No. I was confused. My plan to get him to reveal his secret intentions hadn’t satisfied me and left me needing more. “Thank you, Laius, for sharing your work. Disregarding all the swears, it was very good.”
“Right on,” he mocked and glanced at his peers. “Clap, motherfuckers.”
They obeyed, erupting in whistles, cheers and applause. I snorted and gave a little smile. “Thank you, Laius! You can go back to your seat!”
He turned, giving Murphy a wink on his way back to the desk. Then he tossed the notebook on top of it and slumped down in his seat.
“Laius?” I asked when the class calmed.
“Yes,Miss Meneceo?”
I ignored the clench between my thighs every time he drawled my name in his mixed Italian Southern accent. “What’s the name of your son?”
He stared at me for a second, taken aback. Then his gaze held my face steadily. “Rex.”
Rex? Was I supposed to believe that? Assuming that wasn’t a name you gave a dog rather than your own son, had he not lectured me about the Italian alphabet before? Had he not assumed I checked and knew by now what letters it had? Because I had, and x, just like j, wasn’t included.
How stupid do you think I am, Furore?
“Well, I sincerely hope your time here can be of help to reconnect withRex. I have no doubt you can excel in Creative Writing. Your paragraph while crude is very impressive.” I switched my gaze to the rest of the students, anger coursing under my skin. “What your classmate did here wasn’t just an assignment. He succeeded at using the main pillar of every story out there to make you believe him. He grasped the fundamentals of building a character and outlined our course for us.”
I wrote three letters on the board, hitting hard on the marker, pouring my frustration into a learning experience. How fucking professional of me.GMC. “Goal, motivation and conflict.” I spun and stared at Furore. My student with the accent that made me wet and the eyes that commanded my forbidden orgasms. And my new enemy. “No matter how fictitious or unbelievable your story is, build a character using these three, then give it the right depth with a sad backstory, you’ll have every reader around your finger. They’ll believe and even crave your lies, shed tears for your pain and clap for your talent. That is what constitutes great fiction. It’s magical, isn’t it? But at the end of the day, it’s just another lie.”
CHAPTER 10
Furore
One Week Ago
“Tell me you got something,” I said the second I sat at the table.
“Not even I miss you, bro?” Fort, my Road Captain, grinned in a tease.
“I miss you, bro. Now fucking speak.”
He sighed, losing his grin. He ran a hand through his long, jet black hair, and his thick eyebrows furrowed before he clasped his hands and leaned forward. “I’ve set all our crew and prospects to listen to every whistle and whisper out there.”
I threw a hand in the air in exasperation. Patience hadn’t been my friend in weeks, and now it was taking its last breath. “And?”
“Look, you were right about the Italian honeymoon. It’s over. The Lanza-Bellomo alliance is no more.”
“C’mon, Fort. Give me something I don’t know. Something I can work with.”
“It looks like the Bellomos are gaining turf. They now own Kentucky and Michigan, not just Chicago, and the Irish up north are getting in bed with them. Tino Bellomo is expanding his empire fast, and everybody is game, y’all, even the MCs. He has the Wicked Warriors on his side.”
“So the Lanzas need to expand, too, to counter his move. They can’t rely just on the West. But why the South when it’s the hardest to slip in? Why not go east?”
Fort leaned closer, lowering his voice. “There are rumors Bellomo is planning on taking that, too. He’s already talking with the Italians there, but the only problem is, he has serious beef with the Irish in Boston and New York. They’ll never let him in.”
“The Larvins?” I matched his whisper.
He nodded. “That means one thing. The enemy of my enemy…”
“The Lanzas are getting in bed with them to gain turf in the East. Together they’ll be strong enough to match the Bellomos. Then they’ll come to steal our turf before the Bellomos try to do the same. Fuck.”
“Well, the good news is, Tino Bellomo isn’t a greedy motherfucker. He’s batshit crazy, but he’s like elite and territorial as fuck. He protects what he has, and I don’t reckon he’s stupid enough to waste it on a useless war in the South. The Italian Mafia has tried for years to get on our land, but it always ends in loss of money and blood. We’re immune, bro. Texas is a fucking fort, like me.” He laughed, his big body shaking with humor I couldn’t share.
“The Lanzas look desperate enough to try something as stupid as going toa useless war.”
