“Apparently I need to be,” a voice calls from further in the room, past shelves of stacked liquor and beer, “if my men are gonna start jumping the gun like you. Get your ass in here, Bruno.”
That’s Diego’s voice, no doubt about it. I snort as the doorman finishes checking me over, and I stride down the aisles of stock to the cleared-out space where he takes care of business. I’ve been in here only once before, and it wasn’t on the best terms.
When I step forward, I start to rethink whether I’m about to be killed.
Diego isn’t a man who likes a lot of ceremony, but this looks like a miniature courtroom. Diego himself is looking over a stacked box of expensive Scotch, and in a semicircle around him are men I recognize. Some, I know by name. Most are enforcers like me, but one man sitting on a crate next to Diego takes me by surprise.
It’s a consigliere. In every business like ours, there’s usually only one man like him, maybe two. Consiglieri don’t stick to our hierarchy.
He’s the Don’s own advisor, which makes him the most important man I’ve been in the same room as for a long time. It also means that this meeting is serious. I feel his hawkish gray eyes watching me carefully as he sits there. Diego turns to look me up and down before I can say anything.
“Bruno,” he says, crossing his arms, “I’m sure you’re familiar with our consigliere, Antonio Tomasi.”
I give the man a nod with a tight but respectful smile. He doesn’t react.
“Mr. Tomasi thought it would be wise to sit in on this little business meeting,” Diego goes on, his formality starting to relax into his usual self. “Because when our men make waves as big as you did out of line earlier today, he likes to hear the very good reason I’m sure you have firsthand.”
“News travels fast,” I say, keeping my eyes on Diego evenly.
“That it does,” he says, pacing in a slow circle around me, “especially when a soldier like you takes it upon himself to pick a fight with the likes of Lorenzo Abruzzi.”
That last name gets my attention. But I don’t show the slightest hint of emotion. I’m being grilled, and Diego can smell a crack in someone’s defenses from a mile away.
“Didn’t get his name while I was knocking his teeth out,” I say, and I watch Diego’s jaw set. “He was in our territory, boss. Deep in our territory.”
“Don’t pretend that’s what this is about, I know where the fight went down,” Diego says, coming to a stop and resting his hands on his hips as he glares at me. “I know you got your reasons to go stalking that girl, and before today, I didn’t give two shits.”
My fists clench instinctively at what Diego is hinting, and Diego steps forward as I say, “It was still our territory, Diego. I caught some Cleaners starting to start shit deep in our territory, and I was taking care of business. I was doing my job.”
“Your job is to do what the family needs,” Diego says, restraining the anger in his voice as much as I’m holding back mine. “And the family did not need to spark a turf war with the goddamn Cleaners!”
There’s a silence in the room for a few moments that everyone can taste.
The Cleaners have been like a bad word the past few months, a curse you don’t say out loud. They’ve been trying to cut in on our territory like nothing our family has ever faced before. Our family—the Costa family—has its heels dug into the Bronx deep, but everyone’s feeling the tension with the Cleaners.
That nickname, “Cleaners,” that’s stuck with them since day one. They’re fast, they’re good at what they do, and by the time they’re gone, the cops have lost their trail before they’ve even started on it.
But as much as us Costas don’t want to admit it, the Cleaners are a rival family of Italians—the Abruzzi family. The family Lorenzo belongs to.
“We’ve butted heads with Cleaners all over town,” I say, not giving an inch on this, “don’t pretend I’m the one out to start a turf war here.”
“This is different, Bruno,” Diego nearly growls. “Lorenzo Abruzzi isn’t some nobody cleaning up the streets-”
“Like me,” I interrupt with a smile, and Diego gives a cruel smile back.
“Yeah, like you, a walking death-wish. No, Lorenzo is Abruzzi blood. You didn’t wonder why he thought he could waltz into our territory like that and push that girl around? He’s a spoiled little daddy’s boy, Bruno—Lorenzo Abruzzi is their boss’s son.”
Shit.
“That asshole calling himself ‘Don Abruzzi’? He’s letting his snot-nosed brat run loose?” I ask with a grimace.
“Yeah, that asshole,” Diego says, striding back to the stacked bottles of beer, looking like he wants to pull one out, bad.
I let out a chuckle that makes Diego raise an eyebrow at me. “You think this shit’s funny?” he says incredulously.
“Kind of,” I admit. “I like seeing ‘royalty’ knocked down a peg.”
Diego shakes his head with a smile of disbelief. “Been trying to send your ass on jobs to get you killed for years, and you keep comin’ back with this shit. You’re something else, you know that?”
He’s only half-joking, and I know by the look in his eyes he’d like to try to beat that smile off my face if he weren’t in front of the consigliere, whose face hasn’t changed this whole time.
“Listen, you son of a bitch,” Diego says, stepping toward me slowly, “I don’t care if you’re the best man I’ve got on the ground out here, you were out of line. You were out somewhere you weren’t supposed to be, doing shit you weren’t supposed to be doing, and you beat the shit outta some guy you weren’t supposed to touch with a thirty-foot pole.”
“So you dragged me out here to tighten my leash?” I say, raising my eyebrows. I hold my arms out, exposing my torso to him and the enforcers in the room. “Well then, take your shots. I can take a beating, I know how this goes.”
Diego gives a cruel laugh, glaring daggers at me. I’m embarrassing him in front of his superior, and he knows it. The man could put a bullet in my head if he wanted to, though, so I know better than to push it. My temper is flaring, but in the back of my mind, Serena’s safety is still my number one priority. If I get myself killed, she won’t be safe. I lower my arms.
“Nah, if this was about that, you’d be feeling it already, and we wouldn’t be getting the floor of this fine establishment dirty,” he says. He then moves back to stand beside the consigliere, and both of them look at me like judges.
“The Cleaners are going to take Lorenzo’s smashed-up face as an act of war,” Diego says, “and if there’s one thing I know about the Abruzzis, it’s that they take insults like that very personally.” Diego pauses to take out a cigarette and light it, and the smell of tobacco fills the space between us. He stares me down. “You got us in some real hot fuckin’ water, Bruno, you know that? Things are tense with the Cleaners as it is—I’ve had people calling me to tell me I oughta have your ass killed to smooth things over with them.”