No matter how many times someone told me Angelo was a bad man, I could never comprehend what he was doing was wrong. It was as if I could only see the boy he was when we were children. Despite all the violence, I loved Angelo more each day. I was somehow able to overlook all the bad and replace it with the good times and memories Angelo had given me.
“How come you’re talking about having a family all of a sudden?” My dad glanced at me with concern in his eyes. “Are you pregnant?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing like that. Angelo wants to propose to me after we graduate from law school. He wants me to get my career sorted before we start planning our lives together.”
His eyes held so much sadness it tore me up on the inside. Regardless of what my father said to me, he would have preferred I dated another man. He wanted the same things for me as my mother.
They say the heart wants what the heart wants. Mine wanted Angelo from the second I laid eyes on my blue-eyed boy. He was always mine. And I was his.
“I’m glad to hear it,” my dad said. “You look happy when you’re with Angelo. What more could a father want?”
A different life for me?
Chapter Ten
Angelo
The sound a tooth made when I clamped a pair of pliers on it and applied pressure, always sent a chill down my spine. I felt the root giving way with each turn of my hand. Killing people was easy. Torturing them was much harder. To properly extract a full set of teeth took time and a lot of patience, something I had less of each day that passed.
“Sonny, hold him down,” I ordered. “He’s moving too much, and I don’t have all day for this shit.”
We were in the same basement of the abandoned warehouse where I first watched Pete torture Senator Ackerman. Much like the Senator, the man strapped to the table took money from my family and thought he could get away without paying us back. Debts must be paid.
Carl Giacomo was one of Enzo’s foot soldiers. He borrowed money from our family, long before Enzo had the nerve to wage war with my father. After going into hiding along with the rest of Enzo’s crew, Carl had the misfortune of resurfacing long enough to show up on our radar.
Pete wanted the pleasure of ripping every tooth from Carl’s mouth, before sending him back in pieces to where he thought Enzo was hiding out. But my father had insisted I take the lead on this one. This would be another kill on my hands. Another reason for Enzo to hunt me down and get the blood I owed him.
“Please,” Carl cried, spitting blood all over himself. “I will give you the money. I swear.”
“It’s not about the money anymore, you degenerate piece of shit.” I held the pliers over his tooth and gave it a light squeeze. Not enough to pull it out but enough to make his eyes go wide in fear. “You should know better than to beg. I decided your fate the second I laid eyes on your ugly mug.”
“I have some cash at my mom’s house.” The tears streamed down his face, mixing with the blood on his chin. “I’ll take you there. You can have it all.”
I looked to Sonny, with my hand still on the handle of the tool. “How much does he owe?”
“With the vig?” I nodded and Sonny bit the inside of his cheek, mulling it over. He sucked at math. I wasn’t sure why I even bothered asking him. “Seventy-eight Gs, give or take a few dollars.”
“You better have every fucking cent,” I growled before I ripped out another tooth and dropped the pliers on the ground.
He screamed so loud it pierced my eardrum. My father preferred torture to murder. Fear was a powerful motivator. You could get a man to do just about anything you wanted if you instilled enough fear. A man couldn’t fear you if he was dead. But this man was about to be dead real soon. He was payback for two of our men who were clipped two weeks back. The kills had Enzo’s name all over them.
“Get the money first,” I told Sonny. “Call Dom to help you finish off this asshole. Pete will take care of the rest.”
I glanced down at Carl, who had a hint of hope in his watery eyes. There was no way in hell he was making it until the end of the night. His only saving grace was that Sonny would give him a merciless death before he called in Pete to carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Sonny touched my shoulder, and I flinched. “You sure you don’t want to do it yourself?”
Gia was the only person other than my Ma who could touch me without making my blood run cold. I shrugged Sonny off and stripped the latex gloves from my hands, dropping them to the table.
“Yeah. I have somewhere I gotta be. Make sure he pays. Pops said we could split what you get.”
“And if he doesn’t have the dough?”
He knew what to do, regardless of the money. It was all part of the act. Sonny wanted the men he tortured and then killed to believe they had a chance to live. No amount of pra
yers in the world could have saved him from Sonny and Pete, though. Sometimes, I wondered if Sonny enjoyed this shit more than my twisted brother.
I smirked, then walked past Sonny to peel back the tarps and exit the room. The kill room smelled of sweat, blood, death, desperation, and bleach. I hated the stench of that room almost as much as I detested withholding the truth from Gia. She was the only person I could be myself with. My girl reminded me I was once normal, and when I was with her, I could pretend. I could be the man she once knew—if he was even still alive.