Chapter 17
Jude
Five years later
I let out an exaggerated exhale, growing tired of the way the asshole in front of me refuses to give me any worthwhile intel. Tony wipes his sweaty brow before hitting the Russian soldier in the jaw one more time, but to our dismay, all the fucker does is spit out two of his front teeth and then maniacally smile at us as if it were a game to him.
“Boss?” Tony huffs out, looking worse for wear. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear he was the one who had been tied to a chair, getting the shit kicked out of him for the past five hours.
I suck in my teeth and wave him away. Thankfully, Tony has the good sense to leave the basement before I set my frustration on him instead of our tight-lipped captive. I loosen my tie before taking off my Armani jacket, gaining a scoff from the Russian.
“Hmm, is that your way of telling me you don’t like my suit, Boris?” I taunt.
“Igor. My name is Igor, you, Sicilian scum.” He spits out a pool of blood toward my Italian shoes but thankfully misses its target.
“Boris, Igor. What’s the difference? You’re all the same to me,” I reply, unaffected, while making a show of putting my black leather gloves on.
Igor’s eyes never leave me as I pull up a chair, swing it around, and sit on it, my legs spread wide on each side.
“Here’s the thing, Boris. This little chat between us can only go two ways. Either you give me something I can work with, or you’ll force my hand. Do you understand what that means? Forcing my hand?” I hike up a taunting brow.
“Fuck you,” he retorts in mangled English.
“Tsk tsk, Igor. We can be friends. Don’t you want to be my friend?” I smile sinisterly at the bastard. “See, I can be a good friend to you. The best, even. All you have to do to win my friendship is tell me what I want to know.”
He looks away, his gaze fixed at a spot on the wall, his way of saying I can shove my so-called friendship where the sun doesn’t shine.
“Someone has been very busy lately, haven’t they, Boris? ” I continue, not caring if he looks at me or not. “So busy, in fact, that they got sloppy. You see, my men found your precious container in our docks. The one you and your men tried to smuggle in. Hate to say it, but that was one hell of a bad move on your part.” I shake my head, pretending to look disappointed. “It was too damn easy tracking that container back to you. Too damn easy, in fact. You know what that told me? That you’re not the brains of the operation. No offense, but one look at you and it’s clear you’re just the muscle. So why don’t you give me the name of the man pulling your strings so you can be on your way?”
I smile when his gaze returns to me, his eyes darting up and down my face, trying to see what game I’m playing at.
My calm voice always does it to them—a trait I inherited from my father and was able to master over time. It leaves them wondering whether I’m being sincere or full of shit.
Right now, it’s definitely the latter.
This piece of filth thought it was a good business move to bring a container into our docks filled to the brim with traumatized, malnourished women. Whoever Igor reports to thought I wouldn’t notice and that they’d be able to smuggle the trafficked women in and then sell them off to the highest bidder. I may not know who Igor’s boss is yet, but I know that his lackey won’t be walking out of this room alive.
I know that much.
“Tick-tock, Boris. You know it’s just a question of time before my men find one of your buddies who isn’t as shy as you are in telling us what we want to know.”
But just as he opens his mouth to finally give me a name, the basement door swings open behind us, sealing his lips shut.
Goddamn it.
I turn to curse at whatever asshole had the bright idea of disturbing me when I see that the asshole in question is my adoptive father, Dom.
“You about done here, Jude? We got dinner reservations, remember?” he says as he walks in. He looks every bit as menacing as he did the first day I met him, even if he is wearing a fancy suit that was most likely bought by my mom. However, when I see my brother, Marcello, and my sister, Stella, walking behind him, also dressed to the nines, my smile drops right off my face.
“Jesus fuck, Dom. You shouldn’t have brought them down here. You knew I was right in the middle of interrogating this piece of shit,” I growl as I get up from my chair, putting myself in front of Igor so my siblings don’t get a good look at how I’ve spent most of my day.
“Why the hell not? It’s not like they haven’t seen worse before.” Dom shrugs off, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Ooh, who is that? Can I help?” Stella says a little too eagerly, stepping closer to me so she can take a peek over my shoulder.
“No. Go back upstairs to the club. I’m almost done down here anyway,” I order, stepping away from my hostage since it’s obvious neither one of my siblings looks perturbed by seeing a bloody and bruised-up Russian tied up to a bolted chair.
“You don’t look done,” Dom interjects, eyeing the Bratva soldier in question. “Fucker looks like he’s getting his second wind to me. By this rate, we’ll never make our reservations.”
Jesus, my family loves to bust my balls.
“I’ll be done in a minute. Just give me another hour or so.”
“We don’t have an hour, Jude. It’s Annamaria’s thirteenth birthday.” Stella scowls, no longer looking pleased to be stuck in a wretched basement with my prisoner. “This is a big one. Don’t make me late for my baby sister’s birthday dinner. I swear, I’ll never forgive you if you do.”
“Kid,” Dom tilts his head over to Marcello before I’m able to say anything. “Think you can give your big brother a hand so we can get a move on?”
Marcello’s face turns blank at Dom’s order, and without hesitation, strides over to Stella to whisper something in her ear. When her smile stretches a mile wide on her face, I know this isn’t going to end well.
“Like I’d ever leave the house without one.” She giggles, retrieving a razor-sharp dagger from a garter latched to her thigh and placing the menacing blade into the palm of my younger brother.
Marcello offers her a curt nod and then turns to me, silently waiting for my go-ahead.
“It’s not like I can stop you, now can I?” I groan, throwing my hands up in the air before walking over to the corner of the room to grab my suit jacket.
“Marcello,” Stella suddenly calls out worriedly, stopping our brother from taking another step. She rushes to him and removes his jacket from him. He then helps her by peeling off his white dress shirt himself, handing it over to her for safe keeping. “Thank you,” she says gratefully once she has most of his clothes in her grip. “Mom would shit a brick if you came to Annamaria’s birthday dinner with blood on you.” She quickly pecks his cheek and then skips over to Dom.
“We’re on a clock here, kid,” Dom says, tapping his wristwatch to drive the point home.
My brother gives him another nod, all the while keeping that same blank expression on his face.
I love Marcello.
Love him more than life itself.
But sometimes, when I look at how he is now, I’m unsure if my baby brother even lives inside the man before me. Not when he switches off his humanity and becomes this… soulless thing.
I stand rooted to my spot as Marcello leans down to murmur something into the Russian’s ear. Igor’s face turns a ghostly shade of white, and before he’s able to utter a word, Marcello slices off his thumb clean, blood promptly spurting every which way. Igor’s cries of pain are ignored as Marcello takes the thumb in his grip and jams it into Igor’s mouth, his screams now replaced by the choking sounds that rip out of him. Marcello’s lips return to Igor’s ear, whispering something again that neither of us is able to hear. But when the Russian begins to cry while chewing on his own thumb, adding two and two together isn’t very hard. With the few teeth he has left, Igor is forced to gobble down his cut-off digit, spitting out the bone while swallowing the rest. My fists clench at my sides when the Russian starts throwing garbled curse words at my brother, his tears still streaking down his fat cheeks. But the minute Marcello directs the dagger to the tip of Igor’s cock, he starts singing like a fucking canary, no longer interested in cursing my brother out.
“Dimitri! It was Dimitri!” he shouts.
Dimitri Mikhailov.
I should have known he’d be behind this.
I throw a glance over to Dom, his face looking just as pissed as I feel. Neither of us wanted to believe that the Bratva underboss would be stupid enough to sneak one past us, but here we are.
“Okay, kid. That’s enough for now,” Dom says, and before I have time to turn around, Marcello has slit Igor’s throat wide open.
“Goddamnit, Marcello! What did I tell you about the blood?!” Stella reprimands when our brother turns to us, his face and chest completely soaked with Igor’s blood, right down to the root of his now crimson head.
Stella runs hurriedly to the bathroom to fetch him a towel and then starts vigorously rubbing his hair. As she begins to do some serious damage control, the knot in my chest loosens when I start to see a spark of my dear brother returning to his eyes.
“Leave me some, will ya? I kind of like my hair,” Marcello teases softly.
“Well, it would serve you right if I yanked every last strand of it off,” Stella grumbles, but the little smile at the corner of her lips says she isn’t as furious as she wants to let on. “See, this is why I should be inducted. I have red hair, people. Red. No one would even bat an eye if I got a little blood on it. But you, Marcello? With this golden lion’s mane of yours, a tiny drop is a dead giveaway that you were up to no good.”
“But I was up to no good,” he rebukes, tilting his head over to the dead Bratva asshole.
“Yes, I know that, dimwit,” she counters, flicking his forehead with her finger. “But we don’t have to announce it to the world, now do we?”
Dom snickers and then pretends to hide his chuffed laugh by feigning a cough.
“Enough of giving your brother a hard time, Stella. Just make sure he looks presentable enough for that fancy restaurant your mom is taking us to.”
Stella starts working her magic on Marcello, plucking things from her purse to aid her efforts. Dom and I stand side by side, still thinking of one thing—Dimitri.
“Vincent is going to be pissed when we tell him that Dimitri is trafficking women under our noses,” Dom mutters low enough for Marcello and Stella not to hear.
“I know. I didn’t want to believe that the Bratva was behind this after all. Considering how sloppy they were, I honestly thought this was just some stupid street gang biting off more than they could chew. Guess I was wrong.”
“Don’t beat yourself up about it. Now you know,” Dom exclaims. “And now you can do something about it.”
My scoff doesn’t go unnoticed by my adoptive father. He stares me right in the eye with his arms still crossed over his chest.
“Mind telling me what that scoff was all about?”
“I’ll give you one hint. She bought you that Tom Ford suit.” I cock a brow.
“Jude—”
“Don’t Jude me, Dad. You know as well as I do that Mom is fine with me doing Outfit business as long as I don’t get messed up with real danger. I hate to burst your bubble, but the minute she hears the word ‘Bratva,’ she will be whispering in my dad’s ear to keep me out of it.”
“You know I don’t like it when you use that tone when talking about your mother,” he growls in frustration, running his tattooed fingers through his hair to simmer himself down. “And don’t let Vincent hear it either. Trust me. If anyone is keeping you in the backseat, it’s him and your fucking attitude when it comes to Selene.”
“Whatever,” I mutter, setting my eyes on my siblings instead of doing the same old song and dance with Dom again. “You both about done or what?”
“You tell me?” Stella says proudly.
My shoulders relax the minute Marcello’s shy smile tugs at his lips, looking like a damn choir boy, no less. I bridge the small gap between us, only to ruffle his mussed hair.
“You clean up good, baby brother,” I praise, getting another ruffle in before he slaps my hand away.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he mumbles, never one to like being in the limelight.
“Okay, kids. Best be on our way. We don’t want to be late to see the birthday girl blow out her candles,” Dom chimes in with pride in his eyes. We leave the club, but not before I tell Tony that he should hang back to deal with the mess Marcello made downstairs.
For the rest of the night, I don’t want to think about dead Russians. Or how my mother is constantly blocking me from rising through the Outfit’s ranks due to some misguided notion that she is protecting me. Or the fact that my father will never step down from his syndicate throne and give me my birthright because of it.
Instead, all I want to do is to celebrate my youngest sister’s birthday.
Nothing else matters
Annamaria is the heart of our family, after all.
She’s the best of all of us.
As long as she’s happy, then we all are.
And right now, I’m in desperate need of some joy after watching Marcello at work.
Yep.
Definitely need to bask in Annamaria’s pure light to get that fucking image out of my brain.