Dark Ties (Made Men 9)

“Thank you for coming to see me”—he specifically looked at Maria, who looked like she was going to leave any second—“even though I know I don’t exactly deserve the chance to see you.”

Unfortunately, the other two didn’t have an option not to be here, as they worked for him.

Maria had stopped stirring at his words, finally looking up from the clock on her phone.

“And I don’t think I should get the chance to explain myself, but I ask that you let me—”

“I am not listening to this shit again,” Maria hissed, standing up and moving toward the door.

“Maria, please,” he called out to her, hoping she would stop. Dante knew what she spoke of, and it was the exact reason she was so hurt by him.

The day she and Dominic Luciano had married had been the day that he had told his only daughter that he wouldn’t be able to walk her down the aisle, let alone attend her wedding. He had tried his best to explain to her why, as the Caruso boss, he couldn’t, but he, too, agreed it made him a poor excuse of a father.

“If you don’t like what I have to say this time, you never have to see me again.”

Maria paused but only went back to her seat when Lucca nodded for her to return.

“Thank you,” he said gratefully.

It took him a moment and a long deep breath to put his words together. All three children shared something in common—they had all fallen hard in love with someone who wasn’t of pure Italian blood. The single, oldest rule in the Italian mafia was that, in order to be made, you must be of pure Italian blood. Over the years, slight exceptions had been made that, as long as you were of mostly Italian descent, it was approved … as long as you didn’t have the Caruso name, that is. The men who bore the Caruso last name were ordered to keep their Italian blood pure. That way, the high positions they held in the family of boss and underboss were never taken from them.

The problem was that his children weren’t the only ones who shared that commonality of falling hard for someone who wasn’t of pure Italian blood.

“Your mother and I had an arranged marriage,” he began the story they hadn’t heard since they had been children. “Her father owned this casino hotel and had received many offers to sell, but the only way he would agree to sell to my father was if his daughter married his son. That way, when he passed, this property would pass to me, which would be returned back to his daughter, and then his future grandchildren.” Dante stared at the faces of those grandchildren whom he spoke of before he got to the part that they had never been told before. “However, even though her father and mother were, in fact, Italian … your mother was not.”

This time when Lucca’s Zippo flipped to a close, he didn’t continue his movement of flipping it back open. “Who knows this?”

“Very few people ever did. Most of the ones who did are dead now.” He knew his oldest son was the only one who knew the severity of this information, so he explained to Maria and Nero why he had disagreed with their choices in partners from the beginning. “If this information fell into the wrong hands, any future children you might have with Dominic, Elle, or Chloe”—he looked from Maria’s emerald gaze to Nero’s emerald pair then to the blue-green ones that glowed in the dark corner—“might never sit where I sit one day.” They were already only fifty percent Italian, which meant Nero’s and Lucca’s children would only be twenty-five percent.

“Dom might be from Spanish descent, but he’s fifty percent Italian,” Maria told him, clearly not forgetting the conversation he’d had with her on her wedding day.

“Yes, but one day, you might be in the same position I’m in right now—worried about your future grandchildren.”

She spoke to him as if he had forgotten a vital piece of information. “My children will be Lucianos.”

“Yet you didn’t take his last name?” Dante asked, raising a brow to look at the wedding ring that she so proudly wore on her finger. “The two families are starting to merge, and your children will not only carry Luciano blood, but Caruso as well. I imagine you will want them to at least have the chance to take their pick?”

Maria seemed to understand clearly now.

“Good thing you will be gone when that happens and the rules will have been changed,” Nero finally spoke for the first time. His cold words reminding him that he might’ve been the first he wronged with more time to have passed, but he had yet to forget.

“There will always be those who will never forget the old ways.” His grave warning was not only for Nero, but also his other children.