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Chapter Twenty-One
He slammed his fist into the table, disregarding the pain his hand felt. He was too busy being pissed.
“They found out,” Alessandro protested. “They found out,” he seethed.
Carmine didn’t try to calm his son down. He was equally as tee’d off as his son was.
“I am going to kill that snitch,” Alessandro hissed, his thick brows knocking together. “Then I’ll refocus my attention on the real targets.”
“That’s one way of going about it,” Gabriel smirked.
“What’s so fucking funny?” Alessandro bellowed.
Gabriel looked square into his brother’s eyes, not even trying to hide the smile that teased the corners of his lips.
“You are big brother.”
“There is nothing funny about this situation,” their father insisted.
Gabriel didn’t try to hide the smile, but it didn’t spread as wide as it normally would have. He heeded his father’s correction.
“We struck out to cripple those that wronged our family. That crippling is now ineffective,” Carmine replied.
“So, we come up with another way to cripple them,” Gabriel suggested, still light-hearted as ever. He had to be careful, though. Gabriel knew he was toying with fire, but it was so much fun. He loved the idea of having one up on his golden brother. Still, he straightened up, put on a serious look, and tried to focus on the problem, not his amusement that his family had a problem.
“I’m serious,” Gabriel emphasized. “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. We have to try again, a multi-prong approach that they won’t see coming.”
Alessandro was still infuriated. He still wanted to kill the snitch, but he would hold off just long enough to hear what his brother had to say. Carmine leaned in and waved his hand, giving Gabriel permission to keep talking.
“We go after the Conti’s directly,” he continued. “No more subversive tactics. No more one-step removed approaches. We hit them where it hurts and take the Ricci’s down, too.”
“But how?” Alessandro asked. “How do you propose we do that?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s a far better approach since the first one didn’t work as we thought.”
“Let’s think about what your brother suggested,” Carmine agreed. “We did take the subversive approach by not striking directly at the Conti’s, but maybe we should, especially now?”
“But how?” Alessandro insisted.
“By hitting them where it hurts,” Carmine replied. “We go after their shipping destinations, cut off their territories, put up so many roadblocks that their ships are unable to move.”
“That’s not enough,” Alessandro quipped. “I want them all to pay, personally.”
“I understand, son,” Carmine agreed. “How do you propose that? Without getting blood on your own hands?”
“Who’s to say there’s anything wrong with getting my hands a little bloody?” He countered with a sly look on his face.
“I say,” Carmine insisted. “I will not let you go down for the sake of revenge,” he affirmed. “There has to be a better way, a hands-off way to get done what you want to get done.”
“Hire out.”
Alessandro’s mother’s unexpected voice drew all their attention. She sashayed into the room and took a seat with her husband.
“What do you mean, hire out?”
“It means just what it suggests,” Sofia surmised. “Hire someone to torment the Contis, the Ricci’s personally while you all work on crippling their companies.”
Gabriel hoped his father and brother wouldn’t agree with his mother’s position. Maybe they’d include Valentina in the hurting part, and he couldn’t stand for that. Maybe he was being presumptuous, but Gabriel felt like he had to say something.
