year prior, with his shirt half unbuttoned. It was the first semi-clear look of the tattoo on his chest Iris had gotten, and she’d found herself biting back a smile when she zoomed in on the image. It looked like Dante had a dragon’s head tattooed over the top right side of his chest, almost as if it were coming in from his shoulder area. The head was arched in an upward bend, and the lines she’d never been able to understand before were its open maw, almost perfectly framing Dante’s throat.

The same paparazzo had used that rare unkempt image and the angry expression on Dante’s face to write an accusatory piece labeling him a dangerous criminal. “Dante De Salvo is the Dragon razing our streets,” he’d written.

But it was a short article, and even when Iris tried searching Dante + Dragon, she didn’t get anything more.

She had, however, learned a little more about his family. Things she suspected he would have told her himself, if only she had any idea how to ask. She’d learned that Dante’s father had died in a tragic car accident, that his mother continued to wear black in public even nine years later, and that Dante was the eldest of three boys. The youngest brother was Michele—pronounced the Italian way, mee-KEH-leh—whom Iris had been properly introduced to after breakfast earlier that very morning. The middle brother, the flirtatious one from the restaurant, really was named Romeo, and according to Google, he was a single father of a young girl. Iris had been curious about that, but there was no mention of death or divorce. There was no direct mention of the girl’s mother at all.

The other thing Iris had learned was that despite being obscenely wealthy, not a whole lot seemed to be known about Dante and his family. What she found was surface information. Biographical, almost. There was a distinct lack of invasive reporting, a notable lack of the clichéd, blurry, candid photographs or speculative headlines—all the things one normally associated with someone who was crazy rich, influential, and alive in the current times.

Her fingers paused over the screen again. I wonder if they have social media… She didn’t. She hadn’t since Paul had shut all her accounts down in his efforts to control her life. And while she was working hard to be free of him, the threat of him was enough to keep her from diving back into that particular pool.

Two sharp knocks on the small restroom door jolted her from her research-induced haze and Iris choked on a yelp, nearly dropping her phone in the process. “Y-yes?”

“Are you all right, ma’am?” The stern voice definitely belonged to her escort. Something about it reminded her of a brick, even hearing it through a door.

Iris swallowed. “Yes. Sorry. I’m almost done.” She hurriedly closed out of her searches, flushed the toilet again for good measure, and finished up in the restroom before unlocking the door and stepping out. As she’d expected, her new shadow was standing closer than she’d prefer.

He gave her a once-over. “You’re sure everything’s fine?”

She put as much strength into her voice as she could, hoping to convince him. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m all done.” Megan had said she had paperwork and so they wouldn’t have time to chat that afternoon, as Iris so often liked to do when her official shift came to an end. So she knew she wasn’t expected to linger.

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