Chapter 11

The De Luca brothers have our hands in nearly everything illegal, except for human trafficking and prostitution. That’s where my brother Domenic draws the line. We rarely hurt women and we never lay a hand on children. I don’t agree on not hurting women because sometimes there’s a need for it, but with kids, I agree. They are always off limits for us.

One of our largest sources of revenue is drugs, and you’d think people wouldn’t dream of fucking us over, but they do. There’s an excellent reason we don’t touch the shit. Drugs make you stupid, kids. Really fucking stupid. And desperate. Heroin specifically in the current case. One hit and you’re done. Addicted. An absolute slave to the madness that it makes you crave. People know this, yet they inject that needle into their veins for the first time and then their lives as they know it are over. They will do anything to score more. Very few people can afford to have a heroin habit. Even those that can eventually cannot maintain it. Every day, their body needs more as they chase that elusive high. The problem is once you’re addicted to it, it’s no longer just about the high you’ll never achieve again. It’s the sickness.

I’m told the inability to sleep for days at a time, the bone pain, and muscle cramps are the worst of it. However, the sweating, high blood pressure, racing heart, watery discharge from the eyes and nose, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea don’t sound like a day at the park either. Like I said, they get desperate and make poor choices in the pursuit of the drug that now rules their lives.

When one of our guys in distribution told me he had been robbed of his entire supply, I was slightly surprised because he’s been a solid worker for the last six years. He sat an interrogation with both Dante and myself for twelve hours because we don’t take anyone at their word. We were both concerned he might be lying and either using drugs or attempting to steal money from us. Both of which are terrible decisions. Of course, the story began with a woman, a pretty blonde. It always starts with a woman or ends with one. However, when he informed us that the woman was none other than Nicole Grant, our ears perked up with delight. After a little digging, we confirmed that this woman is indeed Nicole, who is the twin sister of our little obsession. So we brought her in, not willingly, of course.

Nicole sits on her knees with her hands tied behind her back. Normally, a sight like that would make my dick hard, but not this time. Some men might find the thin blonde type attractive, but I prefer women like Natalia, with meat on their bones. I want flesh to dig my fingers into while I fuck them. However, apparently Marcus does not agree because that’s how she got him. She used her body to get into his house, and then robbed him while he slept. We will deal with him. There will be no mercy for allowing this to happen, but right now I’m focused on Nicole and how we can turn this to our benefit.

Her blonde hair is drenched with sweat as shivers, “I’m so-so-rry,” she whimpers loudly.

I rub my hand across my jaw. “Tell me about your sister.”

Her blue eyes snap to mine, widening, as her mouth falls open, and she blinks several times like she’s trying to process my words, “What about her?”

Dante looms over her, an expression of intrigue on his face. “Tell us everything.”

“And then you’ll let me go?” She asks hopefully as I chuckle, “You’ll tell us everything or you’ll die slowly. Painfully.”

Nicole”s eyes water, and I’m not sure if it’s from the withdrawal or if she’s going to cry. It doesn’t actually matter because the only reason she’s still alive is because we want information from her. She doesn’t know it yet, but her sister is the only thing keeping her alive at the moment.

“There isn’t much to tell. She’s the fat one, the ugly duckling. Nobody likes her, not me, not my parents. No one.”

Dante balls his hands into fists, and pulls his leg back and kicks her in the face with enough force to knock her teeth out, but she turns her head in time to avoid losing any. She cries out in pain as his foot connects with the side of her face, and her head smacks into the wall behind her.

“Dante,” I growled, “Stand back. You’ll get your chance.”

He inhales a sharp breath as he turns and glares at me. I nod, and he steps back from her reluctantly. We both have a fascination with our sweet Natalia, but his differs from mine. I want to fuck her and make her cry, but I think my brother is in love with her. He wants to protect her and do all the romantic shit. It’s the only reason other than our brothers that we haven’t taken her yet, because we are not on the same page. I expect that to change because the youngest De Luca brother is getting twitchy with his need for her. Eventually, he’ll snap and agree.

“Why don’t your parents like her?”

I get sibling rivalry, but why her parents wouldn’t like her is beyond me. Natalia has a bubbly, sweet personality and I can’t imagine anyone not liking her. Every family has drama, but I can’t imagine how she would be at the center of it.

She grins at me like she’s holding the world”s biggest secret and shakes her head. “Nope. You’re going to kill me, anyway. I’ll take this one to the grave.”

Dante reacts emotionally, while I’m always calm and calculated. An emotional response is dangerous because if I let him, he’d kill her and we’d never get what we both want. I know it’s his need to protect Natalia that’s driving it. Still, keep your eye on the prize and all that.

Pulling out my cell phone, I call T, “Bring it.”

Physical violence isn’t how you get a junkie to talk. Only one thing will, the drugs they desire more than their next breath.

“Dante, untie her.”

Glaring at her, I stand back, my hands in my pockets, “Don’t try anything stupid. I’ll give you what you want and then you’ll give us what we want or there’ll be no more. Understood?”

She nods emphatically. “Yes. Oh God, thank you.”

T walks in and I nod to him, “Give it to her. She knows what to do.”

He walks over to her and hands her the syringe with the heroin, ready to go, and quickly searches for a vein with shaky hands and injects it into her arm. She hands the syringe to Dante, and he walks away to toss it in a bottle and seal it. It’s not perfect but we don’t have a sharps container because normally there’s no drug use here.

“Now. Start talking before I unleash my brother on you.”

She nods as she takes in a shaky breath. “We don’t have the same father.”

I tilt my head curiously as I cock an eyebrow at her. “Twins can’t have different fathers.”

Okay, it’s possible, I suppose. We all saw the news report about the woman who had fraternal twins by two different men, but I’m sure that’s not what we are dealing with here. That has to be a rare situation—one that’s not likely to happen again. What are the odds? A million to one, I don’t actually know, but it’s got to be something like that.

I suspect she’s fucking with us and feeding us some bullshit about her father.