POV :Matteo
WHEN I STEP out of the Range Rover, my brow darkens into a scowl as I glare up at the looming stone New Jersey mansion belonging to Frederick Black.
Mine's bigger.
Yeah, it's a childish place to go in my head, but at this point, I really don't give a shit. Because despite everything I've built and everything I have despite coming from nothing, it still all boils down to this: do as you're told, or it all gets taken away.
Sure, my place on Long Island might be bigger than Frederick Black's old- money, "my ancestors came over on the fucking Mayflower" sprawling Westchester, New York mansion of a home. My pockets may be deeper than his, and my reach and influence absolutely go further than his at this point.
But.
There's still a massive difference between us. Frederick is truly monarch of his kingdom. I, however, still can't seem to get out from under the… influence of others.
Part of me hates myself for feeling angry about it. After all, I really did come from nothing, and though he might be pushing me toward something in which I currently have no interest, almost all of what I have now is thanks to Vito Barone.
My father once worked as the personal tailor to the don of the Barone family, truly living up to our last name of Belluci.
But that was decades ago, in another life.
And when my parents were killed when my sisters and I were still kids, instead of shoving us out to fend for ourselves in a world that would have certainly devoured us, Vito took in Claudia, Bianca, and me.
Years later, it was Vito again who helped me lay the foundation and the first stones of my empire. It's by Vito's grace, and the grace of the other Italian families, that Club Venom is even allowed to exist, and I am able to run that empire I've built with almost total impunity.
But the thing is, the wheel of karma always comes back around. The pied piper always gets paid.
And my bill just came due. With interest.
Honestly, I've known for years that I was walking a fine line.
Club Venom, my empire, provides neither a service nor an entertainment. It facilitates desires, fantasies, and hedonism. That's a fancy way of saying "what happens at Venom, between two—or frequently more than two—consenting adults, stays at Venom."
The wealthy, powerful, typically connected and dangerous come to my house of ill repute to play how they like.
But always consensually, and without any money changing hands. There's a membership fee, but that's it.
This is important. One, because I'm not, nor have I ever once wanted to be, a pimp. Those who come to play at Venom are there because they one hundred per cent want to be—I know this because I personally and thoroughly vet every single member.
Venom is not a place for escorts, sex-workers, or anyone else who's only there because they have to be.
Because fuck. That.
Aside from my own abhorrence of any situation where someone has to participate in sex for money, the mob also shares that loathing. Or at least, a strong intolerance.
The Commission, which is sort of a council table of the five main Italian families in the United States, agreed almost twenty years ago to stop any involvement in the sex trade. As in, the Italians don't pimp anymore. At all.
One, it's morally reprehensible. But more than that, speaking in a pure business sense, it's just not worth the bullshit involved. Drugs, guns,
casinos, sports betting, construction rackets, and grifting city services… They all make way more money for a fraction of the headache involved.
But that's where the ice has grown thin in places on the surface of my empire.
I of course knew that Maria Greco, daughter of Angelo Greco, underboss to Don Cesare Marchetti, was a member of Club Venom, because all member applications run through me. Perhaps there were some red flags in the back of my mind, letting the daughter of the second-in-command of the entire Marchetti family join my house of sin.
But I'm not here to play arbiter. Maria is a fully grown, twenty-three-year old woman. If she wants to spend her Saturday nights getting gang-banged by Bratva avtoritets or giving lap dances to Yakuza wakagashira, what the fuck do I care?
No, the problem isn't so much that Angelo found out where his little princess was spending her weekend evenings—okay, yeah, that is a problem, given that Angelo now wants my balls on a plate, despite the fact that I personally never once touched her. The bigger problem is that Maria wasn't just screwing dangerous and powerful men at Venom. She was charging them.
Obviously, I wasn't aware that this was happening. I also haven't the slightest clue if it was because Maria wasn't getting a big enough allowance from daddy dearest, or if the money thing was her kink. Frankly, I don't give a shit.
But suddenly, The Commission's not looking at Venom as my little fiefdom of hedonism for the wealthy and depraved. They're looking at it as a brothel.
And that creates a problem.
Luckily, before I could get my favorite appendage removed by a bloodthirsty capo or have my entire empire yanked out from under me, Vito came up with an elegant solution. Elegant, that is, except I want nothing to do with it.
The solution is this: The Commission families have, thankfully, agreed that Maria acted on her own. But the image problem with Club Venom remains
—that I, a single, unmarried man am running what is effectively a "house of ill repute", minus the monetary transactions.
It's that "single and unmarried" part that creates the real issue, apparently.
Now they're worried that it looks like I'm operating as some kind of pimp. So it's come down to this: get married, and quickly, and this whole problem goes away. The drinks keep flowing, the lights stay on, and the rich, powerful, and kinky of New York City can continue to fuck and suck to their filthy little hearts' content at my club.
But now we come back to the million-dollar question: why do I want to marry Aria Black? A girl half my age whose father is a poisonous fucking spider with his fingers in every single pie in New York?
Simple answer: I fucking don't.
Frederick Black is an embarrassing, disgusting stain on this city. And I have zero interest in marrying a child.
But I've also been playing this game long enough to understand how to maneuver around while staying just inside the lines.
In that sense, Aria Black is the perfect match.
She's mafia-adjacent enough, from her father's connections, that The Commission is okay with it. Yet she's not actually mafia, which saves me from getting stuck with some needy, clingy little mafia princess with a don of a father breathing down my neck.
Also, it puts Frederick squarely in the palm of my fucking hand.
I know all sorts of shit about all sorts of people in this city. That, honestly, is what I truly trade in with Club Venom. Not sex. Not fantasies. Not hedonism.
Information.
By that metric, I'm richer than fucking Elon.
Frederick has no idea that I know this, but he's in trouble. As he's gotten older, he's failed to secure new relationships with the younger generations as they come up through the ranks of this city. Which means his little
kingdom built on nothing but handshakes and understandings and favors is starting to crumble at the foundations.
Frederick needs his daughter to marry someone like me. And I plan on leveraging that need to the fullest.
Now, he has no idea that I need Aria to marry me as much as he needs me to marry her. I mean—he'll probably figure it out at some point. But I've seen no need to put all the cards on the table just yet.
Anyway, for all those reasons, marrying Aria Black is a perfect plan.…Perfect, except for the fact that James and Aiden Black and I hate each other.
The details don't matter. I know what they think I did to their family. I, however, know the truth.
And now here we are.
Carmy—as in Carmine Barone, Vito's eldest son and one of my closest friends—snickers from behind me. I turn away from the facade of the Black residence to glare at him, still sitting there in the passenger seat with his fucking feet up on the dash.
"Well?" I mutter, glancing at my watch. He lifts an amused brow. "Well, what?""Well, I'm not giving you a fucking piggyback, so let's go."
He chuckles, his white teeth flashing as he runs a hand through his dark hair. "Yeah, no, I'm fine right here, actually."
I glare at him, my jaw clenching. Carmy grins wider.
"Sorry, Matteo… Did you think I was coming along for emotional support?" He laughs, sprawling back in his seat. "No way, bud. I'm here because this is highly amusing to me."
I give him the finger as I turn to glare up at the house again.
"By the way, were you aware that Frederick once tried to use his influence to ban all strip clubs in New York?" Carmy clicks his tongue against his teeth. "You and your new father-in-law are going to have so much fun together."
I turn to level a withering looking at the friend who's been more like a brother to me since even before his family took me in. "Venom is not a strip club, dickhead."
"Just a masked sex club that regularly hosts voyeuristic orgies and kink nights. My deepest apologies for confusing the two."
"Are you done?" "For now."
I glare at him once more. "So, you're staying here."
"Yep. Can you leave the radio on and crack a window—" "Don't fucking smoke in my car."
I slam the door shut to the sound of Carmy's snickering, turning to groan at the Black family mansion once more.
Goddammit.