Chapter 27

The warehouse my brother has been holding Enzo is at least air-conditioned. I'm certain he'll still stink. If he's been being held as long as my brother told me he had. We're not big on the hospitality in the Ricci family.

"This way, Boss." A soldier's superior depends on which brother he's with. Now that I'm back in town, I lord over the soldiers I take with me to do anything or those who watch my six, such as Dante.

While Mario is with me, I'm his boss. If Lucio was in this room, however, he'd outrank me.

I never liked the aspect of power that came with this job. My calling was much more toward the darker aspects of this world. Always had been.

Because it's what I'm good at.

I follow Mario to the back of the warehouse, where makeshift cells house multiple men. My eyes land on one in particular.

"Oh, hell no!" Enzo says, getting off his cot and racing for the bars. "He's out! He's not even a part of this family anymore."

A dark chuckle leaves Mario as he throws me the keys to his cell. "He was never out, Enzo, but I guarantee you are. Or, should I say, you will be."

Enzo backs to the wall at the back of the cell as I open it and step in.

"Aww, look, he's scared," Mario teases.

An older man in the cell to Enzo's right calls out, "Of course he's scared. That's the reaper!"

"Why are you back?" Enzo asks, white-knuckling the metal sink in his cell.

I stick my hands in my pocket, dropping the key in softly. I cock my head at him. "I dropped in for a bit of fun, is all. I'll be gone soon. You and I are going to have a little chat. Heart to heart if you will."

"Man, no!" Enzo tells Mario over my shoulder.

"Where you want him, Boss?" Mario asks, ignoring Enzo's pleas.

"You know where," I smirk, stepping aside as Mario moves in and connects Enzo's handcuffed hands to a thick chain, then connects the chain to his feet.

When he opens a nightstick, he nods his head toward the open cell door. "Go on, you heard the boss. You're going to have a sit-down."

I bite my lip, anticipation skittering through my blood.

Brynne's face moves through my brain momentarily, and I shake it out. I can't have her with me.

Even so, I wonder if she's alright. Even though my brain says that she's perfectly fine with Dante at the door, I pull my phone out.

Hey.

Hey. Are you alright?

I smirk.She's beat me to the punch by asking me if I'm alright. We're both at opposite ends of the same city, worried about one another.

I'm fine. And you? Are you behaving for Dante?

That depends. Define behaving.

I growl as I narrow my gaze at her reply. What the fuck could she be up to now?

Doing as Daddy tells you is behaving.

Then, yes, I'm behaving. But Dante would say otherwise since I just whipped his ass at Monopoly twice.

A laugh barrels out of me, and Mario looks back to where I'm following him. I'm headed to torture and kill a man, and I'm more intrigued by what she's doing back at the apartment. It's the first time I think I've ever had this happen.

It has me wondering if I'm turning some kind of corner.

But what does it matter if she wants to go home?

Go easy on him. And remind him he's supposed to be working, hmm?

He is working. He's keeping me from losing my mind from boredom. Come home soon.

I will be home as soon as I can.

As I pocket my phone, a stupid smirk lifts my lips. Come home soon, she'd said. It's as if she's going to stay with me and my home is hers. I can't deny the giddy leap of my heart in my chest.

As Mario straps Enzo to the upright table bolted to the wall, however, I remove my suit jacket and my cufflinks. Rolling up my sleeves, I look over the table of implements Mario had already assembled.

"Thank you, Mario. You'll no longer be needed."

"Your brother wants me to stay, but I can make myself scarce."

I nod, outranked and under the same orders. I'm back home in Lucio's territory. I know it's because he's worried about me. But, I feel the most in control I have in a long time.

Having spoken to my little rabbit, I'm even-keeled now.

"Now, let's see what we can get out of you, hmm?"

Enzo screams as I lift a long, spinal needle meant for nerve blocking up in the air and look at him with a grin on my face.

* * *

It's been hours.The morning has come and gone, and I've moved on to much more fun instruments.

The drill winds, the sound of it echoing off the walls surrounding me.

Enzo cries in agony as I push it through his arm, watching it as it shifts through the meaty flesh first. Then, the striations of muscles churn around it as I pull the trigger down harder, keeping it steady.

"Now, the fun bit is going to see how far I can get into your bone with this. I don't think it's meant for drilling rats, do you?"

"Please, stop! God, please stop!" Enzo cries.

He's covered in blood. I'm likewise covered, but I'm not stopping.

"Tell me what else you divulged to your new friends. We know you spilled about the warehouses. You're the only one who could have."

"Your location," he breathes. "I told them where they could find you to get the information they wanted."

"Now, was that so hard?" I remove the drill from his arm and blood squirts out of the wound.

"Hmm, seems I might have hit something important." I shrug.

"Plug it up, man. Fuck!"

I walk to the table and grab some gauze, then head back towards him. Cool and collect.

The more he worries, the more it feeds my soul.

"Please, man. I'm going to bleed out!"

He acts as if I care.

I hold the gauze over his seeping wound. "What did he want to know, Enzo? What is it the Bianchis are after?"

His eyes are frantic as he tries to get his words out over the feeling of blood loss that has him in its grip.

"Tick, tock," I taunt.

"Fuck!" He slams his head back onto the table. "They kept asking about the docks. About the business done there. About where our ships go; what other ports? They seemed like they were searching for something, information on what we're shipping and where. I don't know any of that, though. The docks have always been your brother's thing."

I narrow my gaze. I don't even know what our business is at the docks, but he doesn't need to know that.

"Go on, that's all I know, plug it up! Come on, man!"

I stand back straight, dropping the gauze to the ground. "Yeah, I don't think I will. You disgrace the family, you die disgracefully. You know that Enzo. How many men have we killed, you and me? For the same shit you pulled."

He sobs. "What was I supposed to do, man? They were going to fucking kill me!"

Pulling my blade from my side, I'm on him in a second, stabbing it through his shoulder and twisting. "You die, man!" I snarl. "That was part of this life from the fucking start. You take the secrets we house in our heads to the fucking grave!"

"I couldn't…" he sputters.

"And why is that, Enzo? Why couldn't you?"

"My wife," he says, blood leaking from his lips. And that's when I pause, pulling back a bit, hand still on the hilt of my blade. "I didn't… want… to leave her, man."

His eyes are honest, even through the pain.

"I know you" — he coughs — "don't get that," he manages, blood coating his teeth, the metallic tang keeping me pinned to reality. I am always clearest while I'm killing.

It's what makes me the sickest brother.

What I don't tell Enzo is I know the feeling of not wanting to leave someone. Would I do the same if I were in his shoes? Would I leave Brynne alone? Or would I give up every ounce of information I have to survive and kiss her one more time?

I pull my blade out of him, and he cries out. I turn, beginning to pace as I tap the bloody knife on my shoulder absently.

"So, you'd do it all over again? Give us up to save your ass?"

"I wasn't… saving my ass."

"But you were. You saved yourself, so you could sink your cock into a piece of ass again."

Enzo rolls his eyes as pain overtakes him momentarily. "Sh-She's pregnant. I wanted… to be there," he stammers.

"But the legacy you're leaving behind is that you're a fucking rat. You almost got me killed. You almost got my woman killed."

His eyes grow frantic as he realizes what he almost cost me, and who I am.

"You came into this world understanding that you're born of blood to get in and when it's time to get out…" I trail off, waiting for him to finish it for me.

"You die," he finishes.

I nod. "No matter what, this life ends in death. For men like us, Enzo, that rarely means we die happy in our beds, does it?"

He shakes his head, sniveling as tears mix with blood.

"No. It doesn't," I answer for his cowardly ass. "You had a loyalty to this family first. Your family is secondary to this life, and you knew that."

"You can't do this. You can't kill me."

I lick the blade free of some of his blood. "You know, I could tell Lucio you were doing it for your family, and he might understand…" His eyes dance with renewed hope. "But you caused irreparable damage to someone I care about. And for that, you'll pay."

I shrug, throwing the knife from where I stand five feet away. It finds its way home through his stomach.

Blood spurts from the fresh wound, and he cries out gutturally.

"Boss?" Mario's voice calls my deranged eyes away from my toy, and it's as if ice has been poured over my head.

I turn toward Mario.

He holds out his phone. "Your brother wants to speak with you."

Mario only looks toward where I've pinned Enzo to my table of death with my blade once, covering his mouth with all the damage I've caused over a matter of hours.

"Lucio?" I say into the phone.

"You alright?" he asks, concern filling his breath.

"Fine. You need something?" I don't give him the information I gathered from Enzo, and I won't. Not until I know what the fuck is going on. Because now that it involves me, and I have Brynne, I'm doing this shit the right way.

"Just calling to remind you that dinner is in two hours. I figured since I hadn't heard from you that you needed reeling in."

I grunt. "And you were right."

I didn't know that not only had morning passed, but afternoon as well.

"You'll still be coming?" Lucio asks.

I close my eyes, taking a steady breath as Enzo's cries grate my nerves. "Wouldn't miss it. What are we having?"

"Alessia has a pot of Mama's sauce on now."

My eyes open as I remove my gun from my holster. Enzo screams bloody fucking murder as if it had helped him thus far.

The shot through his head makes a god-awful ricochet of sound through the warehouse, and Mario curses and covers his ears.

"I'll see you soon, Fratello," I tell him, cutting the call and throwing Mario his phone.

After I put my gun back, I walk across the room and retrieve my blade from Enzo's stomach. I wipe the blade clean on his shirt and then slip it into its sleeve.

I tap the contact in my phone for the cleanup crew. "Marco?"

"Fuck, Reaper, when did you get back into town?"

"Only yesterday. I had something to handle. I'll need the usual." I rattle off the address to Marco and hear him repeating it softly as he copies it down.

"I assume you'll need me to bring a few extra people for this job?"

Usually, he'd need to because I'd have cut Enzo into nothing but pieces. But I look at him dangling lifelessly from the upright table in disgust.

"No, your normal crew will be fine."

"Alright, then. We're on our way."

I end the call, looking over at Mario.

"Joe is outside to take you home," he says.

I nod.

"Good to see you, Ardesia," Mario calls out as I stalk down toward the exit of the warehouse.

"Don't say that yet, Mario."

Because the job isn't done.