He was ridiculously handsome, but that was hardly a surprise. I was the only fugly motherfucker in the family. I wasn’t born this way, but it was hard to look past the burn scars and uneven skin on one side of my face.
I swiveled from the coffeemaker, fully annoyed now. “The fuck did I do to warrant this visit?” I pointed between the two of them with a spoon. “In all my years in the city, you haven’t visited me once. Now I get a two-person detail for a meeting?”
“Sangue Blu landed in Newark an hour ago.” Luca tucked his hands into his front pockets. “He’s on his way to the Long Island estate.”
Sangue Blu, “blue blood” in Italian, was Stefano Coppola, a Naples-based Mafia don and the man whose underboss I’d sacrificed at my nephew’s baptism. Dante had molested a young girl on the Ferrantes’ turf, so making an example out of him was necessary to put Coppola back in his place.
The Camorra consisted of clans. Eight different clans made the Secondigliano Alliance. We were the strongest and most ruthless clan in Naples, with Coppola coming in a far second.
The last couple years, we’d been busy pushing the Bratva back to its borders in America and neglected business in Naples. The Bratva was rapidly growing, and now they had a secret weapon—Tiernan, my brother-in-law and the pakhan’s best friend.
Killing Coppola’s underboss was a way to signal we were still the top dog in Secondigliano. Judging by Sangue Blu’s swift and lethal reaction, in the form of blowing up a seven-hundred-year-old church along with its priest, he didn’t share our opinion about the hierarchy in the city.
“Why’s Dad humoring this nobody?” I scoffed.
“He’s not a nobody,” Luca said. “He’s the son of the late Gianni Coppola. We’ve been losing our grip on Naples. He wants to cut a deal. It’s better to squash this now.”
“Not if he is asking for more turf in Secondigliano,” I countered.
“We don’t know what he wants yet,” Luca reasoned.
“Hmm, guys? What the hell is that smell?” Enzo looked up from his phone, screwing up his nose in distaste.
“We need to haul ass to Dad’s.” Luca cocked his head toward where my door was five minutes ago. “Coppola’s waiting.”
“I ask that you join me in vigil to find the fucks I have to give.” I turned my back to him, picking my espresso cup up and tossing it back like a shot.
“No, seriously, what’s that funky smell?” Enzo asked again.
“We’re going with or without you.” Luca ignored our baby brother. “I suggest you join us.”
“Why?”
“Negotiate.”
“Bullshit. You don’t want me there. I’ll just blow shit up. I’ll ask again—why?”
Luca shrugged, his expression, like his entire existence, giving me nothing.
At this point, Enzo wandered into my office to follow the stench. I rinsed my espresso cup, calmly setting it on the dish rack. Fine. I’d go to the stupid meeting. My social calendar was hardly overflowing. Best monitor the situation myself. My father was weakened by whatever the fuck was killing him, and Luca wanted this shit sorted so badly he’d be willing to give Sangue Blu the entire city of Naples, his firstborn, and a goddamn blow job.
“Let’s hit the road.” I plucked my biker jacket from the back of a dining chair.
Enzo reappeared from the hallway, looking visibly appalled. “Dude, are you insane?”
I wished people would stop asking rhetorical questions. Such a waste of time.
“How many times did you kill him?” Enzo jerked his thumb behind his shoulder.
“Two.”Three. Why did he need to know, anyway? Was he conducting some kind of fucking empirical research?
“You promised no more recreational killing.” Enzo ran his palm over his face, his smoke-soaked tone reaching DEFCON 1. “You promised you’d try pickleball instead. I freaking got you a ten-class pass at the country club. Betsy asks every week why your name’s not on the schedule.”
I didn’t have a conscience. If God forbid one ever fell into my lap, I wouldn’t know what to do with it. What I did have was one hell of a temper. And where Tierney Callaghan was concerned, the minute I knew someone touched her, I either had to kill them or kill her. And she was technically family, so that left me with option one.
Shedding blood quieted the noise. Slowed down my thoughts. It brought me calm no cigarette or drug ever could.
The eternal chicken-or-the-egg dilemma—was I a stone-cold killer because I was groomed to become one, or was it in my DNA to kill, just like my mobster father? Both nature and nurture worked against me. A perfect storm, and guess which motherfucker was the eye of it? Dead center. That’s me.
