“No motion,” Nico says, voice low. Scattered throughout the area are four other SUVs, each filled with my most violent and dangerous men. “What time do we have?”
“Ten past two,” I say, checking my watch. “Club closed ten minutes ago.” We watched the late-night drunks filter out, get into their cars, and weave away. Hopefully without smashing into someone and killing them. “Girls should empty out soon.”
“You’re sure Danil and his men are inside?” Gavino sounds anxious and I don’t blame him. My brother’s a hard man and he’s done some violent things, but he’s never gone on a raid like this before. For a long time, I got my hands dirty so nobody else needed to, especially not my brothers or my sister. That was my curse and my burden, a part of what it meant to be the Don’s oldest son. I embraced that part of me with relish and now I wonder how deeply broken and scarred I’ve become. And yet I am much too far along to analyze that too closely.
“It’s our best guess,” Nico admits. “There’s no clear word on where exactly Danil calls home and we haven’t taken time to stake the place out.”
“Doesn’t matter who’s inside.” I run my hands over the steering wheel. “We kill anyone that moves, except for the girls, if there are any left. Make sure everyone’s on the same page. Spare the girls, kill everyone else.”
“I’ll tell the others,” Nico says and gets busy on the radio calling in to each team.
As I watch the club and count the strippers that emerge wearing normal civilian clothes like they’ve morphed from dancers to their regular lives, I can practically feel Olivia’s breath on my neck. The car’s silent now and thick with waiting. Two days ago, Olivia and I slept in the same bed, my arms around her body, her breasts rising and falling with each inhale, her warmth radiating across my skin. I still feel her ass against my palm, I hear her moans in my ears, and I taste her tongue on my lips. But I knew it the moment I punished her. I knew she wouldn’t let her brother go no matter what I said. There’d be more arguments, more spankings in her future, and some part of me was excited for the challenge, the opportunity to break her over my knee.
But I didn’t think she’d run away.
Anger rolls through me again. God, it’s like I’ve been unceasingly angry ever since Fynn was shot, like I haven’t had a single moment of calm since Danil nearly killed my little brother. Olivia’s face mixes in with the terror and pain of that day, of the sharp glass scattered all over the pavement, of Fynn’s moans and blood all over my clothes, and I can’t get my head straight, can’t manage to think beyond anything in front of my face.
She left me. She turned and ran when I needed her the most and I don’t know if I can ever forgive her for that. This is my lowest, my darkest hour, when everything feels as though it’s finally crumbling like sand falling between my fingers, the paint that I’ve smeared over my life in an attempt to make it look palatable finally flaking away. I was beginning to believe that we could have something, that we could put our past behind and move forward—but now I see that was always a stupid dream.
It was never more than sex with her. That’s all it ever was. Sex and lust and fucking, nothing more. That’s how it was back in the day and that’s how it’ll always be.
Now she’s gone back to Mexico and her father, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.
“That’s eight girls,” I say as a little beat-up Camaro pulls out of the parking lot and starts to drive. A handful of cars remain, and most of them are nice: two BMWs and a Range Rover.
Which means men with money are inside.
“How many are usually working?” Gavino asks.
“I think ten,” Nico says. “But I don’t really know. Like I said, lots of guesswork here.” He’s not happy with this mission and he’s made it clear more than a few times. Nico likes to plan and execute a hit with accuracy and bloody prejudice. I appreciate that about him but today I only need him to be a killer.
But I don’t give a shit about planning or making everything perfect. Fynn’s lying half dead in the hospital and Danil’s still running around the city, my fucking city. I can’t have that. It makes me look weak each day that passes without killing a few of those fuckers.
“Let’s move in,” I say, eager to get this over with. Gavino’s echoing nod is suitably grim, the face of a man that knows he may not survive the next hour, but that’s the truth we live with whenever we do something hard. That’s the truth of being part of the Famiglia. Death lurks, death and pain and loss and decay, and that’s all we’ll ever have.