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forbidden legacy
KT SAGE
CHAPTER 1
luca
I’ve got ninety-nine problems and half of them are caused by the man across from me. My youngest brother, trouble-maker, fire-starter, was too handsome for his own good, and too careless for mine.
"The fuck is this?" I demand, fanning the photos in my hand, before sliding them across the desk to him. The desk is wood polished to such a high-shine, it smudges as soon as you look at it, but that makes for a frictionless surface for the pictures to glide over. They spread across, haphazard, in front of the man wearing a face almost identical to my own. If only there weren’t ten years between us, enough time that I practically raised him along with my other two younger brothers. If Riccardo was my age, we wouldn’t be in this problem.
He’d know how to damn-well regulate.
"He insulted my girl—" he says with a shrug, leaning back in his chair, the leather creaking underneath him. His black shirt is stretched across his muscles, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the first few buttons undone. He looks like a playboy. He is a playboy. I should have sent him into the army. My mother would never have forgiven me, even though I came of age and became the patriarch of the family the very same year, and it could have been my say.
It should have been my say.
But I was lost, soft, vulnerable after our uncles, and my father, were all murdered on the same weekend, taking out the heads of Greco crime family and leaving me alone, at eighteen, to try to wrangle our criminal empire.
"He was a business partner," I correct. I was working on a new venture with a shipping magnate and his son, and Riccardo took it upon himself to throw alcohol in his face and light him on fire. "Now I have to send flowers to the private hospital wing he’s in, and pay for his plastic surgery. I had to call his father and explain the accident, and tell him we’ll handle his medical expenses, and his son’s care."
Riccardo shrugs.
"You don’t have anything to say?" My hands grip the edge of the desk, and I want to strangle him. Our father always said Ricky was all feeling and no thought, where-as I was the one who measured everything carefully, before making a decision. Even our middle brothers wouldn’t do something so damn impulsive, so stupid. The only reason the cops didn’t get called was because it was our street medic working the club, and it was our damn club. Nobody employed by the Greco family spoke.
Ever.
Loose lips had caused all the patriarchs in our family to end up with their throats slit. Now I visit the exact same punishment on anyone I catch talking.
And I always catch them.
"I didn’t realize the guy was one of yours." Riccardo rolls his eyes, and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a cigarette, before lighting it, and blowing smoke. "And yeah, I’m sorry. It was stupid."
"Stupid is mild," I reply, tapping my fingers lightly. "You were supposed to take over the half of Gas Town Luca this year."
Ricky pauses, his cigarette half-way to his mouth. I’m going to enjoy doing this. I can’t skin him, he’s family, but I can bring him to his knees.
"I was supposed to have half the town?"
"I was going to make you the Capo di tutti Capi of Gas Town."
His lips turn down, and his fingers tremble.
"Was?"
"After this blow-up? You’re not fucking ready. Twenty-five, you could have had anything, a degree, a career in the military, you could have gone straight, but this is what you wanted, godammit, this life is what you wanted." I stare him down.
Each of my brothers they had choices. I gave them that.
Me? There was never any option for me. I’ve got a hastily forged GED burning a hole in the bottom of my desk, because I’d been immersed in the family business from the time I could walk, before I could talk.
And then I turned eighteen, and ten days later, I had the whole Grecco operation in my hand, only to find that I had to grip it tight with both just to ensure it didn’t turn on me and eat me, and my immediate family alive.
"I need someone I can rely on," I growl. "And it’s not you."
"I’ll do better." His words are a whisper.
"Too little, too late."
