Image is everything. In Hollywood, in business, and especially in the fucking underworld. We need to be feared and respected, in that order, and the second the fear goes?—
The respect goes too.
I wish that were the end of it. Get the key, grab the book, solve all my problems. Except the rot goes deeper.
The Famiglia was set up a long time ago. Back when gambling was illegal and we could make most of our money on small-time moves.
Now life’s different. We still have a gambling income, but it’s a fraction of our drug trade.
I want to drag the organization into the new century. Which means teaching a bunch of old dogs new tricks.
Or killing them and burying their corpses in shallow graves.
My father would’ve hated it. But he also was smart enough to know that I’m right.
Too bad he’s not here.
I close my eyes and see Kira tattooed on my eyelids. She’s always there whenever I let my mind drift. It’s a real fucking problem. I see her breasts covered in blood, nipples pink, smeared in red, stiff in the night, her back arched toward the moon as she comes on my thick cock. I see her whimpering and begging andswallowing me down her pretty little throat. Kira reverted to her normal, tough-as-nails self the second we got back home.
But there are cracks now.
Little moments where I know she’s thinking about me too.
Glances across the bed. Fingers lingering as we brush near each other in the kitchen.
We haven’t talked about the night I became Don since it happened.
But fucking her in the graveyard, smearing her with blood, it changed something between us.
She sucked me and swallowed my cum like I swallowed that ash-and-blood-filled water.
Our own ritual.
I smile to myself, thinking of that happy, glazed-over, dizzy look she gave me down on her knees, and I almost don’t notice the black van when it pulls into the parking lot.
I sit up straighter and glance at the clock. A little past one in the morning. Technically, I shouldn’t be here yet. I’m not due for another ten minutes. The van maneuvers itself to a little corner, trying to hide in the shadows.
My heart sinks. I grip the steering wheel. “Come on. Drive away. Come on. Tell me it’s not them.”
But the van doesn’t move. The engine dies and it is still.
I watch for another ten minutes, feeling worse and worse, until I can’t take it anymore. There’s a sickness in my stomach. Anger in my chest. I hate this, I hate it so much.
I get out of my car and walk around to the back.
I’m parked across the street. The van can’t see me from my position. I open the back and inside, neatly laid out, is a custom AR-15 assault rifle and body armor.
I get strapped up. Full body armor, helmet, goggles, mask. I load the rifle and check to make sure I have extra magazines.
Rage fuels me now. Anger so hot it nearly hurts.
I’ve been in the game for a long time now, but this has never happened before.
Fucking betrayal.
I walk around toward the bank, taking the long way. It’s a quiet little suburban branch out in the middle of nowhere in Delco. There’s no reason that van should be here in the middle of the night.
Not unless it knows the Black Book is trapped inside, locked in a safe deposit box.
