Tempted By The Mafia Boss

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Gabe

There’s paperwork everywhere.

It’s my fucked up way of trying to focus, except now the place is a damn mess and I don’t know what I’ve read from what I haven’t.

I should have either gone to my office at the shipping company or my office at The Dark Odyssey. Either would have been fine and more appropriate than deciding to go through seriously important contracts for the business idea.

I just can’t fucking concentrate and I haven’t been able to do so since I last saw Charlotte.

I’m determined to shift my thoughts elsewhere because Salvatore and Vincent are relying on me to be a hundred percent, but fuck I can’t do it.

I didn’t go to the shipping company because everybody was going to be there today and they would be asking me shit about Charlotte. I didn’t want to talk about it and I was avoiding The Dark Odyssey because I didn’t want the temptation to grab some woman for the night to help me forget.

It was a fucked up thought that made me feel like an asshole and some kind of cheater even though I’m not.

I just thought it best to stay home and get my shit together.

The guys have already gone over the contracts with Roberto but this is my chance to mull over everything and make sure it’s as it was supposed to be.

I surprisingly do find one thing that I wasn’t too thrilled with and I don’t know if the others had spotted it. It was to do with the land we were thinking of buying in St. Lucia. We’d decided on five islands to start with and all the others had existing hotels or some sort of structure we were going to buy and develop the way we wanted.

St. Lucia though had a mass of land and the realtor there had played it up big time. I noticed though there was some government restriction on the water and the usage of the beach area. The realtors didn’t mention that before.

That in its entirety was as much as anybody was going to get out of me tonight.

All I can say is, if the realtors are trying to fuck with us they better pray they had God on their sides because fucking hell, I’m in no mood to be screwed with. Or, to deal with some dumb fucktard who thinks it’s a good idea to screw with mobsters.

No fucking way.

If someone’s trying to shit with us, I’ll happily pay them a visit they’re not likely to forget, if they live through it. Especially with the mood I’m in.

The second I think that, it comes to me once again… the problem.

The problem Charlotte has with me.

The reason why she doesn’t want to be with me.

A regular guy wouldn’t have thought that screwing with me equaled death or serious injury. A regular guy would never think like that at all.

He’d get his lawyer to look into it and make a call. I’d call and make a threat. Or give a look and the bastard would know not to try it with me. Or, at the very least the look would give the bastard a chance to fix himself before I fixed him.

See, that was me playing nice.

Not fucking nice enough for her though, and it’s eating me up from the inside out.

Deciding I need a break, I set down the wad of paper I must have read five times already and throw myself down on the sofa.

Realistically, I probably need to stop what I’m doing because me looking over the contracts in this state of mind is pointless if I don’t catch mistakes of shit I need to give my undivided attention to. It could be contractual shit that could come to bite us in the ass later. I don’t want that.

As an accountant and businessman, I know as a general rule that if you see one thing that sticks out the way I spotted the land issue in St. Lucia, that tends to suggest there could be more things hidden in the mix.

I’m not sure how the other guys didn’t see that. Salvatore usually has a better eye, but I guess he’s more tech. Vincent probably did spot it but didn’t take note. At least I did, and that goes in my good books to my credit and input in the venture.

I definitely confess I’d left all the work to everyone else for longer than I should have. It’s well past time to haul my ass in gear. We weren’t talking even in millions anymore. That was just The Dark Odyssey here. The club brought in millions on the regular, but we had to split the profits five ways. This hotel business venture would be split three ways with a onetime cut to Roberto for his investment input. And, the idea was starting off with a prediction forecast of in the billions. It was different what we had here. It was something good. Something to look forward to.

I sigh and rest my head back against the soft leather of the sofa.

I don’t know what to do with myself and part of me refuses to believe it’s actually over between Charlotte and me.

You can go claim a doll yours all you want but if she doesn’t want you then it becomes something else and I’m not into that. It’s only wild and real if she wants it too.

I’m not as crazed as most of the other guys but that doesn’t mean I’m not as badass.

It’s all, however, the problem. I’m not what she wants. Whether I’m crazy, a little bit crazy, badass when I need to be or not. I’m dangerous just for being me.

I get it. I’m a mobster. A known one as she quite rightly put it just for being a Giordano. There are some things I just can’t change. Can’t change that.

There’s only one guy I know who gave up the business and live the vanilla for a woman and that’s Lucian Morientz. That guy was one of the most feared capos on the street. A hundred times worse than Frankie or Vincent ever was, or anybody in the circle we mingle in. Anybody outside that alliance and circle are not people you even want to speak to let alone associate yourself with.

Not only did he give up the business but his doll was a cop. A fucking cop.

He runs a wine shop now. The thing is, giving it up didn’t mean the end of trouble.

His brother Claudius took over from Raphael Rossi who also happened to be his wife’s father. Long, very interesting story that became the talk of the underground for a whole year. Which was exactly the highlight of the point.

He didn’t stop being Lucian Morientz.

The only thing that changed was his mindset and options. I’ve known Lucian and Claudius for close to twenty five years and I saw him change.

When trouble came knocking on their door and trouble has come in abundance enemies didn’t care that he’d changed certain things about his life, neither did they give a shit that he’d changed as a person. It didn’t matter one way or the other. They still came for him and his nearest and dearest just the same.

His wife, however, accepted him and accepted the possibility that there could be danger beyond their control at various points in their lives because they were who they were.

It was good, admirable to some extent on her part, but she wasn’t burned by our world the way Charlotte was.

Charlotte was burned in the worse way imaginable. The kind where you knew not to hope.

I know all of that. At the same time, what grates me is all she said.

And , the fact that she’s right.

She’s right, no one could save her.

Not even the most badass person we know could step in because the one who took her was worse than them.

The click of my front door makes me frown.

I’m not in the mood to speak to anyone so if it’s Salvatore I’ll literally sit here in silence.

Who I see coming into the living room though is the exception.

Mimi.

I forgot she had keys for my place too. Jesus, it’s not a good thing for a guy like me to lose track on who has keys to my house.

She walks into the room like she lives here. In her hand are two grocery bags and one of her million and one designer purses hooked on her delicate shoulders.

I look at her with expectancy because I don’t know what the hell to say to her.

She sets all the bags down next to the larger sofa, says nothing, just gives me one of her looks and makes her way into the kitchen.

She comes back with a cup of coffee that smells like she’s got some of my whiskey in it. Then I watch the doll pull one of my Cubans from the humidor on the display unit.

She sits in front of me and lights up, blows a ring of smoke out and gives me a very faint smile.

That’s supposed to signal she’s ready to talk to me. Something… a weight lifts from my shoulders when I see that.

“Heard she’s back,” she states. “Also heard what happened and came to see how you are.”

I can’t deny it’s good she’s talking to me again, and once again I feel like a prick that I can’t feel more redeemed.

“I’m not good,” I answer.

“Do you want to talk? I brought stuff for dinner. The guys said they haven’t seen you all day.”

The mother hen again.

“Don’t waste your time on me, doll.”

She raises her brows and looks me over from head to toe. “Gabe you know how I value my time, so this isn’t a waste. I’m here because I want to be and I am cooking dinner.”

I want to insist on her leaving me but I know her. “Okay… thanks.”

“Good. I’m not cooking yet though. We’re going to talk. I want to hear what happened from you.”

Again she’s the exception so I talk and I end up talking more than I thought I was able to. I tell her everything and she listens.

“I can’t blame her Mimi. I can’t.”

“No, you can’t, no one can,” she agrees.

“So this is it, the situation.”

“So…Here’s something you need to hear. It’s something that only two people know and I don’t wish for you to tell anyone.” She hangs her head down and a tear slips from her eye.

“What is it?”

“My mother… you know she wasn’t from our world. Not to start with. She worked in the DA’s office and she was trying to pursue a legal career when she met my father.”

“I know.”

Mimi’s mother died when she was twelve so I know how hard this is for her to talk about. What I don’t know is what she’s going to tell me that I’m not supposed to repeat.

“Her… death wasn’t an accident.”

I still and narrow my eyes. We were told she fell from the balcony of their home and drowned in the pool.

“What the hell do you mean?”

“She killed herself Gabe.”

I gasp and move to sit next to her. She puts out the cigar and looks to me.Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“Mimi why the hell didn’t you tell me that before?”

“I didn’t want to talk about it, and nobody knows. Just me and my father. We found the suicide note. He was devastated and he didn’t want people knowing she killed herself because of him,” she explains and a lump forms in my throat as I start to see the message she wants me to receive in sharing her secret.

Mimi loves her father to no end and I understand why she’d keep the secret. The one thing I knew about her father was how in love he was with her mother.

“Fucking hell Mimi,” I sigh.

“I know. I’m telling you because my mother wanted to leave. She couldn’t stand the continuous possibilities of threats we had to be on the lookout for from something happening back in Italy.”

Mimi’s family were from Calabria. They weren’t the kind that worked with a lot of the more aristocrat families like mine in Sicily, but a lot of them were shifty as fuck. The worst thing you could do in our world is slip up and lose trust. There are two of her family members I know of who got caught talking to feds. It’s enough to attract threats on the whole family everywhere, whether that’s in Italy or anywhere in the world.

“I can understand why she wanted to leave,” I say and bring my hands together.

She nods. “Yeah my father wouldn’t allow her to leave him, he kept trying to make her stay. I heard them arguing at lot, so I know a thing or two. I… still remember the day we found her in the pool. She jumped … she … jumped from the balcony. The coroners said it looked like she slipped and fell. When we found the note she left, we knew… it wasn’t that. She didn’t slip, she jumped.”

“Jesus Mimi, I’m so sorry.” I feel real bad for her, but I feel bad for her father too. He’s a good guy. The sort of man I wished mine could be when it came to my mother.

“Thank you. I appreciate it. Gabe, you don’t want Charlotte to end up hating you.” She nods. That’s a home truth I need to be told. “That’s what will happen. It must have taken strength for her to tell you she couldn’t be with you, especially after all that’s happened. It doesn’t mean though that her feelings have changed. I think if you love her, and I know you do…you need to respect her wishes.”

Maybe this is what I need to hear.

I don’t want Charlotte to hate me.

That would be worse.

That leaves me no option other than to let her go.

“Yeah. I’m going to.” I dip my head, hang it low for a few seconds and draw in a breath as I return my gaze to her. “Thanks for coming. I appreciate the talk.”

She gives me a proud nod. “It’s okay, I guess we were long past a talk as friends. And, don’t worry. She won’t hear from me that we were anything other than that. I guess we weren’t though, so… nothing to tell just in case you were worried.”

I will never forgive myself for the way I treated her and I actually wasn’t worried Mimi would tell Charlotte anything. Mimi isn’t a woman like that. “Mimi, I’m really sorry.”

She rises to her feet then lowers to plant a kiss on my forehead. “I believe you, Gabriel. I’m going to make that dinner. One of my grandma’s recipe’s.”

“Thanks doll.”

She takes the bags into the kitchen and starts cooking.

We eat together and she only stays for a little while longer after.

When she leaves, I call my PA and get her to organize a one way ticket to St. Lucia.

I’ll go sort out the shit there and maybe I’ll sort myself out too.

I’m back at that place in my head again where I can’t stay here. Can’t stay in Chicago.

When I first thought about leaving it was about moving on.

I’m absolutely fucking back there in my mind, but now I know for sure that it’s the only way I can let Charlotte go.