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Prologue
It didn’t matter that my father was still alive; it didn’t matter that he was still the face of the family.Everyone knew that our power came from the rivers of blood thatIhad created in the streets and still did. While our family had been comfortably established way before I had come into my teens, the past twenty years had turned us into something entirely different.
No one could compete with us now.
While there were families out there that were still powerful as hell, they still couldn’t compete with our numbers, our money, our territory, or our level of ruthlessness. Where they were rich, we were wealthy. Where they were deadly, we were unforgiving. Where they were powerful, we were absolutely fearless. Where they were important, we were fucking royalty.
I alsohadn’t come into being the youngest Underboss ever by being fucking stupid. I was always one step ahead of our enemies and even my own family. While my father was brilliant, I was a fucking genius, and for twenty years, I’d been doing everything right, doing everything that would earn me the number one position in this family.
I’d done more than kill people. I’d done more than make millions. I’d done more to corrupt this city than anyone before me. If there was a politician, judge, police chief, or cop in this town that wasn’t in my pocket, then I didn’t know him. This entire city was bought and paid for, and I had the motherfucking receipt in my pocket.
Not the family.
Not my father.
Not my brother.
Me.
Staringout at the grounds of my estate, there was only one thing missing from everything that was already mine. There was only one thing that I needed to complete my ideal reign. No matter what anyone believed, no matter how many men bragged about their freedoms, no matter how independent a man claimed to be, total power could not be achieved without the right woman at your side.
Women were unlike anything that men could ever aspire to be. Men would easily killor die for the woman that they loved; it was simple like that. We were designed to protect, so that’s how we proved our love. As long as our women were safe, then nothing else mattered.
That wasn’t the case with women.
When a woman loved a man, there was no limit to the things that she would do for him. She would lie, cheat, steal, kill, die, or fight a war for him if that’s what was needed of her. If a woman loved a man, then she was willing to sacrifice pieces of herself that would never heal if she felt like she had to. Women were willing to break themselves a million times over for a man, and more often than not, that man didn’t deserve it.
Plus, if that wasn’t amazing enough, what a woman did for her children was even more astounding. If you lived in a world as dangerous as mine, there was no comfort like knowing that your children were safe because a mother’s love was incomparable to anything else on earth. A mother’s love was the most dangerous thing that the wicked could encounter, and a lot of pedophiles and child abusers had the justice system to thank for still being alive.
So, no matter what’d been achieved over these past twenty years, there was still a piece of the puzzle missing, and it was abigpiece. In fact, it was a good three-fourths of the puzzle. A woman could easily love a demon, and that’s what I needed. I needed a woman that was strong enough to see past everything that my family was and did, seeing to the man that was at the heart of me.
Not just anyone could sit at the head of the table with me. Where most of the men in my line of work preferred to have the perfectly styled Mafia wife at their side, I didn’t need a woman that knew how to contour her makeup to perfection. I didn’t need a woman that could recognize last season’s styles from this season’s wardrobe. I didn’t need a woman that knew which fucking fork to use at the country club.
No.
I needed a woman that wouldn’t hesitateto put a bullet through someone’s skull if they posed a threat to her, me, or our children. I needed a woman that wouldn’t shy away from the screams of torture coming from the basement. I needed a woman that could step in and take my place if I got hurt, or for that matter, killed.
Luckily for me, I already had the perfect woman in mind for such a role.
Chapter 1
Nero~
I watched the red-tinted waterswirl down the drain, though nothing that I hadn’t seen a million times already. After all, I hadn’t become the youngest Underboss in family history by keeping my hands clean. I’d done it by practically bathing in the blood of our enemies, and I’d been doing it since before I even hit puberty. So, at thirty-two, another dead body wasn’t that big of a deal.
Port Townsend was a fairly large city in the state ofMaryland, and contrary to what people liked to believe, the Mafia was still very much alive and well on this side of the country. While there were other Mafia families out on the West Coast, most of the organized crime families stayed on this side of the Mississippi. Business was just better when there were powerful public servants that understood how things worked. Over past Nevada, people in political positions were still trying to make a difference, and no one needed that kind of fucking headache.
So, there were five families that ran Port Townsend, but the truth of the matter was deeper than that. We owned the entire state, truth be told. When you had damn near every politician in the state in your pocket, there wasn’t much that you couldn’t do, and lucky for us, our governing body was just as corrupt as the rest of them.
Now, like with most Mafia empires, the city’s territories were divided amongst the families. Port Townsend was large enough to support five different legacies, and for the most part, we stayed out of each other’s way, but not always. While the movies liked to glorify the violence side of our lives, at the heart of it all, we were a business, and profit usually won over temper.
The five Mafia familiesof Port Townsend were the Kotovs, the O’Briens, the Schulzes, the Milanos, and us, the Sartoris. We were a diverse group, but it wasn’t lost on anyone how two of the families were Italian.
At one point in time, Tommaso Calvetti had also beena powerful player in the game, but bad deals and violent tempers had done his family in. Years ago, when he’d begun to see the writing on the wall, he and my father, Marco Sartori, had ironed out a deal for me to marry his only daughter, and I honestly hadn’t cared one way or the other. However, unfortunately for her family, she’d gotten sick, dying at a young age. Once the mourning period had passed, he had joined with Renzo Milano, almost matching our numbers in strength.
Almost.
Luckily, we also outnumbered the Irish, Germans, and Russians in force. Marco Sartori was the head of the Sartori Crime Family, and he’d done nothing but expand our empire after my grandfather had handed down the reins. While all the families had long family ties, we could trace our lineage back hundreds of years, and our hold on this city was ironclad.
