Take Me (Dark Odyssey #5)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Christian

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

Like fuck is this happening. But it is though.

It actually is happening, and shit’s been happening for God knows how long.

I land a fist in Jonny’s face and he stumbles backward, falling into the stack of crates.

The other men look on in fear, as they should. They were shocked to shit when my cousin, Salvatore, and I burst through the door to the warehouse not even five minutes ago, guns blazing with our men in tow.

They thought they could keep their little secret charade of shit going. Well the three dead men on the ground say otherwise.

I move into Jonny and grab his neck so hard I’m surprised I don’t snap it right off his miserable body. Motherfucker.

The fucker cries out in agony and tries to free my hands. Not gonna happen. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s being made to look like a fool, and definitely not in front of my family.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so enraged if the shit they were trying to pull off didn’t come back to me. But it will. All of it will.

“Give me a name,” I demand.

The fucker shuts up and his eyes go wide. The fact it’s only now he starts trembling has me pissed off all over again. Means he wasn’t scared before.

I glance at Salvatore who’s now joined me. He’s seething. I’m grateful for the backup. Two Giordanos is better than one, and Salvatore is underboss.

Having him here is good for me. I don’t have a rank in the family and that’s probably why this shit happened on my watch, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna allow these fuckers to think I’m a pussy. I’m Christian Giordano. My name is enough to put the fear of God in any man who dares cross me.

“Give me a name,” I demand once again.

“I don’t know nothing,” Jonny sputters.

Liar.

He’s fucking lying.

I gave this fucker the chance to run the show, trusted his ass to be in charge and he screwed me over.

Jonny knew shit that was happening under wraps which could ruin the company and kept it hush so I wouldn’t find out.

The three men lying across from me each got one of my bullets to the head before any of them could pull their guns, and Jonny’s going to join them if he doesn’t start talking. The only reason I haven’t ended him yet is because I figure he’ll be most likely to tell us what we need to know.

“Maybe we should blow his fucking head off,” Salvatore snarls and Jonny flinches.

“That’s about to happen,” I growl shoving Jonny against the crates harder.

“You dumb fuck, talk to me. You’re lying and I know it.

You have a name. You’ve been in charge for the last two months.

You watched those fuckers drive out of here with the shipment and filed everything like nothing happened. ”

Me and Salvatore both saw him on the secret cameras I set up in here last night. We watched earlier confirming what intel alerted us to and laid in wait for all the men to get here before we struck.

I look at Jonny long and hard, giving him the chance to talk. When he doesn’t take it, my patience runs out. I land another fist in his face sending him to the ground this time. The others move out of the way when I take out my knives.

Johnny backs away on his hands. Terror is written all over his face, it makes his body shudder under my wrath.

It’s time to change things up. I’m about to show him what terror truly is. He got his chance to come clean while I wasn’t showing my true colors and he blew it.

I throw one knife in his thigh and he screams. Before he can recover, I throw another knife in his other thigh.

This is a thing we do in prep for death, with the hope the idiots we deal with on the regular will talk.

Jonny stops trying to back away from me. He’s unable to move now. The pain has taken him and the walls tremble with the echo of his cries.

“Ready to talk?” I ask, calmly. That’s probably scarier than me being enraged. “I got more knives where those came from. You’ve pissed me off so much though that I might up my game to blowing off one limb at a time. Not sure yet. I’ll do it though. My will I ever do it. What’s it gonna be?”

Jesus, the fucker has to start crying. He’s trying to talk but he can’t. The words aren’t coming out. I just need him to say one word though. One name. That’s all.

Nobody would dare steal from Giordanos. Not a damn chance. So, I want a fucking name. As I study Jonny though … I see clearly that whoever got to him must be really good, powerful. The man’s not talking, and he’s got my knives in his legs. Most people would have been singing like a canary by now.

That enrages me further.

Who the fuck could he be working for?

“Jonny, I’m serious as fuck. You allowed these people to steal from us. Steal shit from us that could land us in trouble with the feds and end us.” Essentially that is what could happen.

This fucker could have opened up Pandora’s box and whatever evil came out would trace back to us. To me.

“I don’t…” Jonny begins, and his voice trails off.

This is turning into a game of shit. I don’t have time for this. I’m already late for the club and I don’t want that part of my life in the shitter, too.

I pull another knife from my pocket and throw it into his shoulder. This time when he screams, I’m on him.

I grab his mouth and set the gun at his temple, ready to blow his head off. “Motherfucker give me a name,” I bellow.

Click. Clack. I cock the hammer. On the sound, his stupid eyes go wide and his breath hitches.

“Falcone,” he garbles and I take the gun out of his mouth so I can hear him.

“Say that again,” I demand, hoping like hell it’s not the name I thought he said.

“Falcone, it was him,” he blurts tripping over his words, now in a haste to talk.

I grit my teeth and glance back at Salvatore balls his fists.

Fuck.

Damn it.

Falcone…

I close my eyes briefly and seethe. Anybody but him. Any other fucking criminal but that asshole.

It’s not that we can’t handle a guy like Falcone.

It’s because we don’t know how much he’s infiltrated or how far he’s reached.

The guy is what we call fluid. You can’t quite track his work, and you don’t know what he’s up to.

He’s able to infiltrate from the ground and work his way up.

In our case, because Giordanos Inc. is a shipping company, it could mean the fucker wormed his way across the seas.

“Where did they take the guns?” I shout in Jonny’s face.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know that part.”

“Fucker, you don’t know where they took the guns?” I find that hard to believe.

“That’s how Falcone works. I just got the shipment ready for them to make the drop and they took it. I …don’t know anything else,” Jonny stutters.

Damn it. I’m fucked.

I’m fucked and I’m pissed. The time for compassion is over.

I stand and Jonny full well believes I’m gonna pop a bullet between his eyes, but I won’t because he deserves worse than that.

“You and you get over here,” I say pointing to the two men to my left. Both are built like tanks. “Take him outside and leave him behind the dumpster for Falcone’s men to pick him up.”

Yes. That’s what I’m gonna do. A tear tracks down Jonny’s chubby cheeks. He knows what will happen next. Torture of the worse kind for talking to me and he’ll have to beg for death.

Falcone’s people would have been watching. That’s how it works in our world. People know shit. They know when shit’s happening and when the silent speak.

They’ll know what it means for me to have left Jonny alive.

Without question the men take Jonny away. His sobs are the last thing I hear as they carry him out the door.

The rest of the men stare back at me, wondering what I’m gonna do to them.

Jonny was the manager. He’d worked for the family for close to five years with no problems until he made one. The problem I’m having here though is I don’t know who else was involved and this shit.

The shipment was a two-million-dollar contract. My first real gig since my cousin, Vincent, took over as boss of the family.

It was my first real gig with Angelo Tripoli, a long-standing client who’s been with Giordanos Inc. since it started.

He hired us to ship a ten-pack crate of small arms worth three million to Italy.

The men stole a crate containing three hundred weapons whose value is close to a million.

The guns are a new generation of squad weapons valued at nine grand per unit.

Angelo has a deal with an army captain to supply him with a certain amount.

I asked for more responsibility in the business. I actually wanted it, and this was my time to shine and show I could handle things. It was my turn to show my father I could be just as efficient as my brother, Georgiou, when it came to business.

Georgiou used to take care of the warehouses and the preparation of the shipments. That role passed to me, along with handling the contracts for some of the VIP clients after Vincent took over. Then this shit happened.

Fifteen men look at me. Some have been here longer than Jonny. What is better, keep them and risk more shit, or something else?

“The rest of you are fired. I’ll pay you for the next four months.” That’s right up to the end of the year. Money that will come out of my own pocket. “Get out,” I tell them, and they walk without any argument.

They know not to argue or ask me shit. It’s clear I can’t trust anyone here. I don’t have proof, but there would have to be at least one or two more people involved to pull off a stunt like what we saw on the cameras.

I turn to my five street guys who came to back us up next. “You guys get on the street and start looking for Falcone.”

They nod and leave.

I wait for everyone to clear out before I call the cleanup crew for the dead, then turn back to Salvatore who has a crude expression on his face.

“Christian, what are you gonna do now?” He narrows his eyes as he assesses me.

There’s so much to fix here and I just made it worse by firing all the staff. Staff who should be prepping shipments for our other clients.