TRAPPED IN A MAFIA MAZE

CHAPTER TWO

"I don't believe you..”

The initial reaction of Isabella Moretti to the news, from her stepbrother, of her father's death was immediate rejection. It was not that she didn't believe him, per se, but it was that her heart was refusing to agree with the information that was now stored in her head.

Tito would not go to the extent of splaying blood all over his shirt and dragging a fellow Mafiosi along to sneak into her house for fun; her father truly was dead, and she knew it. But Isabella refused to accept it. She refused to admit that her father had died without seeing her get married, that her father had died without seeing her children, that he had died thinking she hated him for his life of crime and violence.

In truth, she hadn't hated him; she was actually afraid. Afraid of living on the edge. This was why she'd run away and set up a life on her own. But the fact that she would never get to see her dad again to tell him this was a major source of pain. And so she fought the news with every fiber of her being.

“It's not true.. It's not..”

“It's not true.. Daddy's not dead. He's not..”

And at this point, her voice trailed off and she began to cry. “It's not! It can't be!”

Tito didn't bother to console her; he knew she needed to vent, and so he let her. He also knew that she would want details of how her father had died, and so he gave them to her.

“He'd been laying low for a while, all of us had. A job had gone wrong a few months back and the feds were all over, making random arrests. A few of our own got incarcerated. But it wasn't just the feds that made us hide; dad, as you know, had a lot of enemies. And we'd started to get threats at about the same time as the arrests. Again, a few of our men got killed. So he decided to put a hold on everything. The dinner tonight was supposed to be a meeting with all of the men and women in the organization to let us all know that we were back in business. Just as we were about to start eating, some uninvited diners arrived.. Fifteen times, Bella.. That's how many times he was shot.”

Bella covered her mouth in horror, with more tears streaming down her face, as she imagined her father being pumped with lead bullets, helpless. She wondered how tormenting it must have been for Tito, seeing his stepfather getting gunned down in his presence but unable to do a thing about it because he was fighting for his own life.

“Tito,” she said in a shaky voice, “you know I've never been a supporter of the violence that Dad was into.. But this.. You're not going to let it slide, are you? Whoever took Dad from us.. They must pay..”

Tito nodded his head, his rage being nearly tangible, “Oh, they will pay, Bella.. I swear it.. But I didn't come here just to give you the bad news.. I came here because with Dad's death, the entire family is now an open game and we're trying to prevent further loss. We need your help, Bella..”

“Me? What can i- what can I possibly do? I can't pull triggers,” Bella said, still shaken from the news of her father's death, but she was even more shaken by what Tito said next:

“Yeah, but you can say “I do”.. And that's what we need you to do.. We're planning, or more truthfully I am planning, to wed you to a man you know fairly well.. Dante Romano..”

“What? Dante Romano?!!!?”

***

“What the f**k are you screaming my name for, b***h?!”

“I said: you promised me a hundred and thirty, but all that's here is a hundred and ten!”

Dante Romano, the heir to the Romano Family and son of the ailing Cristobal Romano, was a man who spent his days on naught but three things: mafia work, food and women. He never left his house for any of them but the first; ordering whatever he wanted from his favorite restaurant and paying a certain strip club to send him a woman every two nights to offer “private” services.

The previous night, he'd been in bed with one of them and as soon as he got out of bed that morning, he’d entered the bathroom, trying to have a shave, when she started yelling his name. Her excuse was so flimsy that he interrupted his shave and went out to meet her.

“And what difference does twenty bucks make, huh?” He barked.

“It makes a whole lot of difference, Dante, and it doesn't even matter if it's little or not, we agreed on $130, and you're going to give it to me,” the woman - a thick blonde - confidently replied. Dante loved them thick.

Her defiant response had intrigued him and slighted his ego at the same time, so he decided to stand firm. “No, I'm not going to.”

“What do you mean you're not going to, you son of a b***h?” She retorted.

“I mean I'm not going to, not if you keep acting like a whiny ass hoe!” He clapped back.

“Oh, you can talk, but you were grunting like a pig last night when you were all over me.. But of course, call me what you want; you're done with me, anyway, isn't that right?” She said this, hoping to guilt trip Dante into feeling some sort of sympathy and having a change of heart, but she failed to realize that Dante Romano had no heart.

He simply scoffed and began to walk back to the bathroom.

“You're just going to walk away?” The woman nagged even further.

“Clearly! And I'd do the same if I were you! You're starting to get on my nerves, and you know the thing about people who get on my nerves?”

Dante turned to face her, again, before completing his statement:

“They never do it again.. Matter of fact, they never do anything again..”

The deadpan look in his eyes gave the blonde the memo and she grabbed the $130 and her handbag before hurrying out of the room, leaving Dante alone.

As he entered the bathroom to resume his interrupted shaving, he regretted having entertained the woman for so long. The problem wasn't that he didn't have the money to pay her, but he simply didn't want to. He had some violent and unnecessarily stubborn inclinations and this was why he was as fierce as he was, and why he was going to soon take over the family business.

“Diplomacy and sense of reason is for the weak.. And the weak die poor, hungry, marginalized, alone.. The strong, however.. We rule the weak.. And I'm the strongest there is..”

As he stood before the mirror, proclaiming such violent things, in his bathroom and looked at his cleanly shaved chin, his overly full but stylish hair and his firmly set jaw, he couldn't help but admire himself.

But all this was soon interrupted by a phone call. His phone was in the pocket of his pants and he immediately picked the call. It was his father, Cristobal.

“Hey, dad..”

“Hey, Dante, my boy.. How are you?”

For the past 10 or so years, his father had always started every phone call with those exact words. Dante didn't know whether to praise him for consistency or loathe him for the sickening predictability.

“I'm good, dad.. Everything okay? You never call me before noon.”

“Oh, well, everything is not okay, but in a good way.. You see, I've just received a very fine proposition from the Moretti family. They seem to be pretty.. headless, at the moment.. And they need our help to ward off their many enemies..”

“And..?”

“And, Dante, they're offering something I believe you'd be interested in..”

Dante scoffed. “What could I possibly want that they could give..?”

“They're offering you Isabella, son, your first love.”