AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes, Daddy. Come home soon.”
“I’m trying,piccolina.”
I guess that’s the most I can ask for. He did just what I needed. He distracted me and made me feel safe with his dominating personality. I’m still embarrassed that I just got off in his dad’s study, but I feel much calmer. I feel like I can face the world again. I suspect this will be my last chance to hide for a while.
ChapterFifteen
Lorenzo
I fucking hate Chicago. Not the city itself so much as the pricks filling it. They have fucking chips on their shoulders. Everyone loves to point out this isn’t New York, and how they don’t do things like in New York. No shit.
They have no finesse. It’s like a bunch of spoiled toddlers who need naps. It’s like everything is a tower of building blocks they can’t wait to go King Kong on. They build it just to knock it down. The bribes are out in the open, and no one realizes trying to strong arm me won’t get what they want. They think they can intimidate me. Fuck them little shits.
I run in a class they can never join. While I rub elbows with the most powerful people in the world, they’re here thinking they can be the modern-day Al Capone. Well, that fuck nut went down for tax evasion. I’m about to make sure the same thing happens to the Rizzos. Don Edoardo is about to understand Luca might look like the scary one, but I’m the one he should really fear.
Since we have a rocky alliance when it suits us, I can’t go after him physically and in the open. But I can take everything from him. Every time Edoardo tries to increase his influence east of the Mississippi, we slap him down. Except this time, he got in bed with the bratva here.
He thinks that because Luca considered marrying his daughter, that he has some control over us. He expected Luca to prove himself worthy of Cecelia — a woman who had about as much genuine interest in Luca as he had in her — which was none. At the same time, our dad was pushing Luca to prove himself as underboss. Luca thought he could do that by using the Chicago Oskolki to stir up shit with the Ivankov bratva in New York.
All it did was get Niko’s then-girlfriend-now-wife kidnapped by the Moscow bratva the Kutsenkos escaped. Unlucky bastards. They fled the Podolskaya in Moscow only to be sucked into the Ivankovs in New York. Anastasia survived, and Luca escaped the parson’s noose. There’s a phrase no one uses but seemed apropos when I learned it in an English Lit class. It’s a good thing Luca didn’t marry Cecelia because he would have been miserable with a woman who loves another man, and he couldn’t be with Olivia.
But all of this is to say, Edoardo thinks he’s hotter shit than he is. He doesn’t know that I’ve just arranged for the drugs coming up from central Mexico to somehow fall off the back of a truck. Who’s going to clean that up? My guys I brought with me. That’s not nearly enough for him to understand he can’t encroach on our deals in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Kentucky. We have eastern Pennsylvania, but let the PhiladelphiaCosa Nostrahave everything around their city and Delaware. It’s not a big enough market for us to do more than keep an eye on.
He’s also going to lose all the warehouses where he keeps his shit. Guns, drugs, counterfeit money, and counterfeit lottery tickets. Dumbass him. He took Luca to them when Luca went there to negotiate the blessedly unsuccessful marriage contract. Cecelia was never horrible, just spoiled. But her husband is a douche bucket. She’s going to be a widow by dinner tonight.
“Luigi, are we ready?”
“Yeah, boss. We made sure no one at the airport is tipping them off. We can roll.”
We have someone on our payroll who works at O’Hare. We only fly private, but they still have to log flights. At least, ones that aren’t ours. We know when any other syndicate leaves or arrives. The guy won’t cross us because we know where his eighty-year-old father lives. He doesn’t need to know we wouldn’t actually kill an elderly man.
Luigi opens the door for me, and I climb into the nearly illegally over tinted window SUV. We don’t want anyone seeing in, but we also don’t need the fucking po-po pulling us over. He shuts the door behind me and slides into the front passenger seat. Carmine is back at the hotel, coordinating where we send our men who aren’t with me.
I have three other guys here, and we ride in silence toward our first target. I watch the buildings whizz by while we’re on the highway. I’m lost in thought, my mind filled with Chellie. I miss her. I hate that I haven’t seen her in days. This longing is why, lately, Marco and I have done the bulk of any traveling. We don’t want the newly married guys to leave their wives. I’d rather be tucked in bed with my girlfriend than dealing with this shit.
“Rocco, over there. On the right. Back into that alley.”
We’ve pulled off the highway and are on a side street in the middle of Near North Side Chicago, aka Little Sicily. From here, we’ll see the truck pull out of the warehouse. We can slip out ahead of them and set up a roadblock. We won’t wait for them in the middle of the street like some shitty mobster movie.
Sit around, waiting for someone to get nosey and call the police? No, thank you. We’re there for fifteen minutes before we see the door open and can spy the hood of the truck. We wait for the truck to pull out of the warehouse bay to be sure it’s really leaving. Then we get on the road just as they leave the parking lot. We head three miles down the road before we pull into a parking lot and turn around. We make it look like we’re about to leave. The truck will drive past us as we take out the tires. Then there’s nothing they can do. They’ll shoot, but we’re ready.
“They’re following us.”
Rocco’s gaze keeps darting to the rearview mirror, so I know he’s keeping an eye on them. We wait with bated breath as the truck crosses our path. We’re close enough that I can see the driver with his dumbass vape cigarette. Disgusting. The moment they’re just far enough past us that they won’t see us coming, we slip onto the road.
Then all bets are off. I wind down my window, and the muzzle of my gun passes through just enough to aim and fire without getting my head blown off. I take out one tire while Luigi takes out another. The truck careens onto the shoulder before the driver can get it back under control.
I’m out of the vehicle before our SUV even comes to a full stop. I inch closer, my gaze scanning our surroundings. This isn’t a time to trust anything but the men I brought.
“Get the swing door open. Dump it all. Get what we came for, and we go.”
Rocco leaves the engine running while he dashes to the driver’s side of the truck. He yanks it open, then is even rougher with the driver. The man drops to the ground and curls into a ball. Rocco drives the tip of his steel-toed boot into the man’s ribs. I hear the howl of pain.
If I were any more fucked-up than I already am, it might amuse me. I don't take pleasure in other peoples’ pain, except for what I’ll share with Chellie — the kind that’ll bring pleasure. But knowing Edoardo will discover my family’s anger during the autopsy is satisfying.
Luigi and my third guy, Giovanni, are pulling the boxes of stuffed animals out. How motherfucking original. They tear apart one after another and grab the kilos. They leave the teddy bears and giraffes with their stuffing innards strewn along the road. It looks like a massacre. Once we’re certain we have the right boxes, they hurry to move the stacks of coke to the back of our SUV. I approach the driver, and I glance into the cabin. He’s alone. There’s the first mistake.
“You know you’re going to die. Tell me how you’d like to go. Slow and painful or quick and merciful.”
