Mercenary (Gangsters of New York #3) - Bella Di Corte Page 0,95
Though their relationship was open. He didn’t care if his wife fucked other men, as long as he didn’t know names. Bugsy had, and I told him he was fucking nuts. It was one thing if she took schmucks to bed, but another to take a man from this life. Word spreads.
Word was also that Rocco had wanted my wife before I entered the picture. Yeah, it was my right to call her my wife even before she was. The day we got married was not the day her life belonged to me. It had always belonged to me. It was just sealed that day.
I’d seen it that night at the opera with my own eyes. The way Rocco looked at her, like he was a hungry fucking lion on the prowl for a juicy piece of meat. Again when he’d seen her out with me at The Club.
Rocco cleared his throat. “We were at a restaurant,” he said, opening and closing his hands. “It is not an intimate place.”
“The place doesn’t matter,” I said. “Conversation can be inappropriate or intimate anywhere. Especially when no one is around.”
“You believe your wife to be that way,” he said.
I had to keep a lock on the urge to put a bullet in his chest for even insinuating that my wife was that kind of woman. The three fuckers who had treated her that way in this club had paid for it. One with his tongue and the other two with an eye. One spoke while the other two watched, so it was symbolic for a tongue and two eyes to go toward the debt. They lost one head; they were fucking lucky they didn’t lose all three.
“I believe that about you,” I said.
His face changed completely. I had called him out on his bullshit, and essentially said that he was the equivalent of a whore. He wanted to kill me, too.
Good. Let the slaughter fucking begin.
This thing of ours had a long memory; so did I. Even if we were square after this, I’d never forget it.
“Did your wife claim that I spoke to her indecently or touched her in the same manner?”
Point for him. My wife never spoke a word about it to me. He probably knew that. He knew Nunzio had told me. He wanted him to. The object of this meeting was to make a point while being respectable about it. I’d fucking lose if I outright called him the words on my tongue. Fucking bastard.
“If she had,” I said, “permission or not from her, you wouldn’t be sitting there. Capisci?”
He stood and I stood, followed by our men.
“Sit down,” Tito said. His voice came out cool, collected, and we all obeyed him. He didn’t look at any of us after we did. He kept his face forward, staring at the wall for a few minutes. Then he cleared his throat. “If it were your wife, Rocco, would you have called Corrado here to this sit-down?”
He grinned but said nothing. He didn’t call men to a sit-down for his wife. He only killed them if he had a name. But I understood where Tito was going with this. He did, too.
“Between us,” Rocco said, using his hand to motion between him and I.
Tito went to open his mouth, but Rocco lifted a hand. “Dammi questo, zio.” Give me this, uncle.
Tito looked at me. I nodded.
Rocco cleared his throat. “This will save time. Tell me what will happen if I speak to your wife again—alone.”
I looked him straight in the eye and said the words easily, “Ti ucciderò.” I will kill you. “Fausti famiglia or not.”
This was about more than him being alone with her. This was about respect for another man in this life and his wife. If boundaries were not set, and enforced, he would walk all over them. There was nothing some men wanted more than what another man had. It was the equivalent of a virus in this life of ours. It ran rampant.
The Fausti famiglia were a step above the rest. They had more power and money than all of the five families put together, and it only grew over the years.
Rocco Fausti had wanted Alcina before me. He didn’t get her. After I did, he was going to fight even harder to have her. “No” wasn’t a deterrent to some men; it was a word that triggered them to work harder for what they wanted.