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“Or is it the other way around?” I ask, my tone still calm. “What did you do that she’s now unwilling to work with you?”
His gaze flicks to mine. “What are you, my consigliere? You givin’ me advice on how to run my own show? I never appointed you to that job. It’s none of your fuckin’ concern what I do! Don’t forget, you work forme.” He points a finger at me as he sneers the last words.
“Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I know. I’m the king around here, bitch. I make the decisions, and if I don’t want to work with those assholes anymore, you can’t say shit. You’re nothin’ but a lackey hitman. So act like it and go kill somethin’.”
His skinny neck is in my hands before he can make a peep. I have one knee on the cushion beside him, the other across the top of his legs, pinning them. But the majority of my weight is on his windpipe.
“Do you know what it takes to be a hitman, cousin?”
Mouth opening and closing like a fish, his tanned skin turning purple, he stares at me with wide, wild eyes.
“It’s not just about the ability to kill.” I cock my head to the left, counting the thin capillaries popping in his sclera, forming crimson patches over the whites. “It’s restraint. Patience. It’s about knowingwhoto kill. And when.”
There’s an attempt to form a word, but he can’t push the air through his teeth.
I offer him the semblance of a smile, though it might be more of a sneer, because we may be family, but I fucking hate the guy.
Leaning in closer, I whisper in his ear, “You are king becauseIdon’t want it. And you are alive because I allow you to be.”
I shove off him and fold up the sleeves of my white button-up shirt. He sputters and rolls off the bench, landing on the manufactured wood deck, coughing.
Matteo, one of his two capos, steps onto the boat just then. A smile tugs at his lips and he leans against the rail, his arms crossed over his chest. He doesn’t like Joaquin either, and if I decided to kill him right here, Matteo wouldn’t stop me.
“You fuckin’ whore. You’ll pay for that,” Joaquin threatens.
I’m beyond his threats. I take a step toward him, and he crawls away, pressing himself against the wall. Matteo covers his mouth to stifle a chuckle, which earns him a glare from my cousin.
“Unfuck this mess with the Chief and the D.A., Joaquin. Or my patience with you will come to an end and I’ll do exactly what I do best. Kill.”
* * *
I’ll give Joaquin five days to get the people we need back on the payroll. If he can’t manage to get his head out of his ass, I will have no choice but to do it myself.
Though it’s not my place to get involved in the politics and logistics of running the Giannis—I’m not his consigliere, as Joaquin pointed out—I may not have a choice.
I wasn’t lying when I told him he’s in his position because I don’t want it. But not for the reason he believes.
He thinks I can’t do the job as well as he can. That I lack vision, when, in fact, it’s that I lackhisvision. My father did too. That’s the whole reason the rank was stripped from him when Francesco died.
What he doesn’t understand is that my loyalty to Francesco, to what he wanted for his sons and thefamiglia, is what keeps my blade sheathed.
My uncle built the family. He started with nothing but the shirt on his back, on the streets of Boston, with a baby sister to care for because their parents had died.
During the day, he worked at the wharf. At night, he fought in the dirty underground clubs. He learned the ins and outs of the shady dealings that took place there, how to gain real power, then moved to New Jersey.
Francesco Gianni became a made man, giving his sister a life she would have been denied otherwise.
“All for the family,” he’d say. “We do everything for family.”
If it weren’t for him, there would be no Giannis running New Jersey. My father might have ended up working for someone who didn’t value his service or teach him the importance of family. Who knows what he would have done with me then.
Which means I owe Francesco my loyalty and my life.
“If anything happens to me, back my boys,” he told me once, years ago. “Don’t let them fail, Noah.”
“Yes, sir.” It was an order I accepted without hesitation.
