Make Me: Manhattan Mafia - Book Two Read online

  Also by CD Reiss

  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 Edge | On The Edge | Broken Edge | Over the Edge

  The Submission Series

  One Night With Him | One Year With Him | One Life With Him

  Make Me

  Manhattan Mafia - Book Two

  CD Reiss

  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.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Acknowledgments

  Also by CD Reiss

  Chapter 1

  DARIO

  ST. NICHOLAS STREET STATION

  It’s after midnight, before sunrise. Baker’s hours. The middle of the night watchman’s shift, and the start of the day for morning radio hosts and garbage men.

  Now is the time for sleepless men to meet so they can lie, and betray, and find vengeance.

  We’re just two guys on a subway platform in the middle of the night. We have no history. No murder, kidnapping, or revenge between us.

  Massimo, with the mid-brown hair and hazel eyes of a long-forgotten invader, could pass for an overworked yuppie.

  I know what I look like—a swarthy, dark-eyed monster with ready fists.

  We meet at the northernmost end, past the stairs to 147th and St. Nicholas Street.

  We do not shake hands when I approach.

  “Those your dad’s shoes?” I ask. “They look big.”

  “You going to make some crack about walking crooked in them or nah?”

  I shake my head and look down the tracks as if I’m waiting for the train. Mocking his father’s club foot is too cheap a shot. The deformity never stopped him from running the family with an iron fist. It didn’t stop him from committing a horror that will scar Sarah forever.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” I say.

  He looks away. The platform’s nearly empty at this hour, but I follow his gaze anyway—and find a late-night commuter reading the morning newspaper.

  That’s not a garbage man with yesterday’s Post. My brother-in-law didn’t come alone.

  “Fucking pleasure,” he says, seeing that I’ve spotted his man.

  I should have expected him to bring backup, since I didn’t follow the rules either.

  “Your message was received,” I say. “If you get Sarah back, you’re going to mutilate her and sell her for meat. Got it.”

  “You’ve seen all the messages I’ve sent my sister. I had nothing to do with…” He doesn’t want to think about what was done to show me the threat to Sarah. The hollowing. The stitching. The dress. He’d rather talk about anything else. “What do you want?”

  I hate asking for this, even as a path to something bigger and better. It’s humiliating.

  “Peace.” I spit the word I can’t digest.

  “What the fuck?” Massimo shakes his head, looking around as if he can’t meet my eyes. “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am.”

  “For what?”

  “For Sarah.”

  So much has happened since they found my greenhouse. Since Sarah met Willa. Since I started to think about a future that’s not soaked in blood.

  I clear my throat to pivot from dick-swinging threats. I shake my watch down and glance at it, trying to look disinterested in the hardest conversation I’ve ever had.

  “I want the Colonia to find something else to do with their energy.” When I put down my arm, I still don’t know what time it is. “I’ll do the same.”

  “You’re really talking about a truce?”

  “Call it what you want.”

  “Fucking hell.” He laughs to himself. “You aren’t the same guy since you took my sister.”

  I’m not. The Dario Lucari who lived the hour before he took Sarah had sold his soul to destroy the Colonia. This is my last chance to buy it back for her.

  “I’m offering an end to all of this.”

  “You started this war, and now you’re offering to stop it? Like it’s a bargain? And my sister? Remember her? She’s part of the deal.”

  I expected him to try this trade, but it still pisses me off. “We’ll disappear. We’ll leave New York. That’s all you get out of me.”

  “Why would we do that?” He looks into the tunnel. The light is dim yellow and the air curls unpredictably, catching wrappers and plastic bags in looping whirlwinds—only to casually drop them on the tracks. “For what? We don’t want peace. That’s not some prize. We want you strung up like a side of beef, and we want Sarah back.”

  “She’s better off with me and you know it.” I wasn’t sure if he knew that until I see his reaction. He knows. He just doesn’t care. “You want to fight for her, you’re going to have a fight. But then what? Drag her home? To do what with her? Turn her out like a whore? Or slice her up and sell her?”

  His flinch is slight and as fast as a blink, but it tells me there are things the Colonia do that he doesn’t like thinking about. He was born human and raised to be an animal. Now he’s trying hard to die an animal. But the real him—the human—keeps slipping out. He’s a soft touch, a reformer, and too much of a coward to change anything before his father is out of the picture.

  “We can’t let you live.” His voice is partially drowned out by a warm wind from behind him. A nearly empty train arrives on the opposite platform. “Your deal is bullshit, and it sucks.”

  We say nothing for a moment, while the doors open. He hides his anxiety. I hide my regrets.

  Say you want peace, Massimo. All you have to do is want it.

  Mr. Post doesn’t get on the train.

  Revenge is exhausting. It takes up too much mental real estate. Too much time. Too much love. I need all of it for something else.

  The conductor’s voice gurgles, and with a double beep, the doors slap closed.

  We’re just two men talking.

  Wind gusts from behind me. Train on our side.

  “I’m not coming to you with another deal.” I shrug, offering to clean up a mess I made.

  Massimo’s sneer tells me the discount on salvation won’t
result in a sale. “Without Sarah, there’s no deal.”

  “You can’t have her. Ever. She’s mine.”

  “Our women aren’t your trophies.”

  He’s getting mad. This doesn’t amuse me the way it might have before.

  “You think you can still live in your house while it’s burning down,” I argue. “You’re pissing in corners and convincing yourself you got a hose. You’re gonna climb out the window or I’m putting out the fire. Those are your choices.”

  He shakes his head, looking behind me. This conversation is over. I turn to leave.

  “Get my sister out of the way,” he calls, compelling me to face him again. “Because we’re coming, and when we find you, she better not be where she’s gonna get hurt. And you know now what’s gonna happen if we get her alive and prove she’s a traitor.”

  What they do to traitors makes my blood hot while my fingertips go cold. My vision is a tunnel, and his threat is the light at the end of it.

  “Did you just threaten her?”

  The train rattles and rumbles behind me, and the horn blasts with the hollowness of a stuffed-up nose.

  “I’ll take care of her.” He goes from threatening her to pacifying me. “She’ll be all right if you send her back and she comes willingly.”

  He’s sincere. He’ll try to protect her, but in the end, he can’t push against generations of traditions and win without destroying his own family. He’s a fool. All his promise does is illustrate the risk to her, and I don’t have the vision to see past that.

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  He blinks slowly. Looks away for a moment, then back at me. “I can’t protect her then.”

  I take him by the lapels and swing him to the edge of the platform. He grabs my forearms to keep from falling onto the tracks.

  “What good are you?” I ask through my teeth. “I might as well kill you first. Move up the line until you surrender.”

  Light shines against the tiles. The train’s coming around the corner. The driver won’t see in time to stop. A coward or a child would concede Sarah.

  Massimo surprises me by being neither.

  “No deal without her. No peace.”

  He strains against my hold. I do not react. Reacting too quickly is death, even with a train barreling down the tunnel. Massimo follows the same rulebook, meeting my gaze as the train hoots and the light shines brighter on his face.

  I could let the train cut him in two and disappear into the tunnel.

  Sarah would never forgive me, and that’s why I lose my nerve and pull him onto the platform.

  Movement in the corner of my eye. Sounds at the edges of perception. The flick of a newspaper. The jerk of an open coat. Massimo’s wide eyes. The way his mouth makes an O. The roar of the train drowning out his voice.

  There’s no pain.

  Only the blur of the world.

  And falling so far.

  Farther than the floor.

  Flying, almost, into a certain hell.

  The ringing in my ears and the rumble of the train against my chest.

  My face pressed against filth.

  Dario.

  She’s calling. Urgently.

  The train is coming.

  I am on the tracks.

  Dario. It’s me. I’m over here.

  Is she? There’s only darkness.

  Here. Here. Here. Come to me here.

  I turn my head toward her voice.

  The light on the tracks turns to shadow.

  The train is here.

  Chapter 2

  DARIO

  TWELVE DAYS BEFORE

  Nico didn’t show for his meeting, which is either a disaster or nothing. Oria’s still in the small conference room, losing her mind over it, and I’m with Oliver and Tamara, watching a bank of security monitors. It all looks normal. Calm. Boring. The precursor to everything happening at once.

  Oliver just reported an uptick in SWAT team calls. Sheriff, not the police. All the buildings have a greenhouse on the roof.

  “Audio doesn’t match the feed.” Tamara’s looking into the middle distance, one fingertip touching her headphone to push it tighter to her ear. “It’s got a code added.”

  She scribbles in a notebook. I lean over her to read the scanner. Oliver stands with his thick arms crossed, boyish face set into mature concern.

  I’d thought I was hiring him, and she was gravy. When did I realize that, between them, she’s the one in charge?

  Just now. That’s when I realized.

  “How would they know there’s a greenhouse on our roof?” I ask. “Do we have a mole?”

  My mind runs through a list of names. Santino’s guys? Oria? We planted one with them. They could have done the same.

  Why did Nico miss his meeting?

  “A mole would have given up our address,” Oliver says.

  “Google Maps,” Tamara adds, switching to satellite view, revealing the tightly packed roofs of Manhattan. Water towers. HVAC units. The occasional greenhouse, legal and otherwise, built by residents desperate for a bit of outdoor space. “They’re playing darts with a blindfold.”

  I may be the target, but Sarah’s the bull’s-eye. If they get me, they get her, and she’s mine. They can’t have her.

  We’re going to have to postpone Sarah’s freedom. No more jaunts out to buy soup until I destroy her family.

  “They know too damn much.” I jab my finger at the scanner feed as robberies and car accidents scroll past.

  “We’re cloaked,” Tamara says. “No breaches. I checked.”

  “The only time the two spaces were directly connected was the wedding and the video call. Which one was it?”

  Tamara’s as unflappable as any man. “Let me pull up the video.”

  I know exactly which video she means.

  Where I made her strip naked.

  And kneel.

  And beg for water.

  And take off the one bit of clothing she begged to keep.

  The greenhouse comes up. I lean over the keyboard, fast forwarding so I don’t have to confirm what a monster I am with an unwilling woman kneeling into my crotch.

  Did I leave her there, sobbing, then fuck my hand the next day with the memory of it?

  You bet I did.

  The camera had been carefully set to keep the frame generic. No windows. Just the wall. No detritus, no furniture, no gardening supplies were inside it. But at one point, the clouds move, and in the corner of the frame, for one second, the moonlight leaves a grid-shaped shadow. I freeze it there.

  “Shit,” Tamara says. “She threw her shoe at the camera. We couldn’t recalibrate until after.” She looks back at me. “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t need an apology. I need a solution. “If they come here and find Sarah, they’re going to deliver her back to them.”

  “We’ll move her,” Oliver says. “Get her somewhere secure.”

  Easily done, but it’s not enough. I can’t send her away and stay behind to wait to defend my territory. If she goes, I go, and if I go, everyone goes.

  “How much time do we have?” I ask.

  “I’m checking dispatch now.” Tamara presses a button on her headphones. The dispatcher’s mechanical voice comes over the speakers. Some of it is code. Some plain English. She scribbles shorthand on a spiral pad. She’s going so fast I can’t catch any of it—then she stops. “I think I got it. The code.”

  “And?”

  “Packing up from 42 Crosby. Waiting for next hit.”

  There’s no defense against the authorities. Not if I want to stay under the radar. When they get here, they have to find nothing but an empty greenhouse and an abandoned office.

  No team. No high-level security. No guns, and especially no Sarah Colonia.

  They’ll think it’s another missed shot and move on. We’ll return after they’ve turned their backs, more anonymous for being inspected and discarded.

  Now that I have a plan for Sarah’s safety, I’m relieved.
“Everyone needs to be ready to get out of here. Go bags. Hard drives. Burners. Everything.”

  “Should we set up the car for you?” Oliver asks.

  “I’ll take Sarah in the ghost. Call Benny. Tell him to prep for us.”

  As I leave the office to get her, the job is done in my mind. I have a safe house an hour out of town. Nice grounds. Excellent security. Plenty of places to fuck.

  I don’t find her in the suite, making me noodles. She’s in the hallway between with a rolling suitcase. As if she’s going somewhere, and Willa’s a thousand miles away from where she’s supposed to be, when all I need is a minute or less to talk to Sarah.

  I need Willa to go away.

  I need Oria to back me up.

  I need it all to happen before someone says something stupid.

  Then Willa calls me baby, and herself my wife, and I’m stuck between the truth of the moment and the lies of the past.

  “What didn’t you tell me?” Sarah’s red-faced, dug in, monolithic in confused rage.

  Willa’s shaking her head like a school principal with a recalcitrant student opposite her desk, and Oria looks as if she wants to turn the color of paint and disappear into the wall.

  “Sarah.” Do I sound too stern? Is she open to a command? “You need to go sit down, and I’ll take care of this.”

  “Am I your wife?” She answers my unspoken questions. It doesn’t matter if I sound stern. She’s not open to being told what to do, and she’s not going into my apartment without a fight in front of people. “Yes or no, Dario.”