Chapter Twenty
Elio
Taking over the Marino empire had been one of the hardest things I had ever done.
It was easy faking my father’s death, effortlessly slipping into his shoes and taking over from where he left off.
But even with the “Wicked” persona he had created for me before he “died,” I had still struggled with our associates and other higher-ups who didn’t see me as experienced enough to fill his shoes and run the business smoothly.
I was too young compared to everyone who answered to me.
Even now, though they didn’t outrightly complain out of fear of offending the psychopath who would likely wipe out their whole existence, there were still murmurs. The old ones were still too traditional with their ways, fearing to take things to the next level and strengthen their families.
Old ones like Edoardo, who firmly believed in bond and family, detested betrayal and could ruin the reputation of any house if he so much as called a meeting with his little oldies. The sixty-seven-year-old man was a grumpy, uninterested traditionalist who still led by old laws.
Delusional men.
I was the lawless one, toying with politics and being almost legal. I was the one who betrayed and two-timed. I was reckless because I was young and didn’t know actual loss and the love of family.
I agreed. My conscience and the feeling of right or wrong were gone. All I had to do now was complete this goal, and if having a sit-down with Edoardo in this very bright and un-sanitized city restaurant would help me accomplish that, then so be it.
I looked at my watch for the sixth time, watching people enter and exit the restaurant.
Impatience curled in my stomach. “So unprofessional. How can a man like him disrespect time?” I complained, and Casmiro merely glanced at me with a slight lift of his shoulders, his eyes glued to the newspaper he was reading.
I sighed, reached for my cigar packet and my lighter, lighting one up and placing it between my lips, eyeing Casmiro. “How long will you keep this up, hm?”
He didn’t respond, and I shook my head. It had been three days since I returned home from the pool to an empty home. No Casmiro. He had apparently seen the footage; he knew what Elia meant to me but hadn’t said anything about it.
In fact, he didn’t say anything at all. I hadn’t seen much of him.
If he had a message to pass across to me, he’d send one of his men to deliver it.
I gave him his space and time to process it, but it was apparent he needed more time to wrap it around his head that my father had another son, and he was Elia.
And I hid it from everyone, including him.
“We have work to do. We should be in agreement,” I said, blowing out the smoke and nodding my head at the explosion of vanilla flavor. I rechecked the pack, reading what the stick was made of. “You should try this; it has a wonderful flavor.” I extended it to him.
Slowly, he looked up from the newspaper, a scowl on his face as he watched me with disbelief. “I quit smoking, E. Three fucking years ago.”
I dropped the pack immediately. “I remember that.”
“Right, you do,” he muttered, shaking his head and looking back at the newspaper, completely shielding his face from view.
I sighed, relaxing back in the chair, my fingers drumming on the table, my knees bouncing up and down, feeling even more restless than I did before.
“After this,” I said, “I will be visiting a gallery for an art exhibit. Mayor Artyom Smirnov invited me. There will be lots of political talks and many things you can learn fr—”
“I’ll be busy.”
“Busy with what?”
“I’ll be overseeing some shipments of petroleum, oil, and gas.”
I nodded. “The one housing five thousand barrels?”
He shook his head. “That shipment will come six months from this one. They shifted the date to accommodate two added containers.”
I frowned. “More barrels?”
Casmiro shrugged. “It’s a shipment for the MCSS. We’re only aiding. I signed off on it because I didn’t want to have to go to their headquarters or bother you with it. It only delayed the shipment by six months.”
The MCSS, Marino Caporegime Sovereign Society.
A tight-knit, decades-old society in the body of the Marino empire.
They had several associations with different Caporegimes from different families, inside and outside Italy.
The society had been created under the supervision of my great-grandfather, and they brought in the second most significant illegal funds, from whatever criminalistic business they depended on to keep the association standing.
Although I had a vague idea of this business, I didn’t care enough to investigate further. They were sovereign, only in my name. They could do whatever they wanted. I was just supposed to make sure they did it without hurting the family name, which I didn’t care about.
They took 30 percent of the gains, gave the official Marino empire account about 30 percent, and the remaining 40 percent, for some reason, went directly to my account.
They’d been trying to rope me into their little cult. Every month, I got emails about the proceedings. They kept me in the loop like I was their god, and each email was like a prayer for me to answer.
I never gave them the time of day because I had more important things to worry about—like burning it all to the ground.
“So, which shipment are you going to oversee?” I asked Casmiro, bringing my mind back to the conversation at hand.
“A thousand oil barrels are coming from associates in South Africa.”
“Oh.” It clicked in my head. “Payment for the favor I granted.”
Casmiro nodded, concentrating on the newspaper.
The silence dragged on until I spoke again.
“But that was almost four years ago; I didn’t ask for a return,” I said.
He sighed in exasperation as if my voice annoyed him. “Nobody wants to owe you favors, Marino. The oil barrels were an out from the favor. They managed to gather it as payment.”
I nodded, impressed. “Fair enough,” I said.
He rustled the newspaper pointedly, indicating he didn’t want to talk to me.
“Where in heaven’s sake is that old man? I am very compelled to leave.”
Casmiro ignored me.
I pressed the cigar to the ashtray. The silence made me uncomfortable. It was unlike Casmiro to keep silent when we were in a space together. He always liked picking my brain, wanting to engage me in conversations.
It seemed he was intent on continuing this … malice. We had even taken separate vehicles to get here. It was unsettling and borderline childish.
This was why I preferred to avoid forming relationships.
I should have never agreed to involve him in my matters and become his “friend” again.
We worked better when our childhood shenanigans were only a memory, never to be remembered.
But he had begged me to let him in and trust him, and I had been candid with him.
It appeared he thought my warnings were nothing and that there was no way I could mess up our friendship.
“You can ask someone to cover the shipment overseeing for you. The exhibit is a medium for you to learn more about how politics work. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“It is. But I have to oversee things myself and report back to you. That’s my job,” he said, and I didn’t miss the bite in his tone.
It was silent again, and my drumming increased. His grip on the newspaper tightened at the sound, and I decided to make the last push.
“What is so interesting in tha—”
He cut me off by slamming the newspaper on the table, and a few heads turned towards us. “So this is what you meant by being overbearing and talkative?”
“You agreed to lend your ears.”
“Well, would it help if I said I don’t feel like talking to you?”
My eyes remained on his. “But you have to.”
“I don’t.”
“Are we bickering?”
He stared at me blankly for a while before confusion settled on his face. “What?”
“That’s what friends do, right? They bicker. They fight. They argue, but at the end of the day, they circle back and talk about the issue like mature, levelheaded adults.”
His jaw clenched. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I sighed. “I need us to work together to get Edoardo off our back and turn this whole thing into another one of our favors. That can’t happen if you are secretly plotting my murder.”
He scoffed, muttering something incoherent under his breath.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” he continued. “You have your fast-thinking, problem-solving underboss right where you need him. I don’t know why we’re having this conversation.”
“You—” I stopped when I spotted a familiar head of pink hair at one of the tables with a stranger, talking animatedly. “Is there a reason why Milk from Street is only a few tables away from us?” I asked, and my question brought a frown to Casmiro’s face.
He started turning. “What—” He stopped when he spotted her too. He turned back to me and stopped short again, his eyes zeroing in on the entrance. “Not just her.”
I followed his line of vision and saw Dog walking into the building. A lit cigarette was between his fingers as he looked around, not once glancing at our table before heading to the counter.
I frowned when I saw Elia’s figure right outside the building.
He was leaning on a sleek white 2014 Chevrolet Impala, wearing a black jacket and jeans, talking to Upper, who was pointing at a building by the side of a mini mall, explaining something to Elia, who just stared at him with boredom or disinterest; I couldn’t quite place it.
My eyes swept from them, and I looked around for her, but she wasn’t inside the building or outside.
“What the fuck is going on with our damn security?” Casmiro asked in wonder.
About to look at Casmiro, I caught a figure approaching from the end of the street outside the glass window.
Her short hair was pushed back by sunglasses, and she chewed gum mercilessly as she walked. She was wearing a sleeveless shirt that didn’t cover her navel and shorts that were too short and made it seem like she had long legs.