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The Bernardi stares down at me as we stand there, transfixed, and he hasn’t noticed what I’ve noticed: the SWAT team is sweeping back this way.
I grab him, that thick neck hard as concrete under my curling hand, and press a kiss to his lips. He kisses back and I’m surprised yet again by him, not expecting such passion from this heavy-featured man. I break it off, push him back a little, pantomiming, as though I can’t believe what I’m doing…
And then I make my move.
I rear back, pulling up my knee, and put my back into it when I kick out, making sure to get him high in the belly, wind him as well as off-balance him. He flies backward with an almost comical look of shock, and I just have time to wiggle my fingers at him,Goodbye, before he falls off the edge.
I time my flattening on the roof to coincide with the noise of him hitting the ground, and the SWAT team shout goes up. Below me, I hear a groan, and then it sounds as though the Bernardi Enforcer is healthy enough to get to his feet and run.
Stagger, anyway.
SWAT has taken the bait, chasing after him. I drop down noiselessly from the back of the container, and I run like hell.
It occurs to me just as I duck through the hole in the wire fence: his name.
The Lion, they call him. The Bernardi Lion.
But his name is Leo.
CHAPTER2
LEO
I’m goingto kill Julian Castellani.
I don’t care what my father wants. I’m going to find that Castellani asshole, kick him off the tallest building in Los Angeles, and enjoy his screams on the way down.
Or maybe I’ll just ask him to sit on my dick. He sure seemed interested last night, right before he sentmeoff the edge of that shipping container.
I can take a lot and keep on going. So I’m not bothered by the fact that I hit the ground hard enough to see stars. It’s not even the blatant betrayal, right after a distracting kiss, that has me all worked up.
It’s the fact that I didn’t see it coming.
That fucker played me like a violin, and that makes me angry. Angry enough that right now, getting humiliated in front of my brothers, and the old fucks who hold positions of power in this Family, my only thoughts are of Julianus Aurelius Castellani.
He’s killed too many of us over the years, and only escalated in recent times. He killed and froze and dumped a good man out in the desert, just for fun. He slaughtered half a crew out at the docks, single-handedly, and made a mockery of their corpses.
He’s had his fun. Now it’s my turn.
“You are an embarrassment,” my father rails, banging his cane down on the cement floor to emphasize his point. And hell, I have to agree. I got fooled by a Castellani, and that thought is the one that stings the most. “You are a disgrace! What the hell were you doing at the docks in the first place?”
I keep my eyes down and picture the light dying in Castellani’s eyes as I choke the life out of him. Unfortunately, my fantasies swerve without my permission, into how he’d look mid-orgasm with my hands around his throat.
Perhaps that’s why I find the little shit so fascinating? Sex and death are so mixed up for him.
As much as they are for me.
I let my father’s angry tirade wash over me, nodding when it seems like I should, but my mind is fixed on other things.
On Julian Castellani.
My father’s rage will pass. He likes to make an example of me, to boast that he has me on a tight leash. My father has three sons. AJ, the eldest, is his successor. Gino, the youngest, is barely a consideration.
But as second born, I will always be second best. And both my father and my older brother, Aldo Junior—AJ—never let me forget it.
Our meeting room is basic. A simple long table and chairs around it, at a half-built apartment building close enough to the port to allow my father a view over his sea kingdom. We’re high enough up so that at night you can see the lights stretching out across the city, and during the daytime, if the smog’s not too bad, I can pick out the wide green patch in the distance where Redwood Manor is built.
Construction on these apartments blocks stalled a year back, thanks to Castellani interference in our business, and I think my father likes to use this empty concrete room as a reminder for all of us. If the Castellanis win, we will be left with nothing.
