Undressed By The Mafia God novel Chapter 286

Chapter 286: You Lost This One

"Something to hold over their heads." Luca added.

"Boss..."

"Calm yourself, Marco." Luca understood what this was costing Marco. But this...whatever was happening right now, was entirely Marco’s fault. "You lost this one."

"She is not safe." He said again.

"Then keep her safe," he said finally. "But do it respectably." His eyes held Marco’s making sure his instruction didn’t leave room for misinterpretation. "Without crossing any lines."

*****

Marghera smelled faintly of the petrochemical plants that had defined its skyline for decades — a working place, a place of cranes and container yards. It had never been beautiful and it had made its peace with that a long time ago.

Bianca had not been here before. She stepped out of the car and took in her surroundings. Her heels found uneven ground immediately, adjusting her weight. She had dressed well. Even here, coming to find a man who lived in a trailer in a district that wasn’t on any map she had grown up with, she had dressed as Bianca Genovese.

Even if everything currently suggested otherwise. Ricardo had failed her. She had applied exactly the right pressure at exactly the right points, and he had delivered adequately and then apparently developed a conscience at the least convenient possible moment.

Julian was unclear. That was the most irritating version of failure. He existed in a state of ambiguity that she had come to understand was simply a man who would not spend himself until he could see that he would win.

All the men she had thought would be useful had proven, in their various ways, inadequate.

Which brought her here. To the one person who had never been inadequate. Who was her blood — her brother, her family.

David.

She followed the directions she had memorised through streets that grew progressively less maintained, past men who tracked her passage with hungry eyes. They didn’t see women like her very often.

The whistles started immediately. She kept walking. Then she found the trailer sat at the end of a narrow stretch of ground. It was clean — she noted but modest.

David Vitale had been, once upon a time, the answer to every question the family asked about its future. The eldest. The heir apparent. He had been extraordinary.

She stopped at the door. And noticed that the whistles had stopped. She turned slightly and looked back along the stretch of ground she had walked.

Several pairs of eyes found reasons to be elsewhere simultaneously. Bianca smiled. She hadn’t even seen him yet and his presence was already doing its work — his reputation operating independently. David barely spoke. She remembered that from childhood but his temper was legendary.

She knocked twice. She stepped back slightly on the narrow metal step and waited. A moment passed. Then another.

Then the door opened. The shock on his face should have been photographed. Should have been documented. He looked at his sister standing on the step outside his trailer in Marghera and became, for one unguarded second, completely undone.

"Fratello," Bianca whispered.

David stepped back from the doorway without speaking. Bianca climbed the small metal steps and entered.