Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Anthony

"For fuck's sake," I growled. I'd whacked my toe against the leg of my bed as I stumbled out just a few hours after I'd crashed as the sun was streaking across the sky. "Damnit," I hissed when I looked down and saw blood dripping across the wood floors. "What else?" I grumbled as I walked into the bathroom, trailing blood drops behind me.

I glanced at myself in the mirror, squinting at the butterfly strips that were holding the skin on my forehead together, wondering if I could rip them off, or if Salvatore would give me endless shit about it if it was too soon.

Sighing, I turned away and left them alone, turning on the shower, and sticking my foot under the spray until the water went from red to pink to, finally, clear.

I'd not only managed to slice the edge of the toe on the corner of my bed, I'd pushed the toenail up off the bed too.

I climbed in for a quick shower before hopping out and doing a hasty job of patching it up before making my way to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee, and check my phone.

Four missed calls from Emilio.

"Where have you been?" my brother answered on the first ring.

"Sleeping," I admitted. "I was out till dawn," I told him as I poured some brownie batter coffee creamer into my coffee that, if anyone asked, I claimed I kept in the fridge for my sisters. It wasn't even partially true. But it was better than dealing with the endless ragging the guys in the Family would give me if they found out I just liked it.

"Doing what?"

"Working," I told him.

"Working for who?" he asked.

"Miko needed a hand," I admitted, trying not to let bitterness slip into my words.

Miko worked for Cosimo. Who gave Miko a fuckton of responsibility. While my brother still insisted that I basically act as a doorman for the rest of the capos in the Family. Despite officially working for the Family since I was fucking eighteen-years-old.

"Did you clear it with Lorenzo?" Emilio asked.

"Why the fuck would I need to clear it with Lorenzo?" I asked. "The job was already cleared with him through Miko and Cosimo."

"You're in a good mood," Emilio said as I heard Avery in the background, telling him to be nice.

"You're the one giving me the third-degree first thing in the morning," I reminded him.

As a whole, Emilio was a pretty laid-back guy.

Except when it came to me.

We rarely managed to talk about anything involving the Family without it devolving into some sort of argument.

On his part, he wanted to make sure I wasn't going to reflect badly on him.

On mine, I wanted him to accept that I was a capable member of this organization who deserved more responsibility.

"Why were you calling?" I asked, walking back to the fridge to pull open the freezer, curious if I had any of the breakfast sandwiches my mother had made and left for me while I was working one day, ignoring the way my damn toe was throbbing with each step I took.

"Lorenzo wants to see you," he said.

"I thought he had Nero sitting on his door ever since all that shit went down," I said, thinking of how epic of a fuck-up that was, and how his punishment was to be forced to take over my usual job for a few weeks or months.

This so-called punishment was the reason Miko had reached out to me. I was sure he would prefer taking Nero, his younger brother, with him. In lieu of him, I was probably the only other member of the Family who was free on short notice.

"He is. It's not about that."

"No?" I asked, picking up on something in my brother's tone.

"He's got a job for you," he said.

I ignored the concern in his voice and tried to tamp down any eagerness in my own.

"What time does he want to see me?" I asked.

"In an hour."

"Alright. Let me go then. I need to get dressed," I said, ending the call before I could get any sort of lecture about what I should or shouldn't say during my meeting.

I hoped he was busy with Avery and wouldn't show up.

I hemmed and hawed my suit selection as anticipation sizzled across my nerve endings, hoping that this might actually be it.

Maybe Miko had put in a good word for me.

I tried not to chafe at the idea that someone who was less senior than I was in the organization might have more sway than I did. What did it matter if it meant the boss was finally going to give me something of my own to take care of?

I chose the dark gray suit with a matte black shirt and tie and then, all thoughts of breakfast abandoned, made my way toward Lorenzo's place.

He and my brother each had expensive-ass Brownstones just a few doors down from each other. With that nowhere near my income bracket, I had a small apartment just a block away, wanting to be nearby in case anyone needed me.

As I expected, Nero was already standing at the top of the steps to Lorenzo's brownstone, looking comfortable as fuck in the cool fall air. While my ass had sweated through a particularly hot and humid summer in that same position, sweating through my suit, and cringing at the way the city smells were amplified by the hot weather.

Nero looked a lot like his older brother. Tall, black-haired, brown-eyed. But Nero still had a bit of that thinness that came with youth, all long limbs and not enough meat on them yet.

While everything about Miko screamed ‘mobster' when you met him, from his slicked-back hair to the way he spoke, Nero was a little less obvious about it. At least for now. I had no doubt that the more time he spent with the Family, the more he would try to emulate his brother, who was quickly working up the ranks and gaining a lot of respect.

"Nero," I said, nodding my chin at him.

"What happened to your forehead?" he asked, zeroing in on the butterfly bandages.

It was no secret in the Family that I was, well, unlucky as fuck when it came to getting hurt. Shot, stabbed, shot again, sliced by the barber, in a wicked car crash. You name it, it had happened to me.

It used to be an endless source of amusement to everyone, but these days I think it was bordering on concerning how trouble—and pain, we can't forget the damn pain—always had a way of finding me.

"I was on a job with Miko last night," I said, shrugging it off. Choosing not to mention my stubbed toe and fucked up nail. Sometimes, you just had to keep some shit to yourself to save face.

"Miko's inside," he said, reaching for the door to let me in.

Yeah, I figured that was the way of it.

I was two steps inside of the entryway when Miko walked out of Lorenzo's dining room, a place we all seemed to have our meetings, especially now that Lorenzo's kids were all over the rest of the house.

"There you are," Miko greeted me, taking my hand with his, then grabbing my shoulder with the other. "Appreciate the help last night," he said, his accent just a little more Staten Island than Manhattan. "Especially with the short notice."

With that, and nothing else—least of all a comment on my head—he was moving outside to talk to his brother.

"Ant," Lorenzo called from the dining room, sitting there amongst a pile of what looked like blueprints.

"You renovating again?" I asked, thinking of how much he'd already sunk into fixing up the place when he'd inherited it from his old man.

"Giana wants to add one more floor," he said, waving up at the brownstone that already had an impressive four. And something like thirty-five-hundred square feet. A mansion in New York City terms. "The people down the street added it. And, honestly, we could use somewhere to stick all the kids toys," he said, waving over toward where a full-on miniature scale grocery store was set up against the wall, complete with shelves of fake foods and a check-out line with a working belt and register. "Hate having people in the house, though," he said, grimacing.

The perk to using his personal home for business was knowing there was next to no way anyone could bug it, unless it was an inside job.

"Need to open our own construction business," I said. "Good way to wash money," I added, thinking of all the extra ‘supplies' that could be ordered and such.

"That's not a bad idea, Ant," he said, nodding.

"Gee thanks," I said, trying not to sigh at the surprise in his voice. I had good ideas. It was just that no one ever asked me about them.

"Didn't mean anything by that," he said, shrugging. "Look, Miko came here this morning to brief me on the job. And he may or may not have gently suggested that I'm wasting your skills by using you as a guard."

"The job went well," I said, nodding.

"Better than well. One night of work, two hundred grand? No one hurt. That's a damn good job. And he insisted that it wouldn't have been possible without your help."

That was probably pushing the truth. Miko had gotten a lead on a truck full of unreleased gaming consoles. The kind that went for seven hundred a piece. And the driver had a bit of a heroin problem and was desperate enough to score to leave his truck unattended just long enough for us to get in, take out the consoles, and get out of there.

"I do have to ask, though, seeing you…" he said, glancing up at my forehead.

To that, I snorted. "Miko clocked me in the head with his door when I bent down to tie my shoe," I admitted. "At the garage he was renting. Far away from the crime scene," I told him.

"Okay. Good. Also, fuck," he said, wincing. "That couldn't have felt good."

"It's fine," I said, shrugging it off. Even if I did have to take a handful of painkillers before I dropped into bed to cut the headache if I had any hopes of sleep.

"Anyway, with Miko's recommendation, I decided it was time to give you something of your own to handle," he said.

This was it.

Fucking finally.

A chance to prove myself.

And if this went well, I could finally get a crew of my own, get a chance to build a future for myself.

"What's the job?" I asked, pulling out the chair closest to him and sitting down.

"Know anything about the Czech mafia?"