Cade Burns
Serg wore the sparring gloves this time, and he did it because he knew that I needed to hit something, and I needed to hit it hard. I did repeated combinations, pounding my bare fists into the gloves as Serg absorbed each blow. “What the fuck is her problem?” I shouted at him.
Her virginity. What kind of game was she playing with me to give up her virginity so easily? I hadn’t thought twice about fucking her when she was moaning and making all the sounds that told me she wanted it. I’d gone in there with no intention of doing anything other than bringing her to training, but it had not gone as expected.
“You tell me,” Serg replied, turning his body with each of my punches.
Between grunts, I began listing the problems, “She was a god damned virgin before yesterday,” I told him, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have taken that. I shouldn’t have wanted to fuck her. She’s the enemy.” “She’s your wife,” he said.
“She is responsible for killing dozens of our men and women over the years.”
“Did she pull the trigger?” he asked, and I clenched my jaw, throwing more strength into the next punch. He took a step back from the force of it. “She did something that had consequences, but she was only a child- barely even a teenager at that time, right? Can you fault her for that?”
“In this line of business, it doesn’t matter if you’re a child or an adult. If you do something stupid, you get people killed, and she won’t even acknowledge what she did,” I told him. “She’s not a child now.”
Serg shook his head, and I could tell he didn’t fully agree with where I’d put my blame. Maybe he didn’t think she deserved it, but I knew better.
“Did she snitch on your friendship out of pure malice, or did she do it for a reason?” I didn’t say anything. I knew that I’d pushed her into doing it, but I hadn’t done anything horrible enough to warrant her telling her boss of a father. I’d played stupid pranks on her. And she made it so easy, always giving me the reaction I wanted. Maybe acting interested in her had been fucked up, especially when she was so young and gullible, but it was hardly worth the consequences of her snitching. “You did something, didn’t you?” “I was young. I messed with her a little bit.”
“Then you can consider yourself just as much to blame for all the deaths if you’re going to blame her. Neither of you caused anyone’s death with your actions, but both of your actions led to death.”
I didn’t know if I was angrier that he was arguing this subject with me or that he had a point. I still couldn’t shake the assumption that she’d done it, knowing what it would do to both her brother and me. The future consequences were unforeseeable, but she didn’t give a shit. If she had told me that she planned to go to her father, I would have stopped messing with her, but she’d done it without an ounce of prompting.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said as I paused and caught my breath, lifting both arms over my head. “But I don’t think she’s a traitorous woman who wants to see you go down. I think she agreed to this marriage to fix what she did. She was an angry kid who wanted to best her brother.
You can’t tell me that you’ve never been there.”
I thought back to childhood. I only had Elizabeth as a sibling, but I remembered going to my mother to get her in trouble all the way up until I was an older teenager. The only difference was that my mother and father put family first and business second. They never did anything as cruel as attacking the families of our friends.
And when they got older, my mother left, and my father handed the family business down to me, retiring far enough away that he would never be bothered with this shit again. Matteo and Aria’s father would have never given up his power-not as long as he lived.
Despite the conversation-despite every logical thing he said-I still couldn’t shake the hatred I had for the woman, and I couldn’t stop myself from feeling angry that I’d allowed myself to sleep with her. I should have controlled myself better than that. I should have never taken her virginity, and I certainly shouldn’t have let my temper get the better of me.
In the time she’s been here, I’d already lost my temper with her twice, and I’d cut through two of my lieutenant’s fingers in her defense.
I couldn’t even put into words what she did to me.
“I don’t like it when you disagree with me,” I told him honestly.
“When you go around and cut off fingers, nobody else is going to tell you when you’re being fucking ridiculous,” he retorted, “And I would rather not clean up those messes in the future, by the way.”
I chuckled, a bit of tension leaving my shoulders. “Tell the men not to talk about her, and everyone will keep their fingers and their heads.”
“I thought you hated her.”
“I do.” I think I do, I considered. If she’d stop giving me a hard-on when I walk into a room, it would be a hell of a lot easier to hate her. “Talking about my wife the way Crew did is disrespectful, and I won’t keep disloyal soldiers in my ranks. None of them will touch what’s mine, regardless of how I feel about her.”
He nodded, and I knew he’d pass the message through the proper channels. As my underboss, he handled all my soldiers and guards personally, and he would be the only one able to get through to them before they did something stupid.
“It will be taken care of.”
Elizabeth stormed into the room, her face hard as she looked between us.
“What?” I asked.
“I did what you asked and have been watching the Rusos’ movements,” she said, looking at Serg. “Just from watching them, I don’t get the impression they’re working toward an alliance.”
I grabbed the hem of my shirt and wiped the beads of sweat from my forehead before nodding. “Let’s take this to the office, and you can show me what you’ve found.”
Together, Serg, Elizabeth, and I made our way down a few hallways and toward the home office. They both had rooms here, and they stayed most nights. We passed by Serg’s closed door first, and then we passed Elizabeth’s. I couldn’t help but pause as we went by Aria’s room, but I didn’t hesitate long enough for either of the others to notice.
When we entered the office, I noticed that Elizabeth already had a few things lying around the sitting area.
I glanced down at the photos and flicked through them.
A few dozen of the Ruso men looked like they were cleaning and arranging weapons for an organized strike. I didn’t want to ask how Elizabeth managed to get these photos from inside the Ruso distribution warehouse, but there was no mistaking who was in these photos. The R brand rested on a few of the people’s forearms, and Matteo stood alongside them, pointing around the room as if to give demands.
“They could be planning any kind of strike or outward attack. There’s nothing here to prove they’re doing it to us,” Serg countered.
“When people start an alliance, it can usually be assumed that they don’t need this level of weapons or defenses. The Ruso family is notorious in the Italian mafia community, and they would have no adversaries from the other four leading families. The Commission makes sure they stay in line, so there would be no skirmishes that require this much force,” Elizabeth explained.
“Did you hear them mention us?” I asked.
She scowled and shook her head. “I couldn’t get close enough. I just saw that they’re getting ready for something big.”
I saw how it looked, but this wasn’t an assumption I could readily draw. “They could be making a trade with someone else,” I mused. “Someone with a lot of manpower.”
“They don’t have any merchandise on the premises, and if they were preparing for something like that, they’d have the drugs heavily guarded and under watch until the trade,” she said. “It can’t be that.”
“What if there’s a secondary location?” Serg asked. “Is that possible?”
Elizabeth sighed. “Technically, yes. But you have to admit that this is fishy. If it was something big and dangerous, it would make sense for him to test his alliance with us, would it not? The fact that he hasn’t brought this to our attention makes me think that he means to hide it.”
Regardless of the purpose behind Matteo doing this, there was a chance that he was targeting us. A contract only meant so much when our entire business wasn’t within the restraints of the law. The contract wasn’t one that could ever be held up in court, but we still did dealings like that to hold up integrity and honor. Our word was the only thing we had in this business, and contracts were proof of our word being upheld. “Keep a close eye on it, and try to plant a listening device in the warehouse,” I told her. I looked at Serg. “You, make sure we have a few tactical teams on standby for the foreseeable future. Cut the secondary guards at the front gate and send them
to stand by, too. We won’t be caught unaware.”
Elizabeth nodded. “I don’t trust this.”
I don’t either, I wanted to agree. But I wanted to trust that Matteo was making a genuine alliance with me. He could have launched a full-scale attack and taken us out after his father’s death. He could have ambushed us at the courthouse, though I didn’t give him much of an opportunity. He could have done a number of things, but he didn’t launch a single assault.
It had been quiet.
I thought through all the possibilities as Serg and Elizabeth went about their duties, but the one thing that didn’t makes sense was Aria’s involvement. She was collateral if anything went wrong, and I remembered the love he’d had for his sister all those years ago.
He wouldn’t have given her to me if this wasn’t a genuine alliance.
Maybe I could get some answers from her.
I stood and made my way down the hallway. I reached for the knob of her room, but I paused. I heard her inside, singing the chorus to a slow, methodical song that I’d never heard. The sound of her voice had my heart skipping a beat as she hit each note as perfectly as the last, and I waited. I didn’t know why I paused and listened, but the song was so… sad.
Everything about the lyrics, her tone, and the way she said the words shouted devastation and full of unease. I wanted to ask her questions about her brother and their deal to send her here. I needed to know a lot of things that only she could tell me but now was not the time. Not when her voice alone had me planted on the spot.
As I listened to her raw voice, I wondered how someone I hated so much could make me feel something I had never had before.