Page 10 of Where Dark Hearts Devour
A dark and desperate feeling settles in my stomach. “I didn’t think it was for sale, Papa.”
He swallows audibly. “It isn’t, but that’s not how Savero Di Santo operates. He doesn’t look for things he can buy—he looks for things he can take.”
“Papa . . . I don’t understand.”
“I can’t afford for him to take the port from under me. And I’m under no illusions, Trilby. He has thousands of soldiers working for him now. If I fought him, I wouldn’t stand a chance, and I have to support my family and protect the livelihoods of my workers.”
Regardless of how many times I swallow, the dryness in my mouth doesn’t abate. “So?” I croak.
“So we came to an agreement. You are to marry him to keep the port in our family.”
I fight to hear his words over the sudden ringing in my ears. “You want me to marry Gianni Di Santo’s son. The son of the don.”
“Yes.” Papa’s tone is firm and nonnegotiable. “But you are not marrying the son of a don, my love. You are marrying the don himself.”
“Savero is the new don?” I whisper. My head feels light while my stomach has dropped with the weight of inevitability.
I’m getting married. To Savero Di Santo. To aMafia don.
I can’t stop my nostrils from flaring. “Why me?” My voice inclines to a high pitch. “I haven’t even met him, Papa! He probably doesn’t have a clue who I am.”
Papa clears his throat. “He knows exactly who you are.”
“But he’s never even met me! Why on earth would he want to marry me?”
Papa leans forward, and I’ve never seen him look so serious. “He wants the port, Trilby.” There’s a sober weight to his words. “It’s as simple as that. If we hadn’t come to this arrangement, he would have declared war on me. I would have lost everything—our entire livelihood. He would’ve found a way to bring our business down.”
“That doesn’t sound like something Gianni would do,” I say quietly.
The notorious mob boss was as morally black as they come, but he never took issue with my family despite Papa owning one of the biggest import-export businesses in New York. I guess this was, in part, because my mother’s death gave Gianni and Papa a common enemy. Mama and I were caught up in a misunderstanding between the Di Santos and the smaller-numbered but no less deadly Marchesi mob. I survived. Mama didn’t.
There’s a sadness in Papa’s voice. “Savero is not Gianni. They couldn’t be more different.”
I focus on breathing steadily, because it wouldn’t do to betray my true feelings to Papa—not when he too has been through so much and raised all four of us to be polite and becoming. “Can you explain?”
Papa looks at me for a long moment. “Savero is ... passionate.”
Normally, that description would prick my ears up, but Papa’s tone suggests it’s maybe not a good thing.
“He has a temper . . .”
I can tell he’s choosing his words carefully.
“Not with women, I’m reliably assured,” he continues. “But I hear he can be hasty in his actions. It wasn’t expected that Gianni would pass so soon. He was coaching Savero to conduct himself like the don Gianni was. I don’t know how much success he had before his untimely death, but what I do know is thereare some nervous people in the Di Santo mob right now. A wife—someone who can distract him a little—might be exactly what Savero needs.”
I can only tackle one heinous point at a time, especially when I’m throwing every mental tool I have at remaining calm for Papa’s sake.
“So, I’m to marry a man who just became the boss of New York’s biggest crime family—someone who isn’t liked by his soldiers and is rumored to have a temper—not because he’s long been a secret admirer of mine, but because he wants to use our port for his own illegal gains?”
Papa’s jaw hardens. “Would you like me to spell out the alternative?”
I don’t need him to. The Di Santo family has owned New York City’s underworld for three decades. The FBI may have clipped the wings of the big five, but all that did was make way for a sharper, cleverer kind of crime. Crimes that come in the form of digital espionage, poll rigging, reputation manipulation, and—most lucrative of all—online gambling. The Di Santo family now wields enough power that its soldiers can kill anyone who denies them on a whim, and the feds can’t afford to touch them with a barge pole.
If I dare to deny the don of this family, it won’t only be me impaled on the shaft of his pretty yacht; it will be every member of my family, to “set an example.”
Gianni Di Santo and Papa had an arrangement, but only because it suited Gianni. One sneaky look through Papa’s office when I wanted to fake my ID informed me a quarter of the goods that came through our port were Gianni’s, and Papa would’ve had no choice but to do as Gianni asked.
Papa watches me with a grimace of finality, and I know the time has come for me to accept my fate.
