MATEO
I ’m supposed to be fine dining Camille tonight. Instead, I’m here, doing the dirty work for my family once again, Carina’s words from earlier plaguing me. How can she believe there’s no God when I see proof of his existence every day? Her parents must have really done a number on her if that’s her belief. It also means the level of neglect goes far beyond what I saw when I was summoned that something was wrong with her. What the hell did they do to her?
Feeling blood pump viciously through my veins, I push back thoughts of her for another time. It wouldn’t do well to get taken by surprise, because then, every person we rival with will believe they’ll be able to get a one off on me. And I can tell you now, that’s never going to happen. I’ll compartmentalize all Carina’s shit, then when the time is right, I’ll allow it to unfurl its wings and fly.
I stare down at the pathetic excuse of a man slumped over in a rickety, old metal chair. His eyes are swollen shut from the number of times his face met my fists, and there’s blood trekking down the side of his head, dripping on the warehouse floor.
I relish in the sound of his labored breathing, knowing this puny man is about to break. If it’s one thing I know, pain makes anyone to talk. It doesn’t matter how much you’re being paid to keep your mouth shut, being worked over by me will have them singing like a fucking canary.
Growling, I kick the leg of the chair and spit on the ground at his feet. All my soldiers assured me this man speaks fluent English, so it should be no trouble for him to understand my intentions. “Who knows?”
It takes everything inside not to let the beast roam free. I want answers, and I wanted them yesterday. It shouldn’t be me doing this goddamn shit, but no one in my familia has been able to get this bastard to talk. Oh, but he will. Even if I have to torment him within an inch of his life, he will. There hasn’t been a person yet who’s been able to withstand my tactics. But, I will say this, the guy in front of me now is the only person who’s lasted this long.
No one wants me to let loose on him, as he’s the only one we’ve been able to capture. If that happens, I’d make sure we’d be feeding his body parts to the fish in East River before sunrise. I’m not patient. I expect to get what I want the second I demand it.
“You will tell me what I want to know, or I will peel the flesh from your fucking bones!”
I watch as his chest rises and falls with labored breathing. I’m so close to saying fuck it and putting a bullet right between his eyes. But my attention comes to rest on Lucio as he leans against the grungy metal siding, seeing him eyeing me up and down. He’s giving me one of his looks as if to say, “keep calm, we’ll get him to talk.”
Yeah, when? I want to yell at him. I want this putrid waste of space to spill his guts now, or I’m going to remove the lousy son of a bitch’s tongue from his mouth and mail it to his family. I’ve got no time nor the patience to deal with this shit. If it weren’t for my father calling me, I wouldn’t be here. I have more important things to do than be the rough house of our familia. I was once a long time ago, and since I stepped up into the position I am now, this isn’t fit for my job description.
The sound of my growl reverberates off the walls when the silence continues. My fiery gaze snaps back to Lucio, and I know he gets the drift I’m about to lose my fucking cool with this asshole. I watch as he pushes away from the wall, walking with an air of confidence and authority like all of us Calvetti men have. He comes to a stop in front of our rat, flicking the knife he has in his hand open.
I peer at the scene in front of me with dark enjoyment, relishing the fear I see in the man’s eyes as he looks from Lucio to me, then back to Lucio again—his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. There’s no use in looking to me for help. The devil makes deals, he doesn’t set people free.
“Talk, or we remove body parts,” Lucio seethes.
“Please—” he inserts, and I grow pissed seeing a tear trek down his battered face.
He calls himself a made man? Bullshit! My men know better than to let any type of weakness show through to their exterior, even my women. It doesn’t matter what it’s over. They all know better because I’ll make a motherfucking example out of them if they do. I’ve done it before and have the graves in my backyard to prove it.
“Please nothing,” I force through clenched teeth, feeling my control slip. “Spill your fucking guts, or we will do it for you. Your choice.”
“I can’t,” he mumbles, his answer pushing me to the point I see red tinging my vision.
“Take his ear.”
I lean my hip against the shabby table holding all our devices of torture. My eyes stay glued to the sight in front of me as I watch my brother forcefully grab the man by his hair, driving his head against the back of the chair. He starts flinging his body back and forth, trying to dislodge Lucio’s hold on him. Only, it doesn’t work. If anything, Lucio’s hold gets stronger. He loves it when they fight. If only they get the drift from the devilish smile twisting his features, they would know it too.
I watch the scene in front of me, enthralled. Blood. That’s the only thing that will make the blazing inferno inside of me quiet down. I need someone to pay for the sins committed against my familia. I don’t give a fuck who it is; someone has to pay for thinking they can go against me. No one double crosses us and gets away with it.
The first touch of the razor-sharp blade against his skin, he shrieks, his bloodcurdling screams echo off the metal walls surrounding us. It’s the most heavenly sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Seeing people in pain, it just does something to me. It makes me hard just thinking of the pain we’re inflicting on him.
He gurgles on his blood as he continues to fight, twisting and turning until the rope on his wrists digs into his raw flesh. His grunts, groans, and the slap of flesh hitting the ground elicits a maniacal smile to bloom across my face. He’ll break, or he’ll die—those are the only options he has.
No—strike that. He’ll die anyway.
“Okay, okay!” he bellows, his words distorted. Lucio steps away, chuckling. “The information you want to know … it’s John Stewart. He knows everything.”
That fucking bastard’s been playing us from day one.
“What can I do for you today, Mr. Calvetti?” John breezes up to me, holding out his hand. As if the fucker doesn’t know.
I give him a half-assed look, glancing down at his hand, before raising my eyes back up to his. From the look on his face, I can tell he knows I’m not pleased; not pleased at all. And why the fuck would I be? He’s holding something very special to my family in the palm of his hand, and he needs to get it taken care of as of yesterday.
“John, how many times must I stress loyalty?” I ask, stepping around him. I place my hand in my pocket while lazily striding around his desk to take a seat in his chair. Once I face him, I watch him nervously gulp.
“What do you mean?”
Grunting, I cast a glance in the direction of my soldier and youngest brother, Gavino, seeing him fist and unfist his hands by his side. “Must I explain?”
“No, boss,” he grumbles, his eyes piercing daggers through John.
I glance over to Lucio, who’s leaned back against the bookshelf, leering at John as if he’s pegging his size for a casket. “Lucio?”
Clicking his tongue, his left eye twitches as he tries to hold back his anger. “No. Explanation. Needed.”
Now, Gavino, he’s not as laid-back as Lucio. When he found out what John did, he wanted to come in here with guns blazing. When he found out that John was withholding information, he wanted to torture him until he took his last breath. He wanted to make John pay for ever thinking that he could double cross us. It took a lot for me to calm him down enough to join Lucio and myself in this venture. And from the way his eyes are still glaring at him, his hand twitching to tuck inside his suit to grab his gun, I know it won’t be long before John’s on the floor lying in a pool of his blood.
“John. Gavino here wanted to mow you down,” I say absentmindedly, leaning back into his too comfortable chair. “Do you want to know the only reason he’s not using your insides as a jigsaw puzzle right now?”
“N-No,” he stutters, taking a wary step away from my youngest brother.
A growl slips free from Gavino’s throat, and he takes a step forward, but I hold up my hand, my action causing him to stop in his place as a dry chuckle leaves my lips.
“You’re really trying my patience, as well as my brother’s,” I quip, cracking my neck to the side.
I peer up from my perch on his seat, watching John come toward me. His steps are unsure as he has to get closer to Gavino in order to get to me. I have to say; my little brother is one of the fiercest when it comes to protecting me. Always has been, and probably always will be.
While our mother was lost in the bottom of a bottle for three years of our adolescence, it was I who took over the responsibility for him and Lucio. My father, being the Don of the Italian Mafia in Brooklyn, had too much on his plate to worry about three boys. So, I did my part, and Gavino has never forgotten that. He’s loyal, protective, and will kill anyone who even thinks about doing our familia wrong. If Lucio hadn’t been twice as fierce as him, Gavino would be my captain right now.
“I truly have no idea what I did to anger you, Mateo.” I gaze up at John’s pathetic ass, licking my top lip as I slowly shake my head back and forth.
I’m tired of the evasiveness. This isn’t the courtroom, which is where he fucked up in the first place. This is his office; an office my money furnishes for his cooperation.
“Gavino,” I say harshly, snapping my fingers.
That’s all I need. In the blink of an eye, Gavino takes his gun out of his suit and presses it against the back of John’s head. I can see the wildness in his eyes. He wants to shoot. He wants John to give him a reason to waste him.
I don’t plan on stopping him unless John opens his fucking mouth and tells me what I need to know. The bastard screwed over one of our own with that fucking continuance shit he pulled a few weeks ago, and that’s on top of the fucked-up mess he has us in with Jillian. My man was supposed to be out of there on Christmas. Instead, I had to watch his momma cry over her dinner.
“Okay … okay,” he says, holding up his hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t get Ricco out, but there’s nothing I could do. Mateo, my hands were tied.”
“Bullshit!” I thunder, bolting up from my seat. “You said there was nothing substantial to hold him any longer. Why do you insist on angering me, John? You know better than to do that.”
Gavino’s growl reverberates inside his chest as he pushes the gun even harsher into the back of John’s head, earning a whimper in reply. His anger comes out as he slips into our native tongue. If I know anything about Gavino, he prefers to speak English, so if he gets so lost in the bloodlust to slip into Italian, I don’t have much time.
“Let me fucking shoot him, brother!”
Turning my attention toward my youngest brother, I try to calm myself. Because if I’m amped up, that makes his trigger finger sublimely happy, which is something we don’t want right now.
Clearing my throat, I gain his attention and respond in our tongue, “Gavino, we must remember our heads in this. Give me time.”
“I am two seconds from painting his walls red!”
Fire simmers in my veins when I reply, “Remember who you are speaking to. I am the person who calls the shots here, not you. Now stand the fuck down.”
His eyes close, and I see his chest rise and fall with a few deep, calming breaths. When he reopens them, he glares over John’s head at me. “Hurry.”
Nodding once, I push back the chair and circle around the desk as I revert back to English, unleashing just one warning to him, “John, Ricco’s court date is this Friday. As you know, his entire familia will be at the hearing. I don’t give a flying fuck what you have to do, but I want him home before the streetlights come on that night. Do we understand each other?”
He nods quickly. “Yes, Mateo, I understand. It’s going to be hard, though.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck how hard it’s going to be for you, John. Ricco will walk Friday, or you won’t, capisci?”
“Yes,” he answers, thoroughly shaking in his pants. Good, maybe the motherfucker will get something accomplished.
“Now, onto the other business we have with you.”
“What would that be?”
Walking toward him, I appear to be aloof, but inside I’m a blazing inferno of anger. Grabbing him by his suit jacket, I jerk him toward me, pressing my face close to his. “I want to know why in the flying fuck you’re protecting Marco.”
“Marco?”
Oh, so he’s going to play dumb? Works just fine for me. He can be the next thing I play with in the basement, hearing his screams and pleas for me to stop cutting the flesh from his bones are a pleasant thought to have.
“Do not play dumb with me, goddammit. You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
Sighing, his entire body relaxes in my hold, as if he’s giving up. He knows he’s been caught. There’s no use in him beating around the bush anymore. When I want to know something, I will find out what it is. It doesn’t matter who I have to go through to get it either.
“I’ll send it all over tonight,” he whispers.
“Good. See that you do, because I would hate to make another trip down here. Sniffing out a rat is easy, but taking care of them … now, that gets messy.”
A throat clearing has me turning my attention toward Lucio. With a quick jerk of my head, he slips into Italian, “I think Gavino should rough him up, so John does not forget that our threats are serious.”
Mulling over his words for a moment, I can’t say I’m against the idea. John is getting too ballsy for his own good, and it will do him well to remember his place. “Fair enough,” I retort, a small smile playing on my lips. The longer I think about Lucio’s request, the more I like the idea of it. It seems John’s about to have a very, very bad day. “Gavino, you have two minutes, but don’t touch the face.”
Now, the only thing I have to worry about is Marco, and what the fuck he’s trying to pull by getting information from John. Sensitive information only a Calvetti or our legal counsel should have.