Rocco watched me for a moment, taking a sip of his whiskey, grinning. “It wasn’t the night that I expected, but the end is the end, ah?Verduratrucks.” He shook his head.
I leaned forward in my seat some, watching his face. “What is Macchiavello going to want for this? That was a lot of money that went up in flames.”
It was nearly impossible to break the barrier the Scarpones and Grady had put up at the dock. There were too many men crawling around, looking for any excuse to put a bullet in someone, even when they assumed I was the one who’d been blown up in Hoboken as the deal had gone down.
The Scarpones and Lee Grady had made one massive mistake, though—they assumed.
Instead of guarding the trucks, they put all of their manpower at the dock, not on the trucks leaving with millions of dollars worth of drugs.
Even if they would’ve had more security on the trucks, I wasn’t letting them get past a certain point. So I cut them off and blew them up, but I didn’t know what it was going to cost me with Macchiavello.
Rocco took another drink of whiskey and then set it down. He fixed his tie and got more comfortable in his seat. “Nothing. The job is done. However.” He took out another card from his pocket and laid it on the table, pushing it closer to me.
Another favor.
I owed him my life for saving my wife, so I picked it up and said, “Consider it done.”
He nodded. “You have made your point here. You have done what’s needed to be done. Even though Grady is retaliating, he is not as powerful as he used to be. You run Hell’s Kitchen now, just as your father did.”
He watched me for a minute. “I will be in touch when it is time.” He nodded toward the card. “It will be soon. You will need a few of your best men. Men you trust as much as you can. Give very little detail except for this: Their life will be at stake if they do not arrive at the exact time and do exactly what you say. A man’s life will depend on the minute—a man I consider blood.”
“I’ll take care—”
He shook his head. “Take your wife and go somewhere. You run this now.” He looked around. “You should be as far as possible from the chaos that will ensue after this. If you prove to the world that you have competent and dangerous men who follow you—” he shrugged “—you will gain respect from my side of the world.”
“Stone,” I said. “He’ll be all over it.”
“Everyone who means something will be all over this—there will be a meeting with the families after this is done. Things will change. However, Stone is out of the picture.”
I narrowed my eyes. Even though I understood his subtle language, sometimes things got lost in translation.
“He has been suspended from duty.” Rocco took another drink and then stood. “No one fucks with my family and gets away with it.”
I nodded, standing, and offered him my hand. We shook, and he squeezed my shoulder.
“Tell me about the other threat,” he said.
“Same shit, different day.” I grinned. It was no surprise that he knew about the country club—whatever that was meant to be. He also knew that before I took care of the problem, I had to make sure my finger was pointed in the right direction.
Rocco seemed to think about it for a minute before he nodded. “Bene.” He shook my hand even harder and then went for the door. He stopped before he opened it and said one word. “Dolce.”
After he’d gone, I sat back in my seat, staring at the wall.
Dolce.
The restaurant the Scarpones used as a front. It was their personal pride and joy. A place they used for family functions, and on certain Sundays of the month, they got together for family dinners.
The head of the Scarpone family, Arturo, was paranoid about too many people memorizing his routine after a man named Corrado Palermo, one of his closest, had tried to slit his throat. Arturo switched it up every so often to keep enemies guessing. It also made it easier to pinpoint the rat in his family if another attempt was ever made on his life. He kept his circle as close as lifeblood after the first attempt had failed.
I whistled long and slow, then took a deep drink of my whiskey. It went down like honey and caused a nice fire in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe it wasn’t the whiskey doing the magic; maybe it was what was about to happen.
Dolce only meant one thing.
Macchiavello was going to end whatever fucking vendetta he had against them, and he was going to use some of my men in the game. After word got around that I was part of it, I’d be considered the real fucking deal to the families, and to my own people, stronger than my old man.
In this life, nothing was ever given. It was fucking hard-earned.
