Twisted Loyalties (The Camorra Chronicles 1)

Worry filled me. Perhaps that was the problem.

I sat up. Sunlight filtered through the gap in the white curtains and past it I could catch a glimpse at the Strip. I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t an Italian girl from noble upbringing.

“I should get going,” I said lightly.

Fabiano didn’t say anything, but behind his blue eyes some kind of inner conflict was raging I wasn’t in on.

I was about to slip out of bed, when his hand on my shoulder stopped me. He leaned over to me for a gentle kiss that left me breathless, then pulled back. “This is only the beginning.”

This is only the beginning. I couldn’t decide if it was promise or threat.

I slipped into Dad’s apartment, closing the door with a soft click, not wanting to wake him. But seconds after the roar of Fabiano’s engine had faded, Dad slunk out of the kitchen. He looked worse than last time I’d seen him, like he needed a long shower and a few days of sleep.

His bloodshot eyes regarded me with silent judgment. They lingered on a spot above my pulse point, and the memory of Fabiano leaving his mark there resurfaced. I placed my palm over the tender spot.

Dad shook his head. “You should have stayed with your mother.” I didn’t argue. Part of me knew he was right. I walked past him toward my bedroom. The close space felt even less like home after my night in Fabiano’s apartment. I knew I couldn’t allow myself to grow accustomed to the luxury he had at his disposal. It wasn’t something I could ever hope to have. And until now it had never been but it was hard not to want something that beautiful once you experienced it firsthand. And his tenderness, his closeness – that was the most beautiful thing of all. Something I needed, something I was scared to lose.

The memory of Fabiano’s mouth and hands on me sent a pleasant shiver through my body. That, too, was an experience I’d never thought I would want, and now I worried that I couldn’t stop wanting it.

I changed out of yesterday’s clothes and into shorts and a shirt, then swung my backpack over my shoulder and left. Until I had to start work, I’d stay elsewhere. And I already had an idea where. Now that things with Fabiano were getting more serious, I needed to find out more about his past.

The library was quiet as I took my seat at one of the computers. I tipped Fabiano Scuderi into the search engine and hit enter. There were a few entries about Remo Falcone from recent years, especially regarding his fighting that included the occasional photo of Fabiano with beautiful society girls that sent my stomach plummeting, but over all he seemed to keep out of the public eye. But then I found older articles from more than eight years ago, which surprised me.

The articles weren’t from Las Vegas. They were from Chicago. Some of them mentioned a man called Rocco Scuderi, who was Fabiano’s father and supposedly the Consigliere of the Chicago Outfit. I still wasn’t very well informed about the mob and its terms, but even I knew that Fabiano’s father was a big deal in the Chicago mob family. From what I’d gathered the Las Vegas Camorra wasn’t getting along with the other mob families in the country, so why was Fabiano here and not in Chicago? One photo of him and his family caught my eye. It showed Fabiano with his parents and three older sisters – all three of them so beautiful and elegant, it hurt looking at them. This was what Cheryl meant when she said Italian virgins from noble upbringing.

I was nothing like them.

Only one of them, the youngest shared his dark blond hair while the eldest was almost golden and the one in the middle a red head. They were a striking family. I kept scrolling for more results and soon found articles about his sisters as well, especially the oldest sister Aria with her husband, the head of the New York Mafia, filled several pages.

I wondered why he was never talking about them. Of course I didn’t talk about my mother either, but she was a crystal meth addict and whore. The only thing that was remotely embarrassing about his family was that they were gangsters, and that definitely wasn’t the reason why Fabiano had kept them a secret so far. If I had siblings, I’d want to stay in contact with them. I’d always wanted a brother or sister at my side for support during the many nights I’d been left alone at home when my mother was out looking for johns or other ways to get money.

At last there was one article from a small Las Vegas newspaper about Fabiano titled ‘the renegade son’ that speculated about him joining the Las Vegas Camorra to become Capo. Apparently there had been a fallout with his father that made him leave Chicago and help Remo Falcone. But overall information was sparse. It didn’t give me what I really wanted, a glimpse behind the mask Fabiano displayed to the public.