AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But the one job that mattered most was a job I fucking failed.
I don’t want to hurt Giana. I want to hurt her fucking father.
I want to rip him to shreds, starting by slicing and dicing that smirk off his smug fucking face.
His men are just as bad as he is and no doubt do the majority of his dirty work.
I want them all to die painful, horrible, slow deaths by my own merciless hand.
Because even though we don’t have concrete proof that the Amatos are behind the death of my wife and sister, I know it was them. It was cold, hard, brutal retaliation. And they’re the only enemies we have who would ever bring harm to women.
It’s the reason my father refuses to bring the wrath down on the Amatos yet. No proof, no vengeance. If I were the boss, things would be real fucking different. Every single Amato would be gutted by now—proof be damned.
Managing a deep breath, I thumb a text to my family. To my father, our Underboss, the consigliere, and our capos, telling them to get here and get here now before I lose my mind and go to Amato’s house and gut him like the pig he is in broad daylight.
My wife. My sister, Sofia. Both dead at the hands ofGiana’sfamily.
The Amato fuckers will pay.
And it will be in the form of their sweet, naïve little princess.
Not with her blood…but…in some way.
I just need to bide my time and figure out how.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, the last of my family has rolled into the office, and I can finally explain what we have on our hands. I tell them about Giana, how she waltzed into my club as if she wasn’t a member of our biggest rival’s family.
Immediately, the men around me start to lose their cool, standing and shouting that payback is finally within reach.
“Quiet,” my father, Romeo DeSantis, the boss, calmly says. Loud enough to be heard over the incessant shouts from our capos, me included, but calm enough to strike an eerie chill throughout the room.
I look at him, the man I’m a near spitting image of, only younger and much less levelheaded, although I’ll never admit it. His black hair is graying. Fifty-nine years old, and he’s finally starting to look more his age. He sits in the head chair in my office, reminding me I’m a capo in this family. I’m not one of the highest-ranked men. Not yet. I’ll be taking orders from my father for a long time to come.
I just wish he would drop the cool demeanor sometimes. I wish he’d want to get his hands a little dirty, like he did when I was a kid. Wish he’d want our enemies to pay as much as I do. You’d think he would, after his only daughter, my sister, Sofia, was taken by the Amato fucks. That he would want those pieces of shit to burn for what they’ve done.
Instead, he remains stoic. And that feels like both a blessing and a fucked-up curse.
“You’re all fucking thinking with your balls instead of your brain,” Romeo says, his voice so low in the room you could hear a pin drop. “Payback.” He lets the word linger in the air, looking around the room with his dark stare, focusing on each of us one by one. “Payback is an art form, boys. It’s not something we rush; it is something we carefully construct until we have every single piece in place. Like a game of chess, it’s a well-thought-out war. A war we don’t havesolidevidence to wage yet.”
He glances toward me while he sits forward in the maroon chair, lacing his fingers together as he places his arms on the desk in front of him.
“I’m well aware that some of you”—he makes a point to look directly at me, as if he can read my every thought—“think I haven’t done enough in the aftermath of Sofia and Julissa. This war the Amatos have waged on us is one I am confident we will win.
“We will get our vengeance. I am a man of my word, but you need to stand down and let me continue to do what I do best and lead. I, too, believe they were behind this. But I can’t allow more bloodshed before I am one hundred percent certain it was them. I refuse.”
I shake my head, pissed off at the same old answer.
“We have Gabriel Amato’s daughter in the palms of our hands.” I grit the words out, each one stinging the tip of my tongue as they fall from my lips. “Do you expect me to give that up? This is the exact scenario we can use against them. How do we just let this go?”
“I expect you to stand down until myself, Francesco, and Leonardo have time to think about this. We’ve been forming a plan of retaliation for months, and once we have all of the pieces in place, we will strike. Now, if you can bring me some of this proof that you don’t seem to care about, nor think it important, things will move much more quickly. But this is new information—having Giana Amato so close—and acting quickly on a whim like your suggestion is a childish game. I hope you aren’t leading your soldiers like this, son.”
I want to tell him to fuck off. This is my wife and my sister—his fucking daughter—we’re talking about. This isn’t a childish game; this is the revenge we’ve been salivating over since Julissa was left on my doorstep and since Sofia went missing.
I don’t tell him to fuck off, though—a mafia hierarchy has its ranks, and I know better than to overstep.
I’ll sit back and allow him to come up with his beloved little plan, but in reality, I’m moving forward with the Amato woman. As the meeting goes on, their words droning on in the background, I concoct my own plan.
