Bastiano Romano: A Standalone Mafia Romance Novel (The Five Syndicates Book 4) by Parker S. Huntington (23)

“You ready for Asher’s wedding?” Gio rapped his table as Bastian walked past it and gestured for him to come over.

I ran a rag over the bar’s countertop as Bastian approached them, my eyes down on the table but my ears perked and ready for intel.

Intel.

Gosh. I even hated the word. Two syllables that ground into my soul. Especially after Bastian had gotten me home safely—without taking advantage of me—even though I’d spilled a little too much to him the other day.

Drinking that much while undercover was dangerous. I had no excuse, but my birthday always hit me hard. Back when she’d been alive, my aunt had even known not to call and wish me a happy birthday, not that she’d been able to get in touch with me with my covers intact.

I’d woken up to an empty bed and hadn’t had a chance to thank Bastian. Eavesdropping on him and his dad certainly didn’t qualify as a thank you, but I did it anyway… and felt bad about it, I realized.

“Yeah. You know if Nick’s going?” Bastian took the seat across from his dad.

I racked my brain for a Nick in any of the syndicates’ files and came up empty. Niccolaio Andretti, perhaps? But he was a myth. Bureau folklore. The mafia equivalent of the Lockness Monster. The former heir to the Andretti throne, who’d disappeared one night, never to be heard from again.

The Andretti and Romano family had been feuding for generations. The last place an Andretti, let alone an Andretti royal, would be found was New York City, deep in the heart of enemy territory.

Gio fiddled with his phone, then peered up at his son. “If he can swing it, I’m sure he will. You know how he and Asher are. But I sent Ash a text to double check. If he goes, we need to make sure the security is good enough to protect him.”

Bastian drew out a breath and skimmed his eyes across his dad’s face. “I’m handling it, so you know it’s good.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Isn’t it? I’m not in, so you question everything I do.”

“I meant, Niccolaio’s family can be ruthless.”

Niccolaio Andretti.

The confirmation left more questions than it answered. It made no sense. The rivalry between the Andretti and Romano families spanned centuries. So much bloodshed had passed between the two. I couldn’t picture a world where an Andretti and Romano occupied the same room, let alone the same city.

Then again, Niccolaio Andretti hadn’t been seen or heard from in years. The bureau had lost track of him for a while, and Bastian’s warning look to Gio only strengthened my suspicions. Niccolaio Andretti lived somewhere in New York City.

Holy. Shit.

“So can we.”

Gio pocketed his phone. “You call running a bar ruthless?”

“Belittling it doesn’t change the fact that I’ve done enough for this family to justify my status. Don’t question it again.”

Gio stared at his son. Silent. “Take every precaution in planning the security detail.”

“Nick and Asher are family.” Bastian nodded. “We don’t take risks. Family. Duty. Honor. Above all else. Protected at all costs, no matter how large. You taught me that.”

“I did.” Approval gleamed in Gio’s eyes as he took in Bastian’s face. “Nick says he won’t miss the wedding. Be sure to increase the security. Vince says the bounty on his head raised to five million dollars.”

And suddenly, everything made sense. The bureau had always wanted to take down the mafia. Of course. But they’d sent me now, of all moments, in response to bodies dropping in the city and whispers from their informant of something going on in the Romano territory.

If Niccolaio Andretti, the missing Andretti heir, was hidden in the city with a five-million-dollar bounty on his head, the logical conclusion would be the Romano family had given him safe haven. I didn’t know or understand why, but judging by the way Gio and Bastian talked about Niccolaio, the Romano family cared about him.

The road before me forked, and I stood, splintered in two impossible directions. It should have been a no brainer. I’d tell Jenn the intel during our next session, she’d pass it up the food chain, and someone with more power than both of us would make a decision.

Except my heart demanded I rethink this. It remembered the way Jenn had treated me. What was it Bastian had said?

Family. Duty. Honor. Above all else. Protected at all costs, no matter how large.

In theory, the bureau had that. We’d all taken the same oath, swore the same promises, and followed the same rules. But at the end of the day, being an agent didn’t entail loyalty to one another or even the country. It entailed loyalty to a chain of command—whoever played the game of politics best and had the power to pull my strings.

If I were being honest, the mafia had more integrity, and it blew me away. Mom had run away from Angelo De Luca, the former head of the De Luca syndicate, because he’d been dangerous. A beater. An asshole. The type of man who killed without remorse.

After she’d died giving birth to me, my aunt raised me to hate anything and everything mafia-related. The hatred she’d taught me led me to joining the bureau, and here I was, holding a kernel of information that could hurt the Romano syndicate but hesitating to use it.

Everything I’d ever been taught demanded I give it to the FBI to take down the syndicate, but my heart refused, begging me to consider the alternative—I had a choice whether or not to say something.

And it might not have seemed like a viable choice to an outsider, but now that I’d seen the syndicate in action, I knew they weren’t as bad as they’d been made out to be. They had a code of honor and a way of protecting the ones they loved at all costs. More than I could say about me.

And somewhere between the beloved and the outsiders stood people like me. People who had wormed their way into the syndicate and managed to form a connection. I hadn’t had the opportunity to thank Bastian for the other night, and it was probably for the best.

Otherwise, I’d have to confront the idea that a second side of Bastian existed. One who took me home and acted like a gentleman—albeit his filthy version of a gentleman.

But you trust him, I couldn’t help but admit.

I trusted the man who’d ended a contract for me. Who’d later protected me against one of his own. Who’d made me promise to stay safe. Who brought me home, tucked me into bed, and fed me Ben & Jerry’s when I drank too much.

Dangerous territory.

Bastian eyed the ceiling for a few drawn-out seconds. “That bounty will prove troublesome. We should set a counter bounty on Ranieri Andretti’s head. Either he’ll give in and remove the bounty or he’ll raise it, in which case we’ll do the same. We all know which syndicate has the most money.” His low murmurs made it nearly impossible to hear, but I’d been trained in surveillance.

I was a rat.

A damned good one.

Goosebumps lined my arms. It never felt good to be ashamed of your identity. Of the very thing that defined you. But hell, I hadn’t even passed the name Everett along to the bureau yet. Surely part of me still had limits.

Gio swept his eyes around the bar as he spoke, “Or we’ll have killed the Andretti syndicate’s boss.”

Bastian shrugged.“The position belongs to Niccolaio anyway.”

“Niccolaio still cares for his brother.”

“His brother doesn’t deserve the sentiment.”

“If you were in Ranieri’s position, at eighteen or so years old, and you’d just seen Asher with a gun near your Uncle Vince’s dead body, would you not have drawn the same conclusion? The same assumption?”

Silence.

“Irrelevant.” Bastian stood, looking powerful in his tailored suit. “Uncle Vince wouldn’t have let anyone sneak up on him. That’s the difference between a Romano and an Andretti. We’re the hunters, and they’re the hunted.”

He left, and every part of me warred over what to do with the groundbreaking intel I’d just discovered. Niccolaio Andretti had a bounty on his head for killing his uncle, and he’d been hiding in Romano territory.

The bodies dropping all over the city? They had to be connected to the bounty on Niccolaio’s head. Which meant a thread of evidence connecting those bodies to the Romano and Andretti families existed. The bureau would just have to find it… if I told them to look.

Don’t do it, my heart warned. They don’t care about you. Even Jenn would give you up in a heartbeat for her job.

I’d been cleaning the same spot for the past ten minutes, but I didn’t care. Because the realization struck me hard.

Perhaps everything I’d ever been taught was wrong.

And my job in the bureau?

I was slowly coming to terms with the fact that I didn’t want it anymore.

People are made to be resilient. We overcome cancers, hurricanes, heartbreaks. We are fighters, scavengers, survivors. The experiences we endure teach us to be better versions of ourselves…but for some people, better doesn’t exist.

Only bottom.

Graham Filth scraped the lowest point of the barrel.

I knew Graham was a rat. I could feel it as sure as I felt breaths escape my lips and trouble in the air. Worst of all, I couldn’t prove it, no matter how much time I spent watching Graham. And like an acne-faced fifteen-year-old exploring PornHub for the first time, I’d spent a lot of time watching.

But it wasn’t like I had something else to do with my time. The restaurant business demanded a lot from me, but the bar side—much less. The security for Asher and Lucy’s wedding had been planned, Tessie spent most of her time getting tutored, and my family duties started and ended with confirming Graham as the rat.

For the twentieth day in a row, I watched Graham go about his day-to-day work schedule through the security cameras. Restocking the alcohol. Taking orders. Mixing drinks. Retrieving the ice—I hadn’t taken Ariana off ice duty, but I figured I’d let it slide since it was a little fucked up in the first place. I could admit I was an asshole, just like she liked to call me one.

All this watching, and nothing happened. Some more orders. More drinks. A few texts when he should have been working. A food break midway through his shift. Chatting with Ariana, his body a little too close. More texts. More drinks. More talking to Ariana. Still too fucking close to her.

Ari, Ari, Ari.

I didn’t know what I’d do with that woman. Feisty. Witty. Sex on heels. She defied all expectations, and I decided the night I’d taken her home that I’d have her, fuck her six ways till Sunday, and release her. I traced the resume on my desk. A viable new hire to replace Ariana De Luca. I’d been sitting on it, debating, trying to keep away from Ari.

Not anymore.

Movement on the screen caught my attention. Graham leaned a hip against the counter and flicked Ariana’s nose, like he was Zac Efron and life was a C-grade Disney flick. She laughed and shoved him before returning to a customer.

And then he did it. Graham’s hand slipped into his back pocket, and he pulled his phone out. I didn’t even notice at first, but it was a different phone. He lifted his gaze, his eyes shifting left and right before they dipped down again and his brows pressed together, like he was confused by something on the screen.

I toggled with the keyboard, zooming in as close as the camera would let me. Not close enough. Despite the 4K quality, his phone screen remained pixelated. I drafted an email to Niccolaio, asking him to enhance the quality, before considering he was still in hiding. The rest of the tech guys we had on hand would take longer, but they’d do, so I sent the file to them and called up Gio on an encrypted line.

He answered on the first ring. “Your mom’s driving me nuts.”

“What’s new?” I studied Graham as he wiped the bar counter down and winked at Ariana. The fucking rat. “I may have something.”

“And?” Gio’s impatience had my jaw ticking.

“Graham has a second phone. Possibly a burner. I sent the video to our techies for enhancing.”

“No need. I’ll arrange for someone to swipe the phone and pull up records with the cell phone company.”

“Good. We’ll put this rat business to rest before Asher’s wedding, and I can return to running the restaurant side.”

“Not quite.”

The fuck?

“What now?”

“I’m getting word from our informant that there’s another person in the bar.”

“Impossible.”

Why now? Aside from Ari, my staff had been with me for ages. But I trusted Gio’s intel. I trusted the Romano Syndicate. And that meant believing another rat existed.

Gio’s voice left little room for debate. “I need you to stay there.”

“And go hunting for rats,” I finished.

“Exactly.”

I swiped a hand over my face, unable to hold back my anger. Not what I had in mind for my birthday, but there was nothing I hated more than a rat.