“I don’t want you to. I want you to come with me.”
“Denise,” Carmine said. “I… You know I respect you, but I can’t just let the two of you step in and take over the Costa household. You haven’t been around for years, and up until yesterday, you wanted out.” He pulled up his gun and pointed it at me, an action which no longer scared me. “I can’t have it.”
“You know I respect you,” I said. “Which is why I’m giving you an opportunity to remain in the position you have now. You’re not a Costa or a Skully,” I explained. “You know as well as I do that the second I choose to blow the whistle on you to anyone, you’ll have more hits on your head than the record holder. I don’t want to have to force you to do this, but I will.”
Carmine stared back at me, and I could see some of the emotion he’d previously held toward me draining from his eyes. “You learned even more from Illiana than I thought.”
“Maybe so,” I replied before turning to look at Ashton. “What do you say? We’ll get to California, baby, but we have work to do here.”
He put his hands on either side of my face and smiled. “I’m going anywhere you’re going.”
“Good. Then let’s get out of here.”
Ashton, Carmine, and I slowly made our way out of the basement up to the upper floor. It turned out that this was another one of the Carducci safe houses out in the Chicago wilderness, but one of the lesser-known ones that Anthony used as a satellite kill room, which explained all the torture devices. When we were safely outside the house, Carmine called some of the Costa soldiers to come and dispose of the bodies and burn the house, and once it was all said and done, we climbed into Carmine’s car and traveled back to the Costa household.
“Call a meeting,” I told Carmine as we walked back toward the door.
“Yes, boss,” Carmine responded, though begrudgingly.
Ashton and I walked into the dining room, a place I’d always preferred in the Costa household, and with a little bit of pride and energy pumping through my blood, I settled into Illiana’s chair. Ashton sat next to me on the right, and eventually, Carmine, Cherri, Bennett, and Manny walked into the room. Manny sat in the first chair to my left with his daughter next to him, Bennett sat in his typical seat, although now he was next to Ashton, and Bennett went and sat in the chair opposite me at the other end of the table.
“Thank you all for coming,” I said. “Illiana’s dead.”
For the fact that he was her husband, Manny didn’t seem as sad as I expected, more shocked, but Cherri did throw her hands to her mouth. Bennett looked over at me, a deadly glare in his eyes.
“You killed her?” he asked.
“How she died isn’t important,” I said. “All that matters is that she’s gone, and now the Costa household is under my control.”
Everyone looked at Carmine and then back at me. “You?” Bennett barked.
“Me. It’s time for a new era of Costa. Does anyone object to that?”
Everyone exchanged a few glances, with a few of them landing and resting on Ashton for a few seconds before eventually coming back to me.
“No, boss,” they all resounded.
I smiled. “Glad to hear it, because we have a lot of work to do.”
Epilogue:Arturo
My vision was starting to wane as I raced down the highway back toward the Carducci estate. The pain in my side was getting worse and worse with each passing second, and my head was throbbing so much that I was tempted to slam it against my steering wheel until it knocked me out cold. A thousand thoughts were running through my brain. Everything I had to take care of. Everything that had to be done. What was going to happen next now that my dad and Ashton were out of the family? Why was my dad’s car bugged, and why were the police on our tails and not on the Costas?
How was I going to avenge my dad’s death?
As I traveled, I flipped open the center console of the car and pulled out a bottle of whiskey that I kept tucked in there to stay out of my meddling family’s reach. I twisted the top off and started to drink it straight from the bottle. Whether or not I got drunk while driving or got pulled over by the police mattered little to me. Anyone who got in front of me now was going to meet one of my bullets, regardless.
My throat burned as the swill traveled down it, easing my pain and giving me that pleasurable, lightheaded feeling that often partnered with drinking for me. My body reacted to it, pumping with energy and gearing me up for the fight ahead of me. The coming months would be difficult but fun. After all her bitching and moaning about being cooped up, Callista better be ready for battle because her load was about to triple in size. She was going to go from nothing more than a consigliere to my dad all the way up to an underboss. It was finally time to prove that she was ready to take on the role.
Finally, I was driving back onto our family’s plot of land. It was large and imposing and no longer served its purpose. With Ashton fighting for the enemy, the next thing we were going to have to do was find somewhere else to conduct our business to make sure that we didn’t have the lesser hand to Ashton. That was just the first of many things that were going to have to happen before we could start planning our retaliation.
I kept my whiskey bottle in my hand as I threw back the front door and stormed inside. Callista was in the living room, so I turned and walked in and dropped onto the couch. She sat there, staring behind me, waiting for someone else to come walking in.
“No one else is coming,” I said. “Dad’s dead.”
“What?” she whimpered. “He’s dead?”
“Yep. Illiana got him.” I took a huge drink of whiskey. “But I got her too.”
