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“Who says that?” he asked, stalling for time.
I waved my hand in the air. “People. People say it.” They certainly hadn’t handed out spare IQ points when this guy had been born.
“I don’t know people,” he muttered, his eyes shifting to the side. He was trying to work out how to walk away from this alive. He didn’t realize that was a futile hope.
“Of course you don’t. The real question is, if you could be anything you wanted to be here, in this great, neon mecca for human greed and gluttony, what would you be?”
He licked his lips. “Look, man, we weren’t touching your stuff. We were searching for someone, a kid—”
“The older generation ushering in the new. While I love traditions, I wouldn’t lie to me, unless you want me to make it hurt.”
He blinked at me, trying in vain to decipher my meaning. It seemed clear as fucking day to me, but much like idiots who smoked and then were surprised when they got cancer, no one expected death to be imminent. If we truly understood the risk we took leaving the house every single day, we’d never cross the threshold. The truth was that humans were very breakable creatures, and this world was full of danger.
“I’m not lying. One of the new recruits, Miguel – he went missing. Last we heard, he was hanging out here, Clements Drive. We just want to know what happened to him.”
“Skipped out with some product, did he?” I asked.
I didn’t give a shit what had happened to a young, wannabe cartel cretin, but a subtle glance at my second-in-command ordered him to check it out. We couldn’t have the Castillos sniffing around our drop sites. The police were all over the new cartel, trying to root them out of the state. Unlike me, they had no connections in law enforcement who could look the other way, destroy evidence, and even make the odd body disappear now and again, and that was just the way I liked it.
I was the King of Atlantic City, and thecapo dei capiof New Jersey, and no one would take that title from me. No one.
I stood, having gotten what I wanted from the conversation. My men shifted around me.
“Regardless, Castillos don’t come around my property. I trust you’ll give that message to yourpatrón.”
The sucker actually looked relieved. “I will, I promise, man. No problem.”
I loomed over the man. “I misspoke. I meant your worthless body and those of your men will send the message nicely.”
After that, all hell broke loose.
I ended the man I’d been questioning, the head of his little group, with a sharp slice to the jugular. I almost always carried a knife, and my thin stiletto blade was like an extension of my hand. The only thing I disliked about this method of killing was the gush of warm blood that hit my hand afterward. For that reason, I wore black leather gloves.
His face was frozen in a comically shocked expression. Once his body hit the ground, his men jumped into action. Some of them swung for me. Elio, my second, my bodyguard, and my most trusted man, intercepted, snapping necks and kicking out knees as he went.
My men were so well trained, I didn’t have to slow my pace as I strode from the parking lot. They cut down every attack without a single blow landing on their target. Me.
As the son of one of the richest, most vicious mafiosos in the country, I'd been a target my entire life. I was used to being a target, and my men acted accordingly. If you had an ounce of survival instinct, you didn’t dare come close.
Just the way I liked it.
* * *
In my officein La Leonora, my favorite casino – one of the oldest in the De Sanctis portfolio and named after my mother – the other member of my inner circle, Giada, waited behind my desk. She had her feet up, her shitkicker boots on the dark wood, and chewed bubble gum. She blew a perfect pink bubble just as we walked through the doors.
“Move,” I snapped at her.
Sometimes she felt more like my younger sister than my real sibling did. Sofia Chernova, formerly De Sanctis, lived in Maine with a crazy Russian gangster and their two children. As much as I’d struggled to trust Nikolai Chernov, – the Russian bratva gangster who’d become obsessed with my younger sister – we’d come to respect each other over the years. Besides, his bloodthirsty nature and talent for violence had earned him a reputation that ensured Sofia’s life remained unthreatened. Nikolai was known as thePalach, the executioner, and he was a powerful player to have in the family.
Giada, on the other hand – was mysottocapo, Elio’s, mouthy, hot-tempered younger sister – and was sometimes more of a liability than anything else. Despite that, she was family, and one of the few people who wasn’t scared to talk back to me. She had bigger balls than the rest of the made men in the family in that regard, and I respected that. She was also a tech genius.
She grinned at me and poked a hole in the bubble so it sagged against her chin.
“Say please,” she laughed.
I headed around the table toward her. She shot up, planting her boots on the carpet with a wink before sashaying away. I’d yet to find a subject that Giada took seriously.
Elio glowered at his younger sister. “Giada,” he muttered in warning.
