Oath of Silence: A Dark Mafia Romance (Deviant Doms), page 1
Oath of Silence: A Dark Mafia Romance
(Deviant Doms)
Jane Henry
Copyright © 2021 by Jane Henry
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Photography by Wander Aguiar
Cover art by Popkitty Designs
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
Preview
Meet Jane
Prologue
Romeo
Twenty years earlier
A brisk wind kicked the dry, fallen leaves into mini tempests, camouflaging the secret trip to the quarry. Narciso “The Skull” Rossi, the head of the Rossi family and most feared man on the East Coast of America, loved the quarry, and so did his sons. Far from their mother’s prying and judgmental eyes, the quarry offered the perfect place to teach them life’s most important lessons.
How to hit on a girl.
How to command a room’s presence.
How to earn respect from those around you.
How to kill a man who betrays you.
Romeo Rossi, at thirteen years old, was the eldest brother of the six Rossi children. A rule enforcer and a natural-born leader, he occasionally liked to push the envelope.
So when their father went to Tuscany to visit the family home and conduct business overseas, he went to the quarry. Didn’t need the prying eyes of his younger siblings to tattle to Mama that Romeo was smoking again.
His father would only roll his eyes and tell him to roll his own damn smokes, but his mother despised the habit—no doubt because it reminded her of her husband’s own three-pack-a-day habit—and would punish him severely for such an infraction.
It wasn’t fear of punishment that drove Romeo to the quarry, though. In a bustling family of eight, privacy was a precious, rare commodity. And Romeo liked to be alone.
Leaning his back against a tree, Romeo reached into his pocket and drew out the pack of cigarettes. Putting one between his lips, he was returning the pack just as the sound of crunching leaves and twigs told him he’d been followed. His spine stiffened, his hand still on his back pocket. The lone, unlit cigarette still dangled from his lips.
He did a mental inventory of the weapons he had on his person. Rossi family boys never left home without a weapon, even when going to school or church or on a date. Especially a date.
Switchblade in his pocket, thin razor blade in his wallet, brand-new brass knuckles nestled in the hidden pocket of his jeans. Nothing too flashy, but they’d come in handy if push came to shove.
And the lighter. The lighter could be used if necessary as well.
Never one to cower and wait, Romeo’s temper flared. “Who’s there?”
No answer.
He flicked the blade open, relishing the reassuring heft of it in his palm and primed his senses, but before he could detect another sound, a loud crash sounded behind him. He swung, blade instinctively tucked by his side to hide it in case it was a cop.
“For fuck’s sake, Tavi.” Ottavio Rossi, Romeo’s younger brother and the second eldest brother in the Rossi family, gave Romeo a sheepish grin. Almost as tall as Romeo, Ottavio inherited the Rossi family height but unlike Romeo, had his mother’s lithe frame. With a shock of chestnut-brown hair he wore shorter than the others, combined with a thin pair of wire-rimmed glasses, he looked almost as old as Romeo, though he was three years younger.
“Sorry, Rome,” he said with a sheepish shrug. “Followed the little brats here.” He reached behind him and dragged tiny three-year-old Marialena and five-year-old Mario in front of him.
“I not a brat!” Marialena said, her pretty eyes flashing at both of them.
Mario stomped his foot. “Stop calling me that or I’ll tell Mama you’re smoking again.”
Ottavio rolled his eyes, and Romeo glared.
“You two—”
“Three,” came an amused voice to Ottavio’s right, and Orlando stepped into the light. “Sorry. I didn’t know you guys were here.”
“Jesus,” Romeo groaned. “I came here to be alone, not tagged along by the whole damn family.”
“Not the whole family,” Orlando corrected. “And I could say the same. I came here to read, not to babysit.” He rolled his eyes at Marialena, and tucked his worn paperback into his back pocket.
Romeo’s lips thinned. He didn’t want an audience. He wanted one minute, just one minute, where he didn’t have to take care of someone for once. One minute where he could just be himself for a little while. One minute where he wasn’t Romeo Rossi, the youngest kid in St. Anthony’s ninth grade, already wielding more power as the Underboss-to-be in the Family than soldiers under his father’s command twice his age.
“Nonna’s almost got dinner ready,” Orlando said. “Let’s go.”
“No,” Marialena whined. “I wanted to see the co-ree.”
“Quarry,” Romeo corrected, reaching for her hand. He noted how little, how cold it was, and fanned his fingers to warm her. “And no. It’s getting cold, and we need to get home to dinner.”
Clouds covered the moon and the quarry was plunged into temporary darkness, when a scream and shout broke out behind them. When the clouds parted, Romeo’s eyes met Ottavio’s. He picked Marialena up in his arms to keep her from following and shoved her at Orlando, the largest of the bunch and the one most likely to keep the willful three-year-old in place. “Stay here.”
The brothers froze. Marialena fussed and pushed at Orlando but he held her tight. “Hush, Lena,” he said, using their pet name for her. “Let Rome go see what it is.”
Romeo pushed through brambles and branches undeterred, even as his heart smashed against his ribcage. His trusty knife lay tucked in his palm.
“It’s Romeo!” someone shouted ahead of him. “Rome! Oh, God. Rome!”
Santo, the Family’s best friend and adopted brother, stood in front of a small clearing surrounded by small, bare birch trees, his eyes wide and terrified. “Stay back, Rome.”
Romeo froze. “You okay, Santo?”
Santo slowly shook his head from side to side.
Romeo’s eyes fell to the ground.
A body.
Sprawled out on the ground behind Santo, partially covered by leaves, and obviously dead.
He swallowed the bile that rose in his throat and used the sternest voice he could muster, the voice that even his most willful younger sibling always obeyed.
“Don’t fucking move.”
Santo stood stock-still, obeying, as the sound of footsteps came up behind them.
“No!” Romeo slammed his palm out as if the very air would stall his siblings from coming any closer. “No.”
He glanced over his shoulder and drew in a breath. “Santo, you stay here. Tavi, come here. Orlando, you take the younger kids back to the house.”
“No!” Marialena, who managed to escape Orlando’s grip, protested. “No! I stay!”
Romeo swiveled to face her, prepared to toss the toddler over his shoulder and carry her back to the house himself, when Orlando spoke up.
“Come, little Lena. You help Nonna with the table, okay? It’s cold out here and Mama will be worried if you ruin your pretty new shoes.”
Marialena stared down at her brand-new shoes, pretty patent leather they’d gotten in Boston the day before, and nodded. As the largest of the bunch, Orlando firmly took the younger kids’ hands and dragged them back up to the brightly lit road, but not before he gave Romeo a meaningful look. They were not finished, and he would tell him what happened later. Romeo gave him one curt, quick nod.
When they were far enough away, Romeo turned back to Santo. “Step aside, man. Let me see.”
Santo obeyed and watched. It wasn’t lost on Romeo that Santo was the one who had found the body. Only ten years old himself, he was far wiser than his years and had come to the Family as the resident grifter. He was gifted in swindling, and rarely told the truth.
He was Narciso Rossi’s favorite. The one child unrelated by blood, the only one Romeo’s mother, Tosca, would let him corrupt to his heart’s content.
Ottavio came up beside Romeo, and the two boys stared at the body. Romeo fell to one knee while Ottavio turned and dry heaved beside him.
“Couple days old,” Romeo said in a cold, detached voice that belied the fire that churned in his belly. “Maybe a week.”
He stared at the legs, askew and obviously broken, and wondered what torture had hurt the worst. He stared at the fingers, cold and stiff with rigor mortis, and flexed his own fingers as if to defy the thought of death freezing his own limbs. He stared at the leaves that served as a makeshift coffin before their own decay.
Santo nodded. “Smells like ass.”
“You shouldn’t curse like that,” Romeo protested absentmindedly. He cursed like a sailor himself, but felt anyone under the age of thirteen should be held to higher standards of purity.
“Fuck off,” Santo muttered. Romeo didn’t hear him.
He was too fixated on the bloodied body before him.
“Knife up the back of the skull,” Ottavio noted, voicing the brutality that lay before them on the bed of leaves. He didn’t offer any other notes.
Both Ottavio and Romeo knew it was their father’s signature move, the move that got him nicknamed “The Skull.” Romeo was six years old when he caught his father practicing his move in a woodshed on their property.
Have your move, son. That way you leave your mark. That way they know you. They respect you.
But Romeo didn’t play games.
He’d never killed a man and never planned to.
There was no need for the Boss to get his hands dirty.
Romeo knelt beside the body and patted the dirty, saggy jeans for identification, but everything’d been taken. There was nothing but the body and the putrid smell of decaying flesh.
Why? Why here? The Rossi family was not sloppy with their hits. Ever.
“We can’t call anyone,” he said to Ottavio. The only person he would trust would be his father, who was currently in Tuscany and had been for the past week.
“Do you know who it is?”
Santo shook his head. Romeo turned on him sternly. “Why were you here?”
Santo shrugged. “Heard the boys come down, thought I’d hide and scare you all.”
Romeo scowled, then turned back to the body.
“What do we do, Rome?” Ottavio asked.
“We fucking leave it,” Santo muttered. This time, Romeo didn’t tell him to watch his language.
He caught Ottavio’s eye, and Ottavio’s jaw firmed. He knew as well as Romeo did that if their father had killed this man—and all signs pointed to his guilt—he’d go to jail, and this time, they’d toss away the key.
“No,” Ottavio said with decision. “We get rid of the body.”
“Tavi,” Santo said, kicking a tree stump. “How the hell do we—”
“Not we,” Romeo interrupted. “Us. You go back up to the house and make sure Orlando’s got the little ones under control. Fuck if I want them coming back and seeing this…”
“No way.” Santo planted his feet firmly on the ground before him. “You guys might be bigger’n me, but you’re not big enough to get rid of the body of a man yourself.”
He had a point.
It took two hours, six hands, and five lies to his mother, but when he went to bed that night, the deed was done and his father’s truck parked where he’d left it.
He couldn’t tell his father, though his gut told him his father well knew.
But why did he leave the body like that?
He couldn’t tell his mother. She’d send them all to Italy to boarding school like she’d threatened to for years.
He couldn’t tell any of the soldiers or the men he’d grown up around and called uncle or cousin, because who could you trust? And what if his father had been the one to commit the murder?
And before they went to bed that night, Romeo made Santo and Ottavio take an oath sworn in blood, his trusty switchblade sealing the promise.
Nothing ever happened.
No one saw the body.
They were smoking by the quarry and went out for a drive, and they’d take whatever punishment they got without complaint.
“We have oaths,” Romeo told them, and he felt the weight of his words as he said them. Oaths that bound. Oaths that silenced. “We’ll swear an oath tonight.”
Oaths that would one day tear them apart.
Chapter One
“These violent delights have violent ends.” Romeo and Juliet
Vittoria
Present day
I’m a stranger in a foreign land, and I don’t quite know what to make of that yet, but the bar that beckons to me with bright neon lights promises liquid courage and actual food. I pull out my wallet and look at what’s left.
Pathetic.
Maybe they need a dishwasher here? Heh.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm not planning to relocate to Boston. In fact, I'm planning to spend as little time here as possible. Hell, I wouldn't be here at all if not for the letter that showed up on my doorstep informing me of a meeting tomorrow.
Tell no one, the letter had said, and so I hadn't. It’s easy when you have literally no one to tell, not a friend or soul to confide in. But I couldn't ignore the damn thing, either. So I'd jumped in my car in upstate New York this morning and driven east with hardly a dollar to my name.
My stomach growls insistently, suggesting this had not been the wisest choice.
But I'm a survivor. That's what I do. And I'll deal with this just like I've dealt with all the other shit that life's thrown at me. Ashton Bryant will not undo me.
I pull down my visor and flip open the lighted mirror to make myself look presentable. Who knows, maybe I’ll luck out and a guy will buy me a drink.
No.
I don’t need anything from anyone. I’ll buy my own damn drink.
Quick swish of mascara that’s nearly dried up. Quick swipe of lip gloss from the edges of the tube. My hair’s a hopeless cause, but I quickly tame it under a fabric headband and hope it gives me a whimsical look. I glance down at the button-down top I’m wearing and, with a sigh, unfasten the topmost buttons. I’m not about to whore myself out for money, but a girl could flash a little cleavage for a free drink. And hell, do I need a drink. Maybe two.
The entire six-hour ride here, I thought about the letter in my bag. I’m done now. I don’t want to think about it anymore. That’s something I’ll revisit later, after I get some food in my belly and a little break before hunkering down in my car for the night. I get out and slam the door.
I freeze, startled when a large, lumbering black SUV pulls into the space beside me with a screech of tires, like a raging bull stopped short. It looks bulletproof and powerful and dwarfs the cars beside it. I flatten myself against my car on instinct so I can observe and watch a second, then a third black car—another SUV, followed by some sleek, expensive-looking car with tinted windows—park beside me, so close I feel the heat of the engine on my legs.
They’re either celebrities or drug dealers. Maybe both.
Why here? Why now? I want to be anonymous, and this showy flash of cars and obvious money makes me want to put my car in reverse and leave.
Before I can get my wits about me and head inside, the car doors open, and men start pouring out of it like it’s a bachelor party playdate. I don’t want them to notice me staring, so I try to pretend I dropped something on the ground and peer at them from my almost-hidden position.
A chill skates down my spine. These are no ordinary men.
I’d guess they range in age from late teens to mid-fifties, but every one of them is well-dressed, well-groomed, and they walk with an air of ownership that’s hard to miss. A mere glimpse at them tells me they’re strong, powerful, wealthy men with a purpose. Their voices carry through the night air.
“Served too long,” one guy says.
“Need to get laid,” another offers, cuffing a guy beside him I can’t quite see.
“Bet they don’t serve Frangelico or Limoncello in the big house,” says another.
“Don’t tell Ma we came here first, or she’ll beat your ass,” another warns with a grin. “Party line, we just picked Rome up and he’ll be home for dinner tomorrow.” I can’t really see faces in the dark, only hear their voices and… feel their presence.
I straighten up and slow down my step so I don’t look like I’m following them.
