“You’re joking, right?” Arturo growled before shooting an arm out in my direction. “He doesn’t give a shit about any of that. He just wants to save Denise because he’s got a hard-on for her.”
“We make some of our best decisions when we’ve got hard-ons,” my dad spat back. “Do you have some sort of problem with me making the decisions around here?”
Arturo stared at him for a long time. His jaw clenched and relaxed a few times as he considered the question before finally huffing out, “No.”
“Good.” My dad looked back at me. “So. What’s your plan?”
Relief started to course through my veins as I realized that I actually had a shot at saving Denise’s life. She was still sitting in a chair back in the kill room, awaiting her fate. If luck was on my side, when I went back to tell her that I’d successfully spared her my dad’s wrath, hopefully, it’d be enough to move things in the right direction. Denise and I had been friends ever since she first came into my sister’s life, and we got along great. She was intelligent, and her penchant for conning was impressive.
Thanks to the fact that my dad had forced me into the brains-role of our family versus Arturo’s brawn, I was seen as weaker than my brother, even though we had the same training regimen and were identical in appearance. Some of the drugs that Arturo used had made him a little beefier than me, and not in a way that I was envious of, but in a way that had women looking more at him than at me in any given situation.
But not Denise.
When Denise and I met, she made a passing joke about good looks running in the family, and when she smiled at me, it changed me forever. I’d never felt drawn to a woman before, only the life and my family, but everything changed when Denise came into my life. My thoughts about not getting into serious relationships, or falling into friends-with-benefits relationships at most, completely evaporated.
Over the first couple of years that she got to know my sister and flowed in and out of our lives, I learned that Denise challenged me in ways that I’d never been challenged before. She would make fun of me in that playful, flirtatious way that always had me running back to my room for a littlealone timewhile imagining what I’d do with her if given the opportunity. She was considerate of me too. More than just paying attention to me when she was around, she remembered the things that I liked and didn’t. The first time she bought coffee for my dad, Arturo, and Callista but brought me a smoothie because she knew I didn’t like caffeine was the nail in the coffin.
I didn’t just want to be with Denise. I wanted a future with her, one that obviously wasn’t going to work out if my dad put a bullet in her brain.
“It’s like I said,” I began. “Illiana still doesn’t know anything about what we’ve been up to with Denise. I’m sure she’s heard by now that the Binachis and Varassos are both down, but she doesn’t know all of our involvement. She thinks that Denise was acting on her orders, not yours. We have a great opportunity here to send Denise back to the Costa household and infiltrate it. Two of the six families are down. Now’s our time to strike.”
My dad crossed his arms, and a big grin sewed across his face. “You think she can pull it off? She shit the bed bad with the Varassos, and Illiana’s not an easy one to trick.”
To say that he was correct would be an understatement. Illiana Costa was the head of one of the six major organized crime families in the United States, along with my family, the Carducci family, there were also the Varassos from Philly, who hailed in the northeast, or used to before they hung up the life. The Ghiardos were stationed in Florida and helmed control of the southeast, and the Skully family were stationed in Texas and maintained a majority of the control in the southwest, or what of the southeast wasn’t already controlled by the Varassos.
The former Varasso patriarch, Angelo, was from Cali and moved to Philly once his wife started having kids to make sure they were safe. Little did he know that they were encroaching on the territory of Denise’s family, the Binachis, who were already well established in the northeast. It was a story all too familiar to my family, who, after maintaining sole control over the midwest from a reign in Chicago for decades, was suddenly engaged in a turf war with the newest Costa family, who moved into Chicago out of the blue and started vying for control.
It took our world by storm, even more so when the five male family heads, Anthony Carducci, Angelo Varasso, Sid Ghiardo, Maximillion Skully, and Donovan Binachi, all started to bow to Illiana’s influence. All five heads were clueless as to why the others would bend to Illiana’s will, but then it suddenly became clear. Illiana Costa had managed to become pregnant by each of the five family heads and give birth to one child in each of the five families.
Denise Binachi was one such child, and my sister Callista Carducci was another.
Illiana banked on the concept that blood was thicker than water, and she lucked out big time. She wasn’t a dumb woman, and she was the slickest con-artist on this side of the world. Fortunately, the plan I was thinking up on the fly didn’t involve a whole lot of Denise lying.
“There’s not much trickery to it,” I explained. “Denise is good at telling half-truths. All of us know that. She’ll go back to the Costa household and tell her mom about everything that happened with the Varassos and Binachis and simply leave us out of the narrative. It was originally her plan, and her rogue actions that fucked it all up were all her idea as well. She’s gonna tell her mom what she pulled but frame it like she was trying to take those families out for Illiana’s reign. To Illiana, it will be a job well done. Then Illiana will propose that now is the time to strike against us, and Denise will keep us in the know every step of the way. Eventually, what will be intended to be an ambush against us will actually be one against them.” I leaned across the table toward my dad. “If we can get Illiana out of the way, you’ll have all of her bastard children as pawns. You’ll have the other families by the balls.”
My dad huffed a bit of air out of his nose. “The full takeover.”
I nodded. “The full takeover.”
“That’s good,” Callista said. “We use Denise’s royal fuck-up against the Costas. Make it benefit us instead of hurt us.”
“We’re not meant to be drug lords or money launderers. The others are best at that. If you become the top dog over all of them, we don’t have to learn any new skills. We just sit back and let the money pile up.”
The low, grumbling sound of my dad’s laughter filled the room. “I like this plan, Ash. I like it a lot. Do you think you can keep her in line? She stepped out against us once before, so she could do it again.”
“She’ll have no choice,” I responded.
“Oh, yeah?” Arturo spat through gritted teeth. “How’s that?”
I put a hand on Callista’s shoulder. “Because we have an ace in the hole. A Costa in our midst. Dad hasn’t let Illiana get within a hundred feet of her, but if Denise starts to step out, we’ll just send Callista over to blow the whistle and let Illiana handle Denise how she sees fit.” I looked at Callista. “Then she becomes our new man on the inside.”
Callista shook her shoulder to free it of my hand. “You’d send me into the lion’s den?” As I shrugged, Callista’s face registered a touch of hurt before going back to angry. “So much for being a loving brother.”
“We all have to pull our weight,” I said before turning to my dad. “Besides, it’s just a backup plan. As long as we have Denise, there’s no reason for Callista to go anywhere near her snake of a mother.”
To say I pulled that last piece of the plan out of my ass would be an understatement. Callista was as important to me as any sibling, but she was my dad’s pride and joy. She was his little princess. If it meant keeping her away from her mother’s influence, he’d do anything, including spare Denise.
“It’s good. Just like you to always be thinking ahead. Backup plans are usually what we lack. You’re taking the initiative to improve. I like that.”
