Mac’s rage blew out of control again.
He was off the island stool before his mother could say a thing to stop him.
Fucking hell.
His mother was one thing. Cynthia was a good old Catholic woman who didn’t believe in divorce and would put up with her estranged husband’s stupidity to the bitter end simply because she thought she had to for the Church and God.
But Mac’s wife?
James Sr. knew better than that.
And better yet, why hadn’t Melina told him?
“Get the fuck up.”
Mac’s order was punctuated with a slap to the back of Enric Pivetti’s head. The crack of his palm landing to the younger man’s skull echoed through the quiet, empty warehouse. As Enric cursed a blue streak and blinked crazily in the chair he’d been sleeping in, Mac continued walking back to where the office was. He had shit to get before he could go pay a visit to his old man.
Mac certainly hoped James got the goddamn point after tonight.
One of the benefits of being a made man, and a Capo, was that Mac could lay whatever lesson he wanted down on another man, so long as they weren’t made. It was a little tricky when it happened on someone else’s territory, but Mac figured he was justified enough in this without making a call to the Pivetti Don.
“Cazzo! What the fuck, man?” Enric snapped, his army-style boots hitting the floor hard as he stood straight from the chair.
Mac barely gave him a glance before he disappeared into the office. For the most part, Enric was a good kid—young in his early twenties, though—and did what Mac told him to do when he was told to do it. For being as young as he was, Enric knew how to follow orders and didn’t rile shit up.
That was a point in his favor.
But Enric had a mouth on him. And he liked to use it.
“I was having a damn nap. Merda.”
“Stop your whining,” Mac muttered as he pulled open a drawer on his desk. Enric came to stand in the doorway with a scowl that could rival the devil’s as he rubbed the back of his head. Mac rifled through the drawer, pulling out a small pocket knife he liked and an extra round of bullets for his gun. “We have shit to do.”
“You slapped me awake, asshole.”
“You talk too much—like your father,” Mac said.
Enric quieted at that statement.
It was a strange quirk, but Mac had quickly learned that if there was anything Enric hated more than most everything else, it was being compared to his father. He respected Luca Pivetti, he liked him even, and talked well of his father. That didn’t mean Enric wanted everyone to see him as just his father’s son.
Mac respected that a great deal.
“What kind of business?” Enric asked.
A chuckle escaped Mac, dark and sadistic. “My father, actually. Seems the bastard needs an update on my feelings, because all the other ones must have fucking expired.”
Enric made a sound that came off as both concerned and interested at the same time. Everybody who was anybody in the Pivetti Cosa Nostra, made or just affiliated, knew who James Maccari Sr. was, and exactly what he was worth as a man.
Fuck. All.
“What happened?” Enric asked.
Mac shrugged, his anger bubbling to the surface all over again. “I don’t know. Why don’t you call my wife and ask? She didn’t even tell me.”
It wasn’t like Mac to blurt out information about his wife, even if it was in anger.
It was a good show of how irritated he currently was.
Sadly, some of that was directed at his wife.
A larger portion was directed at his father.
James would get the brunt of it.
“Fucker has earned it,” Mac said under his breath.
“Huh?” Enric looked to Mac, waiting for an explanation.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
It took a few calls, but Mac eventually got a lead on where he could find his asshole of a father. Unsurprisingly, James was apparently enjoying his time at a shoddy stripper joint that was also used as a billiards bar. Mac learned that his father also paid rent for a bachelor apartment above the business.
Mac supposed his father didn’t have to go very far to feed his addictions.
Enric kept a couple of paces back from Mac as they passed by the bouncer at the door, who looked like he was already three sheets to the wind and would fall over if someone flicked his fucking ear. The guy barely passed him or Enric a glance, never mind sparing any attention to the baseball bat Enric was swinging to and fro at his side with every step.
“Are we going to kill him?” Enric asked.
“Not today,” Mac replied.
But that could still happen.
Mac wasn’t ruling it out.
If not today, then someday.
Mac ignored the scratched tables, ripped booths, the dancing women, and the bar filled with shady-looking characters. He side-stepped a stripper as she approached, making it clear he wasn’t there for whatever she wanted to offer.
All too soon, he found his father in a corner booth, a girl that looked no older than eighteen, but blitzed out of her mind, was grinding her ass against James’ groin.