Page 19 of Anti-Heroes in Love Duet
Yet, he’d taken a reckless runaway British lad under his belt and groomed him like a son, even knowing the wildness in his blood would never cool.
We were a good contrast, he and I. He was cold and calculated. I was instinct and hot-blooded brutality.
Together, we ran one of the most successful outfits in a country we hadn’t even called our own until five years prior.
Sitting on the patio of my two-story penthouse in one of New York City’s most storied and expensive apartment buildings overlooking Central Park, the lights of the city beyond shining like jewels spilled at our feet, it was impossible not to feel the power and prestige of our urban empire.
“It might have something to do with the fact that theircapois currently embroiled in a years-long trial with no end in sight,” I drawled dryly before sipping the full-bodied wine.
Tore grunted at that, as displeased with my arrest as picnickers were by flies at a summer spread. Arrests, police surveillance, and blackmail were all frequent and natural consequences of our illegal enterprises. Tore had been inducted into the mafia as a young man and spent his entire life living in the shadows of the Camorra’s powerful embrace. He believed absolutely in its power to crush any opponent, even one so grand as the US government. After all, it had been done before. Many, many times.
I was yet unconvinced.
We were powerful men, the head of the snake of an extensive criminal empire with a widespread network of connections to grease our way out of tight corners.
But this was different.
That fuckface USA was determined to be the next Guiliani and bring down the New York City mob. No one gave a shit about the mafia in a time of national and global acts of terrorism, but Dennis O’Malley was convinced he could cut the line straight to the top of success by taking down the glamourous Camorra.
Even that was nothing, white fucking noise, compared to the real problem.
I hadn’t killed Giuseppe di Carlo in that shithole deli in the Bronx.
I wished I had.
But no.
It wasn’t me who planted a bullet between the motherfucker’s eyes.
It seemed the di Carlo Family was cleverer than their inbred ugliness lent them credit for. They’d set up one of the only people I’d ever loved.
And I’d go to jail, the grave, whatever afterlife there was for sinner men like me a thousand times over if it meant keeping Cosima safe.
So, there we were.
It was a helluva predicament.
“We got the Irish bastards sniffing around our garbage looking for spoils,” Tore muttered into his wine. “Jacopo caught a few of them lingering by the Hudson, scouting warehouses. I tell you, I should’ve killed Seamus Moore when I had the chance.”
It was a complicated story, the one between Cosima and Elena’s mother, Caprice, and her ex-husband Seamus. Caprice and Tore had fallen in love once, long ago, and had a torrid affair that led to the birth of Cosima and her twin brother, Sebastian. Caprice had cut Tore out of their lives because of his mob dealings and raised the twins as Seamus’s offspring until the Irish bastard sold Cosima into sexual slavery and disappeared for years.
He’d cropped up in New York City,our city, last year working for Thomas “Gunner” Kelly and his group of Irish thugs. He’d abducted Cosima for reasons known only to him, and since then, he and the gang had been sniffing around our outfit.
It was hard not to agree with Tore. Some men deserved more than death, and Seamus Moore was one such person.
“Soft heart,” I reminded him. “A powerful man’s downfall.”
His thick brow arched, cutting thick creases into his broad forehead. “And you,figlio mio, are a hardened criminal with no soul,si?”
I didn’t bother to shoot the old coot a look. We both knew well enough that I had one weakness, and it was exactly that. The precious few chinks in my armor were made by the love I held for him, for my brother, and his wife, my best friend, Cosima.
I’d do anything for them.Haddone anything for them.
Without question, without qualm.
This was what family meant to Italians.
Mafia or civilian, we protected our own at all costs.
