Indebted to the Mafia King

Dante

I scream up to the house, but I know what I'm going to find before I even get out of the car. My front door hangs dangerously open, warm light pouring onto the lawn I spent so much of my goddamn life, so much goddamn money keeping within HOA-approved lengths. That doesn't stop me from leaping out of the driver's seat, engine still running, and sprinting inside.

Ben stares up at me, a grinning death's head. One bullet hole, in the middle of his throat. A distant part of my brain registers that they had to get close, that it's a quick death.

The rest of me shouts, "Eleni?"

I expect the silence, but it's like stepping in front of an oncoming train. The pain doesn't hurt any less because I know it's coming. My breath turns ragged, scraping in and out of my throat as I step over Ben's corpse.

The next trail of blood leads me to the front sitting room and Andrea. Fuck. Another throat shot, like a signature. My head of house, the only woman keeping me alive before Eleni, weeps blood onto the pure white carpet she always nagged the maids to keep clean.

But she's not Eleni. Monstrously, that is a comfort.

I tear through the house. Not even another corpse to greet me. Just one rumpled carpet in the hall leading to our bedroom, spattered with a few droplets of blood. I fall to my knees in front of them, my heart hammering loud enough to drown out an army of Russians approaching to kill me. This isn't enough blood for her to be dead. Even the small pool I uncover when I straighten out the rug looks like a minor gunshot. That thought throbs in my shoulder, reminding me of the injury I haven't even checked yet. I continue to ignore it.

They took her. Eleni's gone. Seb is dead on some no-name street in the meat-packing district, and Tony probably still sits next to him, snarling at anyone who tries to touch the body. The whine of emergency vehicles cuts through my own heartbeat, reminding me Piacere is on fire across the island.

There's no other answer. The Russians have been fucking planning this. If Cal's call can be trusted, this isn't just about the Saints, either. They bided their time, and now they're swinging on the whole city at once. I won't be surprised if it turns out triad blood is flowing in Chinatown right now.

And I'm wasting my fucking time. Robotically I stand and march downstairs to my office. It's pristine, untouched, and that makes me even angrier. They don't give a fuck about whose world this is. They're just here to get rid of us. I sit down at my computer, nearly lose it fighting through the protections Eleni put on my laptop, and begin placing calls.

***

"Check in when you hear anything." I hang up and set my phone down. The very last of the Saints' men, on probation and otherwise, has been dispatched to find Eleni. Mikey and the rest of the guys at the warehouse can handle that. I pull Ben and Andrea out of their own blood and line them up in the kitchen, where the mess will be easier to clean, then shut both their eyes. My shoulder begs for my attention, so finally, I go to the downstairs bathroom, shed my shirt, and look at myself in the mirror.

The white tank top underneath my button-down drips red. Seb's blood, mine, Ben's, Andrea's, more Russians than I can count. My shoulder oozes a fine crust of the stuff over a deep flesh wound. The bullet didn't stick in my arm, but it looks like somebody bored a gouge from my flesh with a fat, permanent marker.

I yank a bottle of isopropyl alcohol El insisted on having for every floor of the house out of the cabinet, splash it on the wound, and bite back a scream. Then, I tear the sleeve off my button-down and tie it around my upper arm. Good enough. My phone vibrates.

Sal, a local kid with a few computer classes under his belt that I picked up to run security for my house. No words, just a video link. I tap it.

In grainy, greenish black-and-white, I watch with growing nausea as a team of three masked men tear through my perimeter guards, knock on my front fucking door, and then tear through the inside of my house. The perspective switches a few times, jumping between cameras like Sal took the fucking time to cut this together. I'll bash his head against the wall for that tomorrow.

For now, my hands shake as Eleni on the video gets spotted by the team. She's unarmed, and I bite back a string of curses that I haven't installed secret weapons caches in every room. They catch her quickly. The fight is brief, but violent. I wince when they shoot her hand, and again when they hit her with the baseball bat. The bloodstains upstairs snap into perfect clarity. Then, they put a bag over her head, bring her outside, and disappear off the cameras.

Eleni is gone. I wait for the lava-rush of rage, but it doesn't come. Instead, a hard, icy calm steals over my skin. The Russians have my fiancée. Fine. I'll simply do whatever it takes to get her back. They don't know what kind of man they're messing with.

Honestly, I'm not sure I do anymore.

The emergency sirens still whine, so I turn and march back to my running car.

When I pull up to Piacere, the street crawls with firefighters and cops. The patches on the boys in blue declare them members of the 121st, the precinct I own, so I ignore them. This time, I shut off the car before climbing out.

No sooner have my feet hit the ground than Gianna sprints over, a metallic shock blanket crinkling around her. She abandons it to throw her arms around me.

"Dino," she sobs. Somehow, the childhood nickname makes sense on her lips right now. Soot lines her face, and when I hold her, she's shaking like a leaf.

I want to ask how she is. Instead, I say, "El?"

"Not here." Gianna draws a shuddering breath. "Not that I saw, or anyone else. God, people died! Crystal, she-she"

I squeeze my cousin and watch firefighters pour water onto the smoldering wreck of everything I've built. The basement should be fireproof. But there's fireproof, and there's Russian fireproof.

One of the cops, a detective in a suit, pulls away from the group and walks our way. My arms tighten around Gianna as I recognize him. Not a fucking detective. Henry goddamn Alcott.

I release her quickly, and she stumbles away, but I barely notice as I stride over to him. My fist cocks back and flies before I finish the thought. His head snaps back, and that nose he always goddamn claimed came from the Bellini side cracks like music to my ears.

"Back up," I spit.

He pulls out a handkerchief-a fucking handkerchief! and blots his nose. "Good to see you too. I was going to ask you if this was the fucking Russians, dickhead."

That catches me for a split second, stilling my fist before I knock out a few of his teeth for good measure. "Why?"

"Because I've been hunting their boss for months now." He presses the handkerchief to his nose and holds it there with a wince. "But I can't get the traction I need in the local syndicates. Any idea why that might be?" I turn to Gianna. "Leave."

She blinks. Ash runs down her face like mascara. She looks from me, to Alcott, and back again.

"He's a cop," she says numbly. "I was going to warn you. He was asking around."

A spurt of anger crashes through the ice in a single hot burst. He was in my club. But it freezes over just as quickly. "Leave," I repeat.

She shakes her head and storms away like she can't believe me. I turn back to Alcott.

"If you're making an offer, make it," I say.

He raises an eyebrow. "I'll admit, I thought this would be harder. But fine. Will you help me take down the Russians?"

The ice wraps jagged fingers around my bones, my muscles. I've lost almost everything. Friends, business, staff. All I have left is my honor. My father impressed into me, over and over again, that in this business, all a man has is his honor, but as long as he has that, he's more man than monster.

The video of Eleni going limp as the bat cracked into her skull plays through my mind again.

"What do you need from me?" I ask.