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“Why don’t you tell me why you think Altiere is going to be a problem?” I ask Lorenzo, glancing up from my phone. He’s looking at me narrowly, as if he’s wondering who is important enough to interrupt this conversation. Usually, I wouldn’t check a text while we’re talking. “Other than just afeeling.”
“We split territory with him,” Lorenzo says calmly. “Like we did with Pesci. We control everything from the northern valley down the west side of LA, and he gets the eastern and southern sides. Difference is, our territory has belonged to the Campano family for as long as there’s been mafia in California. Altieretookit from Pesci. Killed him. Killed his son.”
“We weren’t allies with Pesci,” I say blandly, typing out my reply to Emma. “That’s not our problem.”
Thursday is fine. The usual time?
I had a date scheduled for Thursday night, but I’ll cancel it. There’s no one I want to see more than her. Even if all I do is sit while she tattoos me and talk, I’d rather do that than see whichever girl I had lined up for dinner and drinks and a probable blowjob.
That means you’ve got it bad.The little voice almost drowns out what my brother says next, and I push it away. I don’t want to accept how true that is.
Everyone loses their shine eventually. Emma will, too.
“No, but it could be.” Lorenzo lets out a sharp breath. “Business is tougher on that side of the city. Less stable. Definitely more violent. What happens if Altiere decides he wants a piece of what we have? If he feels like he took out one family, so why not make it two, and haveallof Los Angeles for himself?”
I snort. “Pesci was hardly some upper-level don. He could barely get away with calling himself that. I’m not even sure the Family recognized him. Anyone with enough ambition could have taken him out. That’s not the case for us, and you know it.”
Lorenzo shrugs. “All I’m saying is—ambition is a heady thing. Bad as a drug, if a man has enough of it. Altiere gets too full of himself, he might decide he wants in on the richer territory that we have.”
“And then we’ll show him otherwise.” I set my glass down, looking curiously at Lorenzo. “Are you really worried about this? If he tries to step in on anything we have going on here, we’ll shut him down. We have the men for it, easily. Nothing he has can compare.”
“He’s building up his force.” Lorenzo steeples his fingers in front of his face. “He has twice the men he did when he took down Pesci. He’s setting up the traditional structure—underboss, consigliere, plenty of made men to take orders from him. He’s making himself out to be the sort of old-school mafioso that Pesci wanted to style himself as, but never quite managed.”
“And what? You think I should be going that route? You know how I feel about this, ‘Enzo.”
When I took over after our father passed, I did away with the structure he’d followed, the old hierarchy. I inherited the family businesses and the title of don—though I don’t use it, and hate being addressed that way. Times are changing, and it’s my opinion that we’d be better off changing along with them. I don’t have an underboss or consigliere—I have my brothers, or rather, Lorenzo. Carmine isn’t much help when it comes to business. I have business partners, and we do have the sort of men who do the dirty work of moving shipments or handling cash runs when need be, but we don’t handle drugs or illegal guns any longer. So I’ve trimmed down that force, too, turned the guys we don’t need on those jobs into security for our businesses. A lot of them will be going to the casino, once that’s up and running.
“I think you’re a littletooquick to modernize, yes.” Lorenzo takes another sip of his drink. “But I don’t disagree with your ideas, Dante. Just that maybe easing into it would be better. We had to pay out quite a bit, to get out of drugs and guns without causing ourselves undue problems. I still maintain that moving party drugs like the Romanos do in New York would be—”
“I’d help with that.” Carmine glances at me. “I have friends who would—”
“Absolutely not.” I glare at my little brother. “Even if I were willing to budge on the issue of lighter drugs—which I’m not saying I am—you’re not meant to have any part in this. You have a different future ahead of you.”
For all his sometimes-laziness and his bad habits, Carmine is brilliant. He got straight A’s all throughout high school, and even now, he’s still doing just as well in college. He’s working on a business degree, and I have high hopes for what he might be able to manage in the future, as far as our legitimate interests go.
I intend to keep my little brother as far away from anything illegal as possible.
Carmine gives me a peevish look, but I ignore him, returning my attention to Lorenzo. “If you’re worried about Altiere, then put some guys on it. Have them ask around about what he’s doing, what moves he might be making. But I think it’s not something to spend too much energy on.”
Lorenzo shrugs. “You’re the boss.”
It irks me the way he says it. I’m not under any illusions that he wouldn’t prefer to be the boss himself. There are times when I considered handing the reins over to him, just because it would make us both happier.
But the truth is, I cared about my father. We all did. We didn’t have a warm and snuggly relationship with him—no one did—but we respected him, and he was proud of us. All of us, even Carmine. And before he passed, he told me that he was passing on the title and responsibility of leading the Campano family to me, not only because I’m the eldest, but because he wanted me to be the one in charge. He believed I was the best choice.
Even if this isn’t what I would prefer, I feel obliged to honor that.
I let out a long breath. “Keep me updated on it. I’m not trying to dismiss your concerns. I just think Altiere isn’t someone with enough juice to be anything more than an irritation. A fly that we’ll take a swatter to if he gets to be too much of an annoyance.”
“We should have made a move when he killed Pesci.” Lorenzo looks at me keenly. “Not as vengeance for Pesci, but because if there was a vacuum in leadership in any part of the city,weshould have taken it over. We’ve been here a long time. We could have had all of the business there—”
“Business we don’t want,” I remind him as gently as I can. This is why I suspect my father preferred me over Lorenzo for the position of leading our family. Lorenzo has some of that ambition himself. He’s not immune to the appeal of being the only mafia family to control all of Los Angeles.
“Thatyoudon’t want. You’re the only one who thinks we should go entirely legit.” Lorenzo frowns, that pinched look appearing between his brows again. “We’re passing up a lot of money—”
“We’ll make it in other ways. Like the Campano hotel.” I take another sip of my whiskey, starting to fill Lorenzo—and, to a lesser extent, Carmine—in on the details of the development in Vegas. I’m supposed to take a trip there sooner rather than later to check on it, and normally, the thought of a weekend in Las Vegas would fill me with anticipation. I’ve always enjoyed the unabashed licentiousness of Vegas, especially when it comes to women—but as soon as I start to think of the pleasures of the flesh, Emma immediately pops into my head.
Not casually, either. Just the thought of her brings back the memory of her moaning my name as I made her come the first time—and every time after that. My cock twitches eagerly at the reminder, and I have to push it out of my head so I don’t end up with an unwanted boner in the middle of a family business meeting.
