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I pulled out the knife, blood dripping off its edge. The little light was enough for me to see the fear all over his face. His green eyes were wide open, a cough shaking his chest. Coughing up blood, it smeared the stubble under his bottom lip. He reached up to my knife-wielding hand, in a last attempt to avoid his fate. His grip was too weak. His fingers brushed my wrist, before his arm fell to the ground. I wasn’t going to spare him. Hell, no. I held the knife vertical to his neck and shoved it into his skin, more blood gushing out of his wound.
Only then did I realize the shallowness of my breath. I rolled over on my back and lifted my head up just enough to take off my mask, Cesare standing just three feet away from me. His gun pointing down to the floor, smoke was still rising from the barrel. He loosened his grip around it and let it fall down, before shuffling off.
“Balls of steel,” he praised, offering me his hand. I slammed my palm into his and let him pull me back up, my gaze landing on his—still bleeding—thigh.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s just a scratch,” he said as Leonardo, Rocco, Julian and Slater gathered around us.
“Time to haul ass,” Rocco spoke as I looked around me. Howard and Graham Kanin were lying on their chest, not moving. Eight more men were scattered across the hall, their bodies riddled with bullet holes.
That was all I had the chance to see.
Rocco was right. This hadn’t been a subtle incident. Nothing had been taken care of quietly. Someone had to have called the cops. Hundreds of bullets had been fired in that lobby. That building would soon be crawling with men and women in uniform. So, we crawled out of that hole in the glass and made a run for our cars. Adrenaline was still shooting through my veins. My victim’s image was still swirling around in my head. His gagging. His shock. The fear that had taken over him. Even the echoes of the bullets in my ears hadn’t faded yet. Back in Rocco’s Torino, I cupped my drenched forehead, believing my heart was going to explode. It was pounding like a damn war drum. But, when that powerful motor came into life, I smiled to myself. It was small; I didn’t think anybody would even notice it on my face, but it was there. We had won that war.
35
LEONARDO
Well away fromthe sparkly city lights, I looked back through the rear windscreen.
And it felt good.
Hell, it felt fucking great.
I couldn’t believe it, but I was happy to leave Vegas. It was about the last place in the world I wanted to be in.
Probably because sticking around meant that cops would crawl up our ass. Nothing was certain, but it was a possible scenario. None of us liked the idea of talking to those sons of bitches. We were all just dying to drive back to New York.
And that drive felt like heaven on earth.
Unlike the one to Vegas, it just didn’t feel like it took forever. Hours upon hours just flew by, with me and my boys all smiles and making jokes about the fuckers we had just wasted. About a situation where we had come out on top. We had done something big. We had taken out a mob boss—an important member of the organization. After a vicious gunfight in that lobby, Kanin and his boy were dead, and we were not.
Stopping at one of those shitty motels on our way, I realized we had an extra reason to feel good for ourselves.
Rocco and his crew stopped being dicks. Our contribution to the whole operation made them talk nicer to us. They had more than a few niceties for us, like:
“You kicked some serious ass back there.”
“That thing where you charged them with both guns blazing? It showed a lot of guts.”
“Stabbing that prick in the neck to finish him off? Brutal. That’s what a true gangster would do.”
I also loved Matteo’s take on this.
“That’s just the beginning, man. We mean something to them now. We’ve got their respect.”
This meant so much.
A mob crew looked up to us. Word would spread, and soon, the whole organization would do the same.
I repeated that about a hundred times in my head, because I was having a hard time believing it.
I hadn’t known respect. Ever.
Other than the two guys I’d been tight with since I was knee-high to a goose, nobody else respected me. No one would say: “I know Leonardo Turner. He’s a badass. He doesn’t take shit from anybody.”
Hearing a seasoned crew talk me up was like having Scarlett Johansson call me “smoking hot.”That’show fantastic it felt.
