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I almost spit in his face. Instead, I pulled my arm from his and sat back. “Gia has nothing to do with that part of my life.”
“This is your life, Angelo, which makes your girl part of it, too. Either learn to accept it or do the right thing and let her go.”
Gia could have a real life without me, the one she deserves.
“There’s a reason we fuck strippers,” Marco said. “You’d be smart to do the same.”
None of us spoke another word until we reached a crack house in North Philly. Marco parked in an alleyway and turned off the engine.
“What are we doing here?” I asked my brothers. “You guys got a drug problem I don’t know about?”
“Nope,” Marco opened his door. “We have another job for you.”
“Great,” I muttered with zero enthusiasm. “What’s next? Is Dad turning me into a drug mule?”
We got out of the car, neither of them acknowledging my questions. My brothers were such assholes I often wondered how we shared the same DNA. Marco was the nicer of the two, but when he was around Pete, he was all business. There were two sides to Marco Morelli. Pete only had the one.
A few skinny, strung-out looking girls stumbled out of the house with cigarettes in their mouths. One girl walked over to Pete and tried to touch his arm. He swatted her away before she could get close enough.
“Hey, you got any H?” She took a long drag from her cigarette and then blew the smoke in Pete’s face.
“Go find someone to else blow for a hit.” His mouth twisted in disgust but he never stopped walking. “Fucking dirty whore,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Jerk,” the girl yelled, and Pete smiled.
It was the first real smile I’d seen on his face in a while. The only time he looked happy was when he was carving someone into a pumpkin or getting his dick sucked, and even then, I wasn’t sure what he liked more—sex or choking girls with his cock. He liked killing people. The only thing that really got my brother off was violence, especially when he was the one inflicting the pain.
Once inside the dilapidated house, I almost vomited from the overwhelming stench. I thought the kill room had a sickening smell, but it was nothing compared to the mixture of rotting food, old bong water, sweat, unwashed bodies, and jizz. My stomach lurched as we moved past the nasty people on the floor. Some of the druggies laid on the torn, stained shag carpet, while others were either passed out on mattresses or fucking on them. The sight was appalling. Drugs were my family’s biggest moneymaker, but they were never my thing. Gia was enough of a high for me.
I followed my brothers through the dark, dank house wondering why the fuck we were here. A man in his late twenties tried to grab my foot. I kicked him away from me with the tip of my dress shoe. My jaw clenched, still pissed I had to leave Gia at her father’s party for this shit.
Marco stopped first, his hand held out in front of Pete to block our path. “That’s him.” He nodded at a man who reminded me of someone I knew.
I squinted to get a better look realizing I knew him, except he looked unrecognizable. The last time I saw Antonio Mancuso was when we played on the varsity basketball team together in high school. Now, he looked like Leonardo DiCaprio from The Basketball Diaries. Antonio was the eldest son of Enzo Mancuso, a Capo who worked under my father. The same Capo who was waging war against my family.
Pete pointed at Antonio. “Get his sorry ass off the floor and into the trunk.”
He was talking to me, which was evident when Marco didn’t move a muscle. I had to do all the bitch work for them. It was how I earned my place in the family. My brothers had to do the same years before I was introduced to the organization. My dad showed them the ropes, made it even harder on them than they were on me. I was content with doing the stupid shit my older brothers didn’t want to do. But something about this situation was off.
I crouched down in front of Antonio and attempted to lift him over my shoulder. Moving a drug addict was no different than lifting a dead body. I wasn’t even sure if Antonio was alive. One of his eyes was open, the other rolled into the back of his head.
At least you couldn’t kill someone who was already dead.
I looked up at my brothers. “Can you give me a hand?”
Marco moved to help me while shithead crossed his arms over his chest and waited for us to finish. That motherfucker wasn’t lifting a finger for nobody. As far as Pete was concerned, he’d already paid his dues. He was only here because my father was forcing him to show me the ropes.
After years of doing his bidding, I still had to shadow my brothers. The old man didn’t trust me enough to make the hard decisions on my own.
With Marco’s help, I was able to drag Antonio outside to the car. Pete popped the trunk and flattened the plastic tarps which covered the interior. He stepped back for Marco and me to hoist Antonio up and into the trunk, which was no easy feat. Even though he’d lost some weight, Antonio was around the same height as me. His cheeks were sunken in, his skin pockmarked from doing so many drugs.
We got in the car. Marco drove in silence until we reached one of the new housing developments under the supervision of Enzo Mancuso. I was so confused.
Why were we dumping Antonio’s body at the site his father managed?
Then, it hit me. This was payback for whatever Enzo was plotting against us. My brothers hadn’t filled me in on all the details. They had said it was on a need-to-know basis.
Marco helped me unload Antonio’s body. We dumped him in front of the metal gate, the three of us standing over his body. The headlights from the car provided enough light for me to gain a better look at Antonio’s face. He was sickly, no longer the person I once knew from around the neighborhood.
