I splash water on my face. Stroking my beard, I try to focus my attention on my boss. His tone was precise and unaffected when it should have been anything but given his nephew is missing. I’ve known Jimmy fucking Storm my entire life though, and the question he is dying to ask sits just on his well-mannered, manipulative tongue. “Take a moment,” he tells me, “and see what you can remember.”
“We were shot at,” I confirm, feigning a hint of agitation. Of annoyance. I could have put it on thick and pretended I’m in a state of panic, but he’d never buy that from me. “They hit me in the fucking chest.” I laugh once for good measure because that seems like something I’d do.
Silence follows my chuckle.
Then finally he says, “Did you see the shooter?” This time, his words are expressed in a slow, meaningful cadence. His accent is thick as his emotions begin to bubble to the surface. “Ethnicity,se? Did he speak with you?” He doesn’t give a shit about the gunshot wound in my chest, potentially cares very little that Sal is missing.Ask the question, Jimmy. I can fucking hear it like a phantom moving through all your nonsense.
“Not a fucking word, but the prick was Italian. I’m sure of it. Only a wop would have the Mother Mary tattooed on his neck like she’ll save him from having his throat cut open. And I’ve tried Sal’s phone. He isn’t in the hospital. But I’m going to find him, Jimmy. I’ll find him and open that Mother Mary up.”
Even though I pretend I don’t know the shooter, I know he does. Know he’ll recognise that tattoo. It belongs to one of his own. One of his oldest and most trusted.
Letting out a long rough sigh, he states curtly, “A bullet for you is a bullet for me,se?“
Yes.That is the point.
I wipe condensation from the mirror, staring at my reflection for a moment before saying, “Who’s got big enough nuts to go against you, Jimmy?”
A smile creeps across my face.
He clears his throat. “The diamonds?”
And there it is.
I grit my teeth, pretending to sound at least a little uneasy. “I don’t know.”
“No good!” he barks, then takes a moment of silence to settle that break in his resolve. Jimmy was raised in the Old Country by the Family. Raised to be unreadable. Lethal because of his apathy. He can project the pantomimes of any emotion with little ease, but he has a big fucking ego. It is by far his biggest weakness. Disrespecting him, stealing from him, making him feel as though there are things he cannot control, will slowly be his undoing.
“That is an unacceptable answer, my boy. You had one job to do. To collect Sal and the diamonds and get them over the border. You have lost them both,se?I should have sent Clay.” Using my big brother’s name was surely done to irk me, but I don’t give a shit anymore. I gave my youth to Jimmy Storm. My life up until now. At seventeen, I took my vows in front of God and the head of the Family. I love Jimmy. Idolise him. Always have. Still do. He is a pillar of what a man should look like: powerful, unemotional, deadly.
I idolise him, yes. But I’ll kill him anyway.
And I do not fail. For them, I never fail.
“Get back here immediately,” he orders smoothly. “I’ll send people to search for my nephew.”
He kills the call.
And that is where he is wrong. I was never here to bring Sal back. To bring his diamonds across the border. I am here to be the rot inside his fatal flaw. His ego. After finding out that he’s been lying to my family for over a decade, concealing a secret that claimed most of my brother’s youth, that stole his childhood from him, only to hold leverage over my dad. . .
Keep your enemies close? Ay?
That is exactly what Jimmy has been doing all this time, making damn fools out of us. He’s even wed his eldest daughter to Clay, my big brother. Cementing our families. Binding us. As though that will save his life one day.
It won’t.
Because I’m not here for The Family.
I’m here on Butcher business.
Now I have to leave.
But not without her.
Bronson
Fifteen years old
After a quick shower,I head downstairs while Shosh straightens her hair. I spend just as much time here as I do at my own pad, so it feels completely natural to wander around without her.