Page 4 of Truth or Dare

Present Time

Fast forward to today, after watching my brother marry a beautiful girl who was perfect for him, I was thinkin’ it might be time to settle down, look for someone compatible.

Revenge didn’t help me get over what Deb did. Splitting with her was the genesis of what my sister Luciana dubbed the “Man Whore Years” for me. I was cold for a long time and got my rocks off in nightclub bathrooms and alleys or motel rooms and sometimes my place with nameless, faceless chicks. I was always focused, driven, but during the Man Whore Years I was focused and driven with a big chip on my shoulder and no desire to trust a female that wasn’t a member of my family.

Then one day, my pop says that he’s arranged for my older brother to get hitched. Yeah, it sounds prehistoric, but my brother wasn’t gonna do things the traditional way and Tommy getting married was a piece of the puzzle in whatever sinister plot Pop had cookin’ so Pop said he had to get creative because to him he couldn’t hand the business over unless my brother showed he had settled down. A wife and preferably a wife with a bun in the oven said that to my father and his business associates. He wanted Tommy hitched so that he could move on and do other things while Tommy took over as president of the company with me as VP.

Tommy was doing practically all the heavy lifting at that point anyway, but Pop dangled the business like a carrot, knowing what buttons to push with my brother. Pop was always makin’ us jump over hurdles, both of us. My brother laid eyes on the girl chosen for him and he was interested. More than interested. It didn’t take long for him to do a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It was astounding to watch.

Up until that point I’d never seen my brother in a relationship. He showed up stag to family events, business occasions, never brought women around. He had a rep for being a womanizer and he and I are tight, I knew he got action, women liked how he looked so he barely had to snap his fingers to get laid, but I knew he wasn’t interested in settling down. After Debbie I probably modeled my approach to women after my older brother. Fuck ‘em then chuck ‘em.

He was all about power and had a single-minded focus to get to the top of his game in our business, to be someone no one questioned deserved to be in Pop’s chair. His love life was something that wasn’t discussed much, but he had a rep as a prick who liked it rough. More than a few women who were interested in sinking their claws into him got knocked back or scared off. They didn’t kiss and tell outright because they knew better, but there were hushed whispers about Tommy’s tendencies, especially after a neighbor’s cousin who’d moved to town turned tail and left town after one date with my brother, rumor having it that she pursued him relentlessly until he finally gave her a shot. She learned her lesson. She had bruises around her wrists, ankles, and throat and left town the day after their hook-up. There were a few other stories like that about Tommy, but not much was said. People knew better than to gossip about him. If it got back to him, there’d be hell to pay.

This flesh payment my father took, Tia…she’s a real looker, a knockout. And sweet. She worships my brother. He’s a lucky fucker. My brother was turned inside out over her. His whole focus, reason for what he did, his motivations … all changed. As I watched their love story play out, I frequently thought about the fact that by that point I should’ve been married to Debbie a few years. She and I should’ve been thinkin’ about kids.

Debbie wasn’t the maternal type and I guess I hadn’t really thought that through when I proposed because I wanted kids. After we split, I found out she had an abortion and never told me. It shook me. If I’d married her, maybe she’d never have given me kids. Maybe she would’ve kept aborting them. Or maybe she’d have had kids but maybe I’d be raising kids that weren’t even mine. Before the “man whore” years, I wanted a wife who’d drive a soccer mom Hummer (No woman of mine would ever be forced to drive a minivan) and fill it with enough sons to make up a soccer team.

I wanted daughters, too, to spoil. I wanted my woman to drive our boys to soccer and our girls to ballet and to do that while wearing lace and garters underneath her clothes because she was still a wildcat for me. I was foolish to think Debbie would grow up and mature into something maternal, traditional. She never promised me the picket fence, never promised to grow old together. I just figured it was a natural progression. I pushed the signs away that she wasn’t the one until I was forced to face them, which was when I saw her on her knees deep-throating that goof.

I was Dario Ferrano, respected in my field of work. I was a member of an influential family with ties to organized crime but the appearance of loose ties and not a small amount of mystery, so I was revered and feared. But I wanted the traditional sort of family that the Ferranos were not. I wanted someone I could have a real connection with.

I’d seen a little of what I’d wanted with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents. My ma grew up in a stable and loving home and when I spent time with her for two weeks every summer, I saw that. I wanted that. She picked the wrong man to have kids with and that choice had far-reaching impact. I didn’t wanna make that same mistake.

Anyway, too bad I fell for a non-traditional girl. After I caught her with the DJ, it came to light that she’d cheated plenty. She was wild, willing to try anything in the bedroom, always bringing new ideas of ways to get us off. After we split, I knew why. She’d been doing more than her fair share of wild oat sowing.

My father was married four times, widowed twice. He was in his early fifties when he died. My Pop had not only been married four times but he also had a long string of girlfriends and mistresses in between and often at the same time.

Rarely saw Ma, and when I did, she was timid, broken. My ma’s parents lived in Iceland, and they were amazing. If I’d have grown up there, I’m sure I’d be a very different man.

My grandfather was Italian, grandmother was from Iceland, and that’s where they retired. I visited them in Akureyri for a few weeks every summer until I was in my late teens. It’s where I got a glimpse of a normal family life. My ma came from a big family and most of my Icelandic cousins came from stable homes with married parents. My grandparents were married fifty years. My grandmother died peacefully in her sleep and then my grandfather died the same way three days later, because he just couldn’t live without her. I wanted that kind of love.

I wanted a woman who was spirited, beautiful, who loved to fuck, and who wanted a family as a means of getting more out of life, not out of settling. I wanted a woman who had substance. I didn’t want the Barbie dolls my pop had around, didn’t want a shell of a woman like Ma was turned into out of the fear she lived with because of my father. I wanted someone real, spunky, loving, interesting. After Deb fucked me over, I closed my heart off. I didn’t see anyone around me who seemed real enough for me to let them in. Maybe I just never gave anyone else a chance.

Pop died after alienating his family. After he died, I was taking stock. I’d been doing it a while beforehand, really, watching my brother fall in love and seeing what he was getting. A girl with fight in her, a girl who was awesome with my sisters and our nieces and nephews. And I wanted it all. I wanted success in my work life and I wanted a family.

I also didn’t wanna worry about people kidnapping or shooting at my family. I didn’t want my wife and kids to face the risks we’d all faced due to my father’s choices, especially seeing what it did to Contessa who’d been widowed and left with two boys to raise on her own. I was spending time with my nephews, trying to be a male figure for them. So was Eddy, my brother-in-law, but those boys would grow up without their father.

Jimmy was a good fuckin’ guy and didn’t deserve to have his life cut short at twenty-six years old.

And what all the drama had put my brother and Tia through? It was enough to make me do my damnedest to avoid the same thing.

Tia made him better. I wanted a woman who’d make me wanna be better, too. I didn’t know if I’d ever get back to resembling who I was before Deb cheated, but after I got back from Tommy’s wedding I decided on a new era. I was gonna clean up my life.

New motto: man whore no more.

From then on, I wasn’t gonna waste my time with women who weren’t likeminded. I’d try to thaw my heart, but figured I’d probably have to settle because if she was wild like Deb, she probably wouldn’t want the picket fence. I wanted both, but it wasn’t likely so I’d pick picket fences and sensible bikini briefs over the garter belts and thongs if it came right down to it. It’d suck to settle but I’d already had the wild girl and that hadn’t worked out so if I had to settle, I had to.

Not long after we were back from Costa Rica, it was my birthday. We had a small family dinner with my sisters, my brother-in-law Eddy, my pop’s widow Lisa, and my nieces and nephews. But the next day, I found out what Pop had gotten me for my birthday.

I found out that Pop had procured a wife for me. She was almost 23, was a redhead like I’d jokingly requested in memory of my science lab partner who maybe would’ve had a better outcome for me than Deb. This girl was American, and she’d been in captivity for 2 years, trained to be the perfect slave. Part of the deal was that if I wanted, she’d be put in a thirty to sixty-day program to take her from slave material to wife material; some value-added transition service the resort offered for those who wanted their “possessions” to function flawlessly outside of the bedroom. I got the news via an associate of Pop’s, a lawyer I hadn’t met more than three or four times.

“Dario?” he asked when I answered my secure cell line. It was 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning.

“That’s me. Whoever this is, it’s 6:30 in the fuckin’ morning so this better be good.”

“Stan, Tom’s lawyer in Thailand. I’m at the airport, on my way to you. I need a meet. I’m arriving tomorrow night, your time. Where can we meet?”

“We can’t discuss whatever this is about on the phone when you get here?”

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