He didn’t really sleep. Because sleeping meant letting his guard down. Because sleeping meant dreaming, and he wasn’t a huge fan of that picture show these days. He didn’t wanna see Kenny. All fresh-faced and awkward, that cowlick from when he was a toddler still sticking up at nineteen and twenty-two and twenty-six. He didn’t wanna see that fucking dive in Gravesend he’d visited a couple times when Kenny was on shift. With the saddest strippers he’d ever seen, making the saddest tips. Which meant even less for the bartenders. “It’s still extra money, Joey. Better money than anyplace else. Don’t ride me on this.”
“You wanna work for a buncha Russian assholes, it’s your funeral, kid.” That was what he’d said. And of all the bullshit pronouncements he’d made in his life, that was the one that came true. Gravesend dug Kenny’s grave. He never should’ve left Maspeth. At least there they knew all the meth-head devils.
So, no, Joe didn’t sleep. He didn’t want to see the kid he’d loved like a little brother dead on a slab, four slugs in his chest because some Russian fucknut had a grudge with another fucknut and thought a titty bar was the place to settle it. Four people had died besides the fucknuts in question. One of the girls. Two regulars. And Kenny. All of them forgotten in the twenty-four-hour news cycle. It was bullshit then and bullshit now, playing on Joe’s eyelids on a loop even though he was in another damn borough at the time.
And he didn’t want to see Afghanistan either. Because that was the other option, right? The other matinee special at the Peluso Theater. All the things they’d done over there for god and country. The literal monsters they became in the name of patriotism and heroics. He could wash off the sand, wash off the blood, but there was no washing off the stain of those years, those souls. He was a damn good Marine. He fucking made corporal. He followed orders. He never missed a shot. He never left a man behind…unless it was one of the men he was putting down. He wasn’t sure that made him a good human…but they hadn’t wanted a good human, had they? They’d wanted a beast. They’d created a beast.
It’s hotter than balls. Worse than a subway platform in August. And Joe has a hostile’s brains splattered all over his cammies. The ringing in his ears just won’t stop, but neither will the shells. It’s been hours, and he can’t stop tasting the meat…
Fuck. No.
So Joe turned to fantasies instead. It wasn’t always sex… No, who was he kidding? It was mostly sex. He didn’t wrap his hand around his dick, though—didn’t try to get off—because the cellblock didn’t need a show. It was just him and the double feature on his eyelids. Silent. Fists curled on the thin mattress. He remembered Tasha in the back seat of a borrowed Impala. His first. She was Kenny’s babysitter back in the day and still came around the Castellis’ house all the time. Gorgeous. Legs for miles. Then there was Mishelle, practically his common-law wife…if you didn’t count all the time he’d spent deployed.
They’d had five good years together and two pathetic ones. And luckily no adorable Haitian-Italian babies to show for it. Because what kind of shit father would he have turned out to be? Thank Christ, Mishelle wasn’t tied to him and his bullshit for life. But when they were good… Yeah, they’d been pretty amazing. He could’ve happily died in her pussy. And now…? Probably in any pussy. He didn’t have a type or anything. He loved all kinds of women. Loved their minds and their bodies. Loved how they tasted and smelled.
That doctor-lawyer-whatever. Neha. He knew she’d smell real good. Like that first gulp of air whenever he walked out of lockup. And she was soft under those clothes even if she pretended she was made of cast iron. She’d melt for him. Black hair all loose and wild. Honey on his fingertips and his tongue. Thighs spread. Begging. But she wouldn’t need to beg for it, not really, because he’d give it for free.
While all the other dipshits at Aviation High were pressing their girls for blow jobs, Joe had learned how to make girls scream. He aced every lesson, got a 4.0 in eating out. He was a doer, Mishelle told him once. He didn’t bother protesting or arguing or trying to negotiate reciprocity, he just went for it. Why waste time when he could be knuckle-deep in a woman, licking her while she yanked at his hair and said his name like he was a god?
If the death penalty were an option, if they gave him the chair, he knew exactly what his last meal would be. “An hour with her,” he’d say, and point to the doc.
Chapter 3
“Why is Joseph Peluso not dead yet?”
“Boss, I—”
“—have no excuse.”
When her brother was angry, the whole world knew it. Not because of the volume of his fury, but because of the silence. After eight months in his employ—and twenty-six years in his life—Yulia was more than used to the malevolent absence of sound that marked Aleksei Vasiliev’s displeasure. The moment after his interruption stretched to infinity, growing darker and more threatening with every passing second. She knew better than to cross the threshold into his office and, instead, pressed flat against the wall just outside. This wasn’t the first time she’d done so, and it was far from the first time she’d heard something sensitive. Such was the life when your family was Russian mafia…and a clan of bear shifters. You were far more likely to overhear your brother planning violence than discussing birthday gifts.
“Our men have tried, Boss. On multiple occasions. Peluso is…formidable.”
Yulia winced. There was no “trying” in Aleksei’s world. You either succeeded or you failed. This flunkie was either terribly new or terribly clueless. Perhaps terribly arrogant, for that was also a rampant disease in this place. Either way, he would learn the lesson that she had as a cub: One did not upset or disappoint Aleksei without consequence. Nearly fifteen years her senior, he’d won his control of Little Odessa coldly and ruthlessly—without even one swipe of his massive paws—in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, indebting struggling businesses in South Brooklyn’s Russian community to him with a huge influx of cash. He’d rebuilt their restaurants, their family groceries, their shops…and bought so many souls. He was forever expanding his territory into different neighborhoods, different aspects of illegal activity. Some Ukrainians had pushed back more than a year ago. This Joe Peluso person…he’d become her brother’s obsession when he placed himself in the middle of the conflict. She’d seen some of it on the news. There was only so much she wanted to know. Only so much she could bear…so to speak.
There was a human woman who’d often come into the Confessional, the bar where she’d worked before. A writer bent over notebooks, drinking Moscow mules—which would be funny, perhaps, in any other situation. “Russian mafia heroes are huge in romance novels right now,” she’d confided once. “Hot Russian billionaires. Hot Russian hit men. Is that even a thing?”