Chapter 25 Stellan
STELLAN
It’s dark, and I feel trapped. All I want to do is go home, climb into bed with my wife, and fuck her until she’s a twitching, gasping mess.
Instead, I’m sitting in a fucking car, staring out into a quiet, motionless night.
That’s the thing about this operation. It’s better if nothing happens. If I sit here until dawn and there’s not a peep anywhere nearby, I’ll drive home, tired but happy. Maybe it wouldn’t have solved my problem, but at least I’ll be able to scratch one name off a mental list.
The Corsetti Famiglia is a mess right now.
The old men don’t want to admit it. I’m not even sure they can see how fucked things are. Money’s still flowing into our accounts from the usual places, which they probably think means life is good. The Famiglia’s about money and power, and we’ve got more cash than we can feasibly clean and spend.
But what they don’t see is how the power’s slowly leaking away.
Each day that Black Book spends locked in the safe deposit box is another day where I can’t show the city we’re still in control. The longer I go without using what’s written inside, the more our enemies begin to wonder.
Are the Corsettis weak?
Image is everything. In Hollywood, in business, and especially in the fucking underworld. We need to be feared and respected, in that order, and the second the fear goes—
The respect goes too.
I wish that were the end of it. Get the key, grab the book, solve all my problems. Except the rot goes deeper.
The Famiglia was set up a long time ago. Back when gambling was illegal and we could make most of our money on small-time moves.
Now life’s different. We still have a gambling income, but it’s a fraction of our drug trade.
I want to drag the organization into the new century. Which means teaching a bunch of old dogs new tricks.
Or killing them and burying their corpses in shallow graves.
My father would’ve hated it. But he also was smart enough to know that I’m right.
Too bad he’s not here.
I close my eyes and see Kira tattooed on my eyelids.
She’s always there whenever I let my mind drift.
It’s a real fucking problem. I see her breasts covered in blood, nipples pink, smeared in red, stiff in the night, her back arched toward the moon as she comes on my thick cock.
I see her whimpering and begging and swallowing me down her pretty little throat.
Kira reverted to her normal, tough-as-nails self the second we got back home.
But there are cracks now.
Little moments where I know she’s thinking about me too.
Glances across the bed. Fingers lingering as we brush near each other in the kitchen.
We haven’t talked about the night I became Don since it happened.
But fucking her in the graveyard, smearing her with blood, it changed something between us.
She sucked me and swallowed my cum like I swallowed that ash-and-blood-filled water.
Our own ritual.
I smile to myself, thinking of that happy, glazed-over, dizzy look she gave me down on her knees, and I almost don’t notice the black van when it pulls into the parking lot.
I sit up straighter and glance at the clock. A little past one in the morning. Technically, I shouldn’t be here yet. I’m not due for another ten minutes. The van maneuvers itself to a little corner, trying to hide in the shadows.
My heart sinks. I grip the steering wheel. “Come on. Drive away. Come on. Tell me it’s not them.”
But the van doesn’t move. The engine dies and it is still.
I watch for another ten minutes, feeling worse and worse, until I can’t take it anymore. There’s a sickness in my stomach. Anger in my chest. I hate this, I hate it so much.
I get out of my car and walk around to the back.
I’m parked across the street. The van can’t see me from my position. I open the back and inside, neatly laid out, is a custom AR-15 assault rifle and body armor.
I get strapped up. Full body armor, helmet, goggles, mask. I load the rifle and check to make sure I have extra magazines.
Rage fuels me now. Anger so hot it nearly hurts.
I’ve been in the game for a long time now, but this has never happened before.
Fucking betrayal.
I walk around toward the bank, taking the long way. It’s a quiet little suburban branch out in the middle of nowhere in Delco. There’s no reason that van should be here in the middle of the night.
Not unless it knows the Black Book is trapped inside, locked in a safe deposit box.
Only they don’t realize I can’t get inside.
My stomach sinks as I approach the van. The plate is splashed with mud. The windows are blacked out completely. There’s no doubt in my mind what’s inside, and I wish it weren’t true.
I wish it didn’t mean what I know it means.
A part of me still resists the truth. Even as I walk to the driver’s side door and tap on the glass with the barrel of my rifle.
The window rolls down. The man looking out has dark hair, dark eyes, and a thick beard. “Ah, hello, yes, I don’t—”
I aim the gun at his face. “How many in the back?”
“I don’t know—”
“How many?”
The rear door kicks open. I pull the trigger, spraying the driver, the high-caliber bullets ripping his skull to pieces and continuing through to pierce the passenger.
I hold the trigger down, unloading the magazine as I turn the rifle toward the side of the van.
I spray like a madman, filling the interior with M855 “Green Tip” rounds with a nice steel penetrator core, made for this exact purpose.
Men inside scream as the bullets wreck their armor, finding soft spots, exploding tissue.
I eject my spent magazine and reload with another, dropping to one knee as men tumble out the open back door.
I gun them down. I don’t hesitate. I blow apart three men before I walk around toward the back, their corpses riddled with massive wounds, blood pumping onto the asphalt. The interior of the van is a slaughterhouse: three more dead and one wounded.
Someone’s running. I step to the side, get a clear shot, and take it. The fucker goes down, with a hole in the middle of his back, center mass. I stalk over and finish him off before returning to the van.
I check to make sure we’re alone. All dead. I have maybe a few minutes before the cops show up. There’s no way in hell a neighbor didn’t call this in.
I kneel down in front of the wounded man. He’s gasping for air. The bullet must’ve hit a lung. Red foams at his mouth, but he seems relatively stable. For now at least.
I shove my knee against his sternum. His eyes go wide as he starts to choke.
“Who told you to come here tonight?” I wait a moment before easing the pressure.
He wheezes, letting out a sob. “Please. Help.”
“Who told you to come here tonight?”
“Please. I don’t. Know. Nobody. Tells me.” He holds out a hand, slick with blood. “Please. Help.”
“Why did you come here? What was your plan?”
“Stop. You. Get. The book.” He groans when I push my knee down again. This time, I don’t let up. I hold it there, staring into his face as panic takes hold. He struggles, flopping, but there’s no strength left in him.
I give the bastard a slow, painful death. I watch him slow, slow, slow, and fade, until there’s nothing left.
Just a van filled with meat.
I jump out, shouldering my rifle. All told, that took five minutes. I walk back to my car, throw my gear in the back, and get behind the wheel. I’ll have to dump this vehicle at a friendly shop and have it cleaned and flipped.
But I don’t pull out.
In the distance, the wail of sirens. Cops really are on the way. I stare straight ahead, rage bubbling in my stomach.
Rage and an ugly despair.
“Fuck.” I slam the steering wheel. “Fuck. Fuck!” I hit the wheel over and over again.
That don’t make me feel any better.
“Fuck.” I lean my head back and let out a long breath. “Fucking fuck.”
When the sirens get too close, I finally put the car in drive and pull out.