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“Oh, please, stop being boring! So," she sat down on the couch and leaned back, holding her face in her hands, "who did you kill?"
Elio snorted. “How do you know we killed anyone?”
“Ren is wearing his killing gloves, and I just have an instinct for these things. The real question is, why didn’t you invite me?” Giada sighed and sank into the leather. She turned to stare at the huge picture window that overlooked the strip. “I never get to do fun things. If I’d known there was a glass ceiling in the mob, I would have just worked for a bank or something.”
“Feel free to go and do that,” I deadpanned.
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe I will. Though, it won’t pay well, and do banks really need hackers? On second thought, I’ll just rent out my services to the highest bidder. Freelance hacking for criminals, that’s a thing, right?”
“Yeah, a thing that’ll get you killed. Did you eat?” Elio asked, falling into his usual dynamic with his little sister.
It was funny to think of Giada as little anything, considering how dangerous she was. I’d seen her torture men and laugh when they cried. They were bad men, sure, but still. Very few could find humor in human suffering. Besides being slightly unhinged, she was brilliant. Technology came to life under her talented fingertips, and there was nothing she couldn’t achieve with Wi-Fi, a laptop, and a steady supply of energy drinks.
“Of course, I ate. You think I don’t know how to take care of myself?”
“Last time you were working hard on something, you forgot to eat for four days and fainted in the shower,” Elio reminded his sister. “It took two men to get your wet, naked ass downstairs.”
“So what? It was probably the best day of their lives. Think of it as a charitable donation, helping ugly fuckers see some real tits and ass, instead of all the crap they watch online or at a club.” Giada grinned at her brother’s impassive face. Only a ticking muscle in his jaw showed his irritation.
“As entertaining as this is, I presume you’re here to update me on the Castillo situation?” I interrupted and stripped off my black gloves, finger by finger, before dropping them in the trash can beneath my desk. Taking a cigarette out, I lit up and inhaled the nicotine. It felt good crashing into my bloodstream. I only allowed myself to smoke after killing someone. A fucked up version of a postcoital smoke.
Giada nodded and pulled her laptop out of her bag. “Here’re the people they’re paying off to look the other way.”
“Make me a list of their names…Call it ‘Who to kill for being a fucking idiot,’” I sighed.
How anyone, no matter how much power they had in the normal world or how many billions they had in the bank, thought they could get their drugs from someone else at a cheaper rate inmycity was baffling. Undercutting me was tantamount to suicide. Clearly, they were too dumb to live anyway, so I was really doing the planet a favor by wiping them out, hopefully before they procreated. Survival of the fittest in action.
“Your title is a little clunky…Let’s call it the Kill List,” Giada said thoughtfully.
“Whatever.” I clamped my cigarette between my teeth, picked up the small bottle of lighter fluid I kept on my desk, and squirted it into the fireproof trash can.
“Also, I prefer Excel,” Giada continued.
I gave her a dark look and flicked my lit cigarette into the trash can, watching my bloodstained gloves go up in flames.
“Giada,” I warned quietly.
She simply laughed. “Okay, boss, don’t get your boxers in a bunch. One Kill List spreadsheet coming right up.” She pushed herself to her feet, making sure to fix her tight black T-shirt where it had ridden up. Giada liked to dress her curvaceous body in skintight clothes. Those clothes on a body like hers pulled men’s eyes wherever she strutted, and it stressed Elio out. Causing her older brother anxiety was one of Giada’s favorite hobbies, so it worked out well for her.
After she left, Elio approached. He’d had his head buried in a tablet, and now, his lips had become a thin line of worry.
“What is it?” I asked, reading his mood immediately.
“I pulled up the CCTV of the warehouse on Clements Drive. The kid was there, and he wasn’t alone.”
Elio placed the tablet before me, and we both watched. The dumb Castillo goon wandered into the warehouse, and a little shadow followed him. In the grainy night-vision glow, I made out a girl, probably in her teens.
We observed the girl hide, and then saw two De Sanctis men, Tony Guardini and Aldo Vasi, move into the frame. They’d been there to make sure there weren’t any problems with the shipment. I’d recently taken them off the more face-to-face tasks that my men carried out, because lately they’d been getting a little too trigger happy. The video then showed them dragging the boy into the room. The shot was loud, even on the recording.
I didn’t have an opinion about killing the boy. He worked for the Castillos, and he was onmyproperty, trying to takemyproduct. But still, Tony Guardini was on thin ice. He’d been explicitly told not to kill anyone without my say-so. The most dangerous thing to have on your books was an armed man who you couldn't control. It was bad for the De Sanctis reputation, and worse, it came off like I couldn’t rein in my men.
They left the body there, probably calling on our family cleaners to take care of it. I stared at the video a long time, until a small movement caught my attention.
Ah, that’s right.The girl.
She crept out from underneath a crate. She had been off camera for so long, I’d nearly forgotten about her. Just when I expected her to turn tail and run, another figure appeared.
A woman. She was older than the first one, but not by much. She gripped the younger girl’s hand tightly, her body curving around her like a protective shield. A sister?
