Mafia Don’s Secret Twins: Chapter 5

Elio takes all of us down to his basement offices.

Marco included.

I still can’t believe that Marco is here. How the fuck did he get out of Ireland?

And, does this mean that the protection he got for the girls and me in exchange for being in witness protection is done?

That, more than anything, makes me restless. Despite the fact that they all seem to think they have a better grasp on the situation, better than Sal or Caterina, I know Marco. I’ve lived with him as my barely-older brother for my entire life.

I know that Marco is significantly colder, more calculating, and less trustworthy than anyone thinks he is.

So if he’s here, with us…

Something changed.

In the office, there’s silence, until Elio looks over at Marco. “Well?”

“What, Elio,” Marco says, his lips pulling into a frown.

“What the hell do you have to say for yourself?”

Marco looks up, a glimmer of defiance in his brown eyes. “Absolutely nothing.”

“You’ve been missing for long enough that you have new nieces and nephews that you know nothing of,” Elio snarls. “And yet here you sit, in front of me. Not dead. Not even a fucking scratch on you.”

I look over at Sal, who is starring as passively as he can forward.

Clearly, Sal didn’t tell Elio everything about his time in Ireland.

Good.

Now I can use this against Sal, if I need to.

Having some ammunition against my brother feels good. I don’t know if I’ll need it, but if I do…

I’ll use it.

“I had my reasons,” Marco says stiffly.

“Your reasons? To abandon your family? To let us think that you were dead?”

Elio’s accent is so thick you can barely tell he’s speaking English. He’s about two seconds from disappearing into a cloud of Italian curses and murder threats… at best.

The scar on my neck, and the one across my stomach, itch.

I remember what Elio is capable of when he’s in that kind of a mood.

“I don’t ask you how you run your family, Elio,” Marco says cooly. “However, from where I stand, it seems like you, at some point, decided to maul my brother and kidnap my baby sister to get revenge on me for something I did not do.”

Sal’s trying extremely hard, but I can see a twitch in his eye.

I don’t give a fuck. This is great.

Elio growls. “She was, and is, my wife.”

“And that makes it better?”

Elio releases a string of curses and jumps forward, but Sal catches him. I give Sal a look. “Let him go.”

“No, he’s not… in his right mind.”

“That’s why you should let him go. I’ll go pop the popcorn and we can watch our very own cage match,” I say.

I can’t help it that I’m somewhat gleeful. Watching Elio and Marco tear each other to pieces would be fucking fantastic.

Except, I think I do need at least one of them in order to make sure Marisol doesn’t get back to her father.

Unfortunately, I’m not the head of an organization like Elio or Marco. We’ve been running the De Luca Shipping business, and its associated criminal shit, as part of the Rossi Imports for a while now.

If Marco’s decided to show up and fucking run it again, that means that he and Elio are going to have to figure some shit out.

Fast.

Elio and Marco stare at each other. Marco looks away first, turning to look at me. “I heard.”

I blink. “How the fuck did you hear?” and, more importantly, what the fuck did you hear.

“It’s not important.”

“If someone does not tell me what the actual fuck is going on I will shoot the both of you,” Elio growls.

Sal looks like he’s sweating bullets.

Fine, little brother. I’ll cover for you.

I glance at Elio. “Marco knew about Marisol and the girls.”

Elio does his best to not look surprised. “He knew… what?”

“He knew that they existed. I told him, after I found them, and asked for his help.”

“Help with what, Dino,” Elio says.

My throat itches again. I rub at it before I continue. “He helped to make sure they were protected from Marisol’s father.”

“So for how long…”

“A few years,” I interrupt.

I don’t want Elio to know more than we’re giving him. At this point, it doesn’t fucking matter.

Marco shifts. “I heard that Benicio Souza’s daughter is eligible. That he’s going to host a series of trials, and whoever wins them will have access to his daughter.”

Series of trials? I shift. “Marisol said that he’s flat broke. Motherfucker needs cash, fast.”

“It appears, Dino, that he might be broke, but some part of him still wants to use this to his advantage. It’s assumed that, since Marisol is quite clearly his favorite child, anyone who marries her will be heir to the entire cartel, all its holdings, and its extensive network.” Marco’s eyebrows lift. “I also believe that while you know there are some significant financial issues within the organization, that is hardly common knowledge. Word on the street is that the cartel is doing as well as it ever has, meaning the man who achieves this goal of marrying Souza’s daughter will also become insanely rich.”

The silence thunders around my ears.

“Every fucking cutthroat in the world is going to try and win,” I eventually manage to grit out.

That means Marisol is going to get married to someone who is…

Fucking brutal.

The idea of her getting married was bad enough. The idea of her getting married to someone who’s enough of a killer that Benicio Souza approves of them?

I feel like I’m melting from the inside. My rage feels nuclear, and it bubbles against my chest, eating at my bones.

Benicio Souza is fucking dead.

Anyone who touches Marisol is going to be fucking dead.

“She can’t go back,” I snarl. The words are so raspy they’re hardly legible, and I see a flicker of something cross Marco’s face. “She can’t fucking go back there. I’ll keep her here. I’ll fucking lock her in this motherfucking house…”

“This house?” Elio says.

His words glimmer with darkness.

“This is not your house, Dino,” He adds.

I turn on him. “I don’t give a fuck. I will take her and run. We’ll go anywhere that they can’t find her.”

“There is nowhere that Andrei Moretti cannot find her,” Marco says evenly. “You’re welcome to attempt to use the house in the city…”

The fucking house in New York that our grandparents lived in?

No fucking way.

It can’t be secured. On one of the busiest streets in Brooklyn. Under an overpass that someone could literally drop a bomb from and no one would know.

“And what about your children?” Elio says quietly. “Would you separate them from their mother in perpetuity?”

“She’ll be alive,” I bark. “If she’s with one of those motherfuckers…”

“Marisol is smart, and she’s walked out of basically her entire life with him alive,” Sal adds.

Sal’s words drive a knife through my heart.

I spin, my hands raised. He manages to stop me right before I smash my knuckles into his eye. “Shut the fuck up, traitor,” I hiss. “I’ll fucking…”

“Touch my husband again and I’ll shoot,” Gia’s voice echoes calmly through the room.

It’s followed by the sound of a safety clicking off, and that’s the only reason I back off.

Chest heaving, I stare at my brother.

Sal’s face is impassive. His hands, though, are clenched into tight fists at his sides.

“Back off, Dino,” Gia snaps.

I don’t, but I don’t go after Sal again either.

“All of you need to stop. Marisol’s gone,” Gia says.

My mind screeches to a halt.

I spin. “What the fuck?”

“I will shoot you, Dino, if you don’t calm the fuck down,” Gia says softly. “Try that fucking sentence again.”

My chest wheezes, the air barely making it through the tightness in my throat. “What. Did. You. Say,” I grunt.

“Marisol’s gone,” she repeats.

My eyes narrow.

“What did you do?”

After another thirty minutes of conversation and a look at the security footage, I’m still convinced Gia did something.

Sal can tell.

He rolls the footage back. “Look, Dino. You have to look.”

I don’t want to look, so I stare into the corner.

Sal sighs, and I flick my attention back to the screen. He points to it. “Brother, she came in and talked to the girls,” the camera cuts to a new angle of the hallways. “She walked down here,” he points, “and then here,” the camera cuts again, to the outside. “She walked there.”

Meaning, down the driveway.

To where a man wearing all black stands at the end.

I narrow my eyes and glare at Elio. “Your guys didn’t get that one?”

“Some of them are dead. Some of them do not remember,” Elio mutters.

I can see that he’s clenching his jaw.

Moretti must have done a number on them.

Fucking useless. That’s what they are.

The thought of her with that motherfucker…

“She asked us to take care of the girls,” Gia says softly.

My head whips around. “The fuck are you talking about?”

“Before she left. Marisol asked us to watch the girls. I think her plan is to let herself go back to Benicio, and then in exchange, he’s supposed to release her mother, the girls’ grandmother. Once the grandmother is safely back in Florida, Marisol wants the girls to go live with her.”

Rage darkens my tone. “They wouldn’t live with their fucking father?”

Gia’s face hardens. “They don’t know that they have a father, Dino.”

Something inside of me cracks. “They know about me.”

“Marisol didn’t tell them that you’re they’re father.”

My mouth opens.

Shuts.

It feels like my chest is being ripped open again by one of Elio’s knives.

How could they not know about me?

Is Marisol ashamed that we…

“I have to give it to her. It’s a tough choice she made, but it’s the right one,” Sal says near Gia’s shoulder. “She knows exactly what she’s working with, and she knows how to protect the girls.”

The girls.

Who don’t know that I’m their father.

“I want to see them,” I say abruptly, looking at Marco.

He frowns. “Dino, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think. They’re my girls. My daughters. My children,” I snarl at him. “I want to fucking see them.”

“Dino…”

“Elio. You didn’t know about Luna. You know exactly what the fuck I’m going through right now,” I say. I give him a meaningful stare, hoping that he’ll fucking get with the program.

That he’ll know what I’m asking, because I’m not going to beg him.

This is the closest to begging that I’ll ever come.

“It seems that you did know about your children, Dino. You simply did not attend to your duties once you did.”

I’ll fucking kill him.

I throw myself at Elio, only aware that I can’t punch his smug fucking face because there are two sets of arms holding me back after some of the rage fades from me.

“Get him out of here,” Elio snarls.

I throw off Marco and Sal. “Fuck you,” I bark.

If they don’t want to help me get Marisol…

I’ll fucking do it myself.

I’m heading up to go get Marisol back from Moretti when I hear the sound of children’s voices.

I pause.

Slowly, I creep to one of the open doors in the long hallway. Inside, I can hear them.

Three little girls. Luna, my niece.

And my daughters.

“I didn’t know Elio was my dad,” Luna says casually. “But he was gone for a really long time and then he came back for me.”

There’s an awkward silence.

My heart gets that stabbing, aching feeling again.

“Our mom says we don’t have a dad,” one of my girls whispers.

I shut my eyes. Fuck me.

“But she said we have a guardian angel.”

Opening them again, I frown.

“Yeah, she says that he’s like super strong. That he looks like us, and has dark hair and dark green eyes.”

“Your mom has brown hair and brown eyes,” Luna points out.

“Well she says we look like the angel. His name is Dino De Luca. And that if we’re ever in trouble we just need to find him and he’ll help us.”

“Will he help you find your mom?”

There’s that silence again. “I think so,” one of the girls says.

“Yeah definitely. We just need to figure out how to find him!” the other one responds.

Quickly, I step away and walk to the front door. My hand on the handle, I pause.

That aching, stabbing feeling is… a little better.

Marisol did tell them about me.

She didn’t tell them that I was their father.

She said we have a guardian angel.

Fuck.

I drop my hand from the doorknob. I pace, backwards, then toward the door again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Going somewhere?”

Marco’s voice makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I turn and glare at him. “The fuck do you care.”

His eyes flash. “I think at this point it’s probably pretty evident that if anyone cares about you and your fucking terrible attitude, it’s me.”

“I didn’t ask you for that⁠—”

“You did,” he cuts me off. “Remember? The day you found out about the twins.”

I stare at him.

Marco glares back, then sighs. He runs a hand through his hair, and for the first time I notice that my older brother looks…

Tired.

“I’ve been keeping your secrets for longer than you know, Dino.”

I tilt my head. “The fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing. Someday everything will be clear. I think. But for now, you want to get your girl back?”

I nod.

Marco looks me up and down. He sighs.

“This is going to fucking suck.”