Page 3 of Filthy Little Games
“I agree with Weston and Gideon, so you don’t have the votes yet,” I say to Emilio. “For now, we’ll wait and see. No one makes a move on her until we meet up again next quarter.”
“What are we supposed to do until then? Lie low? Because I don’t lie down for anyone,” Emilio grumbles.
“Worried your unruly brood will all get locked up now?” Weston’s hoarse chuckle sounds like a rake scraping over gravel.
Emilio surges to his feet. “Vaffanculo!”
“Seriously, Weston?” I ask when I stand up as well and button my suit jacket. “You crossed a line. Apologize to the man for insulting his family.” It’s not that Weston is wrong. The Rovinas are a messy bunch of thirty-somethings who could all probably use a month of rehab.
“I’m sorry, Emilio, that your spawn are all worthless pieces of shit,” Weston says before he also stands up, going with escalation rather than an apology.
“I will rip your throat out!” Emilio starts around the table. But to do that, he’d have to go through me first. I turn around to face him, six inches and fifty pounds heavier, blocking his way with both of my hands before grabbing his shoulders.
“Calm down. Weston’s just trying to rile you up because it’s so easy. We all know Bowen leaves much to be desired as an heir too.”
I can feel Weston glaring daggers at my back.
“How about we stop talking shit about each other’s families and call it a day?” I suggest. “Now, shake hands like you’re fucking gentlemen and not children playing dress up in designer suits.”
I take a step back and watch the two men. Both grit their teeth and clasp palms directly in front of me, then immediately get into a tug of war over who can pull the other toward them harder using their still clasped hands.
“Enough! Meeting adjourned,” I announce, breaking them apart. “See you all in three months unless you get yourselves killed and we have no choice but to deal with your unfortunate heirs.”
Everyone hastily makes a move toward the door, except for Emilio, which is probably for the best. The last thing I need is all the city bosses getting into a scuffle on my building’s elevator.
“Speaking of…unfortunate heirs,” he starts. “You still don’t have any, Ferraro.”
“My line of succession is secure without needing to procreate,” I tell him. “If anything happens to me, I know my men will be in good hands with my brother.”
He grins at me. “You’re not superstitious? Are you, son?”
I hate when he calls me ‘son.’ And whether or not I believe in my family’s curse…well, our history speaks for itself. Still, putting the blame on some old lady in Italy my grandfather pissed off when he refused to marry her daughter is ridiculous. The women in our family don’t have short lifespans because they aren’t Italian. They have short lifespans because of our way of life.
The women who have been brave enough to marry a Ferraro have all met the same fate, dead before their thirtieth birthday.
My grandmother was thrown onto the tracks and hit by a train when she was twenty-nine, thanks to the fucking Russians my grandfather pissed off.
My two aunts were tossed overboard a cruise ship. They weresent away by my uncles to keep them safe from the war with the Irish in the late ‘80s.
And my mother, she was twenty-eight when she died by my father’s hand. She stupidly thought the three of us would be safe in witness protection after she took his money and ratted him and his men out to the feds. She was wrong.
“Your father always wanted our families to form an unbreakable alliance,” Emilio says, leading up to his point. “Stella is a strong, beautiful Italian woman. She would make a good wife.”
“I’m sure your daughter will make a good wife…for someone else. I’m not interested in marrying a woman who doesn’t want to be in the same room with me.”
Everyone started calling Stella Rovina the ‘viper bitch’ when she was a teenager because she’s always been a handful. Now that she’s thirty-something all that’s changed is she seems to be even more hostile toward the entire male species.
There’s a rumor that she once gave her older brother’s friend a hand job using poison ivy in the bushes at Central Park. The fact she gave a man a red, itchy dick isn’t the worst part. The psychotic part is she was willing to let that shit spread all over her palm to fuck him up.
“Oh, Stella’s more than willing to marry you,” Emilio says, which is surprising since most women fear me. I doubt anything scares Stella Rovina, though. “She also agreed to carry your children. Although, she did say she prefers insemination, but I think you could eventually persuade her to do it the…natural way with the right motivation. We all need to do our part to keep our family legacies going, Creed.”
And there it is. Why would I want to marry a woman who refuses to share my bed?
I do like a challenge, but not one that puts my dick in jeopardy of being abused or mutilated.
“Your father would’ve married a good Italian woman if heknew what would happen with your mother. Don’t make the same mistake your old man did,” Emilio warns me.
“I don’t need to think about it. My answer is no,” I assert firmly. “But I’ll talk to Carmine and my cousins,” I concede, since it was my father’s wish for our two families to unite. And for some reason, even a decade after his death, I still find myself wanting to make the dead son of a bitch proud.