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How did I miss that one by the side of the building?
As soon as the rebel sees that his shot hit me, he scrambles away. There are still a couple of sentries by the windows, but the battle is already over. The fucker knows there’s no way he’s making it out alive; he just wanted to take me out.
“Nico!” Dante shouts. He must have seen me get hit.
I duck, raising my arm, then making a tight fist and flexing my wrist quickly in a bid to check that my left hand still works. Thank fuck!
I swallow back a slew of curses and turn to him. “I’m good,” I yell over the din. “Cover our backs.”
His nod is swift, and for a moment, our eyes lock. There is an intensity, a shared understanding and then we round the van and advance toward the warehouse.
Almost all the sentries are dead now. More of my men come through the warehouse door, heading straight for the stairs across the room that lead up to the second floor.
Leo and I finish off a few more men on the second floor. In a few moments the echoes of gunfire fade and the warehouse stands silent.
Romano’s men lay sprawled across the floor, their bodies bloodied and their weapons discarded, their lifeless eyes staring into nothing.
We return to the main floor and meet my men, still tense and bristling with energy. A grim smile pulls at my lips. They were spectacular tonight, despite it being an unplanned battle.
It’s a fucking shame I’m going to have to put a bullet in someone’s brain. The rat who tipped off Romano.
I catch Dante’s meaningful gaze and I know he’s thinking the same thing. He says nothing, only giving a slight shake of his head before his mouth curves in his signature smirk. He won’t say anything. For all his insolence, Dante knows that questioning me in front of my men is the quickest way to get us both killed.
“Nine up there, Signore. All dead,” Salvatore reports, unfazed by the bleeding wound on the top of his right ear—a bullet likely clipped him. At twenty-four, he’s the youngest of the Vitelli ranks present tonight but also one of the deadliest, a lethal mix of tech wizardry and espionage.
“Grazie, Salvatore,” I nod. Get the doctor to look at that ear tonight; otherwise, you’ll end up with one like a cauliflower,” I warn. He nods and continues the body count as Leo approaches.
“That was some damn fine shooting out there, amico mio,” I tell Leo.
He nods with a tight smile, but his brown eyes hold a shadow, a tension in the air thicker than the fading smoke. “Just doing my job.”
Indeed he has done his job training these men, and he’s done it well.
“Let’s check it and load it up, guys,” Pietro, a stocky, hard-faced Capo, nods to the crates stacked against the far wall of the warehouse, and the rest follow him.
We stand side by side, watching on as Salvatore, Pietro, and the rest of the men carry the crates outside and into the waiting truck.
“How did they know about the ambush?” I ponder aloud, grappling for an explanation that doesn’t paint one of our own men as a traitor. “This was supposed to be a surprise attack.” I flex my left shoulder, feeling the muscle twitch and throb.
A bullet wound wasn't what I was expecting when I decided to join my men tonight, but it sure as hell beats being dead right now.
I wave the truck off, giving the signal to leave with the consignment, and then shove my hands in my pockets. “One of these men leaked our itinerary, Leo. You know I can’t have a mole in my house.”
Leo looks around at our remaining men fanned around a circle around us, still vigilant for any lingering threats. His gaze lands on one man and then the next before coming to meet mine, his eyes unwavering. “I trust every one of them, Nico. The leak didn’t come from any of them.”
I nod, though a cloud of suspicion lingers. “Keep an eye on the perimeter. We’re not out of the woods yet,” I warn in a low voice.
Leo nods and moves away, blending into the shadows outside and I can’t shake the feeling that something is wrong. Leo is like me, usually loose-limbed and exuding a confident, almost lazy calm in the heat of action. This nervous energy unsettles me.
Something is wrong with him. I wonder if Maria and the kid are okay.
Two hours later, we’re miles away from Romano’s now-burning warehouse and unwinding at Urban Elixir, one of my bars. Most of the men have been relieved for the night, leaving my top five. My Capos make it a point never to go straight home after a racket.
Leo sits beside me, nursing a whisky. Pietro, Enzo, and Salvatore are arguing over a poker game while my brother sits far away from the others. His tongue is halfway down the throat of the skinny redhead on his lap, his hand between her legs. It’s his way of decompressing, I suppose. Although that seems to be a universal Dante response to a great many situations.
I lean forward and knit my hands together on the window bar table, my eyes on the quiet street before us. “Something on your mind, Leo?” I don’t need to look at him to know he’s as tense as a bowstring. He’s practically vibrating.
“I’m just tired, Nico,” he replies, the words weighted.
