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Getting mixed up in organized crime—my family’s business of choice—was not what I had expected from Hawk.
Not at all.
But there was no turning back now.
“Fuck,” I murmured, thankful nobody seemed to pay me any attention, but I grabbed Hawk’s arm and told him with a shake of my head to hang back.
I would not step a foot through the small door into the dark hangar, before getting some answers first.
Like…
What the fuck was going on here?
CHAPTERTHREE
“Care to explain?” I asked Hawk when only the two of us were still outside, watching the last small single-prop plane land.
“Your brother called me when you wouldn’t return his calls.” Hawk threw me a dirty sideways look. “Apparently, your uncle is gearing up to take over all operations, and he’s announced he will marry your mother.”
“Fuck me.” I’d had some missed calls from my youngest brother, Cristo, over the last two days but hadn’t taken the time to call back. Though before that—after my father’s recent death—we’d talked more than in the last thirteen years combined—ever since I’d left my family, and the life of being part of one of the leading Mafia families in Italy, behind.
I’d contemplated going home for my father’s funeral but ultimately decided against it.
No reason to risk my life for something I’d turned my back on years ago. It would’ve been more for my mother’s sake anyway, and she’d told me it was better not to come.
“I’m still gathering data,” Hawk said and pulled my running mind back into the present, “but from the preliminary reports, your Uncle Fausto is bad news. Brutal, deceitful, and dangerous. Generally and especially for your mother.”
Fuck.
I never liked Uncle Fausto as a kid. He was always the one relative who managed to make you cringe. “But she’s a widow now; she can just say no. She doesn’t need to remarry—could just stay a respected widow.”
Because no way either one of my brothers would ever force her to remarry, or did she want to?
But why?
Hell, she was only fifty and beautiful—not that I’d seen more than a couple of family pictures they’d sent me over the years. But not Uncle Fausto. “Why would she even contemplate marrying him?”
“Rumor has it he’s threatening to kill your brothers. But my source isn’t particularly reliable. Infiltrating an Italian Mafia family is harder than I thought,” Hawk said.
I side-eyed him.
Of course, it was.
It was a family business, built on secrecy and honor. You were either born into it, dragged into it, or not in it at all.
“So, the first turf wars are starting. But what do they want from me? I can’t fix the situation for them. Alex and Cris are in their mid-twenties—they sure as hell can take care of themselves and my mother.”
“They could, but he’s made a power move already—they’re not in a good position.”
“And my presence wouldn’t help them one bit.” I’d deserted my family at the age of eighteen. Turned my back and never looked back.
Well, not intentionally.
You never really forgot your first kill, not when it was a friend your uncle chose for you. Not when it caused a complete mental breakdown.
Just my luck, Hawk had bought that house in Aruba—one of the more exotic outposts of my family’s empire—and had been there that day.
I cracked my neck to get rid of the kink.. Whatever my brother had discussed with Hawk, they both knew I could never come back. And I’d remained steadfast on that decision for the past thirteen years, ever since my father and uncles forced me to kill a friend—as my initiation ritual—celebrating my eighteenth birthday.
