Carmine was Johnny Z’s second in command and from the old regime. Nothing and no one could scare him. I had to look hard, but the fear was evident in his eyes. He hadn’t spoken since we dragged his sorry ass out of a whorehouse with his pants down, mid-blowjob.
I reached for the jug of water on the table and handed it to Angelo. Like Dante, he reveled in the fear of others. His eyes lit with excitement as he popped the top from the bottle.
He got off on their screams.
Enjoyed their pain.
Stefan held a dirty rag over Carmine’s mouth and nose while Angelo tipped the water bottle. His body thrashed from the excruciating torture of feeling like he was drowning, begging to break free from his shackles. Even the toughest men couldn’t handle waterboarding. It was one of the cruelest forms of torture.
“Where’s Johnny hiding Ava?” I yelled at Carmine.
When I was younger, Dante showed me waterboarding techniques. It was one of the few times we got along. Lately, Ava was bringing us together. My brothers never treated me the same, but now that we were sharing one woman, it was bonding us in ways I had dreamed of when we were kids.
Angelo eased up for a second, lifting the rag to give him a chance to answer. Carmine turned his head to the side and coughed on the water.
“Answer me,” I demanded.
“You’re gonna kill me no matter what,” Carmine muttered, out of breath, gasping for air. “Go ahead and fucking do it.”
Angelo repeated the same process as before. This asshole would tell us what we wanted, or he would drown to death.
It was his choice.
Carmine was a dead man, no matter what. Johnny and his lowlife family were a loose end for us to tie up.
“Keep going,” I told Angelo and then looked at Carmine. “Easy way or the hard way. Doesn’t matter to me. We can do this all night.”
Carmine was a man of honor, willing to die for a pointless cause. But most men caved under this much pressure. Over the years, I’d learned a lot of torture techniques in this room. The scent of blood, bleach, and death penetrated every inch of the space. They were familiar smells no one should have known by heart.
The abandoned warehouse was like a second home. My father had a rule that if one of us ordered the hit, we executed it as a family.
My childhood was far from average, and my adulthood was even more unusual. When kids my age learned how to ride a bike, my dad taught me how to shoot a gun. I was a perfect shot by the time I was ten years old. With the cold metal in my hand and my finger on the trigger, I felt alive, in control.
I was never more in my element.
Our father raised us to become soldiers in his army. No son of Salvatore Luciano would be anything other than a made man.
I laughed at Angelo for the way he taunted Carmine. Every time I thought Angelo would ease up, he went even harder. My brother loved the thrill of the kill, the high better than sex. Unlike my brother, I saw torture as a means to an end. Though I would have been lying to myself if I didn’t admit I occasionally enjoyed a kill.
Some men had it coming to them.
I patted Angelo’s shoulder. “Take a break.” I hovered over Carmine. “One more chance before I shove that bottle down your fucking throat.”
“Fuck you,” Carmine spat, water and mucus streaming down his chin.
I drizzled some of the water on Carmine’s forehead. A wicked, joker-like grin tipped up the corners of Angelo’s mouth as the water ran down Carmine’s nose and into his eyes.
This was how he would die.
With my fingers threaded through Carmine’s dark curls, I drowned Carmine with the water.
“Where the fuck is Ava Vianelllo?”
Well, technically, she was a Vitale. But no one outside of our family knew the truth about her parentage. That information would put even more of a target on her back.
Carmine shut his eyes and sobbed, overwhelmed by the pain. “She’s with Johnny,” he muttered.
“Tell me where. Dead or alive, you’re not leaving this table until we find her.”
