Page 81 of King of War

Nero gapes at me, then slowly lowers his gun. He expected one of the armed guards to shoot me, but he doesn’t have the balls to do it himself. “Good boy.” I wink at him, and it sends Marco into a rage. He lunges but doesn’t make it close enough to touch me before Rafael has him a headlock and chokes him out.

Nero’s eyes dart between his unconscious brother and back at me. “What the fuck? Carmine brought them here to⁠—”

“Whatever he brought them here for, all of these men are loyal to me, Nero. When the fuck are you going to realize that? This city is loyal to me.”

“Eight months,” Tony says finally, pushing off the wall, “Carmine’s been demanding more of a cut of my family’s money for eight months. And last month when my wife lost her job and I couldn’t pay, he suggested I tell my seventeen-year-old daughter to set up an OnlyFans and sell her tight pussy. Enzo paid my debt, and Micah got my wife a job at the beauty salon. Every guy in this room has a fucking story like that, Nero. Every single fucking one.”

Oliver steps out of the shadows. “Nobody in this house gives a fuck about Carmine, kid. We stick around for Enzo.”

“The fuck,” Nero snarls.

Fed up with his arrogant asshole routine, I knee him in the balls, and both he and his gun drop to the floor. Micah kicks his weapon away.

I tower over Nero, on his knees but still with that defiant tilt in his jaw. “Are you going to play nice, or am I going to have to shoot you and your brother for being traitors?”

His jaw works. He might become a problem in my future, but not today. He shakes his head.

“No, you won’t play nice?” Rafael snaps at him.

“No, you don’t have to shoot us. We’re loyal to the family, whoever the don is.” He says the words like they pain him.

I turn back to Tony. “Anyone else in there with him?”

He nods. “Two of his house guards. They’ll fight for him.”

“Oh, good,” Rafael says, genuinely delighted at the thought of some bloodshed. This is all far too tame for his tastes.

I clap him on the back. “I’ll let you handle them, little brother.”

“Aw, why does he get all the fun?” Micah pretends to whine, which makes Rafael laugh and declare they can take one each.

We reach Carmine’s office with no further obstruction. Rafael opens the door and quickly rushes inside before grabbing one guard in a headlock. Micah drops the other one with a bullet through his throat. He must have hit his carotid artery because blood spurts across the room in a crimson arc. Rafael admires it with open child-like awe as he drags the second guard from the room, punching him in the head when he screams too loudly.

I thank Micah and tell him I can take it from here. Probably best he keeps an eye on Rafael anyway. He leaves the room after our brother, closing the door behind him.

Carmine sits behind his desk, pretending to be calm while a perfect line of his guard’s blood runs the length of his left sleeve. He thinks I don’t see it. The slight shift of his shoulder or the way his right elbow tucks in closer to his ribs. The subtle tightening around his mouth as he calculates distance, timing, odds. He has a gun strapped under that desk. It’s on the right side and easy to draw—protection to a man who’s arrogant enough to believe no one in the room is faster than him.

I fire before his hand clears the edge of the desk. The shot cracks through the room, deafening in the enclosed space. The bullet slams into his right shoulder and pins him to the chair, shoving it back hard enough that the legs scrape across the floor.

He grunts, a strangled, furious sound, more insult than pain. Blood blooms fast across his cream shirt, turning the expensive fabric crimson.

I’m around the desk before he can suck in another breath, my gun still trained on him as I catch his wounded arm and wrench it behind his back. He howls now, the sound ripping out of him raw and ugly. Let him make noise. Let him feel a fraction of what she felt.

“Careful, boss,” I mutter against his ear. “You’re bleeding all over this beautifully polished floor.”

He curses me in Italian, vicious and breathless, spittle flying from his mouth. Once, he was a man who could make other men drop to their knees and rethink every choice that had brought them into his orbit. Once, his power might have made me hesitate too.

Not anymore.

My pulse is steady. My hands don’t shake. And all I can think about is how much he hurt her.

The thought of Rayne sharpens something inside me, reminding me of my purpose. I drag Carmine’s other arm back and cinch the zip tie tight around both wrists. Plastic bites into his skin. He snarls and bucks against me, but pain has made him sloppy, and age has made him slow. A few seconds later, his hands are locked behind him, his shoulder pumping blood onto the floor.

He’s still cursing when I step back and pull out my phone. I ignore his ramblings because he can rage all he wants. It’s not going to help him.

I call Luca. “It’s safe. Bring her in.”

Carmine eyes me with pure hatred, his breathing fast and labored as he tries to manage the pain. “Bring who in?”