AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter One
The stench of sweat and blood fills the air as I stand at the center of a street fight. My opponent's breath is ragged, his eyes wild with fear, but he won't back down. The crowd around us roars, hands waving money and booze like it's their last night on earth. The chaos of it all makes my heart pound and my muscles tense in anticipation. A lone street lamp flickers above us, casting shadows that dance and twist across our bodies.
My opponent lunges in, throwing a sloppy right hook that I easily counter, smirking as I do so. I'm only toying with him to keep the crowd happy. There's a lot of money riding on this fightlasting a certain amount of time, and I intend to collect every cent of it.
"Come on, you can do better than that!" I taunt my opponent, dodging another clumsy swing.
I look over at him - some young kid, maybe 21 at best, with a lot of energy but no formal training. His movements are sloppy, and he's got gaps wider than a whore's legs on payday.
Easy prey.
And, easy money.
I always bet on myself, and I always win.
It's pretty fucked up that I'm even in this situation. Dad got himself thrown in jail because he was too busy chasing young tail to see that her father and new business partner was screwing him over. When the feds showed up, the bastard folded like a cheap tent. Now, he's rotting in a federal prison for the next twenty years.
Primo, my eldest brother, thought he could take over the family business after Dad's arrest. Sure, he's older by age, but we're all first-born sons of legitimate marriages – Primo, me, Giovanni, and Teddy. Any one of us had the right to take the reins. Primo wasn't fit to lead, and I knew it. I've known it since we were kids. He cares too much about what people think. When you run the sort of business our family runs, you can't give two flying fucks what people are saying behind your back, as long as they're not conspiring against you. Something Primo completely missed because he was too wrapped up in his own sob story.
I saw it, though. Fucker was so blind to all of it that he couldn't even see that the person closest to him, the one giving him advice, had turned against him. There's no use trusting advice from people when you're in the mafia. There is no honor among thieves and anything they tell you is going to be entirely self serving. Everyone thinks people in the Mafia live by somecode, but that's bullshit. Sure, there's a code. And, they change it to suit their present needs.
Come to think of it, Mafiosos are a lot like lawyers. Maybe Primo can learn something from his new wife.
I stepped in before shit hit the fan. It resulted in me killing a made man, though. Another inane rule that only applies some of the time.
Could I have explained myself?
Maybe.
Would they have listened?
Hell, no.
The entire family's got a stick so far up their ass it's coming out their ears. They were too stubborn, too stuck in their ways. Maybe I should have just let the fucker kill Primo, but that would have been another hit to the family name and legacy. Something I seem to be the only one to care about.
Better to just take care of it myself and figure out what to do after.
"Is that all you got?" I ask, catching my opponent's fist with ease and twisting his arm back.
The pain in the guy's face almost makes me feel sorry for him. Almost. This fight is nothing compared to the battles I've faced in my life. At my age maybe I should have figured it all out by now, instead of fighting some punk kid in a back alley for money. But, life doesn't always work out the way you want it to.
I learned that lesson when I was just a child.
"Enough playing around," I mutter under my breath, preparing to end this fight.
I deliver a swift uppercut, sending my opponent reeling backward. He crumbles to the ground as the crowd erupts in cheers and jeers.
Taking advantage of my opponent's disorientation, I take a one-two step and land a solid punch right to the kid's jaw,mirroring the sloppy hook he threw earlier. Except this time, it was done right.
Maybe by seeing me do it, he can learn a thing or two. Probably not, though. There are no rounds in this fight; it's just fight until you pass out or die.
And that works for me.
I hate this shithole place I'm in. I thought my father had legitimate contacts in Argentina, but that turned out to be a lie. What he had were smugglers and a name that's as common as dirt on this continent. It didn't get me anywhere.
I don't even know what country I'm in right now, but each one is as bad as the next.
It's hard to travel around when most of your assets are tied up in legitimate enterprises. That's the one thing the mafia is good at: laundering money.
