mess he made.
Daddy shook his head and leaned forward with his elbows on his desk, his fingers steepled in front of his face. “No, Jordana. You are to do nothing. I didn’t ask you here to bring you into the fold. I only needed to tell you that this is serious and possibly dangerous. I need you to go to the shore house for the week. Just until I’ve gotten it figured out.”
I could feel my eyebrows pinch together and my spine straighten. I could only imagine what I looked like to him. Angry? Defiant? Whatever it was, he didn’t like it. His fist came down hard on the solid wood of his desk and the dark skin on his face lit up red like a burning flame.
“Do not argue with me, Jordana Maria Albanese.” The full name. That meant business.
“Fine, Daddy. Whatever you think is best.” Women were highly underestimated. Especially in the kind of life we come from. We were Daddy’s girls. We batted our eyelashes and gave puppy eyes and angelic smiles. We called our fathers “Daddy” and they viewed at us as innocent. With the right words, the right look, and a perfectly sweet tone, we got our way. It was something we learned very early on, usually before we walked. Men never caught on. Yet they’re the brains .
“You should go pack now. You need to leave in two hours.”
I had no intention of going to the shore house. Even as I agreed with him, I had my own plans. My own ways of saving this family. They can have their feet and brains and soul. I don’t need them. I am a woman, and I have the one thing men never will—I have my pussy. And if there’s one thing men love to eat more than spaghetti, it’s pussy.
Go ahead, Daddy, use your manly body parts to get Matty out of this one.
I’ll use mine. And we’ll see who ends up the winner .
CHAPTER THREE
The central members’ only hangout was above the A&S pork store and meat market—a local Italian butcher shop. The sign displayed “social club.” However, if you weren’t a member of the Giannottis’ crew, you were not welcomed. Duplicity at its finest. A heavy presence of gangsters mulled around the doorway, making it impossible for the average person to purchase any provisions at the adjacent pork store. Of course, if you were Italian, entrance to the butcher was much easier. However, most people just avoided it, not wanting to drag their children in for a piece of bologna. I smiled. Fond memories of my handholding Nana bringing me into the pork store flooded me. That slice of bologna or Genoa salami was such a treat. My world seemed simpler then. Untainted from the ugliness I had yet to discover about the world around me. I hung a U-turn and double-parked right in front to piss them off. Fuck it. I needed to make a statement. A formidable one.
I had one chance.
And one chance only.
I swung my legs out slowly and closed the door with a bang, leaving the keys in the ignition. No one would dare steal my car. That wasn’t an option. Not in this neighborhood. I shook out my hair and adjusted my sunglasses as I walked confidently to the group of the wise guys loitering about on the sidewalk.
One by one, each man stepped forward, sadistically eager to shame me. Shame—an achingly familiar emotion to me now. I focused on the prize…goal. Two things happened in rapt succession: empowerment flooded my system due to the contemplation of forced humiliation, and then heated desire burned and singed my most sensitive parts. Well-hidden knowledge of my voyeuristic proclivities and the effect of forced degradation left me with a pair of soaked panties. I writhed under the glare of others, loving every second of it. I smirked in the face of my handlers. Their cheap suits and dollar-bathroom cologne had my eyes rolling—hard. Stopping short of showing how to really humiliate someone, I decided I’d roll through again and have some fun with the fuck-nuts at a later date. I filed that shit away with the others on my to-do list. Surely, I’d have the last