Chapter 16
LUCA
I rub a hand across my face instead of putting it through my hair. I slept like a rock next to Sophia, and I don’t want to think about why that is. I had to get the fuck out of there.
Her ample ass pressing back against my dick… She had to know what she was doing to me. I should have slept on the couch, or hell, at least the floor in the bedroom. What had I been thinking?
That you wanted to be close to her.
I ignore that voice in the back of my head. I can’t think about that right now. I can’t think about how her dress rode up over her ass, how I could feel it jiggle against me. I could have slid right in, put my mouth on her neck or a hand looped around her throat and…
I have to stop thinking like this. She’s a cop. She fucking hates me.
I can’t even lie to myself anymore about hating her. I don’t. I feel something for her I’ve never felt for any woman, even if I’m afraid to examine what exactly that is.
I draw in a deep breath and look through my text messages, most of them in code.
The rooster comes home to roost in the trees at midnight.
Arturo Colombo had sent me that, my main point of contact when it comes to trailing Nico. The reason I trust him isn’t because he’s a trustworthy man. He is, of course, but that’s not why I trust him with this task.
I trust him with this task because he hates Nico more than anyone I’ve ever met, and that’s saying something given how divisive my brother is.
He’d once caught Nico with his ex-wife, and it took my father and myself to talk him down from killing him.
Arturo and Olivia had been divorced for five years, but that doesn’t make a difference to wiseguys.
Once a woman is ours, they’re ours forever.
And Nico knew that. But Father made it so he didn’t face any consequences for his actions.
Nico doesn’t know it, but I’ve been tailing him for months, ever since he started acting erratic and I knew he was back on drugs.
Father would ship him off, dry him out, and he’d come back okay but it only took a couple months for him to go back to it. Rinse and repeat. For years.
The rooster is Nico, of course, and by coming home to roost in the trees he means our warehouses on Oak Street. I’m aware a lot of my equipment is bugged by the feds, so I don’t do much business via text or on my main phone unless it’s in code.
I send Arturo back a thumbs up to let him know we’re showing up. He hasn’t given me specifics yet, but I’ll meet him near Oak Street and we’ll formulate a plan of sorts. I’m not going to give Nico the opportunity to lose one red cent of my money.
I shoot Diego a text to come help, knowing he’ll know what I mean. It’s nearly ten when he arrives, and I huff out a breath.
“About time.”
“I was out of town. I’m not always at your beck and call, Caputo,” he mutters, and I’m surprised and a little curious about what he had been doing. But in the end, I don’t push. He wouldn’t if it were me. Not unless it became a habit.
“Just need you to watch her for a few hours. Don’t touch her.”
“Of course not,” he says, looking almost offended.
“I know you wouldn’t. Just had to be said.”
He nods, sharply. “I assume you found out about Nico’s poker night?”
“You already knew?” I don’t know why I’m surprised. Diego makes it his business to know all the goings-on in the mob world.
He grins. “I know everything.”
He sits down in the chair in front of Sophia’s room, pulling out his paperback again.
“I’ll be back before dawn.”
He nods, and I leave the cottage, getting into my car and heading for the freeway. It’s about an hour and a half drive into the city to Oak Street. I make it in an hour, and when I park a few blocks behind Oak I drop my location to Arturo.
He arrives in a few minutes, and it’s around eleven-thirty by the time we meet up, our cars parked in single file along the street. I stand on the sidewalk as he gets out of his car, watching him.
“We’re really doing this?” Arturo asks, blowing dark curls out of his face. He’s got a wild grin on his face and I hold up a hand.
“Don’t get too excited. We’re breaking up the poker night, not killing my little brother.”
“Pity,” he shoots back, but I don’t take it personally. If Nico had gone after my ex-wife, I’d probably want to kill him, too. “I get to rough him up, though, right?”
“No,” I say, and he pouts like a petulant child. “I’ll take care of it. You distract his minions. Alfonso and Johnny will be stuck to his side like glue.”
Arturo nods, cracking his knuckles. He’s almost too excited, but he’s what I’ve got.
I need Diego to stay with Sophia, so I can’t use him, and I’m not sure who else in my circle is loyal to Nico instead of me.
But that shit is going to change. Tonight, they’ll all see why they should be loyal to me and me alone.
I’ve been resting on my laurels, taking for granted that my men will follow me because they followed my father. But when there’s a takeover of power, there’s always casualties. Some of my men might be those casualties.
“We’re heading in right at midnight,” I tell Arturo as we walk toward Oak Street. The warehouse we own there is underground, and I start to feel the beat of the music pounding beneath my feet as we get closer.
I walk down the stairs first, and when the door cracks open Joey Stacks stands there, blinking his gray eyes at me.
“Caputo?”
“What are you doing slumming it as a bouncer?” I ask idly, and he swallows visibly. He knows I’m not supposed to be here, not supposed to know about this.
“Uh, just…wanted in on the action, boss.”
“Unsanctioned action,” I remind him, and Joey holds out his hands in defense.
“I didn’t know.”
“I hate a liar, Joey, You know that.” I shove past him and he stumbles backward as I hit his shoulder.
The other men in the room are distracted, drinking and talking, but a few of them look at me with wide, scared eyes as I walk further into the warehouse. Arturo’s behind me, at my six, and people start parting like the red sea. Many of them even leave, trailing out of the warehouse in droves.
I walk up behind Nico as he’s snorting a line of cocaine, his hand discarded on the table. Folded. Already, and the game had barely begun.
“How much of my money have you lost tonight?”
Nico turns, his grin fading, his nose dusted with coke.
I make a derisive sound in the back of my throat. “Clean yourself up. Meet me outside.”
“Luca,” he starts, but I’m already turning my back.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Johnny throw a punch at Arturo. Arturo ducks the punch, grinning and glancing at me for permission. When I nod, he grins wider and sets his stance, throwing out an uppercut that probably breaks Johnny Marco’s jaw.
Not that I care. Johnny and Alfonso are low on my list of favorite men, especially given their closeness to Nico and their obvious dependence on drugs. Fists get thrown and I’m not terribly surprised when I catch a stray, someone sucker punching me in the jaw.
I grit my teeth and turn, only to meet Nico’s dark eyes, wide and unfocused.
“Now I know you’re out of your goddamned mind,” I growl, stalking toward him and Nico yelps, backing up against the far wall as I advance.
“Fuck, Luca, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t—”
“You fucking sucker punched me,” I hiss, and Nico cowers like the absolute coward he is as I pull back my fist.
I lower it slowly as he whimpers. It’s not worth it. Any satisfaction I could get out of bloodying his nose would be taken away by Father’s lectures, by the cold shoulder he’d give me.
I turn around, scoffing. “Meet me outside.”
“You can’t control me.”
Whatever combination of drugs Nico has poisoned himself with addled his brain and strengthened him, I guess, because he tackles me around the waist, taking me down to the ground.
He grapples with me, yelling, and there’s a cut above my left eyebrow from his sucker punch starting to bleed like a sonofabitch.
I can’t see, and that’s the only reason he gets a couple of hits in. Letting out what feels like a war cry from my chest, I shove him over, managing to straddle either side of his stomach.
I can’t help myself, raining down punches on his stupid, smug face. He’s whining, his nose bleeding freely, when Arturo manages to pull me off him.
“He’s already out,” Arturo said, and sure enough, when I look down at Nico, spitting blood from my mouth onto the warehouse floor, my brother is unconscious.
Motherfucker.
Father is going to be pissed, take Nico’s side, and I just don’t want to deal with it. But I couldn’t let him disrespect me that way, even if he is my brother. I wipe blood out of my eyes, and Arturo helps me drag Nico into a sitting position as everyone else piles out.
Some idiot had probably called the cops, and I’d rather not have to deal with them, either, so we need to get the fuck out of here.
Arturo finds a stray glass of whiskey and tosses it in Nico’s face. Nico sputters, gasping in ragged breaths, and wakes up.
“You can’t control me,” he says again, words slurred, and I roll my eyes.
“Maybe not, but you need to understand your actions have consequences, Nico. That bloody nose? A consequence.”
He grunts in response, but he lets me and Arturo help him up and out of the warehouse. Alfonso is waiting for him outside, and the two disappear in Nico’s sportscar before I can speak to him further.
Fuck. Some part of me feels guilty, even though I shouldn’t. Father hadn’t sanctioned the poker night, either. It isn’t like I’m going against orders. Father wants me to keep Nico in line. He just doesn’t like how it has to happen.
The only thing Nico listens to is violence.
Arturo hums. “Guess my job is done. You good, boss?”
What kind of expression am I making for him to ask that?
I nod sharply. “Fine. Thank you for your help. Keep eyes on him.”
“And report to you before taking action. I got it, Caputo.”
He gives me a sharp salute before heading back to his car. I follow him, waiting for him to drive off before I do. I don’t want anyone following me to the cottage.
I hate that it had to come to this, that it had to come down to me beating up my brother. I don’t like to solve all my problems with violence. But it’s the only thing Nico knows, and I guess I can’t be surprised, given the lifestyle he grew up in.
He deserves consequences. I just hate that I have to be the one to give them to him.