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“On-site, Capa,” My driver said, snapping me back to reality as we drove through the dark alley towards the warehouse that my men already surrounded.
“Let’s go.” As soon as the car stopped at the front door, armed men flanked every entrance and window to the building, alerted to someone’s arrival.
“Who goes there?” A man called out from the second-story window as I got out of the back seat of my car.
“The fucking Don,” I sneered openly up at him, “Lower your fucking weapon unless you want your mother’s throat slit for your disrespect.”
I watched as the men looked between themselves, lowering the barrels of their riffles marginally in uncertainty. I wasn’t their boss. But I was their boss’s boss.
“Do it now!” Luca bellowed from my side and the men complied. I didn’t look like a threat to them, considering it was only Luca and me that arrived, but they knew better than to believe I wasn’t packing more soldiers than just what they could see.
The door opened and a man I recognized stepped outside to greet me.
Cristian.
Arianna’s older brother, and second in line to the throne.
“Nicolas,” He said with a slight nod of his head to his men, who lowered their weapons, “I heard you were abroad.”
“Is that what you were counting on,Brother?” I elongated the title and watched as his eyes rounded slightly at the menace behind them.
He was my wife’s brother, but I didn’t know his character in the least. I had never had a conversation with him before this moment to get a read off him like I had Carmine.
With Arianna’s oldest brother, I could read his sincerity and character by the way he carried himself.
Cristian was more reserved.
Keeping his cards closer to his chest, and while that was admirable and a good trait to possess as a soldier, it was a bad trait to find in a possible opponent.
And finding him here, with nearly three million dollars of smuggled guns on my turf that I wasn’t made aware of, didn’t bode well for him.
He cocked his head slightly and held his hands out at the sides of his waist, “Just an observation made through the long grapevine from Armarow to West Shores is all.” He adjusted his suit jacket. “What brings you this far away from my lovely sister this evening?” He nodded to the car behind me, “Unless of course, you’ve dragged her along on this visit?”
“My wife couldn’t make it this evening, though she sends her best.” I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you planning on explaining the weapons hidden inside, or is your father around to do that?”
I cut straight to the chase, finding the urge to get this over with sooner rather than later.
His face blanched a bit, but he gave no other outward sign of distress. Just that one. And most people would have missed it.
But not me.
“I wasn’t aware we were hiding anything from you, Nicolas.”
“You will call me Don, or Capa.” I took three steps forward until he was close enough to reach if I wanted to. “You haven’t earned the right to call me by my familial name yet, boy.” I spat on the ground next to his shoes. “Now get the fuck out of my way before my patience fades past what even Arianna’s desire to keep you safe can control.” I walked around him and paused at the open doorway as he turned to watch me with fear in his eyes. “Hopefully by the end of this conversation, we’ll be on the same side of this entire thing,” I shrugged my shoulder, “Because your father will be one child short of a five-pack if we’re not.”
I didn’t explain which one of Emilio’s children was at risk, that was the point of the threat.
“After you.” He lifted his hand, motioning for me to do what I already was on my way to do.
Luca nodded, looking at the skyline of the buildings around us discretely before following me inside.
The crates of weapons were easy to find in the warehouse, hidden amongst the machinery that hadn’t been run in decades and exactly where I would have hidden them if I had been in Cristian’s shoes.
But not Emilio’s.
He would have hidden them better.
I stopped at one and grabbed a crowbar from a pile of scrap pallets, shoving the end under the locked lid and prying it open. The lock clanged against the cement floor as I looked over to where Cristian stood with his men in arms, watching us closely. “Last chance to come clean.”
