Sicilian Delight
Notes: Introducing Eric's boss - an Italian dona rather than a don, which initially throws Alan and Grell off her scent - only until Eric actually admits that they're wrong do they start paying a closer attention to the possibilities of a female don. She employs Druitt and Eric on the Bellini payroll. More about her later.
Currently, she's married and in a relationship with her capo, Wally.
Wally lit a cigarette pressed between his teeth and flicked the blackened match to the ground. He dragged hard on the end and pulled it loose, expelling gray-white smoke into the same-coloured sky. A flurry of coloured umbrellas took over the sidewalks of New York, battling through the slush.
The gated household behind him stood quietly at the end of the lane, attracting no attention. Thieves knew better than to ignore rumours - the underworld ran on rumours in this part of town. Bellini was just as cruel and vicious and cold-blooded as everyone said he was; but a weak man. Thin and dapper and ridiculous in his tight, pin-striped trousers, with a wide forehead and thick, black hair starting to thin at the crown, he didn’t really inspire fear. The stories did that for him.
Wally rubbed his arms through the heavy raincoat, and watched a red umbrella bob higher than them all. The cigarette remained lit, smoke spiralling upwards, as the rain started to patter against the wrought-iron gate, the walls, the sidewalk, seeping into the cracks. A taxi splashed past, sloshing water over cement.
Yeah, he was weak, but everyone knew his dame called the shots anyway - a little mix-breed woman, with a patchwork nationality, she didn’t even come up to his shoulder. Soldiers were scared stiff of her. No man’d dare piss off the dona - and no cop thought that a woman could be capable of running a Mafia family. Too soft, girls. Too weak.
Chuckling, he turned his head to watch a window flare brightly, and flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the ground. Nudging the slick gate open, he re-entered the house and lifted two fingers in a friendly, careless wave to one of the soldati that patrolled the perimeters. Dona made a lot of enemies for a woman so small - course, none of them blamed her, they blamed her husband. He was the face, the figurehead; she was just the string-puller.
The back door opened easily enough for him, and he slid the dead-bolt clean down, lacing the metal latch across the doorway. Kicking snow off his boots, he shrugged out of his raincoat, settled in a wooden chair and waited.
At precisely ten minutes to eight, the Dona’s heels clicked closely enough that he could hear them - tic, tic, tic, measured and lazy and precise, and before the fourth or fifth tic had sounded, he was on his feet and waiting for her.
The Dona didn’t look at him when he entered, but moved to the cupboard and poured two glasses of wine, generously tipped to the brim. She handed him one. The other she kept for herself, bringing the rim up to her unpainted mouth and sipping.
“Trapani made the payment this afternoon. I had t’break some of his fingers ‘fore he agreed... worked better when I reminded him how much y’dun like t’wait.” Wally smiled, setting the glass aside. “Uh, Slinby’s gotta guest. Been keepin’ an eye on him, but nothin’ so far there... tried t’get hold’a Knox, too, but Phantomhive’s keepin’ his boys well-protected. Heard they did the Brown murder.”
“Sloppy,” she sighed, and pulled a chair out for herself. Tracing a fingertip around the rim of her glass, the Dona looked up. “They tossed him overboard, yes? To claim, ah... that he was drunk and fell off. Brown never drank. Pah, these English crime bosses, they are so sloppy.”
Wrinkling her nose, Nita pushed the glass away and looked up expectantly. “I want to know who Slingby’s guest is. Santangelo says he hears talk of spies in the city. They are looking hard at people who seem suspicious, with the problems in the East. If he is a spy, then he must be removed, si?”
“Si, dona.” The Italian clashed erringly with a southern accent.
Nita winced, though her smile widened a little. “If my husband gives you any orders, you know what to do,” she reminded him, with a glance towards the door.
When she turned her head back, Wally was at her side, his long fingers on her shoulders, sliding against the straps of her sundress. Nita laughed huskily, tilting her head back to grin. The little mole above the right corner of her mouth flexed with the movement, moved underneath his lips when he dipped his head to kiss it.
The dona’s nails pressed to his cheek affectionately, and then dropped to take his hand.
What her husband didn’t know would prevent another body from washing up on the shores.
. . .
Nita did not make mistakes about who she was or where she had been.
She had been born in Romania, though raised elsewhere - everywhere. Her first clear memory was running, through a deep, dark forest with finger-like branches reaching for her face and her eyes, clinging to her little brother’s hand as she dragged him behind him. He had been crying and weak, but he was a true Drago, and he ran and prepared to run again; though she imagined he’d been more relieved to find that they could hide and rest until morning, instead.
Children these days had no clue what it meant to survive. Everything was so safe here. This talk of assassins and spies didn’t really bother her; she had dealt with them before, in Palermo. Druitt had captured a little spy, Alan something, and lost him in his zest to torture and maim; but he had never come back, and so he wasn’t a problem.
Nita smiled to herself as she rubbed the soap into her skin, covering up the scent of her capo’s aftershave. He stood behind her, directly beneath the scalding spray from the showerhead, with his arms around her waist, and watched the movement of her fingertips over her own skin - wrists, elbows, neck.
Then, he tilted his head to the other side, pulled the damp curls off the back of her neck and pressed kisses before her fingertips could scrub them away.
. . .
Eric Slingby bristled with anger as he marched down the hallway to the Capo’s office without paying attention to the little man behind him, sauntering along like a tourist - armed or not (everyone here was armed, he didn’t care. That bitch had gone too far this time.
He shoved the door open, and walked into her office, ignoring the attendants at either side of her desk with guns already cocked in his direction. The dona looked up from her work, and did nothing but lift her brows.
“I did not send for you,” she remarked lazily, and her brows rose even higher when Eric grabbed her hand and all but pulled her over her desk.
“Where’s my daughter, you bitch?!” he snarled, and would’ve slapped the smile entirely off her slick little mouth if one of the armed gunmen hadn’t gotten between them. With the gun to his cheek, he worked Eric’s vice grip off Nita’s lapels, and tutted.
“Thought you’d treat a lady better,” he said disapprovingly, and Eric rounded on him, his dark eyes lighting up again.
“Show me a lady and I’ll treat her like a fuckin’ princess - this little Sicilian whore is not a lady! She nearly killed my daughter, and I know she has her in here. Where’s Marina?!”
“I don’t kill little girls, Messere Slingby,” the woman replied coolly, and lifted a finger when he went to speak, “But I will make exceptions if you ever refer to me in such a way again. Your daughter is safe. I was not the one who attacked you - sit.”
“You-“
“I said sit,” she snapped, and then the armed gunman who’d separated them was laying a hand on his shoulder and pushing him down into the chair. Eric vibrated in place, fisting his hands tight on the arms.
Nita’s dark eyes never lifted. “You come in here, you insult me, you yell and cause a scene - I should kill your daughter, to teach you some manners,” she sneered, and turned to the other gunman, adding, “Luis, go fetch our guest, please.”
Eric didn’t trust himself to speak, and just slanted the departing man a look that could have levelled a city.
Nita’s nails tapped irregularly on her desk. “As I was saying, I did not set your home on fire, nor would I resort to such attempts to kill you. If I wanted you dead, Messere Slingby, you would be dead. I do not need to hide your death underneath lies. Wally, you may sit as well.”
“Great. I’m on par with him,” the guard muttered sourly, and Eric let it slide. He sat to the right of the dona, his pistol on the desk - to pick it up and shoot them both would be satisfying, cathartic, but it would get everyone else running.
She saw the thought in his eyes, she had to, because her smile became crueller and harder. She lifted the pistol, examining it with little scrapes of her nails.
“Then who tried to kill me and my little girl? The whole place is a fuckin’ inferno! Marina was supposed to be home today, if her friends hadn’t asked her ou-“
“Then she would still be safe, as I do not believe in killing children if it is not sanctioned,” Nita slapped the pistol down onto the desk and stood up to move to a cabinet. “You need a drink. You do not deserve one, but that little girl will wonder why her papa is so agitated and tense.”
Eric watched her unseeingly, and when the shot-glass planted itself in front of him, he shook his head and pushed it aside. “Who tried to kill my little girl and me?”
“Not me.” She shrugged. “That is all you need to kn-“
“How can I trust you?” Frowning at the shot-glass, Eric let most of his temper seep into clawing at the arms of the chair, lightly enough so as not to cause damage. “You just said yourself you’d kill her if I... if I... gave you the cause.”
“Don’t give me a cause, then, and your daughter is safe. And, honestly, Messere Slingby - you came in here asking me where Marina was. If you truly thought I’d killed her, you’d have come in here with a bomb or a gun and shot me dead.”
He didn’t like that smile on her lips, or how it widened when the door opened.
Marina shot into his arms, and he picked her up, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Nita turned back to her work, waving her hand towards the door - but that smile never wavered, and there was a gleam in the man’s eyes that just promised retaliation.
“C’mon Mar, let’s go home, alright,” he sighed, pressing a kiss to her head and turning to the door. “Got something to tell you, hun.”
“And, Messere Slingby...?”
Eric turned his head. Nita didn’t look up.
“Say hello to your spy for me, eh?”
Currently, she's married and in a relationship with her capo, Wally.
Wally lit a cigarette pressed between his teeth and flicked the blackened match to the ground. He dragged hard on the end and pulled it loose, expelling gray-white smoke into the same-coloured sky. A flurry of coloured umbrellas took over the sidewalks of New York, battling through the slush.
The gated household behind him stood quietly at the end of the lane, attracting no attention. Thieves knew better than to ignore rumours - the underworld ran on rumours in this part of town. Bellini was just as cruel and vicious and cold-blooded as everyone said he was; but a weak man. Thin and dapper and ridiculous in his tight, pin-striped trousers, with a wide forehead and thick, black hair starting to thin at the crown, he didn’t really inspire fear. The stories did that for him.
Wally rubbed his arms through the heavy raincoat, and watched a red umbrella bob higher than them all. The cigarette remained lit, smoke spiralling upwards, as the rain started to patter against the wrought-iron gate, the walls, the sidewalk, seeping into the cracks. A taxi splashed past, sloshing water over cement.
Yeah, he was weak, but everyone knew his dame called the shots anyway - a little mix-breed woman, with a patchwork nationality, she didn’t even come up to his shoulder. Soldiers were scared stiff of her. No man’d dare piss off the dona - and no cop thought that a woman could be capable of running a Mafia family. Too soft, girls. Too weak.
Chuckling, he turned his head to watch a window flare brightly, and flicked the half-smoked cigarette onto the ground. Nudging the slick gate open, he re-entered the house and lifted two fingers in a friendly, careless wave to one of the soldati that patrolled the perimeters. Dona made a lot of enemies for a woman so small - course, none of them blamed her, they blamed her husband. He was the face, the figurehead; she was just the string-puller.
The back door opened easily enough for him, and he slid the dead-bolt clean down, lacing the metal latch across the doorway. Kicking snow off his boots, he shrugged out of his raincoat, settled in a wooden chair and waited.
At precisely ten minutes to eight, the Dona’s heels clicked closely enough that he could hear them - tic, tic, tic, measured and lazy and precise, and before the fourth or fifth tic had sounded, he was on his feet and waiting for her.
The Dona didn’t look at him when he entered, but moved to the cupboard and poured two glasses of wine, generously tipped to the brim. She handed him one. The other she kept for herself, bringing the rim up to her unpainted mouth and sipping.
“Trapani made the payment this afternoon. I had t’break some of his fingers ‘fore he agreed... worked better when I reminded him how much y’dun like t’wait.” Wally smiled, setting the glass aside. “Uh, Slinby’s gotta guest. Been keepin’ an eye on him, but nothin’ so far there... tried t’get hold’a Knox, too, but Phantomhive’s keepin’ his boys well-protected. Heard they did the Brown murder.”
“Sloppy,” she sighed, and pulled a chair out for herself. Tracing a fingertip around the rim of her glass, the Dona looked up. “They tossed him overboard, yes? To claim, ah... that he was drunk and fell off. Brown never drank. Pah, these English crime bosses, they are so sloppy.”
Wrinkling her nose, Nita pushed the glass away and looked up expectantly. “I want to know who Slingby’s guest is. Santangelo says he hears talk of spies in the city. They are looking hard at people who seem suspicious, with the problems in the East. If he is a spy, then he must be removed, si?”
“Si, dona.” The Italian clashed erringly with a southern accent.
Nita winced, though her smile widened a little. “If my husband gives you any orders, you know what to do,” she reminded him, with a glance towards the door.
When she turned her head back, Wally was at her side, his long fingers on her shoulders, sliding against the straps of her sundress. Nita laughed huskily, tilting her head back to grin. The little mole above the right corner of her mouth flexed with the movement, moved underneath his lips when he dipped his head to kiss it.
The dona’s nails pressed to his cheek affectionately, and then dropped to take his hand.
What her husband didn’t know would prevent another body from washing up on the shores.
. . .
Nita did not make mistakes about who she was or where she had been.
She had been born in Romania, though raised elsewhere - everywhere. Her first clear memory was running, through a deep, dark forest with finger-like branches reaching for her face and her eyes, clinging to her little brother’s hand as she dragged him behind him. He had been crying and weak, but he was a true Drago, and he ran and prepared to run again; though she imagined he’d been more relieved to find that they could hide and rest until morning, instead.
Children these days had no clue what it meant to survive. Everything was so safe here. This talk of assassins and spies didn’t really bother her; she had dealt with them before, in Palermo. Druitt had captured a little spy, Alan something, and lost him in his zest to torture and maim; but he had never come back, and so he wasn’t a problem.
Nita smiled to herself as she rubbed the soap into her skin, covering up the scent of her capo’s aftershave. He stood behind her, directly beneath the scalding spray from the showerhead, with his arms around her waist, and watched the movement of her fingertips over her own skin - wrists, elbows, neck.
Then, he tilted his head to the other side, pulled the damp curls off the back of her neck and pressed kisses before her fingertips could scrub them away.
. . .
Eric Slingby bristled with anger as he marched down the hallway to the Capo’s office without paying attention to the little man behind him, sauntering along like a tourist - armed or not (everyone here was armed, he didn’t care. That bitch had gone too far this time.
He shoved the door open, and walked into her office, ignoring the attendants at either side of her desk with guns already cocked in his direction. The dona looked up from her work, and did nothing but lift her brows.
“I did not send for you,” she remarked lazily, and her brows rose even higher when Eric grabbed her hand and all but pulled her over her desk.
“Where’s my daughter, you bitch?!” he snarled, and would’ve slapped the smile entirely off her slick little mouth if one of the armed gunmen hadn’t gotten between them. With the gun to his cheek, he worked Eric’s vice grip off Nita’s lapels, and tutted.
“Thought you’d treat a lady better,” he said disapprovingly, and Eric rounded on him, his dark eyes lighting up again.
“Show me a lady and I’ll treat her like a fuckin’ princess - this little Sicilian whore is not a lady! She nearly killed my daughter, and I know she has her in here. Where’s Marina?!”
“I don’t kill little girls, Messere Slingby,” the woman replied coolly, and lifted a finger when he went to speak, “But I will make exceptions if you ever refer to me in such a way again. Your daughter is safe. I was not the one who attacked you - sit.”
“You-“
“I said sit,” she snapped, and then the armed gunman who’d separated them was laying a hand on his shoulder and pushing him down into the chair. Eric vibrated in place, fisting his hands tight on the arms.
Nita’s dark eyes never lifted. “You come in here, you insult me, you yell and cause a scene - I should kill your daughter, to teach you some manners,” she sneered, and turned to the other gunman, adding, “Luis, go fetch our guest, please.”
Eric didn’t trust himself to speak, and just slanted the departing man a look that could have levelled a city.
Nita’s nails tapped irregularly on her desk. “As I was saying, I did not set your home on fire, nor would I resort to such attempts to kill you. If I wanted you dead, Messere Slingby, you would be dead. I do not need to hide your death underneath lies. Wally, you may sit as well.”
“Great. I’m on par with him,” the guard muttered sourly, and Eric let it slide. He sat to the right of the dona, his pistol on the desk - to pick it up and shoot them both would be satisfying, cathartic, but it would get everyone else running.
She saw the thought in his eyes, she had to, because her smile became crueller and harder. She lifted the pistol, examining it with little scrapes of her nails.
“Then who tried to kill me and my little girl? The whole place is a fuckin’ inferno! Marina was supposed to be home today, if her friends hadn’t asked her ou-“
“Then she would still be safe, as I do not believe in killing children if it is not sanctioned,” Nita slapped the pistol down onto the desk and stood up to move to a cabinet. “You need a drink. You do not deserve one, but that little girl will wonder why her papa is so agitated and tense.”
Eric watched her unseeingly, and when the shot-glass planted itself in front of him, he shook his head and pushed it aside. “Who tried to kill my little girl and me?”
“Not me.” She shrugged. “That is all you need to kn-“
“How can I trust you?” Frowning at the shot-glass, Eric let most of his temper seep into clawing at the arms of the chair, lightly enough so as not to cause damage. “You just said yourself you’d kill her if I... if I... gave you the cause.”
“Don’t give me a cause, then, and your daughter is safe. And, honestly, Messere Slingby - you came in here asking me where Marina was. If you truly thought I’d killed her, you’d have come in here with a bomb or a gun and shot me dead.”
He didn’t like that smile on her lips, or how it widened when the door opened.
Marina shot into his arms, and he picked her up, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. Nita turned back to her work, waving her hand towards the door - but that smile never wavered, and there was a gleam in the man’s eyes that just promised retaliation.
“C’mon Mar, let’s go home, alright,” he sighed, pressing a kiss to her head and turning to the door. “Got something to tell you, hun.”
“And, Messere Slingby...?”
Eric turned his head. Nita didn’t look up.
“Say hello to your spy for me, eh?”