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Dario
Iwatched as the corpse swung idly from the chains above my head and tried to breathe out the utter fury that had swept through me. I inhaled the sweet stench of singed hair and cooked flesh, of blood, piss, and shit, and thedeliciousscent of fear.
Il maiale Irlandese, the Irish pig, had taken some time to die. Deliberately, of course. No one wasted a simple death when he’d been kept alive to extract information.
The reason I had taken one of the O’Brien soldiers, and let Lucio off his leash, hadn’t been for the answers I eventually got. That had been so much more. Indescribably so. I finally had the name I’d been after for what seemed like most of my life.
And for the first time in the eighteen years since that fateful day, I was shocked. Eighteen years to the day since I’d exited the car maybe a minute after Mamma, Papà, and Uncle Andrea, because I’d bent down to pick up the lucky quarter I’d been playing with in the car and dropped on the seat. A whole minute,maybe even two, for the gunmen to spray them with bullets, and to miss me. A whole minute to completely change my life.
Not that I wasn’t always going to succeed my father. About seventy years ago, New Jersey was carved up between three families similar to the five that ruled New York, but the Jersey three were the Italians, Irish and Russians. The three had all different sources of income, and we shared the harbor area, but Atlantic City was mine, or would be in a matter of hours. I didn’t touch the drugs, the guns, or the imports. Each family paid me a small commission for all the laundered money, and apart from certain personalities and other families that thought they could take what was mine, my piece of the pie had been a well-oiled machine.
Up to five years ago, that is, when comparatively small amounts of money started going missing.
Lucio wiped some blood, maybe some brain matter, off his face, then sat. “Boss?” I stared back at the creaking chains where what was left of Aidan O’Neill hung, minus nine toes, seven fingers, five teeth, and most of the blood in his body. Although Lucio had gone easy on him at first and had cauterized each severed part with a flick of his lighter. I didn’t think O’Neill had appreciated not bleeding out too quickly. In fact, an hour ago themaialehad begged me to allow just that. Then he’d dropped his bombshell simply to ensure I ended him.
I glanced at my phone. Five-fifteen in the morning, and less than ten hours until I would marry Sofia Martino, the only daughter of Rocco Martino, my father’s trustedconsigliere, his right-hand man, my godfather, and also my boss for the past eighteen years thanks to the stipulations in my father’s will.
Rocco Martino became the Boss—or the Don as he preferred—the day my father and uncle died, but only until my thirtieth birthday, which was also today. The second stipulation to inheriting my father’s empire was that I marry Martino’s heir onor before the same day. If I died or refused the marriage, then all our holdings would be passed to my younger brother by seven minutes, Gianni, and the same stipulations would apply. It had been that way for over a hundred years, and it wasn’t going to change now. Rocco might be Italian, as I was, but he was the wrong family. It was as much in his interest as it was in mine that the marriage happened.
Papà hadn’t been able to think of everything, especially as he had trusted Rocco with what turned out to be his actual life. The only decision he’d made, as far as I knew, that had turned out to be a bad one.
I’d idolized Uncle Rocco, as I called him, as a child, even though he was not a blood relation. When our parents were murdered, he took both Gianni and I in, and for the first six years, I was grateful. I went to school, but when I was eighteen I made the decision to leave his home. I took one of the apartments over La Fortuna, our flagship casino, knowing not one person would challenge me being there even underage. I had decided to learn the business from the ground up. A month later my twin, Gianni, made the same move, but not because he wanted to learn the business, but because he didn’t.
“I think he deserved more.”
I glanced at Lucio, knowing he had stood back while I had eviscerated O’Neill. Rare. He usually interrogated prisoners, but this one was personal. I didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure I could.
Around five years ago my numbers man, Lixin Chen, had started noticing some embezzlement. Small amounts, but over the many casinos, clubs, and restaurants, it added up. I hadn’t immediately taken my suspicions to Rocco because I wanted to find out exactly what was going on, and for the last two years I had known without a shadow of a doubt it was Rocco himself that was taking it. He was good, but I was better. I’d thought long and hard and knew that once I took over he would beretired and I would not name him myconsigliereas he hoped, so I had allowed it. Only Gianni, Lucio, and Lixin Chen knew my suspicions. And as Rocco was my father’s best friend and soon my father-in-law I let it go and called it a retirement fund.
Which had all been great up to an hour ago.
When Aidan O’Neill had confirmed that my father’s best friend had ordered the hit on my mother, father, and uncle. Possibly me. Gianni was only missing that day because he was coming straight from a piano lesson. Rage had built in me so fast I had taken the knife from Lucio, and simply carved out O’Neill’s heart. It had beaten once before I ripped it out with my bare hands.
And ironically, any suspicion I might have had hadn’t been why one of the Irish Mob’s lieutenants was in the cellar. The reason we’d taken him was because a shipment of underage girls had been taken through my territory that someone with loose lips had told us about, and I didn’t touch that. Girls? Yes, but ones that were strictly over eighteen. The girls we pimped out as either high-price escorts or lower-priced entertainment were all protected and looked after.
I catered to special tastes, but only those the girls—and boys—agreed to and got paid a shit-ton of money for. Backed by the Banetti’s, specifically me.
O’Neill thought he could bargain with me at first, but by the end, his only plea was to end his life. He knew when he gave up the last bit of information, he was a walking corpse anyway.
The Irish were as unforgiving as the Italians. And the Irish wouldn’t be content with just killing him for squealing, his whole family would be slaughtered.
Luckily they didn’t know we had him.
And what was even more fucked up? My bride-to-be knew. Apparently, after she stepped over my dead body on our wedding night, she was promised to Declan Walsh, half-brotherand enforcer of Ronan O’Brien, the head of the Irish mob. The Irish were ready to swoop in and take over with Rocco’s help because he was to be given my casinos. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do before I married his daughter, but after?
I’d doubted what O’Neill was saying until I’d found out who his sister was. The mistress of the mob boss would hear what she wasn’t supposed to, and some of the secrets he knew could only have come from her.
I was focused now. I just had to work out how to avoid a bloodbath. The Irish weren’t known for their subtlety, and they would be waiting. But they wouldn’t risk the wrath of the Bratva without an Italian figurehead in their corner as backup, and much as I wanted to raze them to the ground, I needed to fulfill the terms of my father’s will and that meant marriage.
“Dario.”
Both Lucio and I looked over at the basement door that only three people had the code to as my brother came rushing in. He stopped for a second and winced at what remained of O’Neill before turning to me. “I know what to do.”
“Well, thank fuck, because other than taking my AK-47 to half the wedding party at the reception, I was all out of ideas,” I said dryly, noting Gia kept his eyes averted from the mess Lucio and I had made, which suited me fine. Gia was a musical genius who also had a talent with computers. I had plenty of people that could pull a trigger. I needed people I could trust in other ways. And at the moment, that was a very short list of three.
The moment O’Neill had finally spilled, I had told Gia, and he had started to work his online magic. “Do you remember Rocco’s cook from a few years ago?” I frowned at the completely random question. Elisabetta, Rocco’s wife, went through domestic staff like other people changed clothes. She was a tyrannical bitch, and the main reason I’d left Rocco’s house at eighteen. “Caterina Gallo. She used to make the cookies.”
