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While my father was a calculatingMafia leader, my mother, Clarissa Sartori, was your typical pampered Mafia wife. I couldn’t remember a time when she’d done anything more than cater to my father, raise his children, and spend his money. Always well put together, she didn’t even mind his affairs as long as the woman in question wasn’t a threat to the lifestyle to which she’d become accustomed.
I also had ayounger brother, Elio, and while he was a dutiful son, loyal Capo, and violent little fuck, he was also spoiled, reckless, and unpredictable. At thirty, he’d never had to work hard for anything in his life, unlike me. From birth, my future had been mapped out to take over the family, and I’d been working all my life towards that goal, the Underboss position being handed to me earlier than anyone would have guessed or thought wise.
However, what people didn’t know was that I ran the family more than my father did these days. For the past five years, I’d been involved with every decision regarding the family, and I called the shots for the most part. Sure, I still consulted with my father about certain things, but when it was all said and done, he mostly just stayed out of my way.
It was also a matter of safety. While a lot of people would argue that my father was a ruthless bastard, the manplayed no games when it came to his family. So, as long as Renzo Milano, Emil Schulz, Declan O’Brien, and Avgust Kotov thought that Marco Sartori was still calling the shots, then the focus wasn’t on me, and I could make moves without any of them knowing the truth.
So, with everything going as planned, the only thing left was to get married, then work on building myown family dynasty. While my mother had chosen to give my father only two sons, I wanted four children to follow in my footsteps. I also didn’t care whether they were all boys or all girls. I was cunning enough to make sure that my legacy lasted centuries beyond my death.
After Susanna Calvetti had passed away and what was left of the Calvetti family had merged with the Milanos, my father had been quick to hash out another arranged marriage to strengthen our numbers. As Renzo Milano had been denied sons, he and my father had arranged a marriage between me and Renzo’s youngest daughter, Fia. The arrangement would benefit the Milanos more than it would us, but at the end of it all, we’d outnumber the Irish, Russians, and Germans significantly enough to keep them all in line. Though things were peaceful right now, that could change at any given moment, something that we were all very aware of. There was also the fact that the coastline fell within the Sartori territories, making our import and export business very fucking profitable.
Like most of the families, we dealt in drugs, guns, gambling, and prostitution, though we had plenty of legitimate businesses to launder our money the right way. However, since we controlled most of the coastline, that was where most of our business was conducted, and if anyone wanted to use our ports, we made them pay a high price for that privilege.
At any rate, I was tomarry Fia Milano, ensuring our place in this city and the state, really. The others would have to be suicidal to bring war to our doorstep, something that I didn’t necessarily mind. If we were to ever take over all the other territories, then we could move forward with taking control of the entire East Coast, something that could easily be done if we wiped out the other families.
The only problem with Fia Milano was that she was just as spoiled as Elio, if not more. Raised to be a true Mafia princess, she had no ambition, knew nothing about accountability, and very little was required of her. She’d been brought up to look pretty, behave obediently, and produce children, but nothing much more than that. It was also obvious that Fia Milano was not her father’s favorite. Though spoiled as they came, he had put no effort into rearing her. Fia was a product of Sonya Milano, and it was clear as day whenever you saw the two women together.
Yeah, no, it was easy to see that Renzo’s favorite child was his eldest daughter, Kasen Milano. For whatever reason, he had given Kasen choices that he hadn’t given Fia, and at thirty-two, Kasen was a successful criminal attorney, and she was so far removed from the family that she didn’t even have a guard assigned to her. She lived a regular life with a regular profession, and everyone seemed just fine with it, something that I’d never understood. Nevertheless, Renzo had allowed this, and Fia was the one that had been groomed to fit into the life that she’d been raised in.
“It’s done.”
Drying my hands, I turned to look at my brother. Only one inch shorter than my six-foot-three, Elio had inherited our mother’s features, making him the pretty one. Though we’d both inherited our father’s brown hair and brown eyes, I had taken after Marco in just about everything else. I was every bit my father’s son, and it was easy to mistake us for one another from afar.
“I want his head preserved for the next Capo meeting,” I told him. “I want it to serve as the centerpiece at the meeting.” Elio smirked. “I want everyone to see what happens when the only answer they have for me is ‘I don’t know’.”
“There’s plenty of room in Alaska,” he replied easily.
Alaska was a warehouse that we owned, and we used it for almost all our kills. It used to be an oldslaughterhouse, and it had come to us equipped with plenty of storage freezers for when we needed them. From the outside, it looked like a decrepit old building, but the inside was a state-of-the-art torture chamber.
“I also want to keep an eye on all of Romeo’s soldiers,” I added. “I’m still not convinced that this was an innocent mistake.”
“Sure thing.”
Greed was a real problem with a lot of people, and it was that same greed that had them believing that no one would miss a pound or two of cocaine when the shipment weight was in the thousands.
Well, they were wrong.
At the end of theday, I was a businessman, and all my books were straight, right down to the last penny. Nothing came up missing that I didn’t know about, and second chances weren’t anything that I ever handed out; not even if it was Christmas.
“Did everything go well with the other sample shipment last night?”
“Relax, Nero,”he chuckled. “You’re going to grow old before your time if you keep stressing out.”
“I’m not stressed out,” I informed him. “I’m still pissed off.”
Granted, even if I was stressed out, I’d never let him know it.
Chapter 2
Kasen~
It’d been a long day, but that was okay. I lived for the pressures of my job, and I was at my best when I was working. In fact, I worked so much that it could be argued that I didn’t have much of a life outside of my office. Nevertheless, I was perfectly okay with that. I’d been given an opportunity that I shouldn’t have, and I was very aware of that.
My father was Renzo Milano, andhe was the Mafia Boss of the Milano Crime Family. I’d been born under his reign as head of the family, and I’d been learning about loyalty and vengeance during an age when other kids had been learning their colors and numbers. I was my father’s firstborn, and he had raised me to be strong, independent, and loyal; all characteristics that I still practiced to this day. My father had encouraged me to use my voice, and I did so often.
My mother, Sonya Milano was a typical Mafia wife, and though she was smarter than most Mafiawives, she was still just a woman in that world. My mother knew her place, and she had raised my younger sister, Fia, to act just like her. They were both beautiful accessories to the powerful men that surrounded them, and good for them if that’s what made them happy.
I, on the other hand, had been allowed to go to college and law school to become acriminal lawyer. I’d been nine-years-old when I’d told my father that I wanted to be a lawyer, and I’d been nine-years-old when he had promised me that I could grow up to become whatever I wanted. Of course, at the time, he’d been placating a fanciful child, never imagining that I would hold him to his word years later. The first and only time that my father had tried to talk me out of becoming a lawyer, I had challenged his honor, pointing out that a man’s word was a man’s word, no matter if he gave it to an adult or child.
