18. Luca
18
LUCA
“Three more Costa clubs burned to the ground this week,” my father told me and the rest of his capos, unable to hide the glee in his voice.
Gio Costa had fucked with my family too many times to count, but he was dead, and all I could think about was Ana’s inheritance crumbling to dust.
“With Angelo Costa in France looking for his bitch niece, their territory is up for grabs,” one of my father’s capos mused.
My hands clenched beneath the table before I held back and forced myself to relax. Ana was off-limits to me, and I’d do well to remember that.
My phone pinged.
Matteo Zanetti
Ana showed up on the cameras of a casino in Monaco two days ago.
Me
And then?
Matteo Zanetti
Valentin Rochefort came to fetch her.
Angelo Costa’s on a murder spree.
Fuck. I opened a new chat.
Me
Where the fuck is she?
Angelo Costa
Safe.
Me
Not good enough.
Angelo left my message on read, and again I cursed my cowardice. I should have told her how I felt. Should have begged her to stay. Should have gotten her pregnant so no one else could.
Who the fuck was I kidding? Ana didn’t have a future with me. My father would never allow me to marry a Costa, not after the sins Gio committed against my sisters, not even if it meant gaining access to their entire empire.
“Do we know who’s moving in on their territory?” I asked as I looked up from my phone. “With Ana and Angelo occupied in Europe, there’s no one to hold the Costa empire together, especially considering Gio’s debts.”
It was more complicated than that, of course. Gio was an asshole, but that didn’t mean his men would abandon ship while Angelo was taking care of business elsewhere.
They knew he was looking for Ana.
We all did.
Who the fuck was horning in on Costa territory while they were in Europe?
“Luca,” my father snapped, pulling me out of my reverie. “Any word from the other families?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I don’t think it’s mafia. It’s too smash and grab. If it were one of us, we’d see shifting alliances and someone would have checked in.”
Papà blinked, as if he were surprised I had analysis to add to the conversation. I tried not to resent the fact that he’d always wished my sisters were his sons. He frowned. “Then who?”
“Irish? Russians? The Nigerians and Ivorians have been scuffling over territory lately too,” one of the capos said. Idiot.
“Not the Irish,” I said. “We would have heard from them.” What a complicated web we wove—my eldest sister’s marriage to the former head of the Irish mob in Yorkfield had turned the new head, Declan Flanegan, and I into fast friends.
He’d have told me.
Hopefully.
“What did Nikolai say?” I asked. I couldn’t call the bratva myself—Nikolai was my father’s peer, not mine. And he didn’t have any sons. Only daughters.
Papà slammed his hands down on his desk. “Fucking nothing! He’s not taking my calls.”
Why would Nikolai try to expand his territory into traditionally Italian-held neighborhoods? Since his man kidnapped Ginevra almost five years ago, we’d held an uneasy truce, and he’d looked the other way when we were fighting Costas in the street after they’d kidnapped Sofia.
“Angelo Costa’s an enforcer—all muscle, no brains,” I mused. “He doesn’t have any experience running an operation the size Gio left here in Yorkfield.”
“More than that, he’s not a Costa by blood,” my father said. “He needs Ana to hold the territory.”
“If he doesn’t find a way to publicly fix this mess he’s made with Gio’s bitch of a daughter, what’s left of the Costa empire will desert him,” another one of the capos piped in.
“Leaving the network the Costas left behind ripe for taking over,” my father finished.
I stared at my phone while holed up in the same room I’d had since I was a child. As my parents’ first-born son, I’d gotten a bedroom and a connected sitting room, unlike my sisters. And now, at thirty-one, I still lived there.
Not quite the American dream.
Like any good Italian American mafia heir, I’d move out when I married, and not a moment before. I allowed myself to imagine myself with Ana, her sparkling eyes and wit at my side as I strengthened the Russo hold on Yorkfield and merged our empires.
And then I crushed that dream and put it away. Ana wasn’t for the likes of me.
My parents would use my marriage to make an alliance with a family that would solidify our empire. The Russians were a likely bet, or the Greeks. The Ivorians and Nigerians were fighting over the right to import drugs through West Africa, but if they ever settled their differences, or one of them chased the other out of town, they’d be formidable allies as well. Or even an Italian family. Anyone but the Costas.
I was a fucking idiot.
Me
We need to meet.
Dmitri Levedev
Da. We have a problem.
Three hours later, the bratva’s second-in-command, a brutal enforcer with ice-blue eyes and scars that spoke of years in Russian prisons, slid onto a barstool beside me.
“You choose this place to fuck with me?” he shouted over the sounds of hipsters playing Skee ball and video games.
I grinned as he clapped me on the back. “It’s been too long.”
He looked around, his lips curling into a sneer. “Not long enough.”
I signaled the bartender, who slid two vodkas in front of us. Neat, but ice cold.
“ Za druzhbu ,” Dmitri said, clinking his glass against mine then downing it in one shot.
“To friendship,” I answered, drinking mine more slowly.
Dmitri peered into the bottom of his glass, then snapped his fingers. “Bring me the bottle.” He frowned while he examined it. “This is the good stuff.”
“Ready?”
The bartender tossed me a set of keys, and I led Dmitri through the back of the bar to an office where we could speak.
Dmitri carried the bottle and poured each of us another shot. “What can I do for you, Russo?”
I cocked my head and waited. Dmitri would eventually tell me. He grinned, revealing straight white teeth.
“You said you had a problem.”
“Ana fucking Costa.”
My eyes shot to his before I could stop myself. Not for the first time, I wished I had my sisters’ composure under fire. Pull a man’s fingernails out and get him to talk? I was your man. Hide my feelings behind a mask of indifference? Impossible.
“You know Boris Tchérnov?”
I shook my head.
Dmitri looked at me with surprise. “No? You Americans are so fucking myopic sometimes, I’m surprised you can even find your own asses. He’s Russo-French—Paris-based bratva. Ana fucking Costa blew up his boat. So he started blowing up Angelo’s property here.” Dmitri smiled. “Chaos is bad for business,” he said. “And Nikolai doesn’t want Russians he can’t control in Yorkfield.”
“And what about Ana?”
“Who the fuck cares? Costa will marry her off to some poor fucker who’ll spend his life wondering if selling his soul to the devil was worth the alliance she’ll bring.”
“What do you need me for?”
Dmitri grinned, his smile feral in the dim light of the back office. “Nikolai needs someone to take down the bratva interlopers. If he shows his hand against other Russians, the families he rules will rebel.”
“In exchange for?”
“In exchange for letting you keep the territory you gain, you fucking moron.”