23. Lorenzo
CHAPTER 23
Lorenzo
“ I t seems too easy,” Damian said when I filled him in about the call. We were in the car, heading back to Long Island. The cache was set for auction in the following days; we had potential buyers, yes, but I liked casting as wide a net as I safely could. Until then, they would remain under lock and key in our New Jersey warehouse.
Isabella agreed with him. “I don’t know much about anything,” she said, “but I don’t see any of you handing over millions of potential dollars like that.”
She wasn’t altogether wrong. I certainly wouldn’t have given the weapons to anyone, even if I wanted to get on their good side. A discount, maybe, but to just hand something so valuable over? It was madness. Or idiocy. Or both.
“If it is a real offer, though,” Isabella said, “I would like you to think about it.” She reached across the console and slid her hand over my thigh, not in an attempt to seduce, but in order to seek out comfort. “It would be nice if I didn’t have to worry about you getting blown up every time you visited one of your businesses.”
She had a point. “I have some reservations,” I admitted, “but maybe I’ll let Nikolai earn my trust.”
Isabella smiled. “Thank you for considering it.”
For all the smiles and happiness that emanated from Isabella, by the time we reached home, my cousin was foaming at the mouth. “Have you lost your goddamn mind, cugino ?” he barked the moment we came through the kitchen door.
I was going to punch whoever called Elio. I knew that this wasn’t going to go over well with him. “The Russian Syndicate wanted to get rid of Artem just as badly as we did.”
“So, why didn’t they?” he spat.
I leveled a look at him. “The same reasons no one in the Cosa Nostra would come after me directly,” I told him. “Whether we did it on purpose or not, we helped them out.”
Elio’s anger didn’t abate at all. “So, now we’re besties with them?”
Damian scoffed. “Of course not,” he said.
My cousin wheeled around on him. “Stay out of it,” he barked. “This is a family discussion, get it?”
The good-natured expression fell from Damian’s face, and his eyes slid away from Elio, staring at the wall ahead of him. Damian wasn’t going to leave me alone with Elio when he was this angry, but he had detached himself from the situation.
“Enough,” I said, getting Elio’s eyes back on me. They were wide and a touch wild, and he was going to punch me.
“Those motherfuckers almost killed Amalia!”
“I know that.” Isabella put her hand on my shoulder, and I took a breath and tried to gentle my tone. “I will make sure if any of the remaining Syndicate was involved in the attack on the house, they will face consequences for it.”
Elio let out an angry snort like a raging bull. “We should wipe them all out,” he seethed.
I could see where he was coming from. If Artem and Santino did manage to make it out of the inferno we’d left them in, I wouldn’t stop until they were nothing but agony and ash for what they had done to Isabella.
But I had to be able to look at this in the long-term. “Being allies with the Russian Syndicate could be bene?—”
Elio’s meaty fist swung for my face, and luckily, rage made him slow. I was able to block it and push Isabella behind me so that she wasn’t in range. “You’ve gone soft,” Elio said. His voice was like a deep, angry growl. His eyes landed on Isabella, who was peeking at him over my shoulder, and his expression twisted into something hateful, and I heard Isabella suck in a breath behind me.
“Back off, cugino .”
But Elio’s eyes didn’t move from Isabella. “You don’t think the men haven’t noticed how obsessed you’ve become?” he spat. “You barely visit the businesses anymore because you’re lodged so far up your fottuta puttana’s ass.”
Isabella let out an angry sound. “Fuck you, Elio,” she hissed, not needing to know Italian to understand that he’d been insulting.
Elio and I had a tumultuous relationship at times, but I had always been as close to him as my own brother… but the dark feeling in my chest was far from brotherly. “Did you forget that Isabella saved your wife’s life?” I asked, stepping closer to him. Elio didn’t back down. “If it hadn’t been for her, Amalia would have bled out in the garage.”
“Well done, Don Vitali,” he snarled in return. “You finally picked a woman who could hold her own for more than five minutes.”
My knuckles split when it crashed against his teeth. Elio’s head snapped upward; blood poured down his chin. For a second, I thought he might crack a smile, like he usually did after an argument was pushed this far, and we could move on, but he swung at me again. This time, the hit connected, and it felt like my brain rattled in my skull.
I launched myself at him, tackling Elio to the ground. Vaguely, I could hear Isabella scream, but my focus was on the animalistic expression on my cousin’s face. I had to make him back down because I was fully aware of what Elio could do with just his fists.
Elio tried to roll us, but I brought my fist down into his face again and again, ignoring the throbbing in my hand. My focus narrowed down to the movement, hitting and bringing my fist up to hit again.
“Enzo, stop,” I heard someone calling. “Please, you’ll kill him.”
Hands grabbed me and hauled me backward, and I was able to fully take in Elio again. His face was a fucking mess of blood and spit and swelling. I sneered and wrenched myself out of Damian’s grasp. “Get him the fuck out of my kitchen.”
“Sure, boss.”
Elio was glaring up at me, and I leaned in close. “If you weren’t my cousin, I would have put you in the fucking ground, and he wouldn’t have stopped me,” I spat. “Get on board with my plan for the Russians or get the fuck out of New York. Those are your options.” I lifted my hand, and Isabella’s slid into it, locking our fingers together.
We left Damian to clean up the mess.