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“Watch out!” I yelled.
But it was too late.
Pace was too slow.
Our captor grabbed his knife and shoved it so deep into Pace’s stomach that his fingers almost disappeared.
Pace turned to me and whispered one last word. “Fight.”
CHAPTER ONE
“I never lie to any man because I don’t fear anyone. The only time you lie is when you are afraid.” —John Gotti
Santino
I hated them.
All of them.
The hatred was built into me from day one. The Cosa Nostra had risen in power so severely, so quickly, that the Families of old were now reporting to Americans.
Because that’s how I saw them.
Selfish. Stuck up. Pussy. Americans.
And nothing was going to change my mind—not even the fact that my grandfather was happier than I’d seen him in a very long time.
It burned that the man I was now reporting to was related to me by blood, that his blood was mixed with the dirty Russians—the only thing worse than the Americans currently sitting inside that small room deciding my fate.
I wasn’t even given a chance to vote.
After all, my life wasn’t my own.
So I killed and killed and killed some more and used blood to buy my own freedom.
One more task.
And I was done.
The blood would still be on my hands, but at least they would let me walk away because, unlike the American bastards, at least the Italians, my grandfather, had a soul.
Or so I was told, too many times for me to count. Having a conscience, or a soul, it’s a weakness in the mafia, it’s everything they breed out of you before you’re born, then condition you away from when you’re young, or in my case, they hit it out of you.
Beat you until you can’t see straight.
When I was eight, I nearly went blind in my right eye because my dad had so much blood running down his swollen knuckles that he was afraid of nerve damage, so he found the closest thing he could find.
A chair.
He broke a leg off. I still remember him raising it high over his head, the look of rage on his face—but what I think I remember the most is the look of pain as if he was beating himself and me.
The cycle, of course, continued until I was strong enough to fight back. After all, wasn’t that what he wanted in the first place? To raise someone willing to do anything in order to protect The Family? Our birthright? Our name?
The great Sinacores.
I shook the memory from my soul, not just my head. It wasn’t enough to stop thinking about it. I had to stop feeling it because feeling made you believe it was true, that you were wronged.
How could training your son to become a weapon be wrong?
