CHAPTER THREE
Achilles
One week after the baptism
My doorbell rang.
Again.
And again.
And a-mother-fucking-gain.
I pinched my cigarette between my thumb and middle finger, removing it from my lips as I examined the disemboweled body at my feet.
Oops.
I wasn’t supposed to kill Tierney’s hookups. Just rough them up a little. What could I say? I was only human. Mistakes happened from time to time.
Or in the case of Tierney’s hookups, all the time.
I currently stood at 100 percent murder rate when it came to the men she screwed.
No, wait, fuck. Why was I so hard on myself?
Make that 99 percent. I didn’t kill that one shitbag, Angelo Bandini.
Not for lack of desire on my part, but…still counts.
He was the son of the Chicago Outfit’s boss. Offing him would likely spiral into an underground war. And while that sounded like a good ol’ time, I had the Camorra’s interests to think of.
I did relieve him of a few fingers. You know, to make sure he could never touch her again.
She didn’t have many hookups to begin with. The bodyguards I put on her wouldn’t allow her to stray. But every now and then, she managed to slip under the radar, shake off the men I’d assigned to her. I always found them—the assholes who touched my woman.
And when I did, I dealt with them accordingly.
A pang of disappointment pinched my chest. I’d been doing so good. I hadn’t killed off-duty in months. Not to mention hung someone by their entrails.
The doorbell rang for the millionth time. I sighed.
I didn’t have any friends, and my family tried to keep our communication to a minimum, so I had no idea who the unwelcome guest might be.
“You know.” I rolled the body beneath me with the tip of my boot so it landed face up, so I could look him in the eye when I spoke. “This whole situation is as uncomfortable for me as it is for you. You think I like doing this? No. And you’re gonna be a bitch to clean up.”
My little spitfire didn’t normally put the lives of nameless assholes at risk for an orgasm.
Not since she realized I was killing them.
Something must’ve veered her off track. That incident at Gennaro’s baptism, maybe.
Nothing awakened carnal urges quite like staring death in the eye.
If only she’d asked, I’d have given it to her; I’d fuck her for hours, drawing out her pleasure until she couldn’t walk straight anymore.
All she had to do was say the word. I’d have helped. I was a nice guy like that.
How did she manage to sneak this fuckboy into her apartment, anyway? I had three soldiers surveilling her ass at any given moment.
No matter. It wasn’t like the prick was going to be missed.
Hamish Upton was an Ibiza-based, English DJ on a sabbatical. No family. Only a handful of friends. By the time someone realized he was missing, he’d be thoroughly digested by the hogs to which I would soon feed his remains.
I didn’t have to make their deaths so violent and long, but I did it anyway. Because they always hurt her. A bruise here, a black eye there. All with consent, but consent meant little when you preyed on someone broken.
No one was allowed to hurt Tierney Callaghan.
No one but me.
The ringing ceased, and a sharp knock on the door sounded. I flicked the cigarette to the floor, crushing it with my boot. My place was normally pristine, but I let it go a little after I found out Tierney had hooked up with some rando.
And by a little, I mean a lot.
And by a lot, I mean I should probably look for another apartment and torch the entire building. Maybe even the neighborhood. The blood from carving Upton’s body seeped into the cracks between the marble slabs and soaked the walls.
I’d killed him and brought him back through CPR three times to prolong his death before I bled him out. But once I did, I really drained him good. The place was a mess.
Honestly? So was I.
You should’ve given up after Angelo, Little Flame.
My unexpected guest decided to kick down the door with a loud bang. Good call. I wasn’t going to answer. I grabbed a disinfecting wipe and ran it over my bloodstained hands as I calmly made my way from my office to the living room.
Luca, my older brother, the heir apparent, and the Dick of Monte Cuntsto, stood in the foyer. “What, pray tell, the fuck?”
He wore black slacks and a matching turtleneck, both Prada. Good-looking guy. Shame about the sodium-free rice personality. He was a fine man, Luca. Pragmatic, ambitious, and devilishly smart.
Unfortunately, his lack of personality and emotions made Dad really uneasy about handing him the keys to the kingdom.
Unfortunately for him, that is. Not for me.
“Got caught up in something.” I disposed of the bloodied wipe in the trash of the open-plan kitchen, dumping beans into the grinder of my coffeemaker. “Coffee?”
Luca shook his head. “We don’t have time. Dad set up an emergency meeting.”
“Did he now?” I pushed a carafe into the coffee machine. “Who died?”
“I was just about to ask.” Luca sniffed the air, scowling. He followed the foul smell into my office, returned after a few moments to the kitchen, kneading his eyelids with the pads of his fingers.
“Oh my fucking God.”
“Somebody called my name?” Enzo swaggered into my apartment on cue, stepping over the unhinged door on the floor, unperturbed. He wore a nude, ribbed polo shirt, slim-fit chinos, and those stupid sneakers that came looking battered and old and still cost a grand. Pretentious little shit.
My baby brother stopped in front of a mirror on the wall, rearranged his already perfect hair, then winked at himself.
Unlike Luca, Enzo did have a personality. It was just an annoying one, but at least he still had it. He was the sunny golden retriever of the family. An outgoing, friendly, loved-by-all type of guy. Other than his cutting habit, he could almost pass as a normal person.
He was ridiculously handsome, but that was hardly a surprise. I was the only fugly motherfucker in the family. I wasn’t born this way, but it was hard to look past the burn scars and uneven skin on one side of my face.
I swiveled from the coffeemaker, fully annoyed now. “The fuck did I do to warrant this visit?” I pointed between the two of them with a spoon. “In all my years in the city, you haven’t visited me once. Now I get a two-person detail for a meeting?”
“Sangue Blu landed in Newark an hour ago.” Luca tucked his hands into his front pockets. “He’s on his way to the Long Island estate.”
Sangue Blu, “blue blood” in Italian, was Stefano Coppola, a Naples-based Mafia don and the man whose underboss I’d sacrificed at my nephew’s baptism. Dante had molested a young girl on the Ferrantes’ turf, so making an example out of him was necessary to put Coppola back in his place.
The Camorra consisted of clans. Eight different clans made the Secondigliano Alliance. We were the strongest and most ruthless clan in Naples, with Coppola coming in a far second.
The last couple years, we’d been busy pushing the Bratva back to its borders in America and neglected business in Naples. The Bratva was rapidly growing, and now they had a secret weapon—Tiernan, my brother-in-law and the pakhan’s best friend.
Killing Coppola’s underboss was a way to signal we were still the top dog in Secondigliano. Judging by Sangue Blu’s swift and lethal reaction, in the form of blowing up a seven-hundred-year-old church along with its priest, he didn’t share our opinion about the hierarchy in the city.
“Why’s Dad humoring this nobody?” I scoffed.
“He’s not a nobody,” Luca said. “He’s the son of the late Gianni Coppola. We’ve been losing our grip on Naples. He wants to cut a deal. It’s better to squash this now.”
“Not if he is asking for more turf in Secondigliano,” I countered.
“We don’t know what he wants yet,” Luca reasoned.
“Hmm, guys? What the hell is that smell?” Enzo looked up from his phone, screwing up his nose in distaste.
“We need to haul ass to Dad’s.” Luca cocked his head toward where my door was five minutes ago. “Coppola’s waiting.”
“I ask that you join me in vigil to find the fucks I have to give.” I turned my back to him, picking my espresso cup up and tossing it back like a shot.
“No, seriously, what’s that funky smell?” Enzo asked again.
“We’re going with or without you.” Luca ignored our baby brother. “I suggest you join us.”
“Why?”
“Negotiate.”
“Bullshit. You don’t want me there. I’ll just blow shit up. I’ll ask again—why?”
Luca shrugged, his expression, like his entire existence, giving me nothing.
At this point, Enzo wandered into my office to follow the stench.
I rinsed my espresso cup, calmly setting it on the dish rack.
Fine. I’d go to the stupid meeting. My social calendar was hardly overflowing.
Best monitor the situation myself. My father was weakened by whatever the fuck was killing him, and Luca wanted this shit sorted so badly he’d be willing to give Sangue Blu the entire city of Naples, his firstborn, and a goddamn blow job.
“Let’s hit the road.” I plucked my biker jacket from the back of a dining chair.
Enzo reappeared from the hallway, looking visibly appalled. “Dude, are you insane?”
I wished people would stop asking rhetorical questions. Such a waste of time.
“How many times did you kill him?” Enzo jerked his thumb behind his shoulder.
“Two.” Three. Why did he need to know, anyway? Was he conducting some kind of fucking empirical research?
“You promised no more recreational killing.” Enzo ran his palm over his face, his smoke-soaked tone reaching DEFCON 1. “You promised you’d try pickleball instead. I freaking got you a ten-class pass at the country club. Betsy asks every week why your name’s not on the schedule.”
I didn’t have a conscience. If God forbid one ever fell into my lap, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
What I did have was one hell of a temper.
And where Tierney Callaghan was concerned, the minute I knew someone touched her, I either had to kill them or kill her.
And she was technically family, so that left me with option one.
Shedding blood quieted the noise. Slowed down my thoughts. It brought me calm no cigarette or drug ever could.
The eternal chicken-or-the-egg dilemma—was I a stone-cold killer because I was groomed to become one, or was it in my DNA to kill, just like my mobster father? Both nature and nurture worked against me. A perfect storm, and guess which motherfucker was the eye of it? Dead center. That’s me.
“He’s not innocent. He touched what’s mine.”
“Tierney?” my older brother sighed.
I jerked my chin in a nod. I’d only ever claimed one thing as truly my own.
All the rest—money, prestige, power, cars—didn’t mean jack shit.
Luca and Enzo exchanged looks.
“You look like you’ve had a bad day,” Enzo said, pushing off the kitchen counter and opening his arms. “Can I give you a hug?”
“Fuck off.”
Enzo turned to look at Luca, who gave him an impersonal shoulder pat. “That’s a no.”
“Don’t say I didn’t try.”
They thought I lacked control where Tierney was concerned.
They couldn’t be more wrong. I was nothing but the picture of bridled restraint.
If I lacked control, we’d have been married with fifteen children by now.
One for every year I’d known her. And there wouldn’t be a filleted corpse in my office.
If I didn’t have control, things would look fantastic for everyone involved. It was my very control that ruined lives.
“Let’s go.” I shouldered past them. “I’ve a shit ton of blood to clean tonight. Another twenty-one grams won’t make much difference.”