Page 51 of Sweet Revenge

He only stood there, shaking his head.

Clearing my throat, I took another step. “You know, we could make this real simple, La Rosa. We can cut through all the bullshit, and you and I could just go at it,mano y mano. Let all these other poor bastards go and settle it like men. No guns. No weapons at all. Just me and you to the death.” My hands were itching with the possibility of finally getting to wring his neck. I’d give my kingdom to be able to pummel his face until it looked like twenty pounds of ground chuck.

Alexander La Rosa chuckled under his breath. “Are you fucking kidding me, kid? You’ve got a lot to learn. The whole point of being in charge is so that you don’t have to get your hands dirty. Why would I wanna beat the hell out of you myself when I got all these fine young men to do it for me? I don’t get in street fights anymore.”

He was a coward, that was for damn sure, but I still wanted to teach him a lesson. “Yeah, I guess it’s a lot easier to get your own hands dirty when you’re facing off against a woman tied up in a basement, as opposed to a man with his hands free who could bash your fucking brains in.”

That triggered something in him. He knew I was saying he was too chicken to fight anyone who wasn’t weaker than him. “You mind your own fucking business, Petrov.”

His refusal to accept responsibility for what he’d done irritated the hell out of me. “That’s what I’ve been trying to do. But you came into my city, into my own goddamn family, and now you’re coming at me. For what? What the fuck is it you’re trying to accomplish, La Rosa?” I could hear the annoyance in my own voice and knew I needed to calm down a little bit before I lost my shit. Keeping a clear head was important when negotiating.

“Listen, kid. I’ll share a few words of wisdom with you that may or may not sink into your damn head. Sometimes a man’s reach exceeds his grasp. You’ve gotta be smart enough to know when to let go or lose your hand.”

I stared at him, unblinking, for several seconds, trying not to blow a gasket. He honestly thought I wasn’t capable of holding on to all that I’d managed to accumulate? Bastard.

“I’m done playing around.” La Rosa let out a bored sigh. “Just give me those two, and we’ll be done.”

“You’ve gotta live up to your end of the bargain, too,” I reminded him. “Ma, you’re on our side now. No more running back to La Rosa, got it?” I stared at my mother, who seemed perfectly entertained at being the center of all this. In her eyes, we were fighting over her and nothing else.

With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Ma let go of La Rosa’s arm and walked the few feet to come to stand behind me, her heels clicking on the concrete the entire time. I tried not to roll my eyes at the smile in her eyes as she paraded past everyone.

“All right. You got what you want. Now, it’s my turn,” La Rosa barked.

I motioned for Vin and Mikel to take Alex and Dezzy over there. La Rosa motioned for the back door of the SUV where he was standing to be opened. He clapped Alex on the back when he arrived and gave him a little shove. Two of his thugs helped him into the back seat of the vehicle—and promptly shut the door.

Dezzy took a few steps toward the same SUV, but La Rosa put a hand on his chest. Mikel and Vin had already reached me and stood there, dumbfounded as we all tried to figure out what was happening.

“Sorry, pal. Ain’t gonna happen,” La Rosa told Dezzy. He slapped the top of the vehicle a couple of times, and the SUV backed out, sending soldiers scurrying to move aside.

I couldn’t see Dezzy’s face, but I knew his voice well enough to picture his expression as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Dad. I didn’t mean to get caught.”

La Rosa’s hand darted out quicker than I would’ve expected him to be capable of, and he slapped Dezzy across the face hard enough to send him to his knees. An evil chuckle escaped the old man’s lips. “Are you shitting me? No one means to get caught, you dumb fuck. I gave you one goddamn job, and you fucked it up like the asshole loser you are. Must be all that Petrov blood coursing through your veins.”

I could see the side of Dezzy’s face now, noticed a fresh trickle of blood from his split lip. His eyebrows knitted together as he tried to reason through what La Rosa had just said. A pang of empathy washed through me before I reminded myself that he had chosen this bed.

“Petrov blood?” he repeated as understanding settled in. “You mean… you’re not really my father?”

With a shrug, La Rosa pulled a gun from his belt and aimed it at Dezzy’s face. “Doesn’t really fucking matter now, does it?”

As angry as I was at Dezzy for betraying me, he was still my brother. Half or whole, it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to let it go down like this. I heard my mother make an annoyed noise in the back of her throat, but she didn’t intervene.

I did. I pulled my gun and fired off a shot at Alexander La Rosa. It was slightly wide, not hitting him, possibly intentionally. I hadn’t intended to just shoot the bastard in the head and be done with it after all, but the bullet was enough to startle him as it whizzed by.

The distraction caused La Rosa’s bullet to miss Dezzy, despite the gun being only a foot or so from his face. Dezzy lurched forward, ramming into La Rosa’s legs before striking him with his bound hands.

With the attack on La Rosa, the gates to anarchy opened up, and guns began to fire from all directions. Ma screamed and scrambled for cover while Dezzy tried to roll out of the way. La Rosa stumbled backward into another one of his SUVs, the hollow between the two vehicles providing a bit of protection from his guys, though mine who were in the rafters could easily take him out. That wasn’t the plan, though, so I moved in.

I dove at La Rosa, hammering him in the face with my fist. It would’ve been easier to shoot the asshole, but I really wanted to beat the shit out of him for everything he’d done to my family and to Elisa. Everyone in this warehouse would know I was the boss by the end of this.

I caught a glimpse of white out of the corner of my eye and saw Elisa behind a large box, over near my mother, a gun in her hand as she fired at her father’s troops. God, she was a vision, even in such a time as this. My mother, on the other hand, was practically hidden from view, though I did notice she had a phone to her ear. Who the fuck was she calling?

Maybe I didn’t want to know.

Distracted by what was going on around me, I opened myself up to La Rosa’s counterattack. He was old, but he’d been fighting for a long time. He managed to roll me over, my head hitting the concrete hard enough to make my eyes cross for a moment, but I couldn’t let him stay on top of me long. He’d lost the gun he’d used on Dezzy, but he likely had another one.

Raising my legs, I caught him off guard and dumped him off me, straddling him and punching him in the face a couple times. Summoning all his strength, he used his forearm to knock me off him, and I went flying backward on my ass across the floor.

La Rosa scrambled to his feet, using the SUV to help himself up. I flew up off the floor and came at him, pulling my brass knuckles from my pocket as I went. When I rammed my fist into his jaw again, it was with the help of my favorite weapon. His head snapped around as his skin opened up and blood trickled down his collar. The old man slid down the vehicle to the floor.

---