Chapter 1
Chapter One
MASSIMO ROSELLI
T he topless blonde with long black false lashes gives me a wink as I slide into the chair next to my father. “Scotch,” I tell her as she reaches my side. It’s not like Lyndsey doesn’t have all of our drinks memorized. She just knows her tips will double the longer she lets them see her skin.
Still, she scribbles in her little notepad while my brothers and our lieutenants hungrily eye the perky goods. “I’ll be right back with your drink,” she says before sauntering off atop her five-inch fuck-me heels as most of the men watch her ass sway all the way back to the bar.
My father sets his glass down and swivels it, a gesture that he’s waited long enough and we’re about to learn why we’ve been given barely a thirty-minute notice to get our asses down to the club.
Antoine Roselli, head of the Roselli crime family, and known for swift and decisive action against our adversaries, places his heavy bottomed glass down on the table with a thud. His dark eyes meet mine from the head of the table. “One of our shipments was hijacked from the docks. They got all the trucks.”
My brothers’ eyes all go wide. “Who the fuck would dare?” Leandro asks.
My father’s rage can be felt in waves across the table. “The sons of bitches waited until all five trucks were loaded from the docks and hijacked every fucking one of them mid-route out of the city.” He almost grits out the next sentence. “They knew where each of those trucks were going and exactly how to disable them.”
No one could have known those routes outside of the men given orders by none other than those sitting around this table. Maybe they didn’t tell someone personally, but each and every one of them knows they’re fully responsible for the men who sit below them in the family, no matter what.
His eyes meet mine, and as next in line as head of this family, I don’t need to be told that the weight of the retaliation will be on my shoulders. His eyes say it all before his mouth says a word. “Ten fucking men, all dead, millions of dollars’ worth of product, and it’s all fucking gone.”
We heard the rumbling about the Cassones wanting more, approaching some of our suppliers in back rooms and alleys when they should have been happy with what they had. Now, they have started a war I’ll have to ensure they don’t win.
The regret burnishes in his eyes, but more than that, they shine with a steely rage and determination to make it right. “This week, we mourn the loss of our dead. Next week, we’ll use our enemies’ eldest daughter to make them pay.”