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“DeLucci!” I call out. “We need to talk!”
Giovanni pauses mid-game with the man he’s playing with and looks up at me, a mix of surprise and annoyance on his face.
“What do you want, Everhart?” he asks. His men step forward to confront us, but he holds a hand up, stopping them.
“Your wife is a harlot,” I sneer. Ryder and Oliver stand on either side of me, flanking me as I speak. “She’s been going behind your back for years, DeLucci. How does it feel to know that the woman you married is a two-timing whore?”
Giovanni’s beady black eyes widen, his wrinkled face contorting in anger. “How dare you accuse my wife, you potato-blood scum!”
“We have proof,” I tell him, smirking. “She’s been working behind your back to take you down. But it turns out that we share a problem. You see, the person she’s been working with is Declan O’Malley. So it seems we were both played by him, played like puppets on his strings.”
“You'd better fucking show me the proof, you arrogant motherfuckers,” Giovanni spits out, “or I’m three seconds away from letting my men blast you so full of lead you’ll have to be buried as radioactive waste!”
“Here,” I say, shoving the file of letters at him. “Your wife was messing around with him behind your back for years. I’d wager she was on and off with him your entire marriage.”
Giovanni scans the letters, looking more and more irate as he shuffles through the pages. His face is mottled purple by the time he’s done.
“What do you want?” he demands, looking back up at me. “What do you want for this?”
“I want to make a new deal with you,” I say, shrugging. “Whatever deal you had with Declan, I want to cut a new one.”
“Why should I do that?” Giovanni asks, standing up slowly as he leans on his cane. “I have all the cards now. I might as well take all you fuckin’ Callahans out now that I know what’s really going on. Do you think I’d let one of you double-cross me and get away with it?”
Fuck. This isn’t going like I’d hoped. I had anticipated Giovanni being reluctant to take the deal, but I never thought he’d be so angry that he’d want to wipe us all from the map.
I glance back at Ryder and Oliver, whose expressions of fear mirror my own.
“We can get you a better deal,” Ryder offers, stepping forward. “Whatever Declan has given you, we can give you something better.”
“Hah!” Giovanni laughs loudly. “You think you can come in here, tell me that I’m being tricked by a traitor, and just believe that you won’t do the same to me? I’m not as stupid as I look, little vaffunculos,” he taunts. “Why should I not just gun you three down on the spot and then march in and take care of O’Malley just the same?”
“Because we’re not stupid enough to come without being prepared,” I tell him. “I’ve got a man on you right now. If your men shoot at us, we’re prepared to take you out immediately in retaliation.”
“The time for reckoning is at hand,” Giovanni states, signaling to his men to lower their weapons. “I’d suggest you leave now. But don’t think this is the last of it,” he warns. “You might live today, but we’re coming for you. We’re going to find you and we’re going to kill every last one of you sons of bitches.”
“C’mon,” I say to Ryder and Oliver as I turn, stalking away. “If war is what these bastards want, war is what they’re getting.”
The three of us take off, retreating from the tense confrontation with Giovanni DeLucci. The weight of his ominous threat hangs heavily in the air, casting a shadow over our resolve.
But silent determination courses through my veins, fueled by a fiery desire to put an end to the bloodshed, to break free from the suffocating grip of the turf wars that threaten to consume us all.
With each step I take, the echoes of Giovanni's menacing words reverberate in my mind, driving home the urgency of our mission. The three of us cannot allow his threats to go unanswered, and we cannot afford to falter in the face of such formidable opposition.
Glancing at my brothers, a sense of urgency grips at me with icy fingers. Beneath the surface of their steely resolve, I see a flicker of concern. The threat of retaliation is looming, and the DeLuccis don’t issue such challenges lightly.
Fearing they may strike back soon, I decide that we need to head back into our own territory post-haste. As we brace ourselves for the storm that threatens to engulf us, I can’t help but wonder… will we be ready when it comes crashing down, or will this be the moment that marks the beginning of the end for our legacy, for the Callahans and the Everhart brothers?
43
OLIVER
As the sun begins its slow descent behind the towering skyline of the city, casting long shadows across the streets below, a sense of urgency grips me like a vise. The weight of impending danger is crushing, a palpable tension that sets my nerves on edge.
We've received word—more like a warning—that the DeLuccis are planning an assault. In just twenty-four hours, they'll be coming for us.
The three of us have a massive challenge on our shoulders now. We need to be prepared for this oncoming storm without alerting Declan of our plans. We can’t let him know what’s happened yet. It’s a high-stakes situation that will test the very limits of our cunning and resourcefulness.
In order to do that, we have to gather every man with an ounce of loyalty to Marcus Everhart, every man who has felt slighted by Declan or overlooked, or stepped on in his quest to the top.
