Scorned Obsession (Scorned Fate)

Bianca wanted to stay in bed the next morning and I indulged my girl. I reviewed the security footage. She gave quite a fight. I was damned proud of her. She told me that Raffa wanted the mob doc to gather evidence that she and I were having sex. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around how unhinged that sounded. But we were the mafia. If we had a middle name, “unhinged” would be it.

However, this should not have surprised me. The Rossis had historically manipulated the pregnancies of their women. Bianca’s uncle, Charles McGrath, had an affair with Sofia, Raffa’s sister, and gotten her pregnant. My grandmother took her to Italy to hide her pregnancy, and when they returned, they gave the child to the McGraths to raise. Charles, at that time, was in prison.

And then there was my own screwed-up parentage.

I was eighteen when Wilma dropped the bombshell to the entire Rossi crime family that I wasn’t her son. Carmelo had pissed her off for the last time, and she revealed the whole sordid truth.

He forced her to fake her pregnancy because she couldn’t have more children.

There were actually companies that provided you with fake baby bumps and sonograms. I had to wrap my mind around that, too. I guess if you could fake death, you could fake anything. It made sense why Wilma showered affection on Frankie and appeared to hate my very existence despite how I tried to make her love me. I had crafted handmade cards and gifts that were discarded in the trash. At around eight years old, I took the hint and became the withdrawn, antisocial son of the Rossis. A beginning of a fresh hell because Carmelo became frustrated with me and started using his fists to make a point. Come to think of it, that was probably why I never understood the concept of love because I’d never received it. I built walls around myself to hide the fact that I was unlovable.

When the truth came out, I hated Wilma less and despised Carmelo more. In a way it was her absolution for why she wasn’t able to love me the way she loved Frankie.

I stopped calling her Ma and she’d been fine with it.

Wilma told me my biological mother died at childbirth, but Raffa revealed the truth after Carmelo’s funeral when I was twenty-four, recently released from a Russian prison.

Bianca shifted on the bed, calling my thoughts back from my fucked-up past. She didn’t know the complete story. She deserved to know, especially after Raffa’s deranged actions yesterday.

Spending the day with her reminded me of her truancy in high school and how I enjoyed corrupting her perfect life a little. This morning, I read while she slept. We watched TV together in her waking moments. She’d become clingy. Always wanting to keep a part of us connected. Holding my hand, touching my arm. She was so soft and warm and sexily cuddly. Her smell was intoxicating. The swell of her tits through the worn-out tee was driving me nuts. Whereas I didn’t feel any lust in the shower yesterday, today was different. The desire to bury myself in her lush heat was overwhelming.

She sighed for what seemed like the hundredth time and I asked for what seemed like the millionth time, “How are you feeling, baby?”

“Fine.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” The it was my murderous actions yesterday. She hadn’t even mentioned Griselda again.

“Not yet.”

Around nine p.m. Bianca got up and went to the bathroom. I heard the shower start and waited patiently for her to come out, reining in the urge to barge in there. The water stopped after exactly eight minutes twenty-five seconds. The sink faucet turned on, then the blow-dryer. Another seven minutes and fifteen seconds went by before she came out of the bathroom. Her hair was up in a ponytail.

She’d thrown on a robe and, without another look my way, left the bedroom. I swallowed a curse and went after her.

“Bianca…” I mumbled softly.

She ignored me.

Fine. If she hadn’t been clingy earlier, I would be bald by now with the way I wanted to pull out my hair.

She descended the steps and I held back from sweeping her in my arms and carrying her back to the bedroom. The men had mopped the floor, leaving no traces of blood. If there were, it wasn’t immediately evident. The stench of death and bleach still hung in the air. Sloane hadn’t come by yet.

Bianca entered the kitchen and started taking eggs, bacon, sausages, and vegetables out of the fridge. She went to the pantry and grabbed onions.

She hadn’t eaten since this morning.

Bianca brought out the chopping board. Then she grabbed a big fucking knife from the wooden block.

I stiffened, remembering her words to Griselda. Did any of her introspection today trigger the psycho?

“Baby…” I walked toward her.

“Turn the oven to three twenty-five,” she said, not looking at me.

I scrambled to turn on the oven to her required setting.

The blade of the knife reflected in the lighting. It winked at me before she positioned an onion underneath and cut it in half with a decisive stroke. I was glad it wasn’t a cucumber.

I brought out my phone and tapped over to the surveillance app. I switched off the cameras in the kitchen, then texted Sticks.

I didn’t want footage of her in a robe, looking sexy as fuck. That’d plant ideas in my men’s heads, then I’d be forced to shoot them too. But also, in case she stabbed me, I didn’t want there to be any evidence.

As expected, Sticks wasn’t gonna be on board without further clarification, especially given the events of the past few days. I heard the front door open and close, but I intercepted him at the mouth of the kitchen.

“What?” I asked.

He looked past my shoulder, but I pushed him to the side where he couldn’t see Bianca, while I could still monitor her.

“She has a knife.” Sticks pointed out the obvious. Which was made more obvious when the chop-chop-chop sound of the knife furiously hitting the cutting board reached our ears.

“She’s cooking.”

“Obviously.”

Sticks raised a brow.

“I consider that a win. Get out of here.”

He still didn’t budge. “When do I check back on you?”

“You don’t.”

“Boss, give me something here.”

“If you find me bled out in the middle of the kitchen, I deserved it,” I gritted. “Protect Bianca at all costs. Get rid of my body if you must.”

“Christ…”

The chop-chop-chop of the knife continued and was the only noise that punctuated our staredown.

“Fine.”

“Don’t you dare turn on the surveillance.”

“I’ll text you every half hour.”

I wanted to snarl, but every second arguing with Sticks was every second not keeping my full attention on Bianca. “Fine.”

His gaze flitted behind me again.

“What?” I snapped.

“I’ve seen this behavior.”

“This?”

“Back in Afghanistan. Our convoy got hit by an IED. It was blood and gore before the quick reaction team repelled the attack,” Sticks said, but his eyes had taken on a thousand-yard stare as if he was reliving that day again. “LT…our lieutenant…let’s just say he tried to save the leg of one of our boys, but he bled out and died. A lot of us were just shell-shocked, you know… The aftermath of an explosion is just surreal…unreal…” He paused. “Chaos… Even after we’d been evacuated from the scene, it was as if we’re still there.” He tapped the side of his head. “In here.”

I stayed silent, letting Sticks go through whatever mind space he’d drifted to. He’d seen the worst of war and somehow juxtaposed it with what Bianca experienced, so my panic abated. I should trust in her resilience.

“What happened?” I prodded.

“LT left the barracks. He went to the cook and next we knew we were chowing down under a tent and LT was the one serving us. It was his way of coping.” Sticks nodded to where my wife continued slicing and dicing vegetables. “From the first day, that’s how Bianca had coped with the situation of her captivity. In the kitchen.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” I glanced back at my wife and I was already feeling more settled with her behavior. “Then I’m going to let her cope.”

“I’m still checking on you every fifteen minutes.”

“You said half an hour.”

Sticks grinned and flicked me a mock salute before heading out.

I returned to Bianca and sat mesmerized as she methodically prepped whatever she was cooking. After another ten minutes, she set a baking pan across two burners. “Smells good, baby. What are you making with all these ingredients?”

“Dad’s frittata.”

Slight panic arrested my heart. There was one man I could never see myself replacing as Bianca’s number one—at least not yet. So she was thinking about her dad. It didn’t mean she was wishing I’d never been a part of her life.

“I’ve never tasted your dad’s frittata.”

“It’s breakfast food, but I’m feeling like breakfast for dinner,” she said.

“Same, baby. Need any help?”

No answer.

Okay. That was all right. Maybe I was interrupting her Zen moment thinking about her dad. Her overprotective and doting dad. Her cocoon-her-in-bubble-wrap-before-letting-someone’s-brain-matter-splatter-over-her dad.

I sat and marinated in a sludge of resurgent unworthiness, desperate to know what was running through her head. Was she going to demand I let her go? Did she realize I wasn’t worth the trouble?

I was tempted to reach for a beer but decided to get drunk on her movements. The knife rested beside the cutting board. A bowl containing diced onions sat beside it. Neatly arranged on a chopping board were rows of diced peppers and mushrooms, zucchini and broccoli.

Bianca deftly drained the bacon fat, then removed it to set it upon paper towels. Then she began sautéing the Italian sausage. When that was done, she began cooking the vegetables. It slowly registered in my brain. A delicious aroma soon wrapped around us replacing the stench of bleach and death. Bianca was turning the house back into a home. That was why she didn’t even turn on the vents immediately and only did so later.

She stirred eggs into the mix of vegetables, scattered the cooked Italian sausage and crumbled the bacon into the pan. She was making enough for an army again. Bianca was going to feed me. Feed my men. She was about to put the pan in the oven, when I interjected. “Aren’t you forgetting the cheese?”

She set the pan down, closed the oven, and turned to me.

A trace of a smile touched her lips. They twitched. “It’s a sin not to have cheese in the frittata. What was I thinking?”

“What are you thinking, Bianca?” I asked softly.

Finally, finally, her eyes met mine.

She cocked her head in a familiar thinking gesture. She grabbed the bags of shredded cheese and emptied them into the pan. Then, with a wooden spoon, she stirred the contents carefully. “Next time, no prepackaged shredded cheese. I like to grate mine into the food.”

“That’ll be a lot of grating.”

“Well, you’re here.”

“Yes, I’m here.” I moved closer.

When she raised the pan with both hands, I opened the oven door for her. She positioned it in its depths, straightened, and set the timer.

I closed the door and leaned against the counter. She moved to the opposite side, so we were face to face. We locked eyes again. Then she dropped hers and studied the tile floors.

“What’s on your mind, baby?” I rephrased the question I asked earlier. She didn’t reply immediately, but somehow, deep inside, I knew she was done working things out in her head.

Still not looking at me, she said, “I don’t know how I was okay with you killing eight men. Was it just yesterday?” she mused. “It seems like it was a long time ago.”

Relief buoyed my chest that she wasn’t feeling sorry for those motherfuckers. “They deserved it.”

This time, her eyes met mine. “Why didn’t I want you killing Raffa, then? He was the one who gave the order.”

“Baby, one thing you need to understand about Raffa. His blindness came at the price of his past atrocities. And he uses his blindness as an excuse to get a pass.”

“But he asked you to kill him.”

“He has nothing to lose. I killed two of his henchmen who had a lotta influence with the soldiers, basically cutting him off at the knees. He can’t get traction anymore. Tommy told me there’s a big shift in loyalties.”

“Is Tommy right?”

“Too soon to say,” I admitted. “Raffa’s considered the old guard. He’s slowly losing influence, and after what he did to you, it’s an atrocity no one in the modern mafia wants to be associated with. One reason the Rossis are failing is because they failed to evolve.”

She gave a hum of assent.

“Wanna sit?” I glanced at the timer. “Looks like we have another hour or so.”

She shrugged and moved to the breakfast table near the window.

“You want anything from here, baby? Blueberry soda?”

She gave me a small nod. When I got her settled with her favorite drink and I had taken a much-needed swig of beer to lubricate my parched throat, I asked, “Anything else bothering you?”

“I went after Griselda,” she said. “Did I cause a problem between you and Tommy?”

“Nope.”

She cocked a brow before narrowing her eyes in the first signs that her sass had returned.“Really?”

“Really,” I replied.

“She had it coming.” She took a long sip of her soda. “Griselda has had it coming for a long time.” A smile twitched the corners of her mouth. “I didn’t register it much then, but I remembered you telling Sticks not to interfere.”

“I did.”

“Thanks for that because I’m not regretting showing Griselda the door.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“There’s a difference between being a doormat and picking your battles. Showing empathy or being a sucker.”

“As I said before, baby, I have your back.”

She raked her teeth over her bottom lip.

“Out with it. You have more to say.”

Her eyes lost focus for a moment, much like how Sticks had grown distant earlier. “Seeing all that blood…it’s like a horror movie.” She paused, as if choosing what to say, how to say it. “But I’m fine. More than fine. You were right. I went through the shock. And I tried to reconcile my gut and logic that you’ve done the right thing.

“Then I remembered the time a rival family kidnapped Liz. We were all on lockdown at the De Lucci mansion. When the guys returned, Matteo and Nico tracked blood all over the floors. There was this manic look in their eyes…much like yours were yesterday.”

I understood that look. Bloodlust.

Bianca took a couple of chugs from her drink. “I’d never seen my brothers that way. I was unnerved. It was as if they’d become strangers. Dad had come in with them and he saw the expression on my face.”

“Did Cesar go with them too?”

“Of course. Matteo was only twenty-three then. Nico, twenty-two. Dad had more experience. I think that was the first time…”

Bianca didn’t finish, but I got it. It was probably the first time the brothers had shot and killed men. “What did your dad do when he saw your face?”

“Nothing at that moment because Mom and I were rushing out the door on the way to the hospital to be with Renz and Liz while the guys cleaned up. The hospital discharged her the same day, and when we brought her home, that was when Dad pulled me into the kitchen and told me to help him prepare something for everyone to eat. Which I thought was weird because we could have just told someone to bring us food. Mom was with Renz, helping him take care of Liz.

“They made Renz stay in the car. He hadn’t kept up with defensive training, but after that, Dad made sure we both practiced shooting and self-defense skills.”

“I don’t blame him.” Cesar had many enemies. Raffa being one of them.

“But yeah.” Her exhalation was rough and long. “While Dad made frittata, he explained that Matteo and Nico insisted on being part of the rescue and there are things that needed to be done. I mean, Dad already knew I wouldn’t look at my brothers with any less love for killing those assholes who thought it was okay to kidnap a pregnant woman. But I clung to that time with my dad. In our world, there were things we needed to take into our own hands because our enemies would never play fair.”

“And I was the fucker who kept interrupting you sorting shit out in your head.”

Bianca gave a tiny laugh. It lit up her face.

Thank fucking Christ.

“It also reminded me of a question I wanted to ask you.”

“I’m an open book.” I was thrilled to have my Sunlight back. I failed to detect the wary hesitation on her face and her next words dropped an anchor in my gut.

“I don’t know why Warren Winslow popped into my head.”

God fucking dammit. Fuck. I hated that name.

“Raffa’s men dragged me into the office,” she continued. “I had a flash of him. You remember him, right?”

How could I forget? “What about him?”

“He drowned in their family home. The police said he had drugs in his system.”

“Looks like an open and shut case,” I said shortly.

Bianca put the bottle down, crossed arms over the table, and leaned forward. “Now’s the time to tell me the truth, Sandro.”

We stared at each other and I let her see the truth.

She winced. “I just want to know why.”

“You want to know if I killed that fucker for taking your virginity?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a rapist.”

“I guess… The night was fuzzy.”

“Bianca.” I reached across the table, uncrossed her arms, and grabbed her hands, holding our linked fingers on the table. I was afraid she’d bolt. This was a momentous confession, and I wanted to look her in the eye when I told her.

“Did you or did you not tell him to stop?” I asked.

“It was dubious consent,” she whispered. “I was drunk. He was drunk, but in the end, what he did was wrong.”

“I will not argue the point and force you to accept that you were raped. It’s hard enough that you struggle with it. But do not for one second think Warren didn’t deserve to die.”

She gave a tiny gasp at the venom in my tone. Her eyes widened, but she didn’t flinch from my hardened gaze.

“Yes, I killed him,” I stated fiercely. “Yes, I pumped him full of drugs before I threw him into the pool to drown. I wish I made him suffer more. I wish I tortured him. Since the time I picked you up with blood running down the back of your thighs, I watched him.” I rattled that off quickly. It was like a poison I’d kept inside me and I couldn’t wait to expunge it. “But he was eighteen at that time. I wanted to erase his pathetic life, but I couldn’t kill him. Yet.” Me and my fucking code. I grappled with myself. He wasn’t a child, but he was still too young.

“You put him on your hit list.”

“And he was forever on it. I waited five years. And when he graduated from getting women drunk to roofieing them, I was done waiting. The fucker needed to die.” I repeated my earlier statement. It was my mantra for five years when it came to Warren Winslow. Bianca was silent as if absorbing what I was telling her.

“I don’t regret it. You’ll just have to live with what I’ve done. Can you?”

When she was still silent, I said, “If you need proof, I have copies of police reports and video footage from my club.”

“Should you be keeping those?” she asked.

“Does that mean you’re okay with what I did?”

“I don’t know what I’m becoming,” she whispered. “I guess since Warren’s family is rich and influential, nothing came from the complaints?”

“Nothing. Nada. They were paid off or threatened.”

“Threatened?”

“Yes. The Winslows actually have a relationship with the Rossis. They approached us to intimidate their workers during labor disputes. That was how Warren came on Griselda’s radar. She was adamant she didn’t mean for you to get hurt. She thought Warren was like any entitled teenager and his arrogance and good looks would be a distraction for you.”

“You know what? I’ll just add this to my list to chew on…”

Her gaze dropped to our joined hands. Could she handle more?

My phone’s walkie-talkie went off. “Boss,” Sticks said. “Gian is here.”

What did he want? He had a lot of balls showing up here.

“Send him away,” I told Sticks.

“I think you really need to hear this.”

There was an ominous tinge to his tone that gave us pause.

“What’s going on?” Bianca asked.

Gian had been blowing up my phone the whole day. Probably anxious about my decision regarding him. Probably wanting to get in on the meet with the Toronto Albanians tomorrow. Well, he was out of luck. I officially announced Tommy as underboss. “I hope it’s to tell us Raffa finally did the right thing and—” I was going to say “ate his gun” but it was too soon to put that image back in Bianca’s mind. “Fled to Siberia.”

“Boss?” Sticks asked again.

“Let him through,” I responded.

“Sorry, baby,” I sighed. “I’ll get rid of him.”

Gian had terrible timing, showing up when I was having breakthrough conversations with Bianca. I wanted to tell her about my mother. After everything we’d been through, I was confident we would be okay. That she wouldn’t care about the depravity that birthed my existence.

When I opened the front door of the house, Sticks was on the walkie-talkie talking to the guard at the front of the property. “Is Tommy with him?”

Sticks asked on the walkie-talkie. “Tommy Scavo with them?”

“Negative.”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t heard from Tommy since I texted him this afternoon confirming our meet-up tomorrow.

Gian’s Escalade rolled down the driveway, and I patiently waited for him to park and get out of the SUV. He was not welcome inside the house.

When he exited the driver’s side, I called out, “That’s as far as you go.”

“For God’s sake, Sandro. We have bigger problems.”

“If Raffa is dead, then good riddance.”

“No, dammit.” He walked around the front of the SUV. “Someone shot up Jabbin’ Java.”