Page 54 of Duty

John looked out for him.

“It just … the control is getting to me,” Andino admitted. “This whole boss-in-waiting thing, I mean. Every step I take, someone is there to fucking correct it. I can’t breathe without someone telling me I did it wrong. I didn’t even ask for this—I never said I wanted to be the head of this family. Wasn’t it supposed to be you?”

John smirked a bit. “Man, they can’t trust me to have a meeting with a gang leader, and you think they ought to let me have control of a whole organization? Fuck that noise.”

Andino grunted under his breath. “Point remains the same. I was happy doing what I was doing. I was a fucking good Capo. And now, they’ve shoved something else on me that I didn’t even want, but they still expect me to take it with a smile and a thank you.”

John cleared his throat. “Damn.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess now you kind of know how I feel with them all hovering over me like I do.”

Andino sighed heavily. “Sorry.”

John shook his head. “No, it’s all right. I mean … you do sound a little bitchy, though. I expected this because you’re the right choice.”

Yeah, his cousin told him that once.

Andino still wasn’t sure he believed it.

“Point is—suck it up,” John murmured, standing from the table as the gang leader they’d been waiting for was led into the club. “So what, Andi?”

His cousin glanced down at him, waiting.

“Pardon?”

“So what,” John repeated, smirking in that way of his again, “if they make you the fucking boss—take it, and don’t let them control how you sit your ass down in that seat, or what you choose to do with it. They want a boss, then be a boss, Andino. You can do that—you’re just too stuck in your fucking feelings to figure it out right now.”

Was he?

Was that what it was?

Andino stood from his chair as the gang leader approached. “I would kind of need to be the boss to handle myself and the family without their input, John.”

John laughed. “Do that, then.”

Do that.

How easy that fucking sounded.

Was it, though?

That was the question.

Andino didn’t particularly have an answer. At that moment, he didn’t have the time to think it over, either. Not with the gang leader now standing three feet away, and looking like he would rather be anywhere else.

It was time for business.

Andino loved business.

“Maverick, right?” John asked.

The tall, dark-skinned man nodded. “It is.”

“I have a proposition for you.”

“And you’ll want to take it,” Andino added. Then, he gave his cousin a pat on the back. “I’ll go grab you a drink, John.”