Il Bestione (Golden Door Duet #2) - Susan Fanetti Page 0,1

his rules and respected them. They’d quiet if he demanded it, but he usually left them to their roughhousing.

Paolo had continued the tradition that had once brought him to the Little Italy Community Society: a welcome to the orphans and young discards of the neighborhood. Only boys were offered room and board in this building, but he had arranged with Carmela Ganza, the madam of one of the most successful bordello he ran, to take in the girls.

That was a change he’d made; before, girls were ignored and left to starve on the streets, or pulled into the bordellos and put to use in ways they were too young to endure. He had spent too much of his life already watching women suffer and failing to prevent it. Paolo made sure the girls were cared for at least as well, as safely, as the boys.

The very young ones got room and board for simple work—errands and housekeeping. Not until they were old enough to be considered grown, and understand the choice they were making, did Paolo offer them that choice—to do the real work that took place in the place they lived, or to move out. If they chose to leave, they did so without obligation to him. He sent them off with enough money to keep them sheltered and fed for a month, if they were smart about it.

Most of the boys chose to stay. Many of the girls chose to go. It was as he preferred it.

He’d been a grown man, twenty years old, when he’d found himself alone and destitute in Little Italy. Weakened and shaken, furious and afraid, he’d met another young man who’d brought him here, to this building, to Don Giulio Fausto. The don had offered him a bed and a meal, and protection, in exchange for work, and Paolo had taken it.

At the time, he’d known that Giulio Fausto was a bad man, and that bad men worked for him. He’d known because Fausto’s men had raped his sister and beaten him nearly to death, for no reason but the entertainment of it. But he’d taken that bed and a meal anyway, and he’d agreed to work for the don without a blink.

By the age of twenty, Paolo had lived a life full of hard lessons to teach him that good and bad were insignificant concepts, a privilege few could afford. For the rest, power was the only thing that mattered.

He’d watched Don Fausto, learned his ways, worked himself closer to his circle. When Paolo’s past confronted him, and men working for Don Cuccia tracked him down on the streets of New York with the aim to avenge the death of Cuccia’s only son, the shield of Don Fausto’s power had made Paolo strong enough to repel them.

He leaned into that protection, exploited that shield. But he never forgot who Fausto was, or what his men had done. He bided his time and remembered.

When his own strength was enough to do it, he’d killed the don and the men who’d hurt his sister. He’d made a show of it, so there would be no doubt who had done it, or how.

When some of Fausto’s remaining close associates had tried to retaliate, Paolo had killed them all. He’d killed every man who dared stand in his way.

Now the power was his.

Five years ago, Paolo had killed the most powerful men in Little Italy. They weren’t the first men he’d killed; in fact, by then, he’d been up to his wrists in blood.

Since then, it seemed he swam in it.

He’d been a slave. He’d been a beggar. No longer, and never again.

He was twenty-six years old, and he was a man other men feared.

They called him Don Romano.

They called him Il Giovane, the Young One.

They called him Il Bestione.

The Beast.

In his bedroom, Paolo turned on the electric lamp, wincing as always at the harsh glare and unsettling hum it made. He supposed someday he’d grow used to electricity, but he hadn’t yet. It made his eyes burn and his head ache.

He hung his suitcoat and vest on the back of a chair, undid his tie and draped it over the back of the chair as well. Removing his collar and cuffs, he set them on the tall bureau.

With his cufflinks in his hand, he opened the top drawer of the bureau and dropped them into their compartment in the velvet-lined box he kept for the purpose. He’d discovered a taste for gold cufflinks and had