Chapter 3 - The Wolves of Narragansett
The Dunes Club sat poised above the Atlantic like a fortress of old money and cold cruelty.
Rain lashed the tall French windows as the line of black armored Escalades pulled up to the covered portico. Valets in soaked livery scrambled to open doors under the watchful gaze of armed men wearing earpieces and umbrella-covered submachine guns.
Santino stepped out first. He turned immediately, extending a hand to Caitlyn.
She took it. The emerald silk gown swished softly against her legs as she descended from the vehicle. The cold sea air struck her bare shoulders, making goosebumps erupt across her skin, but she held her spine rigid. She had spent a lifetime making herself small; tonight, she had to occupy every inch of air in the room.
Santino pulled her gently against his side. His left arm wrapped around her waist, his hand resting possessively on the curve of her hip. The heat of his body through the fine wool of his jacket was a furnace against the coastal chill.
“Breathe,” he murmured near her ear, his breath warm against the rain-cooled skin of her neck. “You are trembling.”
“I am not trembling,” she lied through gritted teeth.
“You are,” he whispered, his fingers tightening slightly on her waist. “Let them see it as anticipation, not fear.”
The heavy double doors of the private banquet hall swung open.
The room fell instantly silent.
There were fifty people inside. Men with silver hair and tailored Italian suits, women draped in chinchilla and diamonds that cost small fortunes, waiters frozen with trays of champagne flutes halfway between tables.
At the center table sat an older man with jowls like a bulldog and eyes dead as river pebbles. *Don Moretti.* The man who had sent collectors to Caitlyn’s childhood kitchen, who had smashed her mother’s china, who had left her father floating face down in the freezing waters of the harbor.
Beside Moretti stood a younger man with sharp, ferret-like features and slicked-back black hair—Matteo Ferraro, Santino’s cousin.
Matteo was the first to speak. He set his wine glass down on the white linen with a sharp *clink* and began to applaud slowly.
“Santino,” Matteo called out, his voice dripping with condescension. “We thought you’d forgotten the date. The Commission had almost decided to conduct the preliminary vote without you.”
Santino did not hurry his stride. He guided Caitlyn across the polished marble floor with a slow, regal deliberate pace that forced everyone in the room to track their movements. Leo Vance and four other Ferraro soldiers took positions along the perimeter walls like gargoyles carved from slate.
“I don’t forget dates, Matteo,” Santino said, stopping five feet from the head table. “I was delayed. I had to ensure my fiancée’s comfort.”
A collective intake of breath swept through the room.
Matteo’s smile vanished. His dark eyes flicked from Santino to Caitlyn, narrowing into slits of pure venom. He scanned her face, her dress, the emerald silk, and finally locked onto the glittering stone on her left hand.
“Fiancée?” Matteo scoffed, recovering his sneer. “Since when does the lion take a mate without consulting the pride? Who is she, Santino? A chorus girl from Atlantic City? A cocktail waitress you plucked from a lounge to satisfy the charter?”
Caitlyn felt the blood rush to her ears. The sheer insolence in Matteo’s tone ignited something ancient and furious inside her. Before Santino could answer, Caitlyn took a half-step forward.
She looked directly into Matteo’s eyes, her voice ringing clear, melodic, and ice-cold across the vaulted ceiling.
“My name is Caitlyn,” she said. “And if your manners are an example of how the Ferraro family treats its guests, Mr. Ferraro, it’s clear why the Commission prefers to deal with your cousin.”
A dead silence descended upon the hall.
Two older dons at the neighboring table exchanged glances, their eyebrows climbing toward their hairlines. Nobody spoke to Matteo Ferraro like that in front of the Commission.
Matteo’s face flushed a violent crimson. “You little—”
He took an aggressive step toward her.
In a fraction of a second, before Matteo’s foot hit the floor, Santino moved.
It was not a shove; it was an execution of physics. Santino’s right hand caught Matteo by the throat, slamming him backward against the heavy mahogany head table. Wine glasses overturned, spilling red Chianti across the pristine linen like fresh arterial spray. Silverware clattered violently to the floor.
Matteo gasped for air, his heels kicking off the carpet as Santino lifted him an inch off the ground with one arm.
The room erupted. Guns cleared holsters. The metallic *clack-clack* of slides racking echoed through the hall. Leo Vance and the Ferraro soldiers raised their weapons without hesitation, their muzzles aimed squarely at Moretti’s men.
Santino didn’t look at the guns. He didn’t look at Moretti. He looked only into his cousin’s bulging eyes.
“Rule number one of the Ferraro house, Matteo,” Santino said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, quiet frequency that Caitlyn had heard in the study. “You do not disrespect the future mistress of Newport. If you open your mouth in her presence again without asking permission, I will pull your tongue through your throat.”
He released his grip.
Matteo crashed to the floor, coughing violently, clutching his bruised neck.
Santino turned calmly, adjusting the cuff of his jacket. He looked over at Don Moretti, who was watching Caitlyn with narrowed, calculating eyes.
“Don Moretti,” Santino said smoothly, as if nothing had occurred. “I trust the fish is satisfactory?”
Moretti slowly raised his hands, gesturing for his bodyguards to lower their weapons. He dabbed at his mouth with a napkin. His gaze lingered on Caitlyn’s cheekbones, on the angle of her jaw, a glimmer of unsettling recognition struggling behind his cloudy pupils.
“She looks familiar, Santino,” Moretti rasped, his voice sounding like dry leaves scraping over concrete. “Have we met, young lady?”
Caitlyn felt her heart clawing at her throat. She could smell the stale cigar smoke radiating off the man who had ordered her father killed. Every instinct screamed at her to turn, to bolt, to flee into the rain.
Instead, she remembered Helen lying in the sterile hospital bed, the machines humming quietly, keeping her alive on Santino’s dime.
She tilted her head, offering Moretti a look of cool, devastating boredom.
“I doubt it, Don Moretti,” Caitlyn said evenly. “I don’t spend much time in nursing homes.”
A muffled snort of laughter came from an old don sitting three tables down.
Moretti’s eyes narrowed into slits of cold hatred, but he gave a curt, tight nod. “A spirited girl, Santino. Be careful. Spirited horses tend to throw their riders into the rocks.”
“Only when the rider is weak, Don Moretti,” Santino replied.
May you like
He turned, offering his arm to Caitlyn. She slipped her trembling fingers through the crook of his elbow. Together, they walked toward the head table, the sea of mobsters parting before them like water before the prow of a warship.
***
