He never shielded me from his work. I’d seen a man murdered by the age of four and knew how to handle a gun by the age of six. By twelve, I’d taken a life and knew how to drown out their pleas as they begged for it.
It made me the perfect person to step into the job, to step into the lifestyle.
Except I wasn’t my father. I’d made ties. I’d conquered my emotions, crushed them into nothing when I needed to for the family. And I put my trust there.
In the family.
In my father.
I believed in the mob. I indulged in my lifestyle because it was a good one. I saw enough death within the family to know it may not be a life that would last long. So I indulged in the luxuries.
If my life would be short, I intended to make the most of it.
Until we lost my father.
Questions started for me then. The little voice in my head that said I could have been wrong about everything festered and grew.
Love for the life disintegrated. The soul within me withered. I turned from a child with trust to a man with only one purpose: to fill the shoes of the underboss for the family and never be left open to deceit again.
I took life after life and felt less and less pain.
Bastian and Cade, Mario’s only children, nodded at me as they strolled in. When I saved their father’s life, I’d saved their family. I became one of them, another son of the mob boss. Still, they only met my eyes for a moment. Maybe because they didn’t care, or maybe there was nothing there to look at.
“Today, the only person in trouble is Jimmy.” Mario confirmed what I’d suspected.
I cracked my knuckles. Jimmy had been sliding through the cracks for years now, getting away with shit he shouldn’t. The Armanelli family had cleaned up a massive mess for him more than once. We couldn’t afford slipups, not with RICO laws as restrictive as they were now. Tonight, Mario would decide if Jimmy was worth the risk.
He walked in, black suit pressed and a swagger in his step. He wore the gold family ring, along with about nine others, and flaunted extra diamonds where he could. A Rolex weighed down his wrist; the gold chain on his neck was overkill. He wanted to make a statement, but the one he really made walked in behind him.
I sucked in a quick breath.
Katie.
She had always been a little thing, probably only five-five and skinny enough to pick up without any struggle. She had curves, but they were young ones. She was green. So was I. I realized my twenty-one years seemed unripe to most, but I’d seen the world.
On Jimmy’s arm, what had she really seen?
She wore a pink sweater, her black hair pulled back in a tight bun and tipped with red now. She walked close to him like he would protect her.
Her almond eyes and smooth skin screamed innocence. It was beautiful and frightening at the same time. These men were nothing like the ones she should be around. Some of them smiled, Bastian actually catcalled, and Mario hushed him.
I leaned toward Mario. “Why is she here? Did he inform you?”
“I knew about it,” was all Mario said. “Jimmy?” Mario announced, and everyone gave our boss the attention he deserved. “You brought the little Katalina finally.”
She smiled and walked up to Mario. She held out her hand, no fear in her eyes as she shook his hand and he brought her in for a kiss on each cheek.
“Thank you for having me,” her voice rasped out to Mario, a hair above a whisper, and it rubbed every man’s dick just the right way. Her lips glistened with gloss, and the eyeliner she wore was thicker than I’d ever seen on her.
Fuck, she was a pretty little thing. She always had been. Her frosted gray eyes held your soul when she stared you down, like she could suck you in and never let you out. And tonight she’d dressed in soft pinks though she’d painted on the face of a woman.
She still wore the gold necklace. I saw it tucked under the neckline of her sweater. Didn’t she know this wasn’t the place to wear something like that? She had to if she was with a man like Jimmy.
What a piece of shit she’d picked to be with, too. I held back a growl just thinking about how dirty this man got. He’d trafficked buses of women. He’d tied them down, shot them up with drugs, then sold them off.
It was the old way, not something we’d ever focused on much, except that we knew it wasn’t the way Mario wanted to leave the mob, and he would leave it to his son one day soon enough.
Traditions were sometimes buried so deep into the ground that it was hard to determine if the roots were toxic. And poisonous roots needed to be ripped out.