3. Dante
Dante
I t was still dark in the early morning hours.
I was meeting Alessio Russo, the gun dealer from Montréal, in the middle of Lake Ontario.
It was cold as fuck, the middle of November already drawing snow and below-freezing temperatures.
It was our monthly gun shipment I smuggled through Canada.
I regularly bought guns off Illias Konstantin, the Russian Pakhan, and Alessio Russo, this Canadian guy.
I sold them all to a cartel as well as different organizations in the Middle East. Business was good.
I watched the rays of the sun flicker across the surface of the lake and my thoughts drifted to the dark-haired wildling that kicked me in the balls nearly six months ago. They still ached, but for a totally different reason.
I couldn’t even get it up anymore without thinking about her.
Talk about a pitiful case. Maybe I’d been fucked up all along.
Or maybe that cursed DiLustro gene had kicked in and spread through me like wildfire, honing in on one woman.
It never boded well—not for my crazy uncle, not for my father, and certainly not my cousin Basilio, who hunted for his princess like his life depended on it.
I should do the same for the woman that refused to leave my mind. She’d buried herself into my brain cells and my bone marrow, refusing to leave. Obsession was the curse of the DiLustros.
It was the reason for my father’s blindness to what my mother had put my brother and me through growing up. He’d been too wrapped up in his work and the woman he lost—a woman my mother never let us forget.
A breeze swept through and a shudder rolled down my spine. It had nothing to do with the cold.
You’re just like him. Lying, cheating sinner.
I could almost hear my mother’s voice howling along with the wind that traveled through the upper deck of my yacht.
Crack.
The vivid memory of her whip slicing through the air almost brought me to my knees. It was so fucking hard to escape those ghosts. That dark room. Her sick way of torturing us… especially my little brother.
Alessio’s yacht pulled up next to mine and I pushed the memories aside, I focused on the task at hand. Gun smuggling. Our crew piled into my yacht and we made our way over, the spray from the lake hitting my jacket and clearing my head.
A plank was dropped to allow me to step onto his yacht. “DiLustro,” Alessio greeted me curtly.
I handed him the suitcase full of money. He took it and passed it on to his right-hand man. Ricardo.
“Next time, I’d rather we do an electronic transfer,” I retorted dryly. “Make yourself an offshore account, old man.”
I couldn’t understand these old fuckers always insisting on cash.
They had to keep up with the times. Wire transfers.
Bitcoin. Anything was better than moving with so much cash.
Yes, I owned a casino and could pull it from there on a moment’s notice, but it was a risky move traveling with so much cash.
He tilted his chin toward the steps that led below deck. It would seem his man wouldn’t be carrying the cargo himself tonight.
“There won’t be a next time,” Alessio stated coldly. “Have your guys get the guns off my ship.”
I nodded once to my men behind me and they got to work loading the merchandise onto my own boat, walking back and forth across the plank. It made it easier to cross from his boat to mine and vice versa.
“What do you mean there won’t be a next time?” I questioned.
He and Ricardo shared a look, then he answered, “It means I’m getting out. Or do you need further clarification?”
Smart-ass fucker. “Goddamn it,” I spat out. “You tell me only now that you’re fucking bailing?”
The shipment he just delivered would fulfill only one month’s worth of orders.
“Didn’t know.” The tone of his voice stated he didn’t care either. “Shouldn’t make commitments before having a product in hand.”
What. A. Fucking. Ass. There was always a fucking wiseass to deal with.
I could shoot him, but that probably wouldn’t go over well. Receiving word the guns were secure, I made my way back to my yacht, flipping him the bird as we took off into the night.
I could see the outline of his head tip back as he laughed, the grim fucker actually managing to look happy. For the first time in maybe ever.