The Donna

ch 1

The December sun came through the Escalade’s tinted windows and caught the diamond on Donna Zita Ferlazzo’s finger, throwing small rainbows across the leather. She watched them slide over the seat with the flat attention she saved for men who thought they could outsmart her husband.

They couldn’t.

Neither could the women.

“Take the Turnpike, Ciro. The Lincoln Tunnel at this hour is an exercise in self-hatred.”

Her driver nodded and signaled. Ten years with her, Ciro. Loyal, discreet, dull as unbuttered toast, which was exactly what she wanted in a man who knew where she buried the bodies. Metaphorically speaking.

Mostly metaphorically.

Her phone buzzed against the calfskin Birkin. A text from Corrado: Dinner at Carbone. 8pm. Don’t be late.

Not how are you. Not thank you for handling the girl from Fort Lee. Certainly not I’m sorry I stuck my dick in another twenty-two-year-old who thought she’d hit the jackpot.

Donna Zita typed back: Of course, amore.

She deleted amore.

She typed: I’ll be there.

The Escalade merged onto I-95. Past the glass went the refineries, the outlet malls, the gray-brown smear of industrial New Jersey that her husband had spent thirty years turning into an empire. Hers too, though nobody said so. The Donna smiled at fundraisers, wore the right jewelry, didn’t sweat where anyone could see, and handled the messes.

And God, the messes. This month alone: the girl from Fort Lee, pregnant, who believed a Ferlazzo heir meant a Ferlazzo ring. Zita had driven her to a private clinic in Connecticut herself. Held her hand, murmured about how brave she was. By the time the sedatives took, the girl was signing the NDA with a hand that barely shook. Afterward she sobbed. They always sobbed.

The two gold diggers circling her son Orazio had been easier. A wire transfer, a plane ticket, a gentle reminder that the Ferlazzos had a long memory. One of them actually thanked her, as if Zita had done her a favor by threatening her credit score and her father’s construction business in a single afternoon.

She had, really. The girl just didn’t know it yet.

“Traffic’s clear,” Ciro said. “Twenty minutes to the house.”

“Good.” She crossed her legs, and the Valentino pumps caught the light. “I have the florist at four and I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“There’s a protein bar in the console.”

Zita looked at the protein bar. Quest. Chocolate chip cookie dough. She could already smell the chalk, feel it gluing itself to her veneers.

“I’d rather starve.”

Ciro’s eyes crinkled in the mirror. He’d heard worse.

They went another mile before her phone buzzed again. Her son this time. Orazio: Mom, Dad’s being a dick about me opening my own law practice. Can you talk to him?

She typed: Define “dick.”

Orazio: He said I’d run it into the ground in six months.

Zita: Would you?

Orazio: Probably. But that’s not the point.

She smiled despite herself. Twenty-six years old and he still thought the point mattered more than the outcome. He’d learn. They all learned, or they ended up in a landfill off the Turnpike.

Zita: I’ll speak with him. Don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.

Orazio: Define “stupid.”

Zita: Anything that requires me to make a phone call.

Orazio: Love you too.

She set the phone facedown and pressed her fingers to her temples. The Botox made furrowing a brow difficult, but the pressure helped anyway. A headache was building behind her eyes. Advil wouldn’t touch it, and vodka only fed it.

Carbone tonight. Another performance, Corrado parading her around while his eyes drifted to the waitress, the hostess, the woman at the next table who didn’t know she was on the menu until it was too late. Zita had quit being angry about it years ago. The brunette from the April fundraiser. The redhead from the dealership. The Pilates instructor, whose classes she’d enjoyed right up until Corrado got his hands on her, and whose husband had sent Zita a very polite email that morning. Lately a hazel-eyed girl named Ottavia, whose name had reached Zita the way they all did, through the staff.

None of them lasted. The Donna did. She balanced the books and greased the palms and smiled through the dinners while the men talked business and the wives talked renovations.

The Escalade slowed at the gates of the Ferlazzo estate, a Georgian pile in Alpine that had belonged to a hedge fund manager foolish enough to short one of Corrado’s shell companies. The gates swung open. Up the long drive, past the clipped hedges and the marble fountain she’d had shipped from a villa in Tuscany.

Ciro stopped at the front steps and killed the engine.

“We have a problem,” he said.

Zita’s hand paused on the door handle. “What kind of problem?”

“I’ve got a kidney stone that needs surgery. With recovery, I’ll be out at least six weeks.”

She turned to look at him. Ciro had been with her since Orazio was in high school. He’d driven her to funerals and weddings and, one memorable afternoon, to a warehouse in Newark where she’d watched her husband put a bullet in a man’s kneecap. He had never missed a day.

“Six weeks,” she repeated.

“I’ve already arranged a replacement. Vetted him myself. Clean record, good references, knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“Who?”

“My nephew. Augie.”

Zita’s gray eyes narrowed. “You never mentioned a nephew.”

“He’s been doing private security in the city. Executive protection, mostly. The company folded and he wants something stable.” Ciro turned in his seat. “He’s a good kid, Donna Zita. Solid. I wouldn’t suggest him if I didn’t trust him with my life.”

With my life. Ciro had never said that before.

“When does he start?”

“Tomorrow morning. Eight o’clock.”

“And you’re telling me now?”

Ciro’s face didn’t change. “I only found out about the surgery this morning. I wanted everything in place before I worried you.”

Worried you. As if Donna Zita Ferlazzo worried about anything as small as a driver.

She opened the door and stepped into the December cold, the wind wrapping her like a wet silk scarf. “Fine. But if he’s incompetent, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

“He’s not incompetent.”

“We’ll see.”

She went into the house without looking back.

The next morning Zita was on the Peloton in the home gym when the doorbell rang. She ignored it and kept pedaling to the instructor’s manufactured enthusiasm. Forty-six years old and she could still out-cycle women half her age.

Sweat darkened the edges of her blonde extensions. No makeup, no Botox top-up in three months. This hour was the only one of the day when she looked her age, and she guarded it.

A knock on the gym door.

“Mrs. Ferlazzo?” The housekeeper, muffled through the wood. “Your new driver is here.”

Zita glanced at the clock. Seven forty-five. Early.

“Tell him to wait.”

She finished the ride. She showered. She took her time over the serums and the SPF that kept her looking thirty-five instead of forty-six. By the time she came down the staircase in a cream Chanel pantsuit and nude Louboutins, it was nearly nine.

The man in the foyer was not what she’d expected.

Tall, six-two in polished Oxfords, and the Paul Smith suit fit like it had been cut for someone who spent his mornings under a barbell.

His face made her pause on the third-to-last step.

Black hair cropped close at the sides, a jaw you could have opened mail with, espresso-dark eyes that gave away nothing. Tattoos curled out from his collar and cuffs, deliberate and expensive, not the scribbles of a man who’d made bad decisions at twenty.

He looked up at her, and for a second he was assessing her, quick and clinical, before his face smoothed over into professional neutrality.

“Mrs. Ferlazzo.” His voice was lower than she’d expected, rougher. “Augusto Mineo. Your driver.”

“You’re early.”

“I’m always early.”

She came down the last three steps, heels clicking on the marble, and stopped an arm’s length from him. Cedar and citrus. Nothing cheap.

“Ciro’s nephew,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He never mentioned you.”

One corner of Augie’s mouth curved and stopped short of a smile. “Uncle Ciro’s a private man.”

“Apparently.” She circled him the way she’d circle a sculpture at auction. The jacket pulling across his back when he shifted his weight. His hands, large, square-palmed, a silver ring on the right index finger, hanging loose at his sides. “You’ve worked executive protection.”

“Three years. Before that, I was in the military.”

“Which branch?”

“Marines.”

She had spent twenty-seven years among men who killed for a living, and not one of them had ever looked at her like something to be kept alive.