Handcuffs for the Mafia Capo

Chapter One

Gavino

“Yo, I’m fucking talking to you.” Leondro snapped a finger in my face.

“I’m listening.” I wasn’t.

“You might be listening, but you’re not hearing me,” Leo said, pausing to wait for me to try to deny it.

I didn’t. “Look, I know you’re anxious to get back to whatever anime-porn-spank-bank, Lit-RPG, boring-ass documentary, Luddite hermitage you call a life, but I need you to focus for five minutes. ”

He was pretty spot-on with all those. Except the anime porn. Otherwise, it was almost alarming how well he knew how I spent my time when I was almost always doing so alone.

“These meetings could almost always be a phone call.”

“And if you were paying attention, you would know this isn’t some family update. This is about a job.”

No one would ever accuse me of being the biggest earner in the Costa Family. Whatever gene all my brothers and cousins were born with seemed to skip me.

I’d worked hard when I was younger just so I could get myself Made, get my capo status, get a crew of soldiers and associates who did all the actual work and kicked the money up to me, then be allowed to be left to my own devices the rest of the time.

Except, of course, when my family got squirrelly about my lifestyle and staged makeshift interventions talking about shit like depression and being worried about me.

But I wasn’t depressed.

I just liked what I liked. And I liked my low-tech home, my boring-ass documentaries, my books, delivery food, and being left the fuck alone.

Try telling that to a deeply enmeshed mafia family, though.

That said, I did care about jobs. Because those going smoothly were what allowed me to continue life on my terms.

I glanced back toward the coffee house we were meeting at. Bustling, even in the off-hours, with a rack of every single kind of syrup known to mankind and two colored-haired, tattooed, pierced baristas handling the rush with a calm, practiced sort of grace.

It was the kind of place my brother knew I hated. Trendy and too bright with coffee prices you’d need to take a second mortgage out on your house to afford a yearly habit.

Though, to be fair, meeting at my preferred coffee place—a dark, dirty, run-down bodega on the corner near my house, who sold coffee so strong it was almost thick—wasn’t conducive to a private conversation.

“Alright,” I said, exhaling, “I’m listening.”

“One of your associates went missing.”

“Who?”

Associates were a dime a dozen. Low-level guys who wanted to be in the mob, so they were willing to do whatever grunt work you threw at them. They took most of the risk with the lowest amount of reward. It wouldn’t be surprising if someone had enough of it and wanted to walk away.

“Daniel Hall.”

“I’m gonna need more than that.”

“One of the long-haul truckers.”

“Fuck.”

Any other associate and I would have brushed it off. But the long-haul trucker scheme was my most profitable one. Even the loss of one trucker could mean hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in profits lost.

“When did he run off?”

“No, Gav. He’s missing,” Leo explained. “There’s a missing person’s report and everything.”

That was even weirder.

“Did he go missing from his home?

“No. His rig was found on the side of a road. No Daniel.”

“Was he hauling product at the time?”

“I don’t know. Just got the word an hour ago. I have to check the routes and talk to our connections.”

“How long ago was this?” If he was long-hauling, there was no reason to assume he was anywhere near us. So the information wouldn’t have hit our local news.

“One of our soldiers got suspicious about not hearing from him yesterday, so he started looking into it. They found the rig two weeks ago.”

Dammit.

Any leads we could have had to go on would be long cold.

“Was the rig impounded?”

“No.”

“No?”

“The owner of the trucking company took it. We are working on all the angles now. Should have boots on the ground in a few hours. We will hopefully have some answers by then.”

“Do we have any leads on other truckers who might be options to replace him?”

“Damn,” Leo said, lips curving up to reveal his dimple that slashed down his cheek. “That was cold, even for you.”

I shrugged at that. “People go missing. People get gunned down in the street. We still have mouths to feed. And kick-ups to pay.”

Leo shook his head. “I’ll have someone look into it. Get some options. Have Zeno run some background checks. We should be able to have a new guy by the end of the month.”

“Maybe we should find two. In case anyone else decides to go missing or drop dead.”

“Jesus Christ, man.”

We were a big family. And we all had our roles.

Lore was at the bottom of the birth order—the only girl, sweet, bookish.

Zeno was the next youngest—lived in his computer and filth, had trouble focusing or remembering to do his laundry.

There was me, the asshole. Then Cesare, the alternative, always-in-trouble one.

Then Nico was at the top—strong, dependable, selfless.

Right below him was where Leo fell. And Leo was a lot of things—built like a brick shithouse, a good worker, solid earner, and as family-oriented as he was goal-oriented.

But above all that, he was probably the kindest of all of us.

Capable of making hard decisions and doing ugly shit if the job and the Family demanded it, but was a genuinely good person underneath all the muscle. Empathetic. Selfless.

Knowing my brother, he was likely genuinely worried about Daniel, wondering what happened to him, if he was hurt somewhere, dead, if he had family that was searching for him.

Meanwhile, I just wanted shit back on track so I could get back to my life.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, getting to my feet. “I’m a dick.”

Leo watched me for a minute. “How about you come to dinner this weekend?”

“Yeah, I dunno. Maybe.”

“Know you well enough to know that’s a no.”

“You knew it was coming.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“But you asked anyway.”

“Never gonna stop trying to bring you out into the world, Gav. I get you might like your introverted shit, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy.”

“I got a gym in my building.”

“Which you go to at three in the morning so you don’t have to see anyone else there.”

“But the important part is, I do. Run. Lift heavy shit. Stay healthy.”

“I’m talking about your mental health, not your physical.”

“I read a lot. Watch my documentaries. Do the crossword puzzle…”

“You’re being deliberately obtuse.”

“And you’re beating a dead horse.”

“If that’s what you call caring about my brother, then sure.” He got to his feet too, grabbing his coffee that looked comically small in his big hand. “I will let you know what our guy figures out.”

“Send over resumes if you want for new truckers.”

“Yep. Will do.”

With that, I moved out the door, stepping into crisp early afternoon air.

I knew better than to get excited about the seasons changing and start bringing out my cool season clothes.

It was false fall. There would be another few weeks before the weather stopped being temperamental.

But I enjoyed my walk back to my apartment more than I had since the days started to stretch long and insufferably hot.

Hell, I was pleased enough to even make a few stops along the way—getting shouldered by strangers and stuck behind slow-walkers—to grab some household essentials before dipping into a bookstore.

“Well, well, well,” a voice called, making me turn away from a table of new releases.

New York was a massive city. Eight and a half million people. But the way I couldn’t seem to go five blocks without running into someone in my family made it feel like a small town.

Sure, a case could be made for our parents’ generation fucking like rabbits and pushing out obnoxious numbers of kids.

Still.

It was borderline ridiculous.

Though, technically, Alara wasn’t my blood.

She was the sister of Brio’s wife. But she’d been around long enough that she was deeply ingrained in our life.

Hell, sometimes I got the feeling that she knew us all better than everyone else.

She sure as fuck asked a lot of questions.

Like she was cataloging the information away for some reason.

Sometimes, I imagined her in front of a stalker board with little red strings connecting us.

If I had my family gossip right, she’d hooked up with Christopher, who’d just moved back to the city.

“If it isn’t the most elusive member of the Costa Family. Out in the wild.”

Beside her stood a tween girl cradling a stack of chunky fantasy books to her chest.

“Who’s that? Baby sister I don’t know about?”

“This is Charlotte. She’s Christopher’s niece.”

Huh.

I didn’t remember him having a niece.

Then again, I hadn’t heard much from that particular member of the family in a long time.

“Are you getting that?” Charlotte asked, nodding toward where my hand was sitting on a book.

“Thinking about it.”

“It’s good,” the kid told me.

I picked it up. “Always like a good rec.”

“And by that, he means he finds recommendations in the newspaper or from the little staff cards. Gavino would rather walk on hot coals than speak to another human being. Even about the things he likes.”

“I talk to people at bookstores.”

“Sure. The checkout person when they ask for your loyalty card number.”

That got a small chuckle out of me.

She wasn’t wrong.

“I used to think it was weird that you even bothered to come to bookstores. Until a little birdie told me you don’t have a laptop. And you use a dumbphone. You don’t even have a music app.”

I was sure that little birdie was one of my chatty brothers.

“I buy my music.”

“And are a technophobe.”

“I’m not afraid of it. I just think it’s a capitalist hellscape where everything is rented, no one owns anything, and the people who create the apps every one uses just keep getting richer.”

“I like physical books best,” Charlotte piped in.

“See? The kid gets it.”

“We’re going to need to buy more bookshelves soon,” Alara said.

“Build ‘em. Haven’t found a decent store-bought bookcase where the shelves don’t bow a year on.”

“Wait. You build things?” Alara asked. “This is new information to me. Do you have a sexy tool belt?”

“Just the shelves. Anyway, I won’t get in the way of your shopping.”

“You mean that your social battery is overfilled already and you want us to leave you alone,” Alara said, shooting me a smirk.

“Tomayto, tomahto.”

Alara laughed as she led Charlotte away.

I turned to watch them for a second, seeing Charlotte pick up a book I’d read recently. “It’s a little trite, but you won’t be able to put it down.”

She shot me a big smile and added the book to her pile.

I grabbed a few more books before checking out, exchanging a few words with the cashier, finding it wasn’t as miserable as it typically felt.

With that in mind, I grabbed some takeout to last me through lunch and dinner, then headed back to my apartment.

Where I fell back into my usual routines, all but forgetting about the rest of the world.

Until one night, the world broke into my apartment with handcuffs and a plan.