CHAPTER TEN
ROME
––––––––
“Give me a minute to catch my breath,” the man told me. “I feel like my lungs are on fire.”
He inhaled deeply, swiping his hand over his face. I watched, waiting, ready to get this shit over with. Finally, he started talking again.
“Pasquale paid my team to watch you and find a time to end you,” the guy continued. “We were taking too long. So, he told us we had forty-eight hours to finish the job. Wanting to get the rest of the payment, we watched you leave your house tonight and followed.”
“You’ve been watching my house?” I asked, wondering why the hell my cameras hadn’t picked up on anything.
“Yeah. From our business down the street. We own the sandwich shop. Marlo & Sons.”
That’s why. Damn.
“I like your sandwiches,” I admitted. “My favorite is the Panino con la Porchetta.”
“T-thank you. It’s our bestseller. But our shop hasn’t been doing well. That’s why I took the job.”
I didn’t give a damn why he’d taken the job. If he’d succeeded, he wouldn’t have given a damn about my family or me. So fuck him, his shop, and his family.
“There’s more...” the man said, another cough escaping him.
“What?”
“I... I overheard a conversation between Pasquale and a member of the Corradini family while they were dining at my shop.”
“The Corradini family?”
What was my cousin, who was against mafia business, doing with a mafia family?
“Yeah. They meet at my shop often. Pasquale is the Corradini family’s Consigliere.”
For a moment, I just stared at him.
Pasquale?
What the fuck? My cousin, the lawyer who hated my casino because it would make people believe the Cattaneos in Italy were returning to their mafia roots, was actually the Consigliere for a mafia family.
That bastard had spent months preaching about protecting the family's reputation. Every argument we'd had about the casino came back to the same bullshit. He claimed he didn't want the Cattaneo name tied to organized crime.
He claimed he was trying to protect the family from returning to old habits. Apparently, that had all been a lie.
“What did you say?” I asked, needing to hear that shit again.
“Pasquale works for them... the Corradinis,” the man repeated. “I've seen him meet with them dozens of times. They use the back room of the shop whenever they don't want people overhearing.”
What the fuck?
Everything suddenly made sense. The hypocritical fucker was fighting so hard to stop me because he was secretly serving as Consigliere for a mafia family. Not just any mafia family. The Corradinis.
The very family that was trying to establish its own casino empire in Italy. The same family rumored to be behind the collapse of two major casino chains. The same family that had offered to buy my casino for an absurd amount of money after construction began.
An offer I’d turned down, angering their don.
But since their family hadn’t wanted problems with the DeLucas, they hadn’t tried to take down my casino.
Yet, I’d told Davide and Anthony to remain on high alert, just in case they tried something, not knowing that Pasquale had been their way of trying to take us down.
I glanced toward the lab behind me, jaw tightening. I'd spent months believing Pasquale was acting out of principle. Turns out, he wasn't trying to stop the casino because he hated organized crime. He was trying to stop it because he was working for my competition.
“That’s all I know about Pasquale. I swear. But if you let me live, I’ll be your eyes and ears and tell you everything they say when they meet at my shop,” the man offered.
“No need,” I told him, stepping away from him to stretch my leg that was starting to ache. “I hate disloyalty. You betrayed them, which means you would betray me one day too.”
“I won’t. I swear,” the man sobbed.
Promises from a betrayer meant nothing to me.
“Terzo, he’s all yours if you still want to even our kill count,” I called out. “Three to three.”
“On my way,” Terzo shouted, still holding his phone to his ear.
The man continued begging for his life, but I wasn’t listening. I had more important things to think about, like ending Pasquale. I couldn’t wait any longer. He had to die tonight. When the team he’d sent after me didn’t report in, he’d know something was up.
I needed to get to him before he learned that I was still alive. Terzo moved to stand beside me, gun in his hand.
“Please...” the man started.
I hated when they begged. Turning away from him, I headed to my car. I’d only taken two steps when a shot rang out. It was done. I pulled my keys from my pocket, unlocked my door, and slid into the vehicle.
I stifled a groan as I leaned over to open the glove compartment and search for my pain pills. The ones I’d created in my lab. The ones that came with side effects. If I took one, it would last for about seventeen hours.
Once it kicked in, I wouldn’t be able to feel anything, pain, pleasure, anything, for seventeen hours.
I also wouldn’t be able to taste anything or go to the bathroom until it wore off.
Needless to say, the formula needed tweaking.
I opened the bottle and took one pill, swallowing it down without water.
“Here’s your gun you tossed aside,” Terzo said, approaching my car.
Cranking the car up, I pressed the side button. Once the window had rolled down, I accepted my weapon.
“Thanks. You sure you’ll be okay out here alone?”
“I’ve got a trunk full of friends. Each one has killed dozens. I’ll be just fine,” he said, speaking of the guns he kept in a hidden compartment of his trunk.
“Alright.”
“You’re going after your cousin tonight, aren’t you?” Terzo asked.
“I’ve got to end this tonight. And I need to do it alone. I can’t have the DeLucas involved, in case this starts a war.”
The Corradinis versus the DeLucas.
“Call if you need help. I can send a team out. No one would have to know the DeLucas were involved.”
“No, thanks.”
Terzo sighed. “If you had let Enzo’s guards continue protecting you, you wouldn’t have this problem. Even your brother sent guards to watch over you. Your crazy ass sent them back.”
I hadn’t wanted to be guarded all day, every day.
“I got this,” I told him again just as the sound of cars approaching reached our ears.
I stared out the window to see two white vans headed our way.
“It’s the cleaners,” Terzo told me. “Go on. I’ve got this here. Go take care of your cousin. And don’t die. I need you alive to show me around your city when I come to the States.”
“I won’t die. Thanks again, Terzo.”
“Anytime,” he said, walking toward his vehicle.
I started to roll the window up, but paused.
Hanging my head out the window, I called out, “Hey! You want some pain pills?”
Pulling his car door open, he faced me.
“Fuck no. I know the side effects of your pills. I’ll take the meds normal people take.”
“Suit yourself.”
I rolled the window up and backed out, nodding to one of the cleaners who drove past me. The drive home was quiet. I didn't mind the silence. It allowed me space to think, to plot. The pain pill was already starting to work.
With every mile that passed beneath my tires, the ache in my side faded a little more. The throbbing sensation had grown duller until it was barely noticeable. By the time I pulled into my driveway, I could hardly feel the injury.
Unfortunately, the side effects had started kicking in, too. My tongue felt numb. I ran it across my teeth and frowned. Nothing. For the next seventeen hours, I wouldn't feel pain, pleasure, or much of anything else.
The formula still needed work. But right now, I wasn't interested in perfecting it. I was interested in killing my cousin. The moment I entered my house, I headed straight for my office.
Dropping into my chair, I powered up my laptop and pulled up the camera feeds I'd secretly installed around Pasquale's estate months ago. I hadn’t been able to get any cameras inside. And he didn’t have cameras in his home that I could hack into.
However, I’d hacked into his outside cams and installed a few of my own around his property. The screens flickered to life. I leaned back and studied the estate. As usual, his security was pathetic.
Four guards wandered the grounds, guarding the perimeters. One stood near the front gate, which I had no intention of going through. Then there was one inside, managing the cams, guarding Pasquale.
My cousin and I were the exact opposite. While I hated having a team of guards around me all day, every day, he loved it. Maybe it made him feel safe. Or wealthy. Maybe it was a status symbol.
Or maybe he was just a coward who had so many enemies that he couldn’t sleep soundly without knowing his guards were there. Tonight, no amount of guards would keep me away from him.
The four men guarding the perimeter weren’t doing their job properly. One was leaning against the east fence, watching a movie on his phone. The guard at the front door was talking on his phone while sitting on the front steps.
Then there was the one on the back porch, who was seated in a chair, dozing off. The one on the west side was pacing back and forth, staring at his phone every few seconds as if he was waiting for a call. They were all distracted or asleep.
Pasquale's estate sat in the middle of nowhere. Dense woods surrounded the property on all sides. The nearest neighbor was far enough away that nobody would hear a gunshot ring out in the night.
If someone did hear it, they’d assume it was a hunter. My cousin relied on privacy and secrecy to protect himself. He arrogantly believed nobody would be bold enough to come after him. As for me, he thought I didn’t know where he really lived.
The one time he’d invited me to his home, he’d given me the address to a villa in a prominent area. But I’d placed a tracker on his car and found that the villa was where he stayed when he wanted to spend time with his mistress.
This place in the middle of nowhere was where he actually lived... alone. I zoomed in on several camera angles. I’d been watching Pasquale’s estate for a while now. I knew that his men changed positions every two hours.