OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(39)

“You think I would've been able to accomplish the things I did—lead this family like I did—if I was spendin' my time dressin' up in faggy little leather outfits an' sneakin' out to spanking clubs, or whatever the fuck you do with your nights?” Mario finished, disgusted. “You think the guys under me would've respected me then, or do you think they'd have laughed their fuckin' asses off behind my back an' undermined me every chance they got until I ended up in three or four different dumpsters?”



“Come on, Papa, that just ain't fair,” Gio protested. “It's just a different kind of fucking, that's all. It ain't like I'm messing around with guys or nothin'!”



Mario sneered. “'Fair?' Fuck fair! I'm tryin' to tell you how it is. You don't drop this shit with the whips an' costumes an' stop actin' like a mezzo finocch', you ain't never gonna make it in this family. An' you're gonna be an embarrassment an' a liability to me personally.”



“I'm sorry, but I just don't see where this bullshit is comin' from,” Gio said, his voice raising. “How the fuck does what I do in my own goddamn bedroom affect you or anyone else, huh? Tell me that.”



“Because your cock's already makin' you disobey direct orders from the boss of your fuckin' family, Gio!” Mario erupted. He jabbed his cigar in Gio's direction angrily, causing chunks of thick grey ash to fall to the desktop between them. “I specifically told you—more than once—to keep it in your pants with what's-her-name, the fuckin' lawyer! An' last night, I gotta hear from Rizzo that you had her over to your place for a couple of hours around midnight. Rizzo says when she left, she was practically walkin' bow-legged an' she looked like she'd been roughed up.”



“You had Rizzo scopin' out my place?” Gio asked, dumbfounded. Rizzo was a low-level bodyguard and errand boy for the Mancinis.



“Yeah, I fuckin' did,” Mario shot back. “Because I wanted to make sure you were doin' as you were told, an' guess what? Big surprise, you fuckin' weren't. You were too busy disappointin' me instead by actin' like a spoiled, selfish little frocio instead.”



Mario sighed and stood up, brushing the ash off the desk. “Look. You want this life? Fine. You don't? Fuck off. But we got no room for fence-sitters in this fuckin' family.” He walked over to the liquor cabinet, opened it, and gestured to its contents. “So make yourself a drink or two, sit here, an' think it over until you're sure. I got some stuff I need to take care of. We can talk about your decision tomorrow. Just make sure it's the right one, 'cause I don't ever wanna have to have this conversation with you again, Gio. An' however this shakes out, I promise I ain't gonna. Understand?”



Gio nodded uneasily as his father left the room. He understood perfectly. After all these years, some part of him was still terrified of his father, convinced that he was only one transgression away from being permanently silenced like so many of Mario's enemies had been.



But that was silly. Gio was Mario's only son, and he'd always been told that there was nothing more important in life than the bond between family. So his fears were unrealistic.



Weren't they?



Gio went to the liquor cabinet, poured some scotch into a tumbler, and took it back to his father's desk. He sat in Mario's chair and sipped the drink. Any thoughts of his future in the Mancinis were drowned out by the anger in his heart.



He knew his father had always had a steady string of extramarital affairs, just like most men in his position. Did Mario honestly expect Gio to believe that he'd put those relationships on hold—that he had, in fact, “kept it in his pants”—when he first became boss? Mario might not have spent many of those evenings or weekends with his wife and son, but Gio was willing to bet that there were plenty of mistresses, strippers, and whores who'd seen quite a bit of him at that time.



Lousy goddamn hypocrite, Gio thought. He doesn't care that I'm doing a lot of fucking in my free time. He's just skeeved out by how I choose to do it because it's not his thing and he can't understand it. But instead of copping to that, he sits here wagging his finger at me, pretending he never got his dick wet when he was my age and acting so fucking superior.



Well, he's a lying prick. And I can prove it.



Ever since Gio was a little kid, he'd known that his father kept diaries filled with meticulous notes about his meetings and dealings each day. Mario proudly insisted that his notes were written in an unbreakable code, and that the diaries themselves were locked in a hidden compartment in his study that the Feds would never be able to find if they ever raided the place.



Gio had found the hidden compartment beneath the liquor cabinet by his tenth birthday. By the time he turned thirteen, he'd already managed to decipher the code Mario used. But he soon grew bored reading about endless meetings, payoffs, trysts, and money laundering activities he didn't understand. The actual crimes Mario was directly involved in were infrequent—a handful of robberies a year, maybe a murder every two or three years—and after a while, the thrill of a secret window into his father wore off and Gio stopped coming to the study to read the diaries.