5. ~Emilio~
5
~Emilio~
He was covered in blood.
It was literally dripping off him.
I hadn’t seen him this way in a long time.
Unleashed.
Out of control.
Succumbing to all that inner darkness of his.
People thought I was the brutal one. I mean, I looked the part. I was a massive, musclebound guy, for one. And I always wore a cold and unforgiving expression whenever we were out in public and I was doing my perceived duty guarding my brother-in-arms. And, yeah, I’d made sure key figures in our world had witnessed me dealing out some hardcore violence upon anyone who dared to cross Nico. It was an image the two of us had crafted well and one I’d learned to wear equally well. It was a deterrent. A major one, in fact. Although Nico had his nickname for other known reasons, my reputation was the one of a true beast in the physical and literal sense.
As far as everybody else knew.
Before my dad had become Underboss, he’d made a hell of a reputation for himself as a ruthless enforcer for the Marchetti Syndicate. He’d raised me to do the same, to make damn sure I made my public image like his so that people wouldn’t dare fucking cross me.
Nico was of the opposite approach.
He didn’t give everything away up front. There was proof that he’d succeeded in that respect, in the fact that very few people really knew of his feral side, that he was actually the brutal one. He actually got off on it, while I didn’t. It was just a necessity to me. Duty, really, to go the violent route. But dealing that out, like we had done tonight, was kind of a chore to me. The crunch of broken bones, of drawing blood, of forcing screams from our enemies, didn’t make my dick hard. Nah, truthfully, I preferred peace and quiet. The calm. Whenever I had some downtime away from all of this, I delved into another world altogether, a fantasy world , as Nico called it. I’d lost my taste for this life the day I’d also lost my parents. And I guess I’d never recovered from it in that respect. I was here for Nico and the brutal fact that there was no way out. Well, except death. For now, at least.
Now, thanks to our collaboration with a maverick and a highly determined fucker like Julian who never took no for an answer and could not, under any circumstances, accept failure, there was actually light at the end of this fucked-up tunnel. And it might not be a never-ending one after all.
“Benzino!”
My thoughts came to a grinding halt at the sound of that name being uttered shrilly from the final guy remaining conscious inside the warehouse.
Nico had been determined to deal with the final three and he’d had me hang back, so I’d just been watching and twiddling my thumbs—literally, actually—while he’d been unleashing all over them and spilling a fuck-ton of blood.
But this last one, the guy was trying to reason with him, trying to spare himself.
Poor, stupid bastard didn’t know that there was no reasoning with Nico when he was in this state. Not until he’d gotten his fill. And that wouldn’t ring true until this last guy was a writhing mass of blood and bones, like all the rest.
While Nico wouldn’t show mercy, that name coming out of the guy’s mouth had managed to pull him up short.
“What?” Nico demanded.
I pushed off the metal floor-to-ceiling rack I’d been leaning against and approached, stepping over a couple of bloodied and disfigured bodies along my path, limbs skewed at awkward angles.
Nico had the guy up against the wall, one hand around his throat and the other grasping his dislocated shoulder. The guy’s greasy blond hair was doused in blood, his nose broken, several deep gashes leaking down his face. His eyes were glazed over, one so swollen it wasn’t even fully open anymore. And four of the fingers of his left hand were broken.
“It was… Carlo Benzino… he hired us… to do this. Burn down this place… was an initiation… so we could… become something.”
Nico snarled in his face, and the guy trembled.
And then he yanked him off the wall, spun him around, then smashed his face into it, knocking him out cold. He released him with a growl and the guy slid down the wall, blood trailing all the way down, until he landed in an unconscious heap.
Nico spun to face me.
I gave him the time I knew he needed to come down from his current state and just watched patiently as he shoved his blooded hands through his hair several times and fought to even out his breathing.
Moments passed, and then I finally saw his shoulders slump and that blackness in his eyes retreat.
He looked out at me clearly.
“This is bad, Nico.”
“Unfortunately, an understatement.”
“Carlo must suspect this Lynch deal.”
“Well, my father has ventured out of the city to meet with him, something that wasn’t known to any of us until after it had already taken place, but it’s possible Carlo Benzino had eyes on him and had his soldiers tail him.”
“And this is his warning for Marco to stay in his lane?”
“Possibly.”
“How do you want to handle it?”
He looked out at the mess of the guys littering the warehouse floor, contemplating carefully like he usually did, weighing up the options and working through them to anticipate how things would play out.
“If Benzino involvement in this gets back to Marco, all hell will break loose.”
Nico nodded. “It will start something that can’t be undone.”
“Want me to call in Rocco and the boys and have these shitheads packed up and transported out of the city ASAP? If we move now, we can get it done before we need to move the coke tonight.”
“There’s only one option acceptable to the Marchetti Syndicate,” an all-too-familiar nasally voice rang out, a moment before Leo Marchetti, Underboss and uncle to Nico, rounded the corner and strode toward us, that ridiculous black leather trench coat of his sweeping around him as he moved. His long, black hair, just like Nico’s—and Marco’s—was pulled into the usual ponytail held there by a rubber band of all things. He wasn’t a particularly muscular guy, but he sure carried himself as though he were.
His brown eyes lit up as he took in the unconscious guys lining the ground.
“What are you doing here?” Nico demanded, making his displeasure known.
“Gio got word that these troublemakers had crossed onto your territory. When you didn’t call in your soldiers, it had me concerned for you.”
“For me?” Nico scoffed. “Sure.”
Leo glared at him for a moment, the two of them entering into a staring match for several long seconds, before Leo grunted when Nico didn’t back down, then looked away and at the fallen troublemakers. “Bring a few of your soldiers down here with chainsaws. Maybe a bone saw too. Chop these shitheads up and send them back to Carlo in pieces.”
Nico and I exchanged an incredulous look.
“That’s not the optimal solution,” Nico pointed out.
It was definitely the most aggressive and insane one, though.
“It’ll send a message,” Leo insisted. “We have proof that Carlo knows about our weapons deal in the works and he’s pissed. Little shit is really pissing himself, knowing this will give us a shit-ton of power far beyond his.”
Send a message? What era did the slimy asshole think we were living in?
“It’ll do a whole lot more than that,” Nico argued. “It’ll be a call to war.”
Leo lifted a shoulder.
Nico’s eyes flashed. “But that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“We’re done being held back by a fucking pussy-ass truce.”
“Your shortsightedness and skewed longing for what you foolishly call the glory days will be the end of us all.”
“That,” Leo said, jamming a finger in Nico’s direction. “That’s why you’ll never move up from Capo. It’s why Marco will never hand the reins over to you.”
“Because I’m sane?”
“Because you’re weak. All about the diplomacy. All about toeing the line.”
“Of course you’d misconstrue smarts for weakness. You’re nothing but an uneducated thug.”
“Just because I didn’t go to a fancy private school, then a top college like you—”
“Being educated doesn’t just mean college. There are those who are self-taught, those who keep themselves informed, who learn as they go and grow. Those who know it’s necessary in order to thrive, to better themselves. But you, you’ve always refused to do that. You’re not only stuck in your ways, you’re moving backward. And you’re also delusional as fuck. Do you not recall what happened last time the three families went to war?”
“There was some collateral damage, sure.”
“Collateral damage?” I sneered. “Is that what my parents were to you?”
The asshole actually grinned at me. “Your mom, yeah. But your dad losing his life too? Now that was fucking ace for me. I finally got what I’d deserved for way too long with him out of the picture.”
I started toward him, rage rushing to the surface so fast I could barely breathe with it.
Nico was there, though, throwing out his arm and holding me off.
Taking a shot at the Underboss would have cost me. Big time.
“I won’t let you do this to the Family,” Nico warned him.
That nasty grin of Leo’s widened. “You’re under the impression that you’ll have a choice? Nah, far from it, nephew.”
“What are you talking about?” Nico questioned, and I saw him clenching and unclenching his fists down at his sides, so fucking close to knocking out the bastard.
He’d just come out of his feral state. It had to be taking him a mass amount of control to hold back in light of this major provocation from his snake of an uncle.
“You see, you’re right about one thing. We don’t want outright war. At least not yet. So we’re gonna keep the Leones on our side. The thing is Santino wants a gesture of good faith after hearing about the Osiris deal. I came up with the perfect solution. As much as you’re pissing me off and threatening to get in the way of what needs to be done here, he’s facing a similar thing with his daughter. He wants her leashed. Now, we’re aware that you’ve been putting her in her place here and there for the last couple of years… and that was when it came to me. You will leash her. And she’ll keep you busy trying to achieve that.” He laid his hand on Nico’s shoulder. “Congratulations, Nico. You’re getting married.”
Holy. Fucking. Shit.