THERE WAS NOTHING quite like being strapped in while speeding through the clouds in something that might as well have been a tin can. It was no wonder that it was practically impossible to find bodies after a plane crash, all things considered.
Christ, his thoughts were morbid today.
“You really don’t like flying, do you?”
Joseph Rossi hated that his discomfort was this obvious. Mind you, it was his father, but still. He took great pains to keep his outward appearance at undecipherable levels. It was a talent of his.
Or shit, it should have been.
He fingered the rosary, a gift from his uncle, Tommas, at his First Communion, around his throat, and wished it would give him the peace he usually found in it. The church had become somewhat of a sanctuary for him.
No matter the kind of shit he did—or how much blood stained his hands when the daylight broke over the horizon—those doors were still open. The church still welcomed. His priest was still there to listen.
He was the worst kind of sinner.
It never seemed to matter.
Damian didn’t miss Joe fidgeting with the rosary. Frankly, his father never missed very much anyway. Eagle-eye, and all.
“We’ll only be another thirty minutes,” his father said.
Joe shot Damian a look from the side that he hoped screamed at his father to just stop before he started—
“Take a deep breath,” Damian added.
And there he goes.
“Don’t use that voice with me,” Joe muttered.
Damian raised a single brow high, and regarded his son. “What voice?”
“That one—the one you just used. The one with the tone.”
It unsettled Joe for more reasons than he cared to explain. Mostly, though, because it wasn’t like his father to be a gentle kind of man in his speech. Soft-spoken, and quiet, sure. That was just Damian’s way because he didn’t need noise to get the job done, or to do violence.
A lot like Joe.
No one ever saw them coming that way. Yeah, he was definitely the worst kind of sinner.
“Hand to God, Joe,” Damian said, shaking his head,” I have no idea what you are talking about.”
His father looked sincere, too. That was the thing about Rossis, though. They could look innocent as fuck, but at the same time, be planning some way to slit your throat the first chance they could … if they had a reason to.
Men like them—criminals; Mafiosi—all needed an edge to stay on top where this life and business was concerned. Joe’s edge just happened to be a hell of a lot like his father’s edge once used to be. He was the man in the shadows doing what needed to be done to protect the organization and family. Damian had once done that, too, except he traded his hitman-style in for a cushier seat as the Chicago Outfit’s underboss.
Funny how that worked.
“That tone you just used,” Joe said as the plane finally settled out of the turbulence. Jesus, he could actually breathe again. “You know exactly what I mean, Dad. It’s the same tone you used to use on Cory and me when we were kids, and you wanted us to admit to something we had done wrong. Now, you use it on Monica because it doesn’t work on us anymore, and she’s the only one who hasn’t caught onto your shit.”
And Joe only blamed his sister’s trusting nature on her age—being a decade younger than his twenty-one years, she had a valid excuse for being gullible.
Damian’s lips twitched with the ghost of a smile. “You sure about that?”
There it is again.
Joe opened his mouth to speak, but his father held up a single hand and let out a short laugh. It was only the amusement and mirth in Damian’s eyes that kept Joe quiet for a moment. Sometimes, he just let his father have his moments. They all needed them occasionally.
“You’re right,” Damian said quietly, “I do know which tone you mean.”
“Great—stop using it.”
“Glad I could distract you long enough to prevent you from ripping the armrests off your seat, however.”
Joe blinked.
Huh.
He had removed his death grip from the armrests. At least, for now.
“I know you hate flying,” Damian murmured, staring out the port window.
He really did. More than he cared to admit. It was an unjustified fear, and just about the only thing in life that did scare the hell out him, but that didn’t make it any less real to him. Like the universe was coming around to kick Joe in the ass with a sarcastic smirk to remind him that he was just as fucking human as everybody else.
“We could have drove to New York,” Joe said. “Damn, I would have drove for you.”
Damian’s gaze drifted toward his oldest son, and he smiled a little bit. “It’s amusing.”
“What is?”
“That you feel like when another family calls—a family with bigger pull and more control than yours—that you have the option to make them wait.”
Joe stiffened a bit in his seat. “I didn’t—”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying, and you know better, son.”
Just like that, the easy banter between a father and son was lost. In its place was the unspoken code of made men, and the mafia life they were surrounded and suffocated by. It was never-ending. All the rules, the expectations, and everything else that came along with being men like them.
Usually, he didn’t mind.
Joe didn’t know anything different.
“You’re twenty-one,” Damian said, never turning his attention away from the window as he spoke, “and so I will give you a pass for putting your own wants before someone else’s. But you’re close enough to twenty-two, Joe, that I can’t keep giving you passes.”
Clearing his throat, Joe glanced down the first class aisle at the flight attendant starting to make her rounds again. She was too far away yet to hear their conversation. No doubt, his father knew that, too.
Damian knew everything.
“No offense,” Joe started to say.
“Whenever someone starts a sentence with that statement—”
“It’s usually going to offend someone. Yeah, let me talk.”
Damian waved a hand as if to silently say, Get on with it.
“No offense,” he repeated, “but you didn’t even tell me what we were coming to New York for, Dad. You just said the Marcellos needed something, but not what, or why I needed to come along. You expect me to know everything just because? I’m not a goddamn mind reader.”
“Business,” Damian said simply, “when the Marcello family calls, it always means business.”
And Joe knew … He’d grown up his whole life being told—everybody bent to the Marcellos, but they didn’t fucking bend for anybody else. So was their right being who they were, and having what they did.
No mafia organization remained on top by playing nice with others.
“No, I won’t be long, Lily,” Damian said. “I won’t miss Mon’s game.”
In the backseat beside his father, Joe ignored the buzzing of his own phone. He didn’t need to pick it up and look at it to know who it was.
Cory, likely.
His younger brother—by only a year—was dying a little because Joe was in New York for this mysterious business, and Cory had to stay at home. He was not in the mood to listen to his brother whine or bitch about it, so he just opted to not pick up the phone at all. It would be nicer to listen to Cory rant about that, anyway.
“You got it, sweetheart,” Damian said. “Love you, bye.”
Not a damn second after Damian hung up the phone with his wife—Lily, Joe’s sweet-natured, good-hearted mother—he snapped at his son, “Joe, stop that goddamn fidgeting.”
It was almost like his father had been watching him the whole time through his phone call, and knew the closer they were getting to the Marcello mansion, the worse his fidgeting had become. Joe’s hands stilled in his lap instantly.
Joe scowled at his father. “I’m nervous, all right.”
“Be nervous, but stop the jittery bullshit.”
“Easy for you to say, Dad.”
Damian smirked, but he didn’t hide it fast enough for Joe. He still saw the grin before his father turned his head, and stared out at the cars they passed. It kind of struck him then at how content and comfortable his father seemed in a state that was not in any way theirs—at least when it came to the business side of their life. Going into the territory of another family could sometimes be tricky. Like navigating alligator infested waters. A person might think they were stepping on a rock, and before they knew it, they were in the mouth of an alligator.
Yeah, just like that.
Maybe it wasn’t the same for his father, though. He often made trips to visit other organized crime families to do deals, or make peace. Despite how intimidating his father could be at first glance, Damian was charming when he made the effort to be. And doing good business and keeping peace was one of his many jobs as the underboss for Joe’s uncle, Tommas.
Really … he worried about fucking this up for his father. It was the first time Damian brought Joe along for a meeting of this caliber, and it kind of put him on edge. He was always the one in the shadows, never the one stepping up to take center stage.
He didn’t like that.
He wasn’t the type.
“Dad?” Joe asked.
“Yeah?”
“Cory would have been better for this, not me.”
There, he said it.
Let his father make of that what he wanted.
Damian sighed, and looked at Joe. For a short while, the two simply stared at each other in silence. He took in the almost-perpetual smirk his father wore, the strong jawline, and sky-blue eyes, and felt like he was staring into a reflection of his oncoming older years. Even their hair was the same shade of dark brown, although Damian toted a bit of salt color behind his ears, and Joe liked to keep his cut in a high-fade style.
Still, his father stayed silent. More often than not, that was Damian’s way of getting one of his sons to speak. It worked far better on Cory than it did Joe.
Joe liked silence, after all.
And right now, he had nothing to say. He said what he said.
“I know Cory would have had more fun maybe,” Damian finally said.
“Exactly.”
That was also evident by the phone in Joe’s pocket that had finally stopped ringing for two goddamn minutes.
“But you’re in a position where you could use a bit of education on the rules of other families,” his father added, shrugging. “And as someone once told me, Joe, comfort zones are reserved for weak men who are afraid to try something new. I want you to succeed—you chose this life, son. Don’t shy away because you prefer to hide away.”
Joe frowned. “I hate it when you do that.”
“I know.”
Smug asshole.
“How much longer?” Joe asked.
Better to change the topic—he wasn’t going to get anything else from his father in this conversation, clearly.
“Actually, we’re almost there.”
Damian hadn’t been exaggerating, thankfully. It was only ten minutes of driving later, and the car pulled in front of a gated driveway. Once the gate was opened for them, a long and winding driveway lined with tall trees led them to a stop in front of a mansion that was probably large enough to house a small army.
He took in the manicured grass, carefully placed cobblestones in the driveway, and the large marble pillars holding up a grand entrance for cars to drive under. Their car parked off to the side, instead.
Wealth.
The place screamed wealth.
Joe had just slid out of the car—still taking in the Marcello estate with fresh eyes—when the front door of the mansion opened, and a group of young women fled onto the marble steps one by one. Five young women, actually.
Marcello daughters?
Principessas?
Did the Marcellos have that many daughters in their family?
Joe didn’t really know.
He figured it didn’t really matter anyway, and besides, his attention had caught something far better to focus in on. Like the young, willowy woman hanging back a little from her group of friends. Her hazel gaze caught his, and something struck him still and silent when she refused to drop his stare. Confidence wafted from the tall, gorgeous woman. Her dark blonde hair hung in loose waves that flicked over her shoulder when she turned her head a bit to keep staring at Joe even as she rounded the back of the waiting SUV.
Goddamn.
Joe wasn’t one to notice women. He liked a good time once in a while when the mood struck him, but he had far more important things to focus on in his life. Not like his brother, Cory, who liked to have a different female on his arm every weekend.
And yet, Joe found it damn near impossible to look away from the hazel-eyed, blonde woman with the bow-shaped lips, and dancer’s legs. She had to be a dancer given the way she walked like the ground was made of clouds, and her toes barely touched the cobblestone in her flats before lifting back up again. Quick, carefully taken steps with a posture that spoke of beauty and grace.
All the other ladies wore skinny jeans, and heels. But not her. She wore a flowy summer dress that spun wide with every step she took.
Still, she kept staring.
So did he.
What was her name?
And why couldn’t he breathe normally again?
“Joe,” Damian said loudly.
Joe snapped out of his daze just as the unknown woman reached for the backdoor of the SUV, and looked over his shoulder to find his father staring at him. He couldn’t even pretend like he hadn’t been gawking like a foolish boy caught with his prick in his hands. He didn’t even try, either.
“Yeah, Dad?”
Tires squealed before the SUV quickly pulled out of the circular drive, and headed down the winding path out of Joe’s sight.
Damn.
Who was that woman?
“Find something you like?” Damian asked, smiling in that way of his.
“Uh …”
Fuck.
Damian cocked a brow.
Joe cleared his throat.
Jesus.
Maybe he should have acted like he hadn’t been staring.
“The last one—you were watching her,” Damian said.
Joe spun around to face his father completely, and tried to laugh it off. “So, what if I was?”
“Since when do you stare like that?”
“I don’t.”
His father nodded like he knew exactly what was running through Joe’s mind.
He wanted to know the woman. Who she was, and what made her so bold as to stare at a man she didn’t know from Adam like she liked what she was seeing.
“Leave it alone, Dad,” Joe said.
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“You’re thinking it.”
Joe didn’t need to be told.
He knew.
“No, I’m thinking that I should give you a heads up,” Damian said.
“What’s that?”
Damian grabbed Joe by his shoulder, and turned them both to face the entrance of the Marcello mansion. During Joe’s little daze, it seemed someone else—or several people, actually—had come to stand out on the marble steps.
Three men.
Dressed in black three-piece suits.
Side by side.
Even from this distance, Joe could see the resemblance between two of the men, and easily guessed this was the infamous Marcello brothers. One of the three were adopted—or so the stories went. The men waited for Joe and Damian to come to them, and not the other way around.
“That girl, Joe,” his father said slowly as though he wanted to make sure his son heard every single last word, “is Liliana Marcello.”
Joe grimaced.
A visceral reaction he couldn’t even try to hide. Not because that deterred his interest in her, but rather, because he knew it was going to make it that much harder on him.
Liliana Marcello.
Daughter of Lucian Marcello.
Principessa of the family underboss.
Shit.
Nothing good ever came easy.
“Oh?” Joe asked.
He tried to sound unbothered.
He failed like a fucker.
Damian laughed. “The man on the left end is her father—the other two are her uncles. She’s a year younger than you. Lucian is intimidating as hell. Don’t let him know you think so, however.”
“Thanks?”
Why did that come out like a question?
“That’s a start,” Damian grunted as he gave Joe a hard pat on the back. “Best way not to fuck this up, Joe, is not to act like a cafone. That is something you’re incapable of doing. I know because I raised you this way. Do you want to know that girl?”
His head said to keep his mouth shut.
The rest of him didn’t listen.
“Maybe,” Joe said.
Because yes.
He did want to know her.
Damian nodded in the direction of the men waiting on the steps. “Start with her father.”
“Great.” Moving forward in step with his father, Joe asked, “Shit, they don’t call her Lily, do they?”
Lily, like his mother.
Oh, damn, that thought just made his dick shrivel—
“No,” Damian murmured, “and as far as I can recall, she has always asked to be called Liliana.”
Oh, good.
There was his dick again.
“Also, I might have been wrong about the age thing. I believe she’s the oldest, actually. A year older than you, not younger. How do you feel about an older woman?”
Joe gave his father a look. He was doing that annoying fucking thing again. He needed to stop.
“Got it,” Damian muttered at the look on Joe’s face, “now fix yourself.”
“Damian,” the man in the middle greeted, “and company. Good to see you, old friend.”
“Dante,” Damian replied, taking the hand the Marcello boss offered. “Gio, Lucian; nice to see the two of you. Theo says hi, Gio.”
Gio—or Giovanni—Marcello grinned. A sight that threw the man’s features back a good fifteen years in a blink. “How’s Chicago, D?”
“It’s good. You should visit more often.”
“Unlikely,” the quiet man said.
Lucian.
Liliana’s father.
Lucian’s gaze drifted over Joe momentarily as though he was studying him. Although for what, Joe had no fucking clue. He still didn’t even know what in the hell he was here for to begin with. Just as quickly as Lucian gave him that appraisal, he moved his attention back to Damian when Joe’s father spoke.
“You’re never going to get over that little incident from years ago, are you, Lucian?” Damian asked.
“I don’t kill one of you every time someone from the Outfit comes into my city,” Lucian replied, “and so if I were you, I would take that as a win.”
Damn.
Seemed this man didn’t pull any fucking punches.
“We do consider that as a win, actually,” Damian returned easily.
“Play nice, Lucian,” Dante said. And then to Damian just as quickly, he added, “We should take this conversation inside. The girls were heading to the store for … well, junk food and whatever else. I don’t think we need to be on the steps discussing business when they get back shortly.”
“Agreed,” Damian said.
As they climbed the last couple of steps, and the Marcello mansion was opened to them, Lucian Marcello glanced back at Joe with a grin that came off as altogether cold, and just a little bit sly. Joe rarely found himself put on edge by someone else. He just wasn’t the type, and he was usually the one with his linebacker size, towering height, and silent nature to make people feel nervous.
This change was strange for him.
Entirely unsettling.
“Welcome to New York, Joe,” Lucian said, his smile fading in a grim line, “I certainly hope you’re worth the amount of money I am about to pay for you.”
What?
“Fair warning,” Damian said as he took a seat across from the large oak desk Dante rested behind, “he doesn’t know why he’s here. I figured it best to let him in on the secret when it was needed.”
Joe shot his father a look from where he stood in the corner—the other chairs in the room were already taken, and only a seat with the back facing the window remained. He was not a stupid man, and he was not about to put his back to a window in a house he wasn’t familiar with, not to mention around men he wasn’t sure if he could fully trust.
Dante glanced over at Lucian, asking, “Do you want to start this, or should I?”
“You’re the boss, brother,” Lucian replied.
“And this is—”
“You’re the boss.”
Joe stiffened a bit as the two men passed a look between each other while everyone else stayed quiet. He could never imagine interrupting his boss without some kind of action for disobedience, but clearly there was a different kind of relationship with these brothers. They were made men, sure, but family still held a firm line where it counted.
Dante nodded, and pushed his chair back just enough to open a drawer in the desk. Pulling out a file, he tossed it on the desk, and then gestured to Joe. “Go on, pick it up, Rossi.”
He moved away from the wall with footsteps that didn’t make a sound, and plucked up the folder. Opening it, he scanned the contents, and then flipped through the items inside. Pictures of older men stared back at him—details of them, and their life. Their careers, too.
One, a politician—George Earl. Republican senator for the state of New York. Joe remembered him winning by a landslide during the last election.
Another, a Chief of Police for the city of New York. A man by the name of Martin Abraham. Joe didn’t recognize him as well as the first man, but his title was more than enough to make Joe hesitate.
Fuck.
Already, Joe was not liking where this was going. The only reason he would be given a file like this with marks inside was to rid the world of them. He could make a business out of being a hitman, if he wanted to. He wasn’t stuck with only work in Chicago, but that’s where his loyalty and family were at the end of the day. So, he only willingly offered his services to his family.
After all, that’s just what he was good at. Like his father had once been, too.
“These look like prospective marks for me,” Joe said.
“Because they are,” Lucian said from his chair.
Joe flipped through the pages again. “Shit, you’ve even laid out details for me the way I like …” He passed his father a glance, adding, “Which tells me this has been in the works for longer than I actually was aware.”
“Yes, well …”
“I don’t hire out my services,” he said quietly. “I work for the Chicago Outfit only.”
“You will in this circumstance,” his father said quietly.
Joe’s jaw flexed at that comment. “No offense—”
“Joe.”
“Don’t give me that rhetoric again, I mean this to be fucking offensive.”
Damian sighed. “Then don’t color it up with useless nonsense. Just say it.”
Joe passed a look at the quiet, waiting men. “Maybe I shouldn’t right now.”
“What, son? Just say it, Jesus.”
Fine.
“I’m not going to work for them just because the Outfit is still trying to get on friendlier terms with the Marcello family. Beyond that, look at these names, Dad.” Joe dropped the file into his father’s lap, and quickly retook his place in the corner before he added, “Very high fucking profile names. A politician? Chief of Police? That’s asking for trouble, and it’s not the kind of shit I want to be stepping in. It looks like someone else’s shit, to be honest, and they’re probably not even going to give me the decency of telling me what kind of shit before I step in it.”
“On that, you’re correct,” Dante said, finally stepping into the conversation. “We’re not going to tell you why we want these men dead. We will tell you why we want you to be the one who does it.”
Christ.
Joe’s molars were going to crack from the way he was clenching his jaw so goddamn tight. “Try me, but don’t assume it will make any difference to what I already said.”
Gio chuckled from the couch. “Damn, Damian, I like him. He’s … got balls.”
Damian scowled. “Usually, he’s quieter than this.”
Dante went on speaking to Joe as though the other men weren’t conversing at all. “These men need to go for reasons we’re not willing to disclose. However, that shouldn’t be important to whether or not you’re able and willing to do the job, not to mention, how much we’re going to pay you to do it. What is important is that you come from Chicago, not New York. You, Joseph, have never even been in the presence of our family properly. Not been pictured with any of our made men, or our women. Nothing. Invisible, essentially, which is exactly what we need. We cannot afford for attention to be put on our family for these hits, although we assume we’ll get some spotlight anyway just because. Nonetheless, with nothing to find by way of connections, we’ll all make it out unscathed.”
Joe was barely listening because he was now staring at his father. “Give me one reason why I should agree to take on this job when you know I have only worked for Chicago.”
“I can give you two, actually.”
“Try me.”
“The thing we talked about outside, for one. Might want to be here a while. It could help with that, you know.”
Ah, yeah.
Liliana.
He heard his father’s unspoken words. Although frankly, working for her family like this might put a serious fucking dent in those plans. Not to mention who her goddamn father was. Shit could never be simple for Joe.
“And for two?” Joe asked.
“Because I am asking you to take it, Joe,” Damian said, “and not for any reason you might assume, but because sometimes, we lend a hand when it is desperately needed. There was a time once when you started taking on marks because you wanted to remove those who did not deserve to breathe the same air we did—maybe it’s time to get back to that place for a while.”
His rosary felt heavy around his throat.
Like a noose, almost.
“Asking me, or telling me?”
“Asking,” his father murmured.
“What was it they called you, Damian?” Lucian asked, quietly jumping into the conversation again. “Back when you did all the dirty work for the Outfit, I mean.”
Damian grinned a little. “Ghost.”
“Hmm.”
“And you?” Dante asked, glancing up at Joe. “What do they call you?”
He didn’t want to answer.
He was going to have to take this job, anyway. His father asked, and something inside told him it was the right thing to do even if he didn’t have all the details.
“Well?” Lucian pressed when Dante didn’t.
“Shadow,” Joe said.
“Pardon?”
“When the Outfit wants someone gone,” Joe clarified, “they send the Shadow.”
Because he moved quietly, as though he wasn’t there at all. Because he blended in with the crowd, and was never really seen. Because in darkness, and in the shadows, he was the most dangerous.
There, he felt the most normal, too.
Strange how that worked.
“Five million for both,” Dante said, “and they both have to be successful hits. We’re not particularly working on a tight deadline, either. We’ve been briefed that you can take a while to make sure … everything is good and clean.”
“Half in my account by tonight,” Joe returned.
Dante nodded, and waved a hand toward the door. “Done … now, you should probably acquaint yourself with the mansion, as this is where you’ll be coming to brief or get orders. Have a look around, and if you see my mother, say hello. She enjoys guests.”
Great.