“You either get the pussy or the throne, but you can’t get both,” Luca had clarified. “You made your choice.”
It was the easiest decision I’d had to make. Tierney came first. The rest of the world after.
“All right, asshole, what’s up?” I landed on Vello’s plush chair, stacking my ankles on his desk.
Jeremie assumed the seat in front of me. He looked as charming as a bucket of piss. What Sofia saw in him, I couldn’t tell. I guess he was good-looking, if you were into the whole unhinged-motherfucker-the-size-of-a-football-stadium vibe.
“You’re probably asking yourself what’s going on.”
“No, I don’t really care, unless Tierney’s involved.” I slid a cigarette out of a battered packet, lighting it. “But go ahead. People bother me with boring crap all the time.”
“Sangue Blu gunned down five of your soldiers in Naples last night.”
I was aware. In response, we’d set up this urgent meeting.
“Enlighten me as to how my shit is your business?” I exhaled a thick stream of smoke to the ceiling.
“It’s likely you and your brothers are going there in the near future to settle the score. It’ll leave your family exposed to retaliation.” He paused, waiting for me to put two and two together. I decided to play dumb.
“Leave Tierney’s security detail to me.”
“I’m talking about Sofia and Ciro. They need proper security.”
“And?” I was going to make him spell it out for me, so he could hear for himself the level of deranged he’d reached.
“And I’m the only one who’s fit for the job.”
Silence followed. I waited for him to realize the error of his ways, but apparently, he was too drunk on my brother’s wife’s pussy juices to understand the gravity of the situation. He really was lucky I was still pissed with Luca for breaking up Tier and me when we were kids, or we’d be having an entirely different conversation right now. One where I did the talking and he did the falling off a fucking cliff.
“Are you asking me to give you the green light to fuck my brother’s wife while he goes to war?” I stubbed my cigarette into an ashtray. The balls on this asshole.
His nostrils flared. “It’s not like that. I’ve never touched her.”
Chivalrous. Wasn’t expecting that little twist.Anyhow.
“We’re going to get rid of the entire Coppola clan,” I said. Not a done deal, but an educated guess. “So your services, though philanthropical, aren’t needed.”
“They could already be on American soil, waiting for the green light to hurt you,” Jeremie drawled. “Every first-rank wife of the Camorra needs a bodyguard. I’ll be hers.”
That he’d lower himself to be the babysitter, thehelp, was enough to tell me everything I needed to know. Jeremie was a well-oiled killing machine, with combat and technological abilities that made him priceless to any organization.
“She ispregnant, Jeremie.”
“I know.”
“And you don’t care?”
He flashed me an oblique smile. “I need to stay in New York because of my own reasons. Guarding Sofia is something I can do well and easily. Win-win.”
“So you’ll be content if I assign you to do something else in New York that doesn’t involve Sofia Ferrante?”
“Yes,” he said flatly. But he’d paused. I heard it.
“Are you fucking her, Jeremie?”
“No.”
“Why did you delete the records from the CCTV footage in their bedroom?”
