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Chapter One
Marco
The sight of blood was an aphrodisiac. It warmed my gut and seeped lower into my groin like a secret lover. I could feel the flare of anticipation in the pounding of my heart, and the sizzle of heat along my spine. My cock hardened as my enemy weakened.
“I don’t know anything.”
I didn’t expect Greco’s sniveling whimpers. More evidence the fucking rat had betrayed the family. For five years, he’d worked under my brother, Luca, and had been trusted.
Luca trusted too easily. Now, he was dead.
Father Lodi searched for the virtues of men, but it was the seven deadly sins that made men dangerous. The truth, trust no one. I said a silent prayer in my mind. This wasn’t just about business. Power, money, loyalty, and family were interwoven and never to be separated. They were worth defending—worth killing for.
Standing in front of Greco, I rolled my shirt cuffs one more turn, covering the blood splatter staining the white linen.
Fear was a powerful weapon. But not always enough to get me the information I wanted. A thousand cuts strategically inflicted to cause pain, but not death, could be highly motivating. So were the two-hundred and six bones in the human body.
I rested my hand on his trembling shoulder. With a hard, fast thrust, I rammed the heel of my palm against the ridge of his clavicle. Bone snapped, giving beneath the stretched skin where his shoulder met his neck.
Greco screamed. The piercing wail sliced through the room, echoing off the walls, and warming me like the smooth notes of a merlot from the Bruno vineyards. Some would say the Bruno men were brutal. I would hate to disappoint them.
“Marco, please.” His voice quavered.
Adrenaline, like liquid fire, slipped through my veins in a dangerous and lethal combination. I continued to apply pressure to the broken bone.
“I suggest you use your words for confessing, rather than begging.” Soon, he’d be able to do neither after I cut his deceitful tongue from his mouth. What did he expect?Omertà, the code of silence, had been broken.
Sweat dampened my underarms and beaded on my brow. The room wasn’t warm, and I was far from finished. The moment grew heavier with tension.
“I don’t know anything.” Urine trickled down Greco’s leg, spreading out on the concrete, swirling with his spilled blood, and gurgling into the drain in the floor. “I swear to God.”
“Swearing to God? That’s your mistake.” I spoke low and controlled. Muscles in my forearm flexed as I balled my hand into a fist. “You forget you swore loyalty to my family first. God isn’t here to save you. I am.”
Stefano, my younger brother, a capo in the Bruno family, sat on a solid wood table along the wall and chuckled. I cast a quick glance at him as he cleaned beneath his fingernails with a seven-inch, black coated, combat knife. Carmine, our cousin, one of Stefano’s best friends—and a soldier for the Bruno mafia—sat next to him. Antonio De Napoli, Ant, my best friend and confidant leaned against the wall.
Tears leaked from Greco’s swollen eyes. “I swear on my life.”
“Your life is already mine. Try again.” I gripped his hair, forcing his head back. “Perhaps you should swear on Dino’s life. If your son isn’t reason enough, perhaps Alice is.”
I didn’t enjoy threatening his wife and son, but he was jerking me off with his lies. If I wanted jerked off, I’d have a woman’s fingers wrapped around my dick.
I narrowed my gaze. “Don’t you find it odd that you get pinched, and my brother is clipped?” My throat tightened with the words.
“A coincidence. I’m loyal to Luca, to the Bruno family.”
I tilted my head, cracking my neck. “There are no coincidences.”
Greco’s eyes, pupils blown with pain, could no longer focus. “I didn’t rat on Luca.” He barely spat the words. His thick tongue dabbed at the gaping splits in his lip.
Stefano inspected his cuticle, then stabbed the knife into the table. “Greco, you don’t want to lie to Marco. We know you squealed about the diamonds.”
I stood in front of Greco. “Interpol has already spoken to the Agenzia Informazioni e Sicurezza Interna.”The Internal Information and Security Agency or AISI.“Luca was killed making the diamond delivery.”
“One of his enemies must have known he would be there.”
“Who? Who else knew?”
“I don’t know.” Spittle flew from his mouth as he wailed.
