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Twice.
Then I knew the sound.
A gun.
Because bullets were now lodged in my body.
CHAPTER TWO
Salvatore
“The legend!” Cesare said as he walked into the brownstone, his arms wide, as if we were the oldest of friends.
When I got pinched, Cesare was probably a kid just like Lorenzo, Emilio, Santi, and Brio had been.
When I got out, he’d been pushed out of the city thanks to some beef he got into with the Lombardi Family, a rival of ours. He’d, apparently, fucked a Lombardi wife, which got a hit put on his head.
The only reason he was allowed back was because that particular Lombardi capo had been caught talking to the Feds. Somehow, Lorenzo—the boss of all bosses—had managed to agree to a deal.
Cesare could come back from Maine.
But only if he took out the man who was talking to the Feds.
From what I heard, he hadn’t found the rat yet. But he was looking, that was for sure.
“Cesare, how you been?” I asked, going in for the hug because that was just what you did, even if it was distant family.
“Turning over rocks looking for a rat,” he said, stepping back. “Looks like we’re getting paired up on a job.”
“Seems that way,” I agreed, nodding.
No one got summoned to the boss’s house after midnight unless there was a pressing situation that needed handling. And, typically, the permanent kind of handling.
I didn’t know a whole lot about Cesare, but I did know that he single-handedly ran things at one of our docks up in Maine, which meant he had to have a lot of guts and an ability to handle problems on his own without any assistance.
That was a good man to have doing a job with you.
Sure, the likes of Brio were the more obvious choice, but he was also not known for his self-control. Or, well, sanity. I preferred a more careful and detached partner for jobs.
“Hope you two got some coffee in you,” Emilio said as he led us into the dining room where Lorenzo—thecapo die capi—was waiting for us. “It might be a long night,” he added, taking his seat.
“Hey guys,” Lorenzo said as he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“What’s going on, man?” Cesare asked, looking over at his cousin. Second cousin? Third? Who knew. It didn’t exactly matter. Family was family.
“We tracked down the crew who jacked our shipment last month,” Lorenzo said, his head going up to the ceiling where a baby was letting out the beginnings of a cry.
“The Lewis Crew. Apparently, the stupid fucks were going around bragging about it,” Emilio piped in, making everyone’s brows raise. Everyone but the boss, whose face went dark.
It seemed that, during Lorenzo’s father’s reign ascapo dei capi, the respect for the mafia had clearly taken a bit of a nosedive. More so than I realized, what with being locked up and all.
On the inside, bosses still got a shitton of respect. They didn’t exactly run the whole prison system anymore, but they damn sure had their fair share.
So it was always a bit of a shock since I got out to realize that the world had sort of forgotten about the mafia. Or believed it no longer existed, or had the same authority it used to.
You heard a lot more these days about gangs, cartels, and even the skinhead organizations. And, sure, they were a force to be reckoned with, even for us.
But Lorenzo had brought the mafia back from the brink of death. This generation was going to be the one to restore the glory to the Family.
