Page 60 of Vicious Intentions
I see it in my brother’s eyes—his fear that one of the families will betray me. That they’ll take my plan straight to the Outfit, hoping to earn favor while saving their own necks.
“The families will kneel to me,” I say calmly. “If not to me, then to the idea of me and what I represent.”
“Which is?”
“That I’ll give them everything Carlo once promised them. That New York will be ours again, without the influence of the Outfit or the Irish breathing down our necks at every turn.” I glance at him. “Tell me, brother… isn’t a life of freedom worth fighting for? Or is servitude our only option?”
Niccolò exhales again, this time more subdued. “You know what I think, Matteo. But don’t ask me not to worry. I can’t do that. I’ve already lost one brother. I don’t wish to lose another.”
“You won’t lose me.”
“Carlo thought the same thing,” Niccolò says quietly. “And we watched the life drain from his eyes, unable to do anything to stop it.”
The image of Carlo’s last seconds on this earth sets me on edge, as it always does. Carlo was our champion, and we loved him for it. Respected him. Looked up to him even.
But I know the love Niccolò bears for me is different than the one he had for Carlo. Niccolò and I share more than the same blood running through our veins. We suffered the same horrors in the house we grew up in. Our past holds the same exact trauma.
The same cannot be said for Carlo. He didn’t have to endure his mother’s wrath the way we did. He didn’t have to live under the same disapproval and detachment our father subjected us to. No. His parents idolized him and treated him like the second coming.
Niccolò, Raffaele, and I never had that, even though we all lived under the same roof.
“I know you have your misgivings,” I say quietly, “but I will not fail you. Or Rafe. Never.”
Niccolò turns to me, seeing the resolve in my eyes. His shoulders relax, even if only slightly. He knows I am a man of my word. That I would go to the ends of the earth, if need be, to make it so.
Yes, my plan still has its hiccups. But I’ll flesh them out in time. I won’t take a single step until I know there’s solid ground beneath my feet. I will not put my brothers’ lives in jeopardy.
Mine, I may not care about. But theirs? Theirs, I do. Because, unlike the monsters I grew up with, family actually means something to me.
I’m seated at the desk of my home office, the glow of my screen the only light in the room. Behind me, the windows frame the city in glass and steel. New York stretches on outside, awake and glittering, its skyline lit like a constellation against the dark.
It’s been exactly thirty-six hours since I received a text from my people in Chicago, confirming they’d managed to obtain Jude Romano’s DNA. I knew it was only a matter of time. He spent more time stateside this past summer than at Mina Crane’s ancestral home in Kent. All because the Romanos have had an abundance of weddings lately.
It began with the heir to the Outfit himself, Marcello Romano. Yes, it seems the devil finally found a woman brave enough to share his bed. I doubt any woman envies Marcello’s bride. If I’m known for being heartless, then Marcello is known for not having a soul.
I saw it plain as day when he killed Carlo all those years ago. His eyes were vacant of emotion. There was nothing there. Just empty space where a soul should reside.
According to my sources, the next one to tie the knot is Luciano. He’s barely out of high school and already eager to run down the aisle to marry his high school sweetheart, Frances O’Malley. The same girl who, inexplicably, seems to have some kind of hold over the Petrov clan.
I haven’t been able to determine exactly what that hold is, but my sources tell me that Mikhail Petrov himself bought a luxury apartment in downtown Chicago for the girl and her adoptive brother. The millions sitting in her bank account are also funneled through the Bratva.
At first, I assumed she must have something on the Petrovs. Dirt. Leverage. Insurance. But that theory falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. If she had anything worth using against them, they would have killed her without hesitation.
Instead, they haven’t touched her. In fact, my spies report that both Kirill and Konstantin Petrov spend an alarming amount of time at Frances’s apartment, where she apparently feeds them home-cooked meals and showers them with affection.
It’s baffling, especially considering that before she entered Luciano’s life, she was heading toward a very different altar—one that would have had her pledging her life to God. What a woman like that has to do with the Bratva is the million-dollar question.
Not too long ago, I was practically bursting with anticipation, convinced the Outfit and the Bratva would finally turn on each other and bleed themselves dry after the Romano children were kidnapped. It would have been an ideal outcome for the two organizations to come to blows and do my dirty workfor me. But alas, their alliance is tighter than ever, and it will only grow stronger once Stella Romano marries Kirill Petrov.
Vincent Romano is either the luckiest bastard to ever walk this earth, or he’s one calculating, self-serving son of a bitch, perfectly willing to use his own children to fortify his alliances.
First, the Firm in London, binding Jude to Mina Crane. Now Stella and Luciano, securing ties with the Bratva. Even Marcello married an ex-FBI agent, polishing his public image until it’s nearly spotless. A stroke of obscene luck, if you ask me.
I never believed in such a thing, though. Luck is what we make for ourselves.
My thoughts are momentarily pulled away by the arrival of an email I’ve been anxiously waiting for. No dramatic subject line, no warning. Just a quiet notification blinking on my screen, demanding my attention. Knowing exactly what it contains, I open it without hesitation, ready to read the words I’ve been yearning for. The report is clinical. Cold. Charts, percentages, spreadsheets of data laid out with merciless precision. Vincent Romano, Giovanni DeLuca, Dominic Mancini, Jude Romano, Marcello Romano. On and on it goes, each name reduced to numbers and probabilities.
I scan it once. Then again. Then slower. My jaw instantly clenches as the information becomes clear—Vincent Romano has heirs. Thefiglio di puttanahas heirs. Jude and Marcello are his by blood. Here lies the proof that Vincent Romano has ensured his bloodline after all.
