“No. She’ll be fine. Give her some space,” I say, though every inch of me wants to be the one comforting her, not my brother.
“You’re taking her with you to visit the families,” Isabella says.
“Are you asking or telling?” I question her.
“Telling.”
Stefano sits up. “Non puoi dare ordini al nostro Don.”You don’t get to order our Don around.
“Charlie needs this. She needs to see the families,” Isabella spits back at him.
“You’ve spent one day with her and you’re now besties?” he says sarcastically.
“I probably know more about her than you do.” She leans over the table. “She’s been here for months, and you, Stefano, still treat her like shit. She isn’t just some whore Luciano is fucking. She is and will be your next Donna. So you better start respecting her.”
“Stefano, don’t push her. She will stab you in your sleep,” I warn him. I honestly don’t know what is with these two. They always want to argue about something.
“You, woman, don’t scare me. I’ve done and seen worse than you.” He scoffs at Isabella before walking out of the room.
I excuse myself and head to bed. I take a quick shower, then I find myself outside Charlie’s door. I knock. Silence. I turn the handle gently, peek in. She’s out cold, peaceful. I close the door behind myself and climb in beside her, pulling her in towards me and close my eyes.
27
Charlie
When I walk into the office with Isabella behind me, Luciano and Stefano are already there waiting for us.
Stefano stands from his seat and looks over at Isabella. “She can’t be here. She’s not a part of the Cosa Nostra.”
I glare over at him. “I asked her to be here.” I grab Isabella’s hand to show a united front. I look over to Luciano to see who he’s siding with.
“She can stay. I asked her to help Charlie,” he reminds his brother.
“More like sleep with Charlie,” Stefano mumbles under his breath. Luciano is out of his chair within seconds and has his brother in a chokehold, shocking both myself and Izzy.
“Brother, watch your tongue,” Luciano snarls, squeezing his grip slightly to remind him who’s in charge. “I will not have you disrespecting Charlie anymore.”
“Sorry, Don,” Stefano says.
“Apologize to Charlie, not me.” Luciano lets go of him, shoving him in my direction.
Stefano sulkily looks up at me. “Sorry, Charlie,” he says, but I can tell he’s only saying it to keep Luciano happy. He clearly isn’t,otherwise he wouldn’t keep questioning everything I do or Luciano’s decisions.
“Apology accepted,” I say to him, dragging a chair beside Luca behind the desk. No distractions today. Stefano and Isabella take a seat in front of us.
Luciano starts. “We had three men killed at the docks. Stefano has started making arrangements to cover their funeral costs but we need to go over the finer details of the compensation packages to their families.”
“I didn’t know the mafia did anything like that. The movies show you guys as like ‘each for your own’ attitude,” I say to them.
Isabella chuckles. “You can’t believe everything in the movies. They either don’t show enough or over exaggerate.”
“Your grandfather, Marco, was old school and did the nothing approach. However, when Caterina took charge, she didn’t think it was right. These men served our family, so she thought it was only right to create a new system,” Luciano explains to me.
“And what is the system?” I ask.
“Their compensation amount is a formula that Gabriele created, based on a few things: how long they served in our family, how many children they have, what their ranking is, and how they were killed.”
He taps on a spreadsheet on the screen, and it’s literally a formula like he mentioned. I wonder what else Gabriele can do… I watch as Luciano starts to enter one of the soldiers’ details into the spreadsheet, and within seconds a figure is shown on the bottom.
