Page 17 of Primo DeLuca

“Capo, Leandra definitely have eyes on her,” Umberto updated. “We’ve been following the two who started trailing her vehicle. They followed her home and parked a few houses down to keep watch. You want us to find out who they are and handle them?”

I didn’t miss the hint of enthusiasm in Umberto’s tone. His or his brother Lenni’s gun cocking in the background sounded. I was starting to believe my short reign as Capo had created some monsters who were more bloodthirsty and ten times deadlier than they had been two years ago. I hesitated a moment, thinking before I gave him an order.

“Whoever they are, they think Leandra is a soft target because she’s a woman, not taking into account her last name. For now, watch the watchers. Don’t engage them unless you believe her life is in immediate danger. They may lead you to whoever ordered them to watch her. The person that gives them orders is who we want.”

“Understood,” Umberto replied before hanging up.

Enemies were coming at us from every available angle. It made me wonder if there were more than two groups out there putting in requests for DeLuca blood.

***

“We have your wife, cousin. Picked her up attempting to hop into an Uber,” my cousin Aurelio said. I could hear the tease in his tone over the phone line. I knew the moment I asked the twins to pick Nevah up and keep her safe they would not only have questions but would tease me since I was known for having a fuck-them-and-forget-them mentality where women were concerned.

“Thanks, Aurelio. You guys have perfect timing. I knew when I was speaking to her that she didn’t believe a thing I was saying. Take her to S3, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I can,” I instructed.

The second call I made earlier tonight after The Malizioso had knocked me off the highway was to my cousins, Aurelio and Alesso, who, like me, knew how to deal with high-quality assassins. Although I knew they had their own shit to handle, they had dropped it to come to St. Louis to help me.

“No problem. We’ll take good care of our new cousin-in-law,” Aurelio teased before hanging up.

I couldn’t help laughing but had faith that he and his sister would protect Nevah with their own lives simply because I asked.

Nevah needed protection after her brief encounter with me, whether she believed she did or not. A murderous coward in our family was roaming free and stirring up mayhem. The added stress left me unable to work at my full potential.

There weren’t many people in the world I trusted enough to watch our backs, and the knowledge that two on my shortlist had arrived in the city in time to protect Nevah put a rare smile on my face.

Before taking on the Capo position, me and three other DeLucas were a part of a four-man team recruited by Don Ermanno himself.

The four of us were once the bastards of the family.

My mother and I were homeless for most of my young life, and I was abandoned to the streets of Sicily at eleven years old after my mother was killed by one of her Johns.

I was picked up by child protective services a few years later and placed in a home with a couple who abused me for years after that, physically and sexually. The woman used me for sex, and the man used me as his punching bag.

By the time Don Ermanno tracked me down at seventeen, both my foster parents’ bodies were buried in their backyard, and I was living with and working for one of the toughest gangs in Sicily. Therefore, when I was approached, informed that I was a part of the DeLuca family and offered an opportunity, I didn’t think twice about accepting the Don’s offer.

He also recruited Alesso and Aurelio, twins whose mother had never disclosed who their father was, to prevent a scandal. Their mother having babies by a ranking member of the mob who was already married with a family would garner too much trouble and attention. The situation had marked the twins as bastards and outsiders until the Don offered them a name and a job.

Zaire was the fourth of us, abandoned at birth and brought up in a rundown orphanage on the outskirts of Sicily before he too was found and presented an offer. Don Ermanno’s plan for assembling his secret team was brilliant, giving us all a powerful name and a purpose. He legally gave us the DeLuca name and a place within the family, even when the DeLuca men who sired us preferred to keep us their dirty little secrets.

A select few were aware that we worked for Don Ermanno on occasion, but they didn’t know how in-depth those duties were. What would happen to our team now that Don Ermanno was gone? Had he shared our secret mission with Don Enzo, or would we have to eventually settle into our covert jobs within the family and let our secret operations fall into the shadows?

Whether the family knew it or not, our team was a necessary evil that prevented wars and started them if one was needed. Ultimately, we helped stabilize a deadly ecosystem built on death.

Each of us had agreed not to say anything about our extra duties unless the new Don approached us. If he never approached, we would take our secrets to the grave.

There were many secrets that died with Don Ermanno and unless I started digging up bodies and conducting blood tests, I’d never know for certain which DeLuca fathered me. From the history I’d uncovered so far, my mother had passed herself around to multiple DeLuca men back in the day.

Trusting the word of Don Ermanno was essential to keeping order. However, there were times when I got the sense that the DeLuca he revealed as my father, his dead cousin Eladio DeLuca, may not have been the truth. It could have been a convenient lie to save face with the family and to keep the bastard title off my head.

There were times when I caught Don Ermanno staring at me with an odd expression like he wanted to say something, but he never did. There were times when I wondered if I had any DeLuca blood running through my veins at all, and it was that very thought that kept my curiosity about my father at bay.

With a hit out on me, I’d had to swallow my pride and call for the kind of backup that was on the same level as the hitmen after me. The twins, Aurelio, male, and Alesso, female, home station was located in California. Although Alesso’s home base was in Cali with her twin, her code name was “The Traveler” due to her executing hits in over thirty states so far.

It had taken them a few hours to arrive in St. Louis since they were laying some groundwork for the past few weeks for a mission they would soon start in Chicago. I was set at ease knowing that they would be protecting Nevah.

Now, I needed to shake this tail I picked up outside of the club. Killers were swarming, anxious to cut the cord on my lifeline, but as time went on, I had become more eager for the fight. They were poking a savage, and I planned to give them every bit of demented energy that raced through my blood.

My way of handling the enemy was usually quiet, but always deadly. I poured a lot of time, money, and energy into keeping a low profile, so this was the most popular I’d ever been in my life and career.

I drove Brizio’s silver Dodge Challenger, cruising along Grand Boulevard and allowing my tail to creep closer so I could pick up clues about them.

The idea of multiple groups gunning for me was a compliment to my reputation.

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