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WhiskeyUndertheRocks, Devil’s Hollow.
Tension drips off the craggy ceiling, and underneath it, made men plot revenge against one of their own.
Voices are low and expressions are somber. Leaning against the bar gives me a view of the club through a wide-angle lens, and I drink it all in over the rim of my low-ball glass.
“What do you call a nightclub full of quiet Viscontis?”
My gaze skims left, where Castiel, my oldest cousin and soon-to-be capo of Devil’s Hollow—if Uncle Alonso ever fucking checks out—is pouring out two fingers of whiskey.
I cock my head and consider the punchline. “No idea.”
“Me either. Never seen it before.”
He smirks and I huff out a sardonic laugh. I down the rest of my whiskey in one, but before I slam the glass against the bar, he grabs it from my hand.
“Easy there, cugino,” he drawls. “This bar top is African Blackwood. Just had it fitted last week.”
My eyes fall to his ring-clad hand caressing the wood grain. “If you touched your woman like that, she might not be sitting in the corner swiping right on every man on Tinder.”
We both look up at Alyona. She’s the long-legged heiress to Russia’s largest vodka distillery and Cas’s unwilling fiancée. By the way he’s glaring at her, I don’t doubt the feeling is mutual. She sits crossed-legged in a velvet booth with a face like a spanked ass, eyes glued to her cell. Sure enough, her thumb is working overtime.
Cas grunts and refills my glass with Smugglers Club whiskey. Sometimes, I wonder if being the CEO of the company means he ever gets sick of drinking it. He gently slides a napkin across the bar and places my glass on top of it, before bringing his to his own lips. “I wish Dante would have given me a heads up he was going to blow up the port tonight,” he mutters into the amber liquid. “I’d have dropped her slap-bang in the middle of it.”
“Such a hopeless romantic.”
“I’ll leave that title to Vicious.” His cell vibrates in his pocket. After pulling it out, he glances at the screen and strides away with it to his ear.
I swipe my fresh drink and regard my brother Angelo and his new wife with the same level of interest one has when watching a David Attenborough documentary. They’re standing in the center of the room, oblivious to the tense conversations being had around them. Angelo’s hands are cupped tightly around Rory’s jaw as he murmurs something for her ears only. His dinner jacket is slung over her shoulders, concealing most of her wedding dress.
Mild amusement prickles at my skin. Angelo’s nickname isn’t Vicious for nothing. He’s forcing a calm exterior for his wife’s sake, but the vein thumping in his left temple tells me he’s going to slip away to an empty room at the first opportunity and rip apart everything in sight.
His temper is, and always has been, like a gas leak. Bring a small flame near him and he explodes, seemingly out of nowhere.
Sometimes, I wonder if he really did go straight for nine years, or if it was a long fever dream on my part.
I’d like to say he returned to the Cosa Nostra and finally claimed his rightful role as the capo of Devil’s Dip because he came to his senses, but it was actually because he lost his fucking mind.
Long story short, he wanted Uncle Alberto’s twenty-one-year-old fiancée, and when he didn’t immediately hand her over on a silver platter, he popped a bullet in the old man’s head and started a war with his eldest son and successor, Dante.
I knew Dante was a cunt the moment he cheated at one of my poker nights, but I didn’t realize he was lobotomized, too. He blew up the Devil’s Dip port, which all three Visconti outfits, including his own, run their businesses out of.
Angelo and Rory break into a game of tongue tennis, and I’d rather pop my eyeballs out than watch the match. So, I shift my gaze to Gabe, our youngest brother and newly appointed consigliere of the Devil’s Dip outfit. He’s sitting at a poker table with three of his most-trusted soldati. Like Angelo, he’s calm in appearance, but his gaze is lit like a live wire.
My brother is a mystery, and despite being as thick as thieves growing up, all I know about him now is that he has a constant hard-on for violence and a hatred for sharp tailoring. I’ve probably seen him in a suit twice in my life: today at Angelo’s wedding, and nine years ago at our parents’ funeral. As he grunts orders at his men, he twists his bow tie around his fists, like he’s weighing up who he should strangle with it.
He suddenly stabs the map on the table with a thick finger, and a figure flinches in the booth behind him.
It’s the lady my cousin Benny picked up at the wedding. My eyes skim over her then move an inch to the right, to the idiot himself. He meets my gaze with a smug smirk, then raises his glass to me. Cheers.
I wipe my hand across my mouth in a poor attempt to hide my amusement. Seems like only minutes ago Nico and I were watching him shoot his shot with her on the dance floor, taking bets on how long it would be until she kicked him in the nuts.
“You owe me twenty grand.”
Speaking of Nico. He saddles up beside me at the bar and pours out two shots of Don Julio ‘42. He slides one across to me with a flick of his wrist, giving zero shits about the African Blackwood.
“Read the room, cugino. Now’s not the time to be settling trivial bets.”
Nico laughs. “Double or nothing says he fucks her.”
