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None of them included what everyone thought I was doing to her. Hell, I had a reputation of making people suffer before I killed them, using various methods that I had learned as an enforcer. My teachers had been more sadistic than I could ever be, but among those trainings, I had picked up some tools that had served me well over the last few years.
Now, as Don, I still liked to get my hands dirty. One of the lessons Cosimo had taught me was to feel my enemies’ pain, that it was the only way I could understand how to torture them effectively.
What could I say? I was a fucking monster.
And I loved it.
“I’ll go check the perimeter,” Rocco said when he realized I wasn’t going to carry on a conversation.
He left me at my office door. I stepped inside, ignoring the newly filled whiskey decanter as I did so. Hell, I no longer wanted to touch the stuff if it was going to have the same effect on my fucking dreams as it had last night.
I fell into my chair and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling. The meeting hadn’t gone well. The fucking client wanted to hire my Mafia out to move his guns, and while I wasn’t opposed to the idea for a few of my capos, he low-balled me on the price.
If he wanted me to do the dirty work, then he was going to pay the right price for it. He left with a threat to go to one of the other Mafias. So naturally I told him to fuck off, knowing he would be crawling back in a few days.
I could be accommodating when I wanted to be, but I wasn’t going to do it for pennies.
That wasn’t the sort of Don I would be. When I first took the title, the power had been tenuous. It wasn’t easy adapting to giving orders. It wasn’t easy managing everybody constantly asking for a share, or figuring out who was going to backstab me.
But I adapted to the task. I spent days trying to sort out information on the entire family, meeting with the capos—even the ones that didn’t see me as their Don—and laying down my version of the law.
It hadn’t been easy. Even now, there were still capos who whispered that I wasn’t the true Don.
Adrian hadn’t helped at all, of course. He kept giving me shit, did everything in his power to be a pain in my ass. He tried to sway the votes and get the other capos to call for me to step down.
An outright mutiny.
But then Carmine’s empire collapsed. A single article, a couple of dead men, and all of a sudden, the boot of the NYPD came down on Carmine’s neck. Seemingly overnight, there was no more D’Agostino Mafia.
His own son dismantled everything he built up. Now, I didn’t doubt that there were loyalties left for the old man’s name, but their days were numbered.
And suddenly, those capos’ whispers got a lot quieter. They’d all seen what happened when a Don falls:
The jungle tore itself down, and guys like them were caught up in it. Chewed up by the sea of change that churned through them. They knew this could happen to Cosimo’s empire. They knew, and so did I.
There were times I had considered letting the same thing happen to Cosimo’s empire and absconding with what I could. But I had a change of heart when even the most mutinous capo knelt down and pledged his life to mine.
All except Adrian.
I used the Cavazzo Mafia to crush the other Mafias, and I spent the last five years doing just that. I leveraged what was left of Cosimo’s influence to steal contracts. I took businesses that had been part of some other Mafia’s for generations.
Money talked, and Cosimo’s dead pockets were deep.
And the entire time, Adrian kept undermining me. Say what you wanted about that little shit, he had a way of swaying enough men to his cause.
Did it matter that I reminded him Cosimo’s will made it plenty clear that I was Don?
No.
And even though the will had been upheld, Adrian had spread the poison of dissent among my ranks. Those capos wouldn’t last long anyway. Either they would fall to me, or I’d send them onto their deaths.
That was the real point of Leda at my side. Once the war inevitably came, the unfaithful would be the first ones to die.
Adrian thought I was bringing Carmine’s wrath down on the family’s head by taking Leda.Not mine, you little shit. Just yours.
My cell rang, and I fished it out of my pocket. Number withheld. Probably that client who came crawling back.
I answered it. “Yeah?”
