Losing a couple of hours on TikTok seemed like a smart way to kill some time.
That was when I saw the message from him.
It wasn’t the first time he’d texted me since I’d run away from Russu last night.
Of their own volition, my fingers surged to my throat, touching the mark he’d left behind.
Though shivers whispered down my spine, they were forged in anger, not lust.
Luciu: Where are you?
I frowned at the question. How dare he ask me that? Damn nerve.
Me: I don’t want to talk to you.
Luciu: You’re lying.
I scowled at my phone.
Me: What right do you have to call me a liar?
Luciu: Where are you?
Me: Where are YOU?
Who did this guy think he was?
Luciu: I’m at Russu. You should come. We never got to finish our dance.
No, because his wife had goddamn attacked me.
Should I have stuck around to suck his dick while his wife was waiting in the wings to annihilate me?
I was used to the blatancy of men. Seriously, the things they thought they could get away with beggared belief, but this took the cake.
Me: Don’t contact me again.
I made to switch over to TikTok, but a swipe down of the menu revealed his message to me, and it made me want to hurl my phone against the wall.
If I wasn’t in desperate need of a distraction from the goddamn war going on outside, I would have.
Luciu: You know where to find me when you’re ready.
I wasn’t sure he could have said anything more annoying than that. In fact, I knew it.
I’d gone home crying last night.
Crying.
Not because I’d hurt my ass when I'd been thrown down like it was a fancy WWE match, but because I’d thought—
I rubbed my eyes where tears were beginning to make themselves known again.
I’d been stupid, so stupid—I’d thought there was a connection between us.
One that was genuine and real, and worth something. I’d never felt that way before. Never felt as if I understood what all the songs were about when you met that one person who made the universe stand still for a moment.
His message just made it stand out in stark relief how much of an idiot I’d been.
And I was not an idiot.
Many adjectives could be used to describe me, most of them bad—flighty, sly, covetous, avaricious—but idiotic wasn’t one of them.
I went into the iMessage app, made sure he knew I’d read his message, then I backed the hell out of there. Not just physically but mentally.
Fool me once, shame on you.
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Jennifer MacNeill was not a fool.
Six
Luciu
December 27th
There was no time to think. The time for thinking was gone.
In the past.
Now was the time to act.
Stan, my brother, pressed the detonator, exploding the C4 one of our men had left by the gates that led onto the Fieri compound, meaning that those curlicued gates were no more.
From a thousand yards away, the noise from the blast rang in my ears, but Stan slammed his foot on the accelerator and with a whoop, we charged forward like goddamn conquerors of old.
Behind us, fifteen SUVs drove into battle with us, in a way that made my history-loving heart crow with glee as we waded into a war that was ten years in the making.
As we drove over the busted railings like they were shards of glass, we made it onto the compound’s courtyard. Bullets tore into our vehicles, doing little damage thanks to the bulletproof shell, and Stan let loose a holler as he drove into the guardhouse where the Italians were firing from.
As we collided with the small hut that was made of wood, it went down like a house of cards. The blaze of bullets from the gunfire stopped as soon as our wheels bumped into the now-dead guard on the ground.
Stan moved around the compound as if we were on the bumper cars: knocking into shit, tearing stuff down as we rode around the perimeter, checking for clusters of guards.
We knew why we were here but to get to that phase, we had to make sure that any security details on the outside were handled.
By the time we’d collided with two more huts, driven over three guards who thought they could take us with their submachine guns, the bulletproof shell was undoubtedly battered but worth the two-hundred-and-fifty K I’d plowed into each vehicle in the flotilla to prepare for this night.
"Cristo, what the fuck was that?" Stan rasped as a loud explosion echoed through the compound.
"More C4?" I asked him, but it was rhetorical.
Instead of wasting time guessing, I grabbed my phone and sent out pings to the driver of each vehicle and received a quick message on what was happening out front. Three men were down, and two were injured after an Italian had thrown a hand grenade at one of our SUVs.
The Italians weren’t happy about a Sicilian takeover.
Tough. Shit.
As we made it back to the front of the compound, I saw the damage for myself. Three SUVs were overturned; a few others were dented and shredded from the blast.
As Stan braked to a halt, I saw the front door of the Fieri mansion had been blown in, and that our men had secured the area ahead of schedule.
Leaping out of the car, guns in hand and feeling like I was in a goddamn video game, I headed up the stairs and into the mansion.
"The council room’s over here, boss," Lorenzo, one of my most trusted men, called out.
Finding him after I scanned the area, I took into account the grand entranceway that was larger than some people’s homes—complete with a double staircase that arched around the room and led to a single landing. There, a painting of that fucker, Benito Fieri, and his young bride hung pride of place...
Raising my gun, I shot the fucker, and the bullet landed right between his brows.
It didn't hold the same satisfaction as killing the cunt myself, but it was as good as it got seeing as someone else had already pulled the trigger before me.
I strode over the red carpet toward Lorenzo and watched as three of our men who’d hauled a battering ram in began to break down the door to the council room.
Gunfire immediately pounded the entrance way, and Accursio and Carino took the brunt, falling back as bullets pounded their Kevlar vests.
My soldiers surged forward, one tossed a smoke bomb into the meeting room, followed by a tear gas grenade, and that turned the tide of the battle.
Within a half-hour, the remaining Rossis and Genovicos who had survived the last gathering of the crime factions in the city and were ruling the Famiglia now that Fieri was dead, were either plowed down or corralled.
It took two hours all in all to lay siege to the compound and to win it. To take the Fieri widow hostage. To eradicate the threats to my takeover of the Famiglia…
Two hours, after ten years of striving.
When I took a seat at the head of the table in the council room, a meeting place that had probably heard more war stories than the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I peered around, almost unable to believe that I’d made it.
That I’d done it.
Might was right in this world, and I’d just taken the last bastion of the Fieri reign.
There was still so much to do, so much to achieve, and the war wasn’t won entirely, but this was my equivalent of planting the flag at Iwo Jima. Taking ownership of this compound was my first step as Don.