I laugh. “Yes. For real food. Breakfast.”
We both clean up and sit down to finally eat, both of us glowing and happy. It’s as if the events of the past twenty-four hours have all been power-washed away. But no sooner has the peace arrived than it gets broken.
Bruno’s phone buzzes. I pick it up to hand to him, catching a glimpse of the text message on the screen. It says simply, Don’t go home.
We both look at each other, sharing a dark expression.
We’re already home. And only God knows why we shouldn’t be.
BRUNO
“Y ou made one hell of a splash last night, Bruno” says Antonio. I’m not sitting in the back of any liquor store today. I’m in a proper office, standing in the middle of a room that’s packed with shelves of thick books. The consigliere lives pretty well. I’ve heard he was a lawyer a while back, or maybe he still is.
We got the hell out of the house after I got that message, and I took Serena to Rafaela’s bar to lay low for the day. The guy who sent the message was one of ours. He must have assumed I’d go straight to one of our medics, because word of what happened at the junkyard spread fast.
It wasn’t long after I’d gotten Serena to safety that I’d been summoned here, to the consigliere’s own house.
This isn’t a grilling, though, not like last time. I’m not surrounded by other soldiers this time. There are only three people in this room, and all of them are way over my pay grade. Two of them are familiar faces: the consigliere and Diego, my capo. The third is a man even I’ve never met and only seen once.
Giacomo “Jackie” Pisano, the underboss. Where he goes, business is serious.
The consigliere is sitting in a leather armchair, but not behind the big desk in the room. Jackie is leaning on that, while Diego sulks by the window.
Jackie scrolls through his phone, his face hard to read. He’s a massive, meaty guy with thick, heavy features, and he always looks vaguely pissed-off. “Haven’t seen a body count like this in a while.”
“Neither have the Cleaners,” I say, and Jackie’s small eyes look me up and down, appraising me. I don’t let it faze me. “Have we heard from Mike?”
“Mike’s fine,” Jackie says, putting his phone down. “Got himself patched up with one of our guys. We’ve already had a word with him.”
“So you know how things went down,” I say.
“We know,” says Jackie, crossing his arms and pacing around the room, “that things were going fine until Lorenzo Abruzzi pulled up with a truck full of fuckers packin’ military-grade weapons. We know our intel was bad, and the guy who gave you that tip is being dealt with right now. We know that you told Mike to get the fuck out of there, and we know he assumed you’d be hauling ass too, like any reasonable goddamn person would.” Jackie stops to turn and look at the bandages visible on me. “But judging by the way you look and the fact that the Cleaners are out for blood, I’m guessing that didn’t happen.”
I clench my teeth for a moment before I force myself to relax and speak. “Lorenzo knew I was going to be there. He was after me. It was business between the two of us. He killed Paul and Tony, I wasn’t about to let him get away with that. So I hunted his men down, and I almost killed him, too. But he fled. He’s a coward.”
“Mike told me what he saw,” Jackie says. “He saw the guns those maniacs got a hold of. How the fuck are you alive?”
There’s a pause between us as we hold each other’s gaze. “My uncle,” I say after a moment, “he taught me, when I was young. Taught me how to defend myself. He was in the army.” That’s a lie. Uncle Carlo was part of a Special Forces unit. I don’t want to tell them too much detail, though, or they’ll have me doing hits for them with Diego. I gesture to my body with a nonchalant expression. “The rest? Good genes, I guess. Luck?”
Jackie’s ugly mug twists into a smile, and he chuckles. “You’re a stupid son of a bitch, you know that?”
“I’m alive, aren’t I?”
Jackie stops chuckling, but he holds his smile for a moment before it fades. “You weren’t the only target last night.”
My brow knits. “What?”
Jackie scrolls through his phone to pull up a few messages. “That dive bar we run, Pete’s? They got hit hard right before last call.”
“Fuck,” I breathe, running my hand over my face and clenching my fist. Bad enough that I couldn’t keep a hold on the situation with Lorenzo, but another place too? “What happened?”
“Driveby,” Jackie explains, and he holds out his phone to me. It’s a picture of the bar in question, an old place I’ve gone to before. The front is riddled with bullets, all the windows are shot out, and I recognize bloodstains on the walls. “Pete made it out with a bullet in his side, but he’ll pull through. The bar’s done for, though.”
“So, two places in one night and more bodies than the city’s seen in a long time. Do we know who they’ve got on the take?” I ask. We have our own cops on our payroll, but if they’re turning a blind eye to this much…
“Our boys in blue suddenly don’t know a thing,” Diego speaks up ruefully. “I don’t know who they’ve got to, but it’s someone who can pull some major strings.”
“This has become a war,” the consigliere says calmly. “They’re making moves fast and hard, and if we don’t act now, they’ll have their heels dug into our territory even deeper. That’s why I’m promoting you, Bruno.”
That hits me like a bolt of lightning. I stare at him, and I realize both Jackie and Diego are eyeing me expectantly. So this is why I got dragged out here.
“A promotion?”
“That’s right,” says Jackie, making no show of pomp or circumstance. “What happened last night would have gotten all four of you killed under most circumstances. Nobody could have been ready for that. But you and Mike got out of there because you can think on your feet, and god knows how many bullets it takes to put your ass down.”
“That’s the kind of initiative we need calling shots on the frontlines,” the consigliere says, finally turning to look up at me. “Bruno, I’m putting you in charge of the block the de Laurentis girl’s shop is on.”
Serena’s block.
“So what, you’re using her as a front line now?” I say, and the look Diego shoots me tells me I’m out of line, but I don’t care. I’m sick of her getting endangered, dragged back into this life.
And I admit that the guilt in my gut is wearing me down. If I’d just avoided her…
I shake the thought away. No, I didn’t bring this heat down on her. Lorenzo was shaking down her shop before I ever got there, and there’s no way Bathing Beauty could’ve paid the protection fees. Besides, her father was the one that put the target on her back. I was just the one that made Lorenzo take it more personally.