Leo stands up from his spot at the table and greets me with a tight-lipped smirk. “Hello brother,” he says in a tone that sounds more like a wicked caricature than the innocent, docile brother I’ve known all these years. He doesn’t look at all surprised to see me here either. I wonder if maybe his fantasies and all the shit he concocted in his head while he was living a completely different reality didn’t screw up his head.
“Where’s Camille?” I ask, ignoring all the other burning questions I have for my snake of a brother.
“Do you like what I’ve done with the place?” he asks, ignoring my question as he motions his arm around the inside of the open area. “Not quite as quaint as it used to be when we used to come here as boys.”
I look at what he’s trying to show me and have to admit that it’s impressive. He’s taken an old abandoned warehouse and turned it into an entire operation. Somehow, he’s recruited men—stealing them from inside of our own crime family, but also from others like the Grecos. And somehow, he’s backed this operation with enough money to have actual channels of business going on in here. It’s lucrative and sneaky, as if he’s trying to just make up his ownborgataout of thin air, kind of like how he made up all those fictional scenarios in his journal out of thin air.
“Where’s Camille?” I ask again, this time glaring at him and also sizing up the men around the table to determine whether or not I have a fighting chance. As my brother motions his hands toward a few of the men and they start to walk toward me, I realize that my fighting chance is not at all the same odds as it once was back when I was a kid doing sparring matches in the ring. Now, I’ve got five huge guys coming toward me with the intent to either kill me or take me down. For more reasons than one, I wish that Leo and I were both just lanky teenagers again. Because if we were, I would pin him down and never let him come up again.
15
CAMILLE
Even with my ear pressed up against the back of the metal door, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on outside of this locked room. I can hear the muffled sounds of people talking and moving about, but I can’t decipher any of the words that are being spoken.
I want to know where they’ve taken Leo. If something happens to him while we’re so at odds, I’ll never forgive myself. He was definitely acting a bit obsessive about it, but I was the one who lied to him to begin with, so the whole thing is pretty much my fault.
I bang on the inside of the door, demanding to be let out, but no one comes for quite a while. Shouting inside the room doesn’t seem to do any good either. They either can’t hear me or don’t care. I envision inside my head what these creeps might look like, and every visual scenario that I come up with is some sort of the same variation—big, bulky, meathead bullies with no morals.
When the door finally opens and I’m let out, I can’t believe my eyes. This warehouse has been converted into some sort of headquarters. I guess I didn’t really take a good look at it when I was first brought here, but also there wasn’t as much activity going on then as there is now. There are mafia dealings being run out of nearly every corner of the building. Drugs are being packed, money is being rolled, and an impressive selection of artwork and stolen jewelry is laid out on a table the length of a semi that looks like it’s being inspected. This is a huge operation here, and not one I know of anyborgataoperating here in Noho.
“Leo!” I shout with relief when I see him standing near one of the walls of the giant room. I run up to him and throw my arms around him, not even caring about our last argument but just happy that he is alive. When I let go of him and look him over to see if he’s okay, I’m surprised to see that he no longer even looks injured. He isn’t cradling his arm anymore and he looks all cleaned up. In fact, he looks better than he did inside the locked room with me. And then, to my complete shock, I notice something else. Leo looks like he’s in charge.
“You want her hands bound up again, boss?” one of the men asks Leo.
Leo’s eyes are fixed on mine but when I look at him, I feel like I don’t even recognize my best friend. “That won’t be necessary,” he says as casually, as if he’s used to giving orders. I’ve never seen Leo order around anything in his life. He wasn’t even good at training his dog in high school to listen to him. I’m confused and distraught over what’s obviously a web of lies I’ve been a part of.
“What is this? What do you think you’re doing?” I ask him as I take a step backward. I’ve always considered myself to be pretty intelligent and to be able to figure things out with quick thinking, but this has me completely boggled. I don’t understand why or how Leo would be in charge of whatever sort of mafia ring this is. He’s part of the Adamiborgata, not some sort of rogue independent. Hell, Leo doesn’t even want to be involved in this kind of stuff—does he?
“I was going to bring you in on this one day,” he says almost as if he is sad about something. “I wanted you to be part of it with me. I did all of this for you, Camille.” He waves his arm around the warehouse, and I look at all of the men carrying out various illegal tasks, but I still don’t understand. “I thought that if I gained enough power, I’d become so great that you would one day choose me.”
“What?” I think back to what he told me in the room when we were alone. He’s been harboring a secret crush on me since we were kids, and now he’s giving me this ambiguous explanation that his quest for power or whatever the hell is going on here, as a ploy to try to win my affections? My heart drops into my stomach when I realize that all this time, all these years, Leo’s only been biding his time and acting like my best friend, when in actuality he’s wanted more all along. “Why didn’t you ever just tell me how you felt?” I ask with tears swelling in my eyes. I am hurt and betrayed, and I imagine that’s how Leo felt when he saw me and his brother together.
“I was planning to,” he answers. “When the time was right. I was almost there—almost ready to be able to impress you enough to compete with my brother. But then I find out that the two of you couldn’t wait, apparently. Gabriel sunk his cock into you and ruined everything.”
“Leo, you need to stop this right now. You need to call an end to whatever it is you’re planning, before Gabriel comes here with the full force of hisborgatato put a stop to it for you.” I don’t trust Leo now, and I’m beyond upset with him. But I still don’t want to see either of them get hurt. Even though I can see that Leo has betrayed me, I still care about him as the best friend I thought him to be. And I think that maybe he needs help.
“Oh, you don’t need to worry about that,” Leo smiles in a way that seriously creeps me out. “Gabriel already is here, and he came alone.”
I turn around quickly when I hear a noise behind me and see two of Leo’s delusional followers dragging Gabriel out by his shoulders as his body slouches between them. What I’ve only ever seen as a powerful, primal force to be reckoned with has now been beaten within an inch of his life. “Gabriel!” I cry as I run over to him.
The men holding him drop Gabriel at my feet and I catch his arms over mine in order to help break his fall. “I think maybe you should make peace with my brother before he leaves this earthly world behind,” Leo says coldly from beside me. I look up and see nothing of the man I once knew. There’s nothing left of Leo that’s recognizable. Instead, he’s been replaced by a cold, calculating, terrible monster that has been lurking in the shadows unnoticed and plotting this sick scheme.
“Who even are you?” I ask. I can barely see through the tears filling my eyes now.
“I’m the same man who’s been here for you all these years, Camille. You’ve just never seen me. But now you will,” Leo says harshly as he waves for his men to follow him and leave Gabriel and I alone on this side of the warehouse. “Say your goodbyes to my brother.”
As soon as Leo and his cronies leave, I bend my face down to Gabriel’s. I am panicked as I hold onto him and don’t know what to do to help. He looks bad, really bad. His cheek is cracked open and there’s a gaping cut across his chest that’s drenching his torn shirt with blood. I can tell by the way his weight sinks into my lap and the way he’s taking quick, shallow breaths that he’s in acute pain. “Tell me how to help you,” I say, terrified he might be bleeding internally and on the verge of death.
“I’m okay,” he lies. “These injuries aren’t going to kill me, but Leo intends to.”
“I don’t understand why he’s doing this,” I cry. “Is it really just because of me? Because I slept with you?”
“No. I know what happened now. I know why he’s doing this,” Gabriel says, grimacing as he tries to speak and visibly trying to push the pain aside to get his words out. “My brother’s been involved in the Grecoborgatawith you since the two of you were teenagers, ever since Leo was a line cook in one of your father’s restaurants. He’s had feelings for you all these years. But he never acted on those feelings because he always felt inferior.”
“But I never did anything to make him feel that way,” I say.
“Not inferior to you, Camille,” Gabriel explains as his weight starts to get heavier in my lap. He’s struggling to hang on and finish telling me what he has to say. “He felt inferior to me. Leo always felt as if I overshadowed him, being the older brother and then the powerfulcapoof our family’sborgata. Even before you and I slept together, Leo felt like he couldn’t compete with me, but he wanted to. That’s why when your parents died, he seized the opportunity.”
