Take Me Capo, page 1
Also by CD Reiss
Manhattan Mafia
Sold to one man. Forced to marry a monster.
Take Me Capo | Make Me Cry | Break Me Down
The DiLustro Arrangement
Some girls dream of marrying a prince. I was sold to a king.
Mafia Bride | Mafia King | Mafia Queen
The Games Duet
Adam Steinbeck will give his wife a divorce on one condition. She join him in a remote cabin for 30 days, submitting to his sexual dominance.
Marriage Games | Separation Games
The Edge Series
Rough. Edgy. Sexy enough to melt in your hands.
Rough Edge | On The Edge | Broken Edge | Over the Edge
The Submission Series
Monica insists she’s not submissive. Jonathan Drazen is going to prove otherwise, but he might fall in love doing it.
One Night With Him | One Year With Him | One Life With Him
Copyright © 2021 by Flip City Media Inc.
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.
Which is a fancy way of saying don’t be a dick.
Cover designed by the author because she’s a control freak.
* * *
Paige Press
Leander, TX 78641
* * *
PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-957647-18-0
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-957647-17-3
For everyone who slowed to a standstill in the first year of the pandemic. I was with you.
Contents
Chapter 1
SARAH
Chapter 2
SARAH
Chapter 3
Sarah
Chapter 4
Sarah
Chapter 5
Sarah
Chapter 6
Dario
Chapter 7
Sarah
Chapter 8
Sarah
Chapter 9
Sarah
Chapter 10
Sarah
Chapter 11
Sarah
Chapter 12
Dario
Chapter 13
Sarah
Chapter 14
Sarah
Chapter 15
Sarah
Chapter 16
Sarah
Chapter 17
Sarah
Chapter 18
Dario
Chapter 19
Sarah
Chapter 20
Sarah
Chapter 21
Sarah
Chapter 22
Dario
Chapter 23
Sarah
Chapter 24
Sarah
Chapter 25
Sarah
Chapter 26
Sarah
Chapter 27
Dario
Chapter 28
Dario
Chapter 29
Sarah
Chapter 30
Dario
Chapter 31
Sarah
Chapter 32
Dario
Chapter 33
Sarah
Chapter 34
Sarah
Chapter 35
Sarah
Chapter 36
Sarah
Chapter 37
Dario
Chapter 38
Sarah
Chapter 39
Dario
Chapter 40
Sarah
Chapter 41
Dario
Chapter 42
Sarah
Paige Press
Also by CD Reiss
About the Author
Chapter 1
SARAH
NEW YORK CITY
It’s my wedding day, and I can’t breathe.
With one hand on either side of the window frame, I look down over the city and across the East River, where the sun is rising, gritting my teeth against the discomfort in my ribs. It’s still dark enough outside to reflect my face’s pained contortions.
Grandma Marta can see she’s hurting me, but she pulls the strings tighter anyway.
Last night, at the dinner with the Agostis, I served the food but ate nothing, and they commented on what a good wife I’d make for Sergio.
I’ve spent my whole life getting ready for this day. Avoiding food to fit into this corset was nothing.
“One more,” Grandma says. “Make the Colonia proud.”
I empty my lungs and nod.
She pulls. “Good!”
When the strings are tied off and the back zipped, I stand straight and look at myself in the mirror. The corset is hidden under a more modest white shell that zips over the lacing. Tonight, after the reception, Sergio will see the corset when he removes the outside. Then he’ll remove me from my childhood and place me inside the society of women.
“So, then,” Grandma says. “You’re going to have a husband.”
She’s suspicious of this match, and though she knows it’s not my fault or my choice, she can’t hide her disapproval from me.
“It’s an important day for us, Grandma. All of us. It’s the first time a Colonia has—”
“No.” She holds out her hand to stop me from saying another word. “It’s not the first time one of us has married outside Precious Blood. No. Don’t fool yourself. It’s the first time it’s been done for politics. For territory. For money.”
“Daddy knows what he’s doing.”
She shouldn’t be questioning my father. He’s been running the Colonia for as long as I can remember. We live all over the city in a web of silent connections. Daddy is the king of us all. He keeps us safe, manages disputes, quietly rules over our little slice of New York from the secret closed church of Precious Blood.
“Let’s hope so.”
Grandma is my mother’s mother, and we’re all descended from the first Colonia. When Mommy died, Daddy got us a bigger apartment and brought her up to live with us. Someone had to take care of Massimo and me—so she’s invested in us and afraid I’ll be less than I was raised to be.
“I don’t like giving you up to strangers,” she adds.
“I’m scared,” I say, putting my hand on her shoulder. My face tingles, and my nose tickles. I’m going to cry again.
She slides me into an embrace too careful to mess up my hair. “The Agosti family has the same values as we do. Think of it as us bringing them in.”
I nod against her. She’s said it a million times, and she’s still right, but I’m still terrified of entering this new world. “I know.”
“Don’t cry.” Grandma pushes me away, keeping her hands on my shoulders as if our eyes are on the same level. “You are Sarah Colonia, and you are proud. You will not arrive at Precious Blood late with ruined makeup.”
“I won’t.”
She takes me by the chin. “You will be beautiful. You will be pristine. And you will be given into marriage today.”
“I will. Thank you.” My tears have stopped. I do feel better.
Her hand drops. “We need to talk about tonight, peanut.”
“I know how to give him what he wants.” I can’t look at her while thinking about the details of the act itself. “I know it’s going to hurt.”
Denise beat Grandma to it—talking about sex in every detail since she got married four years ago. But Grandma never wants to hear about my best friend, that no-good whore.
“You just stay still.” She strokes back my hair. “It’ll be over soon enough.”
The door slaps open, and we both spin around to my younger brother, Massimo, storming in.
“Goody.” His nickname for me is short for “goody two shoes” and comes from all the times I’ve stopped him from doing something stupid. Like drinking from the liquor cabinet or smoking a cigar butt Daddy left in the ashtray. He’s already in his tux, but his top two shirt buttons are open. “What’s taking so long?”
“Put your tie on,” Grandma demands.
He ignores her. Massimo does what he wants, the way he wants, no more or less. The tie will probably stay in his pocket until the last minute.
“Such a hurry to get to church.” Slowly, I put my satin gloves into the little purse that matches my dress. “You haven’t seen the inside of it in years.”
“Because it’s all bullshit and it’s boring.”
“Don’t talk like that.” Grandma gathers my shawl and scans the room to make sure we have everything. We do. But she’s tormenting Massimo as much as I am because he’s a man and has all the freedom in the world. All we can do is delay.
“Don’t rush me on my day just because you want your prize.” In the mirror, I check my lashes, my hair, the lay of my dress. “Now, what else am I forgetting?”
“You’re forgetting to move it like you mean it.” He adjusts his cuffs in the mirror. “You’re not getting any younger.”
He has a point. I’m twenty-one.
“And you need to be a little older.” I jab his side with a bent finger. “Before you start bossing people around.”
He laughs and pulls me to him with one arm, side to side.
I stand next to him, framing us in the reflection. “Spoiled little prince.”
“King-in-training as of today.” He’s been waiting for me to get married so he can move up in the family—even above any husband I might take.<
“As of Armistice Night,” I tease. “You’re not officially the successor until then.”
Last year, on the night the most important families of our world gathered in truce, my father brought me to Armistice Night. I was the talk of the evening with my white dress and red sash, broadcasting that I was a virgin available for a marriage to unite kingdoms. More than that though, I was a walking notice that the Colonia was ready to come up from the underground. I stood behind my father’s chair as men approached my father to ask about my availability and pitch their sons and grandsons.
“Today is your day, Goody.”
“So it is, Emo.” I take his arm. “So it is.”
Chapter 2
SARAH
The autumn sun’s first rays spill from the sky and rush between the buildings, blushing the white silk of my dress a sweet, shimmering pink. It was dark when I woke, cool blue light rendering the world outside my window in smudges and shadow, but now the sunrise is a riot of color in the slit of sky between the buildings of First Avenue—a gift to Manhattan’s early-morningers. The security guards with their thick-fingered gloves and the night nannies smelling of diapers, the bagel makers and coffee grinders, they trudge up, headfirst, from the subway in a daily rite where the first sight of their day is the only thing we share—the most magnificent sky I’ve ever seen.
I can’t help feeling like the intense, singular beauty of the heavens on my wedding day is a good sign and that I too am being born into the warm core of a city populated with people who have no idea I exist.
The Colonia exists astride the world and outside it. We are born, baptized, and married without public record. We die without word to the world and are buried on private land upstate.
We do not have social security numbers. We cannot make money or pay taxes, as that would expose our existence. Every transaction is locked inside charitable corporations run by our church—Precious Blood.
To the outside, this arrangement is called organized crime. To us, it’s called survival.
From the other side of the black glass that hides me from the driver, I hear a rustling, then a murmur, and my thighs tense until it stops. I can’t see the man driving me to my wedding. It doesn’t sound like Timothy, who’s taken me everywhere since I was small. The voice is deeper, more urgent, and even though I can’t make out the words, they’re more commanding than a driver’s need to be.
My skirt crinkles inside a damp fist.
Sergio will think I have nervous sweats. No man wants a wet-palmed bride. I unclench and smooth the satin before the creases set, then I open the window a crack.
William sees me through the untinted slit and tips his hat with a nod. His silly doorman uniform means nothing to the rest of the world, but we know how important and dangerous his job is. He’s one of us. When Daddy moved us to First Avenue, William appeared at the doorman post like a gift.
I roll the window back up.
Peter Colonia emerges. My father’s gait is as unhurried as ever, with a loping swerve caused by a club foot. He’s taught the world to slow down and wait for him.
With his slicked-back dark hair and otherworldly gold eyes, Daddy doesn’t need to be as big as he is to strike fear into men’s hearts. How can anyone not fear such unspoken, lethal authority?
William opens the car door, and my father gets in next to me. The door snaps closed. The locks click. The driver pulls away from the curb without another rustle or muffled command.
“Sarah,” he says with a voice ravaged by tobacco, leaning back to get the full view of me. “My mother-in-law did all right. You look good.”
“Thank you.” I touch my hair.
“You nervous?”
There’s no use lying to my father.
“Yes.”
“You’re always one of us.” He puts his hand on mine. I can see the old scars at the base of his fingers where he was cut into marriage with my mother. When they locked their hands together, the lines matched. “You got that? Always. No matter what they say.”
“Yes, Father.”
He regards me with seriousness.
“The Agostis are only a couple of generations from the old country.” He takes his hand away. “Not like us. The kids still speak the language like they’re running around the streets of Altomonte. So, it’s on you to civilize the bastards.”
“Yes, Father.”
He nods and looks at his phone, then shakes his watch down his wrist and checks the time.
“They’re there already,” he says, putting his phone away as if he just finished a conversation with my fiancé. “They need this.” He snaps his thick fingers, a tic for completion of a thought.
Like many churches in Manhattan, Precious Blood is an unobtrusive building wedged into row housing, only differentiated by the stained glass over the wide brass doors. The windows are boarded from the inside, and no one has entered through the double front doors since we left the Roman Catholic Church in 1888, when they established their own Precious Blood church to compete with ours.
When Daddy told me I was going to marry Sergio Agosti so we could come up from the underground, I asked if we’d open up Precious Blood. He just laughed.
My palms are soaked. I fold them together, but that makes it even worse. I wish I could will my sweat glands to stop leaking.
“You got your gloves?” he asks with a glance at my hands as if he knows the palms have their own water table.
“Yes.” I pat my little lace clutch. The gloves go on after I’m cut.
“Agosti’s a lucky bastard, you know that?”
“He and Massimo are going to run a big territory.”
Daddy smiles with teeth straight and white. He was always proud of his teeth. He said that was how he got such a pretty bride despite his club foot.
“I got something here for you.” From his breast pocket, he pulls ziplock bag with lacy fabric pressing against the plastic. “From your mother, for your new husband. She made it when you were little.”
He drops it in my lap.
My mother died a long time ago, but she knew this day would come. I’m hesitant to open it—sure some sadness or hope trapped inside will finally be released.
The streets of Manhattan whip by the window, a blurred melt of sunstruck color lighting up the buildings’ gray. We’re going down First Avenue instead of taking the FDR. There must be traffic.
“I wish she was here,” I say, exerting just enough pressure on the seal to let in air.
“I sent two outsiders to hell for what they did.”
“I know.” The thought of the outsiders who murdered her stirs up a cloud of hatred.
“Go on,” my father says, tapping the bag—maybe encouraging, maybe impatient—looking out the window with concern.
I open the bag and release a circle of lace and elastic.
A garter.
My cheeks flush, and I look down at my dress to hide their color. I finger the soft lace, reveling in the luxury of my dead mother’s skill. A little silk disk with three cherries embroidered on it has been tacked to the side. So much detail in such a tiny space. Inside, the words YOU BELONG stitched in red script.
My father looks away, and I know why. After taking off a shoe, I slide the garter up my thigh, under the dress, without exposing myself. This gift could be a mile away from Sergio’s fantasies. I have no idea yet what my husband likes. We’ve met a couple of times. He’s handsome and powerful—big in the shoulders and chest, with the wide manner of a man who spent his boyhood in the halls of power.
All I have to do is make him happy. I’m breathless just imagining tonight. The caress of his mouth on my skin. The way my body will please him. A twinge of worry that it won’t.
