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Within seconds the front door opens, and I hear the storm of feet coming in my direction.
“Ready?” Gino asks.
“Yeah. Take his ass to the Lodge,” I mutter.
I nod to Paolo, who like Gino, relocated with me. Carmine remained behind in Italy, and Ermes will be over at the end of the month.
“We’ve got a cleanup crew on the way. I’ll meet you there,” Paolo says.
He’s already coordinated with Johnny’s cleanup crew to clean this house and destroy any evidence that either Rocco or I left behind. This house was Johnny and Maria’s getaway; one that no one in the families knew anything about. They didn’t even share its location with their mothers. The only way that Rocco found Maria was because he’d followed her from her home yesterday to this destination, and he’d foolishly shared it with his cousins.
***
OUR DRIVE IS ONLY TWENTYminutes before we arrive at our next destination. One of Alessandro’s former torture houses in the woods is known as the Lodge.
“We’re waiting for Paolo?” Gino asks.
“Yeah,” I say, lighting a cigar as I lean against my rental.
“I can haul him in, Boss,” Gino says.
Shaking my head, I say, “No. I’m taking no fucking chances on shit going wrong.”
“He’s almost dead, Marco.”
“The fuck I say!” I holler.
Gino waves his hands and says, “Sorry.”
Shaking my head, I glance up at him. “No, I’m sorry.”
Gino’s eyes widen because I never apologize for my actions. I know a thousand emotions are whirling in my head, and I don’t want to attack Gino because of them. I remove the keys from my back pocket and toss them his way.
“Make sure everything’s in place as it should be. It’s been years since this place has been used.”
Gino nods and disappears inside.
While he’s checking the equipment, I’m lost in my thoughts. Now that I’m back in Atlanta, keeping Piper off my mind is hard. It would be my fucking luck that the moment that I’m free to claim her as my own that she belongs to another.
I’ve made men disappear for less. But could she ever forgive me?
Anger and jealousy have my jaw clenching. I’ve never been jealous about a bitch before, but neither have I ever wanted someone as badly as I want Piper. She’s not a bitch. She’s completely a woman.
I want that girl so badly that I’d give up eating pussy for a lifetime to make her mine. I’d give up fucking all the beautiful women at my disposal if she’d just be mine. If it hadn’t been for my vow to my father and the don, I’d have left Grazie long ago.
I may be a cheating bastard, a maniacal murderer, and I may have respect for nothing and no one, but I am a man of my word. It’s all that I have when it comes to values and morals. If a man doesn’t have his word, he’s got shit. No matter how wealthy he may be or the harem of women at his beck and call. Doesn’t matter the power he wields or the number of men he commands. None of that means shit without his word. That’s the only lesson I ever learned from my bastard of a father.
I know Paolo has arrived when I hear gravel crunching down the road. Gino steps outside, and I realize he’s been in there quite a while giving me the space he knows I need to clear my mind.
I don’t utter a word, stand back, and watch as Paolo and Gino pull a handcuffed Rocco from the covered truck bed. He doesn’t have much strength, but he’s trying to kick up a fight as they drag him into the Lodge.
It’s an old cabin that’s been in the family for decades but has been transformed into a torture chamber. When we step inside, the musty scent of the place being closed for so long hits me, but it’s nothing compared to the memories of the stench of old blood, rotting flesh, and death.
This place has been cleaned a thousand times; but I know what it smelled like all those times, it’s ingrained in my memory. I know that’s what is assaulting my senses now.
I follow my men as they walk through the living room with its old, dusty beat-up furniture and to the rear bedroom. Within less than five minutes, Gino and Paolo have Rocco strapped to a wooden contraption formed in the shape of a capital T.
His head hangs off the end of the T, and his arms are stretched out on the wings of the T. After strapping two fifty-pound weights to a pulley system, Gino places a weight in each of Rocco’s hands.
