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PROLOGUE
JAKUB
THREE MONTHS EARLIER
“What the fuck do you think he wants?” I look at my little brother, Jozef, and shake my head. He is asking the very same question I am wondering. Being summoned by our father is not something that happens often. Especially not to his primary place of business. Not being the trash, my father would rather not flaunt.
Maybe I should go back to the beginning. My father is a Polish crime boss, Mikolaj Zielinska. The position and organization were handed down to him by his father and his father and so on and so forth. His marriage to his wife Anya was arranged by my grandfather. Her father was the biggest exporter of goods, both legal and illegal, and they saw a way for it to benefit them both. Now I should say at the time; my father was dating my mother, Paulina Wojcik, whom he had been dating since high school. She was from the wrong side of the tracks, and as such, she was considered a Kulva, which means whore. By the time my father’s wedding happened, she was already pregnant with me.
You’d think he would take his vows seriously enough to simply take care of the kid he made and not step out on his wife but, nope. My mom, still in love with him, relegated herself to being the mistress. The dirty not-so-secret who bore him yet another son, three years later, two years before the son he had with his new wife. Yeah. My old man is a piece of work. Oh, don’t misunderstand, his wife knew. She didn’t care. She was a chess piece in her father's life, and she knew it. So, she grinned and kept her mouth shut. Hell, it’s not like she had to be around us. My father did a great job at keeping his two families apart. We stayed on the other side of the tracks, in the hood. The place he slummed when he wanted to do his business. Albeit we had the nicest house on the block, but it was the slums, and he knew it.
As we grew older, we began to understand the dynamics of our life, and resentment set in, but by then, we were being groomed to join the low-end part of his business as his bastard sons who would never be good enough. We would be outcast if it weren’t for our grandfather, but he took my brother and me under his wing and showed us what it meant to be a Zielinska, even though we would never bear the name.
As time went on, it became clear his son, his ‘heir’ by his wife, wouldn’t have the cojones for this life; hell, even my Dziadek, grandpa, knows it. He told my father as such, much to his dismay. Ironic, really, when you think about it. The sons he pushed aside and shunned for all intents and purposes are the ones built for the life. You pretty boys don’t have the guts.
Ordinarily, I balk at being summoned by him, respect for him dying a long time ago, but something about this felt different. Like charged with expectation and a bit of reticence. That got my attention.
Too bad I am not psychic because of the bullshit that happens next… hell, not even Satan saw it coming.
ONE
JAKUB
PRESENT DAY
I have no idea how long I have been outside in my car, staring at the entrance to this fucking campus, waiting on the blonde-haired angel to exit the building. For two months, I have been stalking, following, logging everything about the family, trying to find a way in. I found it two weeks ago.
That day three months ago, when my father summoned me and my brother to his office, it was to tell me that the Don of New York and New Jersey, Guiseppe DeSantis, and the four men under him were ambushed and murdered by the Russians, leaving his organization in every city vulnerable. My father felt this was our way in. In his mind, the rest of the DeSantis’ family is weak. When I congratulated him and made to turn my back, he stopped me by telling me he was giving me Chicago, provided I could get Romeo DeSantis, the Don in charge of the Chicago part of the DeSantis family, to surrender his territory.
I stared at him for a minute, sure I heard him wrong about giving this city to me, but he looked me in my eye and told me he knew Goya, his legitimate son by his wife, would never have the heart or kulki, balls for this life and his legacy were more important than a name. My little brother Jozef looked at me slack-jawed, equally as dumbfounded. When he stood and held his hand out for me to shake, cementing my place, something in me shifted. I felt validated for once in my life, not like the garbage he and his wife have made my brother and I feel all these years.
