Prologue V Constantine
Prologue V
Constantine
I arrived in Florence, checked into the Four Seasons, and then finally met Edric in the bar downstairs.
It was a large room with low lighting, couches and chairs spaced out everywhere, and he was seated in the corner with a stiff drink already on a coaster.
He looked a little more like me these days with the tattoos he’d added to his arms. He’d clearly started lifting more, too, because his arms were thicker.
His eyes lit up at the sight of me. “There’s my bro.
” He stood up and embraced me, our palms coming together before we gripped each other tightly and let go.
We got comfortable at the table, and the waitress immediately came over and took my drink order.
“Four Seasons, huh?” Edric asked. “You really are Tommaso’s favorite.”
I’d moved up quickly with Cosa Nostra, and I wondered if that was the reason Edric left.
He didn’t want his failure to be compared to my success.
My brother was the one who’d gotten me in with Cosa Nostra, but he’d quickly turned into an outlier because he was too stubborn to listen.
The only reason sense wasn’t beaten into him was because Tommaso didn’t touch him out of respect for me.
In the end, I thought it was good that Edric left. I just wished he’d gone somewhere else. “How are things here?”
“No complaints.” He was in a short-sleeved black T-shirt, the black ink on his arms visible and spaced out.
It had taken a long time to fill out my arms completely, which was why I started when I was young.
It was an expensive endeavor too. So Edric seemed to have begun that long process.
“Money is good . . . pussy pie is even better.”
“Pussy pie?” I asked.
“Yeah, try a slice while you’re here. I can introduce you.” He waggled his eyebrows. “So, how’s the gang?”
“The same,” I said. “Harold tried to double-cross us . . . got his head blown off.”
“I never liked that guy.”
“Yeah, me neither,” I said. “Tommaso suggested an arranged marriage between me and his fifteen-year-old daughter.”
“What the fuck did you just say?”
I chuckled. “Wish I’d said something different.”
“No way.”
“He said when she’s twenty-five and I’m almost thirty-five. When I’m done sowing my oats. Still fucking weird, though.”
“Really fucking weird,” he said. “What’d you say?”
“Didn’t really say anything. Kinda backed out of it and changed the subject.”
“Damn, he fucking loves you, though. Thinking you’re good enough for his daughter.”
“He only feels that way because I took a bullet for him.”
“You got shot?”
“Kinda, not really.” I tugged up the sleeve of my shirt to show the mark where the bullet grazed me. “It was a graze. I’ll add ink and cover it.”
“Don’t commit to that marriage. There’s still a lot of time for her to get ugly.”
I chuckled. “She could end up being the most beautiful woman in the world, and I still wouldn’t be interested.”
“Because of Isabella?” he blurted.
“No,” I said with a scoff. “I would just never do an arranged marriage. And I don’t like the age gap either.”
“You’re the first man in history to say he doesn’t want a younger wife.”
“Younger is fine, but ten years is too big of a difference. We won’t have anything in common. We’ll be in different seasons of life—”
“Why do you need to have anything in common to smash?”
“If she’s my wife, then we’re going to do more than smash.”
He shrugged and took a drink.
“This is a stupid conversation.”
“So you do want to get married?”
“No, I don’t want to get married. But if, by chance, I met someone that I’d burn the world down for, then yeah.
” But the odds of that were a million to one.
In my line of work, I didn’t meet a lot of spectacular women, and a lot of spectacular women wouldn’t want to get mixed up with someone like me.
“Good.”
“Good?”
“I’d always hoped that the Isabella thing didn’t permanently fuck you up.”
Not permanently, but it sure fucked me up for a long time. “Life goes on. She’s seeing someone now.”
“Does that bother you?”
“No. I’m happy for her.” I knew she’d struggled to move on as much as I did. Friends would tell me she’d go to the beach alone, pick up extra shifts because she wanted to stay busy instead of sitting around. We both processed our heartbreak, but she also had to process her guilt.
He nodded before he took another drink. “Seeing anyone now?”
“No. You?”
He smirked. “Kinda.”
“Kinda?”
“Yeah, it’s complicated. Forbidden, taboo, all the good stuff.”
“So she’s married.”
“Yep.”
I didn’t bother to admonish him, just shook my head.
I’d only slept with a married woman once—and that was because she lied to me.
When I found out the truth, I blocked her calls and moved on.
I was pissed that she’d lied, but I was also pissed that she’d made me complicit in an affair I wouldn’t have been a part of if I’d known otherwise.
Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t mess around with that. “So you like the Skull Kings?”
“Like I said, can’t complain.”
“Have you met him?”
“Who?”
“The Skull King.”
“Oh, Darius,” he said. “No, I haven’t met him, but we’ve been in the same room together. And I know him pretty well based on reputation . . . and what I hear.”
“Then I’m sure you’ve figured out he’s a psychopath.”
“And what the hell is Tommaso?”
“An ass—but not a psychopath.”
“What are you saying, Con?”
“I don’t know . . . I worry about you.”
“You worry about me?” He placed his hand over his heart. “Me?”
“I just hear a lot of bad shit about this guy.”
“But no one fucks with him.”
“No, but he fucks with everyone—and you could be next.”
“And you think Cosa Nostra is better?” he scoffed.
“Cosa Nostra sticks to their lane. We mediate disputes, we push product across borders, influence sea trade, bribe judges and officials to lean our way on certain matters, and we only physically harm those who cross us. And we’re bonded to each other, loyal like a family.
But the Skull King . . . he’s only out for himself. ”
“If you think Tommaso isn’t out for himself, you’re delusional.”
“Darius traffics women, undercuts his partners, lets the city go to shit because he doesn’t care about it or the people who live there.
Tommaso at least has a deep love for Palermo and Sicily, which is why petty crime is lower than anywhere else in the EU.
Under Darius, crime flourishes—because he’s getting a cut of it all. ”
“Which is why I have a job, Constantine.”
“You can have a job with Cosa Nostra—”
“I’m not fucking doing that.”
“So you’d rather participate in these horrific crimes?” I asked incredulously.
He sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, looking elsewhere as he thought of his answer. It was strange to watch him, to see myself and my own reactions like I was looking in a mirror.
“I’m not going to be the lesser brother.
I’m not going to live in your shadow. You know how many times a day I hear how great you are and how shitty I am?
I hear the way people talk about me, that you should have absorbed me in the womb so I never would have been born.
So, no fucking thanks.” He shook off the emotion in his eyes and took a drink.
“Rather work in a place where no one has a clue I’m a twin. ”
“Edric, I can help you—”
“Did I say I needed your help?” he snapped. “I don’t fucking need your help, Constantine.”
“Well, I’m worried about you. You shouldn’t be involved with an asshole like that. Cosa Nostra is the right fit for us and our values.”
“Your values.”
“No, we have the same values, Edric.”
“No, we fucking don’t,” he snarled. “Because I don’t give a shit about the women he traffics. I see them all the time, and I feel fucking nothing. I’m fucking his wife, and I feel nothing. You and I are not the same, Constantine—and don’t you ever forget it.”
I was stunned into silence, my brain so overloaded with shock that I couldn’t process all the details he’d just shared. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“He uses the women to process drugs and puts them in whorehouses.”
“What if that were Beatrice? What if she went on a trip with her girlfriends and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time? And she’s stunning, so we both know she wouldn’t be processing drugs.
” I felt sick saying that out loud, but I needed fighting words to get through to him.
“She’d be drugged and raped for the rest of her life. ”
“I didn’t say I agree with it—”
“These are not our values, Edric. Cosa Nostra isn’t a fucking nonprofit, but they aren’t monsters. You are better than this. Don’t sit there and say you feel nothing because, yes, you fucking do. I know you do.”
He tightened his jaw and looked down at the table. “I broke up you and Isabella.”
“And you felt like shit about it and still do. You are not him, Edric. You feel remorse and guilt and empathy. You are not a psychopath.”
“You did call me a narcissist.”
“A narcissist is not a psychopath. And you aren’t a narcissist either, because you care. You care about me and your family, okay? I’m sorry I said that.”
He moved his arms to the surface of the table, hunched forward slightly.
“We’ve both made good money. Let’s open a business together.”
“So I can run it into the ground?”
“Keep that attitude, and you’re going to manifest your worst fears, Edric. And for the other thing you just said . . . are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“I fully admit I’ve lost it with this one.”
I was shocked the Skull King even had a wife. Didn’t seem like someone who would even entertain marriage.
“We crossed paths, one thing led to another, it just happened.”
“Does anyone else know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then end it. End it now.”
“It’s complicated—”
“Your life is literally on the line. It’s not that complicated.”
“She didn’t want to marry him. It was an arranged marriage sort of thing. She doesn’t love him but he’s obsessed with her, and . . . we just connect. She’s not just some woman I’m sleeping with.”
“Jesus Christ, Edric. You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what again?”
“You only want what you can’t have. Isabella and now this woman.
You don’t actually give a damn. You like being able to play house without having to pay the mortgage.
You like the intimacy without the commitment.
Because you know it can’t go anywhere. Because you know it’s doomed.
But in this case, you aren’t doomed—you’re dead. ”
He dropped his face into his hands and ran his fingers deep through his hair. “Yeah . . . maybe you’re right.”
“End it and leave the Skull Kings.”
“I don’t know if I can leave.”
“If he doesn’t even know who you are, you can probably slip out. Cosa Nostra will protect you if there’s trouble.”
“They won’t do shit for me.”
“But they’ll do it for me,” I said. “So tell me you’re going to end it.”
His face was still in his hands.
“Edric.”
He gave a sigh and finally straightened. “Yeah, I’ll end it.”
“Edric.”
“I said I’ll fucking end it.”