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I still wasn’t entirely sure it was worth saving, but even an asshole has a self-preservation instinct. Especially one who now faced his opponents with his fists up every damn time, whatever the odds.
Tonight’s fight had nudged me even further up the ladder. It had taken me months to get this far. As a full-blooded Italian, technically my rightful starting position was as a man of honor, someone with direct access to the capo and with all the bennies that afforded.
Money, status. Women.
So many fucking women.
There was only one problem with that. I wasn’t moving into the position in my father’s organization granted by my birthright. That would be too simple. No, my destination was much loftier—and most would say, stupider. A certain death wish for a man who cheated death and all its snarling cousins on a weekly basis.
The organization I was attempting to ascend to the heights of belonged to my father’s greatest rival—Roberto Andretti.
The father of the woman I’d loved and had
planned to marry.
The woman Roberto had seen killed, rather than have her end up with me.
I’d been the target of that bullet. Did I know that for certain? As certain as anyone can be when a message is sent their way without a pretty name tag attached. I’d been warned, many times. So had Emilia. We’d begged and pleaded and eventually, simply ignored. Young and dumb and naïve, we’d believed we could love our way through anything.
Even a hail of gunfire.
Yeah, well, we’d been wrong. And the dual cemetery plot in Woodlawn Cemetery proved that.
But I was still alive. As long as I had breath in my body, I would fight for the chance to look in Roberto’s cold, black eyes while I slowly, methodically squeezed out every drop of life.
Tonight, in one of the endless back rooms of The Pyramid Club after a technical knockout in the first round with a fighter who’d been groomed to beat me, I would move one step closer.
Whatever it took. I wouldn’t blink. Wouldn’t hesitate.
The one good thing about being willing to die? You had nothing fucking left to lose.
I entered the blinged out VIP room with my swagger fully in place. My crowd of sycophants trailed me, shouting their excitement, pumping their fists. I slapped hands and bumped knuckles until my already bruised hands were even sorer, but my smile never faltered.
The champagne was flowing, and the girls were dressed in skimpy outfits that provided a handy distraction from the worry pushing at the back of my mind. That no matter how I thought I’d prepared myself for this night, the game could always be altered. I might posture with the best, but that didn’t change the fact that I was so out of my depth here that I usually had to whale on a heavy bag the moment I left just to get the air pumping in my lungs again.
This wasn’t me. Any of it. Or it hadn’t been before. At some point, the pretending probably took root. I couldn’t be the same man after all of this as I’d been before.
If I even still existed at all.
“Gio, my man, you looked amazing out there tonight.” Z, one of Lorenzo Donato’s most trusted associates and therefore someone I wanted to be closer to, clapped me on the back. “You are a fucking beast.”
“Well, yeah, but who kissed and told?” My grin was second nature, as was the quip that came to hand as easily as the uppercut that could break a competitor’s jaw with a single blow.
Not that I’d done that tonight. I hadn’t needed to. My skill at assessing an opponent and deciding the fastest way to break him had saved my neck a dozen times. I hoped my streak held while I was in the company of these men.
A beautiful redhead with large, liquid brown eyes and an ass that wouldn’t quit sashayed past in a skimpy cocktail dress that clung to her every curve. This time, my grin was real.
There were ladies here too. Couldn’t forget the ladies.
I never did. They were what made the long hours of bullshit bearable. That and the knowledge of what awaited me if I kept climbing. Vengeance. Redemption. A second chance.
I’d settle for one of those, if I couldn’t have all three.
Z laughed, clutching his stomach as if I’d just said the most amusing thing he’d ever heard. He was dressed in unrelieved black like most of Lorenzo’s men. Their ties were the exception. There was a rainbow of them in this room.
Z’s was bright spring green.
“Funny you should say that. I find rumors to be so tedious, don’t you?”
