Page 3 of Made in Love and Blood

“What have you done?” Carina snarled Nico’s way as she rushed inside. All that venom in her words might have been spewed at the boy, but the way she grabbed Francesca off the toilet would surely leave a new bracelet of bruises.

Maybe she would get another puppy. Or a kitty this time.

“Did you touch her?” her stepmother demanded. “What did you do to her? There’s pee everywhere, you little shit!”

“No!”

“Nico, you tell me the fucking truth right this second.”

Nico’s attention snapped to his father who loomed closer to the boy as Frankie got dragged out of the bathroom. That aghast look on his face was the last thing she saw before Carina threw her into the waiting arms of Salvatore.

“No, I did not!” she heard Nico yell.

The bathroom door slammed closed again. It didn’t hide the sudden sounds of slaps or the stark cries that answered every hit.

“Daddy,” she whispered to her father, “he didn’t.”

Frankie tried to tell Sal. She even tried to tell Miss Sissy that night when she tucked her into bed. Nobody seemed to listen or hear her, or maybe they just didn’t care. What was done was done, they all said.

She did, though. Francesca cared.

But she wouldn’t see that boy for another nine years. And that lie they all told on him? She never forgot it. She couldn’t.

1. — when problems are piling...

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Staten Island, New York

Salvatore Gallo, Russo Estate

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“He’s feeling some kind of way today, Mr. Gallo. Mind yourself.”

The consigliere of the Russo crime family gave the enforcer standing guard just beyond the opened office doors a once over. “I’ll mind the boss’s moods, Matty, not you.”

Salvatore had that guessing game down to a science. Half his job came down to knowing whether Giorgio Russo had shit sideways in the morning or not.

“I’m just sayin’ is all.”

“Well, don’t,” he warned the younger man. Matty should really heed what he was lucky enough to be told but Sal had at least thirty years on the man and a hell of a lot of lived experience with Giorgio. Sal had to keep in mind that Matty was new on his post for the boss, barely a few months in. He still had things to learn, but he wouldn’t have much longer to figure it out. “He hears you telling the wrong person to watch themselves around him, and he might take that some kind of way. Got it?”

Matty showed some sense by nodding.

“Keep it in mind,” Sal uttered, then moved past the man to enter the office. He didn’t need for someone to announce his presence. Everyone knew who he was, and exactly what he was there to do.

Sal’s connections to everything political and judicial, not to mention, the bottomless pit of wealth he came from made him a hot commodity to someone like Giorgio with very specific needs. And the money his first—dead—wife had been born into? Even older than his own. The boss couldn’t say his name was on a mall in Shanghai, China, but he could use the fact that his consigliere’s was connected to one.

Even though the enforcer didn’t announce Salvatore’s arrival to the office, Matty kept a three-stride distance behind him as he strolled beyond the threshold. The irritated, raw vibe of the room vibrated all around him the instant he was within its four walls. It almost made him turn around and leave, but that would only make Giorgio’s mood far worse for Sal to deal with later.

Speaking of which...

The deep lines set around the boss’s scowl as he scanned the Los Angeles Times spoke volumes. “A countdown, Sal. They have a fucking countdown to every step in the proceedings of this trial now.”

If he were a praying man, now would be the time. Alas, he wasn’t. Church just helped the image because God left him long ago.

“Told you,” Matty murmured at his back.