When his howls of agony echoed around the clearing and blood had spattered onto the dirt, joints and cartilage with it, I crouched low and pressed my knee to his gut. “You want me to leave you like this? I can leave you here all fucking day and night and you can scream and cry and wail for your mama, but no one on this construction site will so much as look at you as you piss and shit yourself while you plead with God for morphine, and then you wish for death.” I grabbed his chin and forced him to look at me, his eyes loaded with agony, suffering too much to stare at me withhatred. He was, I knew, inches away from passing out, but the drugs were working against him. “Don’t bother asking God because God doesn’t run this fucking playground. I do.” My top lip curled into a sneer. “You want morphine or a grave, my friend?”
His face, bright red from the exertion of screaming, snot making his face gleam in the spotlights, turned away as he sobbed, “Might as well be dead if I talk to you.”
“Then, you have options.” I pointed to the cement truck with my thumb. “Option one.”
“What’s option two?”
“Bullet to the temple. Option three…” I slipped a hand into my pocket and retrieved a baggy of pills. “One of these and it’s night night for good.”
His mouth quivered rather than form an answer, so I flicked a look at Chad, who dipped his chin.
As he slammed his boot onto the severed joint where the Albanian once had a working knee, the guy bayed in distress. “BULLET!”
“Good answer.” I smiled. “Now, who the fuck are you working for, and what were you dipshits after atRussu?”
ELEVEN
STAN
With a yawn, I watched as Luc called a meeting of the three families—the Valentinis, the Carusos, and the Brunos—to order at five AM.
The yawn stemmed from not sleeping for the past forty hours but also because this shit looked set to be boring.
Gesù, I hated politics.
Ordinary people had to worry about government shutdowns, while this was my purgatory.
“The Albanians tried to infiltrate our main factory yesterday,” Luc stated as a greeting.
Caruso grimaced. “What the fuck was their game?”
“If we knew that, we wouldn’t be here,” I sniped, running a hand over my hair, grimacing at the water still clinging to it from the shower I’d grabbed at Russu’s after tonight’s particularly messy bout of wet work.
Aurora tutted. “Custanzu.”
“What? I need sleep, which means I need this bullshit to be over with.” They weren’t to know that I intended to sleep on a plane.
Because I’d worked. Now, it was time to play.
Life was for seizing.
And claiming angels.
“While the rest of you were tucked away with your loved ones, sleeping,” I continued, “I was on a construction site replacing Albanian knee joints with air the whole fucking night. Can we get on with this, please?”
My sister’s lips pursed in disapproval. “Debrief then fuck off.”
Content with that payoff, I retorted, “Gladly. Long and the short of it—Albanians came toRussubetter armed than a battalion of Marines. Their plan was to cause a disturbance, get taken out and shifted to our nearest site, in this case one of our warehouses on the docks.
“I’d have ordinarily held them there because the mayor might suck your dick, Luc, but he’d get pissy about me smearing Albanians over FDR Drive.” When my brother snorted, I stated, “I happened to notice they looked too happy about where they were heading, so we diverted to the construction site in Queens.
“With my superb negotiation skills—” That earned me a few laughs as well as an eye-roll from Rory. “—I managed to extract their asinine plan to take over whichever warehouse we transported them to and steal whatever they could get their hands on from our supply of Red.”
“Good catch,frate.”
“It’s why you put up with me,” I said simply, meaning it.
Luc, apparently catching the nuance in my words, frowned before steamrolling over my statement as much as Luigi had the Albanian’s legs earlier tonight. “How did they get into the club?”
