My brother is essentially the complete opposite of me. Even the looks of him, with his rust-colored hair and athletic build, not particularly tall, make us seem unrelated, even though we’re definitely blood brothers. He shrugs off mafia business, even though I’ve offered to let him have more involvement in our family in the past. Mostly, he does his job and spends time with Camille, without putting any extra effort into helping me run things. At first, I thought it was because he was jealous that I was the eldest and therefore stepped into the position ascapo. But I came to realize that Leo just doesn’t want to lead, or at least he doesn’t act like it at all. He’s mostly good at being picky and disgruntled.
“What about the Grecocapo?” Nick asks, posing a question I hadn’t thought of yet.
“Camille’s own family?” I ask, turning the idea over in my head.
“Sure. I mean, she defected from theirborgatawhen she couldn’t be the boss as a female, and her cousin stepped into power. What’s his name again?”
“Johnny,” I answer. “Not a man I particularly like. I’ve crossed him a few times in my day, but nothing enough to warrant an assassination attempt. And that still wouldn’t explain why he’d want to go after his own blood.”
“Maybe he’s worried that Camille still poses a threat,” Nick says, thinking aloud. “She’s definitely a firecracker.” I chuckle because he’s not wrong about that. “And even though you haven’t crossed each other in big ways, maybe the thought of removing you from the playing field is still appealing enough for Johnny to have ordered the hit. You’re a powerful man with a dark side you don’t hesitate to use to your advantage. I’m sure most of thecaposin the city would jump at the chance to rid themselves of you and open up your business channels for themselves, if they weren’t too afraid of repercussions.”
I’m not so sure that Johnny Greco, a distant cousin of Camille’s, would go through all the effort. But it’s worth looking into. If nothing else, maybe it can give us more info and get us sniffing down the right track. “Take some men with you and snatch one of Johnny’s soldiers,” I instruct Nick. “Bring him back here and we’ll get him to talk.”
Nick leaves immediately, taking a couple of my best men with him, and returns in less than an hour. It always impresses me how efficient he is. I’m lucky to have a guy like Nick at my side. “Want to do the honors or do you want me to take care of it?” he asks as he shoves our new guest into a chair and ties his wrists to the armrests. The man already has one black eye and a bloodied lip.
“I’ll do it,” I say coldly. I don’t enjoy torturing other men’s soldiers, but I also don’t enjoy being the target of an assassination attempt. And now I also have a pressing need to want to watch out for Camille, even though I keep trying not to think about her. So, I get to work. But after a solid hour of painful extraction, I’m not able to get much in the way of information. Either this guy truly doesn’t know anything, or he has a very high pain threshold and an iron jaw.
I leave him sitting half-naked in the chair and pick up the pile of clothes that I cut off him to search through the pockets. Johnny Greco is smart not to let his soldiers carry cell phones or any identifying information on them. It must make tracking and communication with them difficult, though. Apparently, he doesn’t care much for their safety. I have no respect forcaposwho think their soldiers are disposable. It takes a very small-minded man to think that his life is more valuable than anyone else’s, which is exactly the reason I haven’t killed this poor sap yet.
But then, my fingers touch something inside one of his shirt pockets and I pull out a photograph—of Camille. “What are you doing with this?” I growl at him. My suspicions are instantly confirmed. Someone isn’t just after me, but her as well. I’m a lot less worried about myself, since I’m surrounded by my entireborgataand men who will protect me with their own lives. Plus, I’m a fearsome adversary in my own right. But Camille is another story entirely. She may think she’s tough and invincible, but she’s far from it. And even though I let her leave here with my brother, Leo isn’t strong enough to keep her safe.
“Why do you have this picture?” I demand as I shove the photo up against his face so hard that it makes his nose bleed again. “Who is this woman to you?” I pull up a chair and spin it around before sitting down in it to face him. This guy is now suffering several injuries that I know for fact to be excruciating. At some point, he has to talk.
“I don’t know who she is,” he says as he spits out a wad of blood onto the ground in front of him. “I don’t know anything.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. I don’t even know how that photograph got inside my clothes. It must’ve been planted.”
I stare at him for a moment, trying to decide whether I believe this dunce or whether he’s lying in order to confuse me and throw me off the scent. It’s easy enough to find out, though. I’ve learned that most of these foot soldiers are big on bulk but not so much on brains.
“I don’t believe you,” I say, setting him up to find out what I want to know. “Why would anyone plant a picture of Lara Ricci in your shirt pocket?”
“That’s not Lara Ricci,” he sneers as if he thinks he’s smarter than me. “It’s—” Before he finishes his sentence, he realizes the mistake he’s just made. A look of sheer terror crosses his face before he starts shouting at me like a bumbling idiot. “I told you, I don’t know anything, and you can do your worst but I won’t say a word!”
I pull my pistol out, take quick aim, and shoot the guy in between the eyes. I’m all done playing games, and I’ve run out of patience. What he lacked in intelligence, he made up for in resolve, and it was clear he wasn’t going to crack. No point in wasting my time on him any further, especially when I did get at least part of an answer from him. Someone with ties to the Grecoborgatawants both me and Camille dead. Whether that’s Johnny or not remains to be decided, but my guess is that this order came straight from the top. Nick must be right—Johnny wants to eliminate the possibility of his little cousin ever coming back to try her hand at taking power again, and he figures in the process he can try and get me out of the picture as well.
Ambitious but definitely not too smart. Still, the Grecos are a formidable threat—a threat Leo isn’t going to be capable of protecting Camille against. I sit there staring at the slumped body and the cracked skull in front of me. The silencer on my gun was on, so there won’t be anyone alerted to this shooting in the building or near vicinity. Before I fetch Nick to dispose of the body and have my discrete housecleaning service clean up the blood splatter in this room, I take a minute to try and think straight.
My mind is still lingering on Camille, and not just because she seems to be part of this assassination web. There’s something else there, something that shouldn’t still be pulling at my thoughts after what should’ve been nothing more than a casual if not intense one-night stand. I know what I should do, but in complete disregard of that, I stand up and get ready to do the exact opposite.
“Nick,” I call out the door.
Myconsigliereappears around the corner within seconds. “Boss?”
“Take care of the grisly scene in the other room,” I say as if I’m asking him to do something as simple as ordering takeout.
“Sure thing, boss,” he nods, pulling out his phone to call a clean-up crew. “Were you able to find anything out?”
“Only that your suspicions are probably correct.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Well,” I say in an amused tone as I shake my head at myself. “Something I’ll probably wind up regretting. I’m going to go get Camille Greco and bring her into my fold and under my protection before she gets herself killed.”
Nick stands there for a second as if he can’t believe what I’ve just said. Bringing the daughter of anothercapointo yourborgata, even a deceasedcapo, isn’t exactly commonplace. But at the moment, I can’t think of any other way to keep her from being murdered. I guess I’ll just have to deal with the consequences of my actions after the fact, including how my brother is going to react to me taking his best friend hostage in order to save her from her own stubbornness.
“Get another few bottles of wine out of the cellar,” I say as I grab my keys and head out. “I have a strong feeling we’ll be needing them.” I catch the corner of Nick’s smirk as I walk out the door. At least he gets me.
