Page 18 of Pretty Lies

FOUR

“WHAT’S THE PLAN?”

In the passenger seat of the black ‘69 Shelby Mustang—that his uncle demanded to be the only thing Cory ever drove him around in—Theo smirked at Cory’s question. “When do I ever have something like a plan, Cory?”

“But isn’t that basically our everyday plan?”

Theo glanced over at him. “I mean—”

“You should just say the usual. Would have saved us this entire conversation.”

“You’re such a shit.” Theo’s laughter colored up the car. “Don’t make me laugh before I have to do business, Cory. Makes it harder to keep a straight face.”

“Sometimes smiling when you get work done is worse. Trust me—a man that can beat the hell out of you with a smile will fuck with your head worse than one who won’t.”

His uncle considered that.

Only for a second.

“Good point.”

To another high-ranking man in the Outfit, a chat like that would have probably earned Cory a smack, or worse. Definitely a whole conversation with his father about disrespect and boundaries. All fun things.

Not.

Except this wasn’t any other man. This was Cory’s uncle. His mother’s brother that he’d taken his middle name from. His godfather, too. People liked to say his carefree attitude and behavior came more from his uncle than his own father, Damian.

They probably weren’t wrong.

It didn’t matter that Theo had decades of experience and years on his nephew, either. They were always more friends than anything else. Even when his chance to dabble in the family business—mob business—came up shortly before his sixteenth birthday to mentor under his uncle, Cory didn’t hesitate to say yes.

Next to a portfolio of businesses that he kept with his brother for the purpose of hiding, laundering, or washing cash, his main business with the Outfit revolved around working with his uncle. The Outfit’s front boss, and the only man keeping the streets mean.

It appeared like Theo called all the shots to anyone who might be watching. Outside organizations. Officials. Even people on the streets. It was a rather significant seat in the Outfit’s tiers of power because when all the attention was on his uncle and the business he did while on the streets, it kept their eyes far away from what was really happening inside the mob.

Like Tommas—a man he knew as his uncle but was really Cory’s second cousin by blood—the real boss.

And all the illegal deals he had going.

It worked.

Well.

“You’re going to kill this shit when it’s you,” Theo said absently as he turned to watch the familiar buildings on the east end pass them by. Their destination was coming up in three blocks, so whatever had his uncle in his retrospective feelings was going to have to be packed away in a few moments. “They worry all the time—think you won’t be ready. Some shit, that. You’ll be fine.”

“What?” Cory asked, his grip on the wheel tightening.

Theo didn’t even turn to face him when he scoffed under his breath and said, “Come on, Cory. Don’t pretend like you’re unaware of the shit you do. Trouble doesn’t just find you. It’s not like you’re stumbling on it. You actively look for it.”

Yeah, yeah. His self-preservation was shit, and he had little to no moral compass. Safe was boring. Same shit, different day. That also wasn’t what he’d meant.

“Why’d you say when it was me doing this?”

That had his uncle turning in the seat.

Face to face, it was much more obvious to Cory how he had taken more of the DeLuca side of his family genes than the Rossi in appearance. The hard, sharp planes of his uncle’s face was an older mirror of his own right down to the masculine grin and jawline that could cut steel. The only difference was the eyes.

Theo, with his brown.