Chapter 40
Chapter
Forty
ENZO
Irun over the plan again, and my brothers are in full agreement. Rayne, not so much.
“So, I get to sit outside with a babysitter—again?” she asks, arms folded across her chest.
Luca rolls his eyes. As her designated babysitter for today, he could give me shit for making him sit part of this out, but unlike her, he recognizes that, besides me, he’s her best protection. “No. You get to stay outside with Luca until I give him the signal that it’s safe to bring you in.”
She bristles, still not convinced. Fuck me, she’s infuriating. Still inherently adorable though.
“You want to be in the middle of it all? Possibly bullets whizzing past your head and blood and brains all over the floor?” I ask her. I doubt any of that will happen, but there’s no guarantee.
She blanches at my words. “No, but just…” She swallows. “Just be careful. And don’t leave me out completely. I want my chance to look that sack of dogshit in the eyes.”
I cup her jaw in my hand, run my thumb over the plump bow of her lip. “I promise you’ll get your chance, baby, but not until it’s safe.”
She stares at me, her eyes shining with tears, and I recognize her brattiness for what it really is.
Fear. I press her to the wall, kiss her softly, my tongue exploring her mouth.
Rafael mutters something I can’t hear, and Micah clears his throat.
But fuck my brothers—this could be the last time I ever kiss my girl again.
While I’m well-prepared and I’m determined to kill Carmine, who knows what could happen in the aftermath.
That’s why she’s going to be safe with Luca, and if things do go south, then he’ll get her out of here and somewhere safe.
New identity. New city. A new life without any of this.
She melts into me, hands fisting in my hair, like she knows it could be the last time too. I grind myself into her, cock already hard and aching to take her back to bed. “I’ll be careful,” I murmur against her lips. “I really want to take you to bed tonight and finish this.”
She smiles. “You’d better.”
Luca and Rayne remain in the SUV behind us, parking along the curb a few hundred yards away while Micah, Rafael, and I head straight for Carmine’s house.
The gate opens before we even reach it. The guy manning it gives me the same half nod he’s given me for ten years and waves us through.
My brothers and I have been coming to this house since we were kids— birthdays, funerals, the endless meetings Carmine insisted on having with me.
“Looks like he’s expecting us,” Rafael says, peering out of the window in the back.
“Of course he is. I’m certain Nero came straight here after our meeting yesterday. Are your people in place?”
Rafael nods. “Ready to roll if we get any unexpected pushback, or if the Bianchis and the Mancinis have drummed up any kind of support. They can be in here in minutes.”
“Good.”
We don’t meet any resistance getting into the house.
Too public out here on the driveway. The front doors were already open and we step inside.
Twelve of Carmine’s men stand in the hallway.
I recognize all of them, know some better than others.
Philip at the foot of the stairs, he used to play on the football team with Luca back in high school.
Tony, whose kid I helped deliver when his wife went into labor during a blackout.
Oliver Green steps out of the shadows, gives me a nod of recognition.
But there in the middle of them all, Nero and Marco Mancini, prancing around like ringmasters, only better dressed I’ll give them that.
“You showed up?” Nero says. He glances around the place like he owns it. “Wow, you’ve got some balls, Enzo,” he says.
“More than you, fuckface,” I tell him, striding confidently down the hallway, Rafael and Micah beside me.
We all have guns, but we don’t need to draw them.
Not here. There won’t be any bloody battle in here today, unless Rafael’s army of thugs don’t do their part.
But the war inside these walls has already been won.
It was won in every single act of respect and mercy my brothers and I have shown every man in this room over the past ten years while I’ve been Carmine’s second, stacked up against every humiliation and affront he has inflicted.
That’s the true art of war. Knowing the strength of every single player on the board and moving them into position before a single drop of blood is shed.
Nobody reaches for a weapon. Nobody challenges me.
Philip straightens up as we get close. “He’s in his study.”
“What the fuck?” Nero yells. “What the hell are you doing?” He pulls his gun, points it at me, stepping closer until the cold metal is pressed to my forehead. His hand trembles. Mine do not.
Beside me I feel Rafael and Micah ready to strike, but they don’t move.
“Take that goddamn gun out of my face or I will ram it down your throat,” I say, my voice low but deadly.
Marco shifts from one foot to the other, glancing between us and the guards and his brother. “Don’t even fucking think about it, jackass. Because I would love nothing more than to put a bullet between your fucking eyes,” Micah says, cool and calm, in total contrast to the Mancini brothers.
Nero gapes at me, then slowly lowers his gun.
He expected one of the armed guards to shoot me, but he doesn’t have the balls to do it himself.
“Good boy.” I wink at him, and it sends Marco into a rage.
He lunges but doesn’t make it close enough to touch me before Rafael has him a headlock and chokes him out.
Nero’s eyes dart between his unconscious brother and back at me. “What the fuck? Carmine brought them here to—”
“Whatever he brought them here for, all of these men are loyal to me, Nero. When the fuck are you going to realize that? This city is loyal to me.”
“Eight months,” Tony says finally, pushing off the wall, “Carmine’s been demanding more of a cut of my family’s money for eight months.
And last month when my wife lost her job and I couldn’t pay, he suggested I tell my seventeen-year-old daughter to set up an OnlyFans and sell her tight pussy.
Enzo paid my debt, and Micah got my wife a job at the beauty salon.
Every guy in this room has a fucking story like that, Nero. Every single fucking one.”
Oliver steps out of the shadows. “Nobody in this house gives a fuck about Carmine, kid. We stick around for Enzo.”
“The fuck,” Nero snarls.
Fed up with his arrogant asshole routine, I knee him in the balls, and both he and his gun drop to the floor. Micah kicks his weapon away.
I tower over Nero, on his knees but still with that defiant tilt in his jaw. “Are you going to play nice, or am I going to have to shoot you and your brother for being traitors?”
His jaw works. He might become a problem in my future, but not today. He shakes his head.
“No, you won’t play nice?” Rafael snaps at him.
“No, you don’t have to shoot us. We’re loyal to the family, whoever the don is.” He says the words like they pain him.
I turn back to Tony. “Anyone else in there with him?”
He nods. “Two of his house guards. They’ll fight for him.”
“Oh, good,” Rafael says, genuinely delighted at the thought of some bloodshed. This is all far too tame for his tastes.
I clap him on the back. “I’ll let you handle them, little brother.”
“Aw, why does he get all the fun?” Micah pretends to whine, which makes Rafael laugh and declare they can take one each.
We reach Carmine’s office with no further obstruction.
Rafael opens the door and quickly rushes inside before grabbing one guard in a headlock.
Micah drops the other one with a bullet through his throat.
He must have hit his carotid artery because blood spurts across the room in a crimson arc.
Rafael admires it with open child-like awe as he drags the second guard from the room, punching him in the head when he screams too loudly.
I thank Micah and tell him I can take it from here. Probably best he keeps an eye on Rafael anyway. He leaves the room after our brother, closing the door behind him.
Carmine sits behind his desk, pretending to be calm while a perfect line of his guard’s blood runs the length of his left sleeve.
He thinks I don’t see it. The slight shift of his shoulder or the way his right elbow tucks in closer to his ribs.
The subtle tightening around his mouth as he calculates distance, timing, odds.
He has a gun strapped under that desk. It’s on the right side and easy to draw—protection to a man who’s arrogant enough to believe no one in the room is faster than him.
I fire before his hand clears the edge of the desk. The shot cracks through the room, deafening in the enclosed space. The bullet slams into his right shoulder and pins him to the chair, shoving it back hard enough that the legs scrape across the floor.
He grunts, a strangled, furious sound, more insult than pain. Blood blooms fast across his cream shirt, turning the expensive fabric crimson.
I’m around the desk before he can suck in another breath, my gun still trained on him as I catch his wounded arm and wrench it behind his back. He howls now, the sound ripping out of him raw and ugly. Let him make noise. Let him feel a fraction of what she felt.
“Careful, boss,” I mutter against his ear. “You’re bleeding all over this beautifully polished floor.”
He curses me in Italian, vicious and breathless, spittle flying from his mouth. Once, he was a man who could make other men drop to their knees and rethink every choice that had brought them into his orbit. Once, his power might have made me hesitate too.
Not anymore.
My pulse is steady. My hands don’t shake. And all I can think about is how much he hurt her.