Chapter 21 #2
The thug’s face paled, and he stepped back. He’d intended to hold my hand down, but fuck that.
I stalked over to Lordi and smacked my right hand down flat on the table in front of him... If he was man enough to pass the sentence, he better have been man enough to carry it out.
“You really want to cut your right hand?” he asked.
“When I get my girl back, she’ll want my left ring finger to be intact. Now man up and do it.”
Lordi stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. I didn’t know anymore. I just needed to get it over with.
Reluctantly, he took the knife from his man.
I folded my other fingers beneath my palm, so he would still only cut my ring finger if he missed.
He raised the knife. The glinting blade sliced down through the air and settled with a wet thunk . One blow wasn’t enough.
I set my back teeth together, clenched my jaw, and held my tongue as I waited for the motherfucker to finish his hack job. Sweat rolled down the sides of my face. My heart ricocheted back and forth against my ribcage. The need to roar clawed at the inside of my throat, but I held it back.
Telling Lordi to do it had been a mistake. His brute could have done it in one clean shot, but it took this asshole three attempts with a dangerously sharp blade to lacerate the joint.
I’d expected him to take the whole finger, but he only took the tip. A joke lurked in there somewhere, but too many dark spots edged into my vision for me to find it.
Angelo stood and buttoned his jacket.
“Is there anything else you need to discuss before the rest of us leave and we let this man bleed in peace?”
“You’re all dismissed but stay close. Enjoy some wine and whiskey on the house.”
Lordi examined my severed digit as I took a seat and stuck my finger into an empty glass, so I didn’t bleed all over myself.
With my left hand, I reached across my body for my phone and set a thirty-minute timer.
It hurt far more than I had imagined. I wanted to roar just to burn off the adrenaline and at least some of the pain, but I suffered in silence. I refused to show these assholes any weakness they might later use against me.
After ten minutes passed, the rest of the men had filed out, leaving only Lordi in the room with me. I’d hoped he would join the others in the restaurant and send one of his men back to cauterize the wound. Instead, he remained in his seat and poured us some whiskey.
He shoved a glass across the table at me.
“I know I’ve said this once before, but I truly might have underestimated you.”
I ignored the whiskey and fought the urge to throw up.
“Seems to be a growing trend,” I said. “It doesn’t tend to end well for those people.”
He nodded and sipped his liquor.
“So you now control your family’s business as well as the Capaldo and Malta empires.”
“So it would seem.”
“You know this means I need you to take your seat on the council. Otherwise, you’ll become a target, and the same goes for your son. I understand why you don’t want to join us, but it’s shortsighted. I believe the Commission can give you something you want even more than you want to kill me.”
“What I want makes a very short list,” I gritted out.
Fucker laughed.
I fixed him with a bored expression and focused on ignoring the searing pain radiating from my finger while a cold sweat left my shirt clinging to my back.
“Aren’t you even a little curious to know how I found out you broke the treaty?”
Actually, yes, but he chose that moment to bump the table with his knee. The edge of the table knocked my finger against the inside of the glass filling with my blood.
I could no longer guarantee my ability to respond without screaming, so I kept my jaw locked and my mouth shut. It worked out, since Lordi liked to hear himself talk.
“I got an interesting call this morning from Aris Moscatelli. He said you showed up uninvited at a ball to make an offer on his sister. Of course, it didn’t take me long to get information and hear the rumors about her. I’m assuming the person she had a tryst with in the ladies’ room was you.”
I said nothing.
“It got me thinking. The treaty was a sign of weakness. New York saying they couldn’t handle Chicago.
Maybe it was true for the old guard, but I think it’s time for Chicago to come back into the fold and get put beneath New York.
I want to break the treaty, unravel it, and take over that second-rate city. ”
He canted his head to get a read on my expression.
“What do you think about that, Mr. Vignali?”
“I think you should have brought that to my goddamn attention before you took my finger.”
“That was your own doing, Stefano, not mine. I had intended to let you make a case. I didn’t think you’d let it go without a fight. Your argument was going to be the basis I used to dissolve the treaty, but you had to be difficult.”
“What is it you’re proposing?”
“I’m proposing you join the Commission immediately. I’ll have you sworn in right now. The rest of them are waiting in the restaurant. And then we start putting together a plan to invade Chicago, take out the heads of each family there, and restore the natural order.”
“So you want a war?”
He tossed back another swallow of whiskey and shrugged.
“Not just any war. I want the bloodiest war this country has ever seen. I want to expand into Chicago, then north into Boston, and then all the way to California. There’s no reason the rest of this country shouldn’t be under New York control.”
“Why do you need my help?”
“Aside from the fact you’re now one of the most powerful men in the city, you, son, are the inciting incident for my war.”
The more he called me son, the more I yearned to end him.
“This new age we find ourselves in is all about image. It’s all about telling a story.
If we just go attack Chicago, then we’re the bad guys.
Families start leaving the council. Maybe Atlantic City and Atlanta decide an attack on one of them is an attack on all of them.
Suddenly, everyone’s trying to restore balance. ”
“What the fuck does this have to do with me?” I snapped.
“You’re going to be the story we tell. The young man thrust into power he wasn’t ready for, but who regained his family’s honor, then fell in love with a girl from a rival family. It’s like the Capulets and the Montagues. You know, Shakespeare shit.”
Right. Shakespeare shit.
The English Lit major in me huffed a frustrated sigh.
And the man just kept talking.
“Then Chicago is the bad guy because they’re getting in the way of true love. And for those who aren’t romantic, you have a claim to this woman. She’s the mother of your child, and the Moscatellis have not only stolen her from you, but they also made a deal with the Russians.”
I hated to admit it, but his plan did make me look more like the hero rather than a villain if I went into Chicago, with all of New York behind me, and burned it to the ground to prevent my wife’s tragic death.
However, it would also give Lordi a lot more power.
More than mine.
I never wanted to be part of the Commission. It had been my life’s goal to tear it apart.
I’d already lost a finger for the woman I loved. Was I willing to lose my integrity too? Break the promises I’d made to my family? To my mother?
Yes, I decided immediately.
Yes, I fucking was.