It's true that my fake brother liked to eat my ass. Why wouldn't he? There wasn't a boy in the neighborhood wouldn't have eaten my ass with gusto if I asked them to. Because that's how boys are, whether they like it or not. They're obsessed with the ass. Point blank.

But that business about him going sick and crazy and ending up an invalid all on account of his buryin' his face in my pillows was a total fugazi and everyone knows it. That bottachigaloop he useta hang out with was a liar and a virgin and he had it in for Angelo. That's how come he called my real Daddy in the first place—to let him know what Angelo and me was getting up to.

And when Daddy heard what that stunad had been doing to me, his only daughter, he dragged his ass across that reception hall and slammed the front daw on his head. And I am not exaggerating when I say, I was turned on. It's not every day a guidette from Bensonhurst is avenged by a worldly man with real scarole.

Truth is, when Daddy came back for me he also came back to give the phony what was coming to him. That's what happened. On God, the real reason Angelo ended up in Catheter Flats was because my real Daddy did what any real Daddy would do: he protected his little girl's fortune. That's how come Angelo Scadavecchia ended up with a dent in his left hemisphere, drooling on his self and messing himself like that.

As to why he was a drooling, demented diarrhea machine before Daddy showed up, your guess is as good as mine. Maybe he chowed down on too much bussy while he was doing his bid at Metro DC. Or maybe he was just oobatz.

Before you go castin' aspersions and callin' me a femminaccia, just you remember that it was Angelo who let me think he was my brother and it was my brother who was railing my ass. If you wanna look down on somebody, look down on the big drooly boy at Catheter Flats.

And Catheter Flats wasn't for old people, it was a home for the mentally deficient, and my fake brother was lucky Daddy had a soft spot, otherwise he would've been just another rambling nutcase wandering the streets of East New York. Point blank.

As for me, I got everything I ever wanted... at least at first.

I could feel the wind in my hair and the sun at my back as Daddy took me home in his Maserati GranCabrio. We was doin' eighty with the top down on the Long Island Expressway, heading for his crib on the Gold Coast of the North Shore, and I was finally sure that I was free of the Spadavecchia stink.

My life in Bensonhurst had been a miserable one—cramped apartment, creepy-ass neighbors, violent crime, and dead end babysitting gigs that ended in arguments with jealous wives. Everywhere I went, I had to put up with poor, ignorant stronzos whose idea of seduction consisted of grabbing their crotches and shouting “maddon'” whenever I'd pass them on one of their stoops.

But that was all over, now that my Daddy had swept me up in his arms and spirited me away to the life I deserved. I was no longer a Spadavecchia. I never was a no-good stinkin' Spadavecchia, he told me as we zipped along the parkway. I was a Ficarotta and I deserved everything my heart desired. I'd been waiting my whole life to hear that.

As we headed to the Island, I drank my old man in. He was as handsome as he was imposing. He had a thick head of wavy gray hair and just a hint of stubble on his smooth, leathery face. And he didn't smell like an old man, nor did he smell like the Spadavecchias. That is to say, he didn't smell like something you'd pull out of a sewer grate. His skin radiated with a heady blend of wood and cardamom  and notes of something warm and spicy.

If I leaned in close enough—as I had when he first climbed into the car beside me and I'd placed my head on his chest—he smelled like a cool and refreshing ocean breeze. Just the kind of thing he said I could expect outta life on Long Island.

“What's a Colonial revival?” I asked.

“It's a fancy term for home,” Daddy explained. “Your home, Fiammetta.”

I was Fiammetta Ficarotta, the heiress of the Ficarotta fortune, and my Daddy was Massimo. How do ya like that? I was literally descended from greatness, he told me.

As he cranked Pagliacci and negotiated the curves of the highway, I studied the curves of Massimo Ficarotta. He was a well-defined man in his mid-fifties, but he looked at least a decade younger. His strong chest and chiseled features suggested a man in his prime, and the crease in the seat of his pleated slacks told me he was hung like a blue whale.

He had sinewy hands, which gripped the steering wheel the way a woman wants to be held—firmly and confidently. His posture betrayed his fitness regimen; this was a man who knew his way around rowing machines and resistance bands.

Are you kidding me? I thought.

When I looked at him, I didn't see a father. I saw the man I would call Daddy. I saw a worthy sexual partner, a premo fuck buddy. And judging from his swag, and the luxury of his automobile, a natural born provider. I was sprung, totally locked in. If the Colonial revival was half as classy as the man sitting beside me, I would offer him my ass on a silver platter and relish the feel of his stubbled mouth on mine.

* * *

The Colonial revival was like something out of a movie. It was bigger than Vatican Palace, Daddy told me, and it had style just like him. There was hipped roofs, decorative porticos, and large double-hung windows. And there was curtains on the insides of those windows.

Back in Bensonhurst, the neighbors knew when you had your period cuz they saw you when you when you was changing your tampon, but that would never happen here. Daddy wouldn't allow it.

When we got to the front door, Daddy asked me if I wanted to see something cool. Then he turned his key in the lock and opened the Dutch door. The top half swung wide, but the bottom half remained shut. Not for nothing, but I couldn't understand what the point was, other than to show that you could afford to saw your door in half to show people you got the goods.

“Why's it like that?” I asked.

“So I can do this,” he said.

Then he took me in his arms and passed me over the threshold, depositing me on my feet inside the grand entrance. Inside, I could smell cinnamon and wood polish, and I could see the classy layout of the house—a winding staircase with white risers and stained handrails, crown molding, and a Williamsburg chandelier.

Daddy opened the bottom half of the door and stepped in behind me, securing both sections of the Dutch door and fastening a dead bolt. Then he advanced to where I stood in the hall, admiring the Queen Anne console table and silhouette portraits on the hallway wall. He stepped up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. Then he spoke in a soft, soothing tone.

“Is it everything you hoped for?”

“I always wanted,” I told him, “but I never bothered with hope.”

“What do you want right now?” he asked.

I turned to him there in the hallway and I cut my eyes at him.

“I want to show my appreciation, Daddy.”

“Oh, Fiammetta,” he sighed. “I've been waiting eighteen long years for you to say that.”

I bit my lip and looked, bashfully, at the floor. Not cuz that's something I would normally do in that situation, but because it was what I thought someone of his means would want me to do. His response told me I thought right.

He stood behind me as his hand went to my inner thigh. It was as thick and ridged as the sorta thing you'd find washed up on a beach. And he eased it into my panties gracefully, taking his time. Then he took my temperature like a good Daddy should. And when he found the wetness he was looking for, he withdrew his fingers and offered a soft murmur of approval.

Then Daddy undressed me with expert precision, peeling off my simple skirt and catching it before it could hit the floor. He folded it neatly, placing it on the cushioned seat of a brace-back Windsor chair. Then he unlatched my bra and flung it over the back of the chair.

I stepped out of my dampened underwear and awaited his next move, but it was not forthcoming. I stood there in silence for a moment, wondering if maybe this was all a dream that was collapsing around me. But when I ventured to look behind me, the dream was still there... and it was sitting in the Windsor chair. Daddy had settled on my simple skirt and bra, and he was massaging the front of his slacks with gentle satisfaction.

He said nothing, only moved his hand around in slow circles and watched me as I glanced timidly around my shoulder. Then his movements ceased and he ran his palm over his knee.

“Come to Daddy,” he said.

I crossed the hall gingerly, not knowing what to expect. This was a man who had lost his daughter to a clan of vulgar, inbred gavones. A man whose little girl had developed a nasty reputation as a cock tease and a brother fucker. There was no tellin' how he might want to punish me.