Shaking my head, I sigh. “No, not going to happen.” Christ, why couldn’t this be about killing someone? “Let her go to school. Get some age on her and out from under the nuns. Dominic won’t touch her with a gun to his head if she’s under twenty-one. Once she’s done with school, there’s a much better chance.”
Of her meeting someone else and getting married on her own so Dominic never knows I had this discussion with Johnny and doesn’t speak to me for the rest of my life. “Dominic is not going to marry someone else between now and then.”
“It’s five years to get through school there. Five years out from under those nuns is long enough for her to find some guy. I didn’t make sure everyone in that damn village knew she was untouchable for her to get fucked by some pencil dick the first year she’s on her own. She needs to stay pure for her wedding night.”
“Look, Dominic wouldn’t give a shit if she’s fucked every guy at the university and their father at the same time. Her being pure isn’t going to make his dick harder or softer. If anything, it will probably be softer.” I can’t hide my disgust at the idea of my thirty-four-year-old son fucking a seventeen-year-old girl.
I might have passed on my thoughts of men fucking girls being gross onto my sons—the same way my father had to me. Women were more than soft bodies to give a man pleasure. You never truly fucked a woman and gave her all the pleasure she deserved if you didn’t fuck her mind as well as her body. If she wasn’t mature enough to know her own desires, then fucking her mind wasn’t truly possible. In that case, you were simply a taker and you didn’t deserve the pleasure she gave you.
Over the last year as I saw Cesare, my nephew, with his new wife, Alicia, the change in him was almost stunning. Cesare is the happiest I’ve ever seen him. I want the same for Dominic. I hoped him seeing the two of them together, he would want it for himself. If anything, Dominic had dug his heels further into his decision not to marry. A young girl like Regina, there was no way she could keep from falling in love with Dominic. I wouldn’t want the poor girl to come up against Dominic’s hard heart and head.
Johnny shakes his head. “For a fuck maybe, but not for his wife. It’s different with a wife. I was the same way. I couldn’t have cared less how many men a woman fucked. But when it came down to a wife, to someone you’re stuck with forever, it makes a difference. He’s going to like knowing he can be the one to show her how to please him. That will mean she’s more his woman than the ones he’s had before.”
Taking a sip of his scotch. “You Sabatini’s, your grandfather raised you right to honor your woman, your word. Him being her first and only will make it so he won’t want anyone else. I want Regina to have a love match. After all the shit she’s been through—all the shit I haven’t given her that I should have—she deserves it. Yeah, he won’t love her in the beginning, but Dominic is a good man. He’ll grow to love her. It’s the one thing I can give her.”
I agree with Johnny—love takes time and work. It grows in a marriage, in a relationship built on trust and a whole bunch of other shit that is hard, but from what I saw with my parents and grandparents was worth it. I swallow the last of my scotch, wishing there was more. Johnny doesn’t do regret, but I know he regrets how he’s handled his daughter in the past.
As a father who loves his son, I feel for the man. It’s my greatest wish my son will find love. I also know Dominic will fight falling in love tooth and nail. Being the kind of vulnerable he would need to be isn’t something he’ll allow. He could end up hurting Regina and himself before it’s all over. If Johnny really wanted to do right by Regina, he would let her find love on her own. Hopefully in the next five years she will.
“You want to keep her pure, keep her with a nun.” Carlo tugs at his tie. “Pay a nun’s family to take her in. The school is at least four hours from Turin, she can’t stay living there. Move her in with a family the nun has from the school. She’ll feel like she’s still in the school. Make it so she’s busy paying for her room and board by taking care of the house. There’s gotta be at least one nun with family in the town you can pay off.”
Johnny considers it. “That could work. It will be another way of keeping an eye on her. The bitch Mother Superior is pissed off at me and threatening not to send anymore reports on Regina with me not paying for her to go to university. If she’s not at the school anymore, fuck ’em. I’ll stop paying them and pay the family. Good Carlo. Good thinking.”
Pleased with himself, Carlo calls over a waitress. They know not to come to our table unless we ask them to. Once he orders we all do.
“You gonna help me when the time comes?” Johnny eyes me like he knows I don’t want to do it.
I meet his eye, hoping like hell it never does, and nod. “If it will be good for Dominic, then I’ll do what I can.”
He holds my eyes. When he sees it, he nods. “Good.” Turning his attention to Carlo. “I figure it’s time you know. Whoever you thought you were going to name as underboss when the time comes, it’s not happening. I want Dominic. I’ve always wanted Dominic. There is no one else who will lead this family better than him. I was going to tell you when I made you underboss last year, but you had some of the family antsy. A couple weren’t sure you’d last long, were mad I hadn’t made Tony underboss like pretty much all of us old-timers feel he should be.”
Carlo’s jaw goes tight as he presses his lips closed.
“If he hadn’t caught the murder charge, we all know he’d be underboss then one day Don. I asked him to be underboss anyway—before I picked Gianni. When Gianni died last year, I asked him again before I picked you. No one but Tony knows that.” Johnny shrugs as he finishes his drink.
Carlo looks to me. He doesn’t like that. Tough, maybe now that he knows he’ll get over the resentment.
“Tony felt he couldn’t do right by the position and maybe he can’t. But Dom can and will. The thing is, until the moment he’s named underboss, I don’t want him to know. He’ll fight like hell against it. I know he likes being in his own corner away from the schmoozing of the alderman and senators and shit. I don’t care. Dom is what this family needs.”
Throwing back his drink, Carlo nods. “I understand. Dominic would be my pick too. I didn’t know about you picking Tony before me.” He shrugs. “I’m not unaware people didn’t think I would be up for the responsibility despite the fact I make good money and work hard. So what I don’t like to get dirty? Not everyone has a taste for blood.”
“I’m glad I don’t have to listen to any bitching about Dom. For now, you tell anyone who asks it’s Sal who you’re thinking of but leave it open.”
Carlo scoffs in disgust. “That little fucker. He’s a piece of shit. I can’t believe I gotta call him family. If he makes it still breathing in five years it will be a miracle.”
“I’ve heard. You want me to order him dead, say the word. I have no problem doing it. He beat the fuck out of a civilian in a public place. We don’t make waves. The little fucker is making waves on an almost weekly basis.” Johnny offers.
“I think about it daily. He’s my sister’s only child. If there were another, he’d be dead already. But if you ever feel the need to end him, I’m not going to argue with you.”
My phone goes off with a text. I check it. Interesting. I look up to find the sender of the text at the bar, anxiety clear in every line of her body. “If you’ll excuse me a moment.”
Laughing, Johnny raises his glass to me. “Tony Sabatini, always with the women.”
Ignoring Johnny, I approach the woman. Lisa is one of the women who lives in the building I own, a working girl who was a part of the stable of women before I came to run them. Running is a term used very loosely when it comes to me. However, I refuse to use the word pimp. Grace Evans came to me asking me to do business as a madam out of a building in my territory, almost seven years ago. I gave my permission without much thought and didn’t ask for a cut, even though most men would have. A few years ago, Grace retired and asked me to
take over for her.
It wasn’t something I was interested in. While there were men in the Outfit who ran women, it was a rule we didn’t force women to work in the sex trade and we didn’t traffic women, ever. My grandfather didn’t want a Sabatini handling women, even more so than not touching drugs. At the same time, there were more than thirty women who would be left without protection. Too many for my conscious to allow, so I accepted the responsibility.