Days. She’d been gone days.
I’d called her the first night only to notice her phone was still on the counter. She’d left everything, and the only thing we could do was listen. Cade kept eyes on her and gave me phone access to the men who had taken her hostage. Yet I had to trust her. I had to let her go like she asked.
We kept our ears to the ground for news and focused on our own cleansing.
I told Bastian that very night, “We’re cleaning this damn family up. That means you’re about to become the real leader of this country.” We’d been his men of honor, his soldiers, his musketeers. The day had come where he chose to stand with us now. Was it our blood or was it the family’s that mattered?
He’d nodded at me slowly, taking in the words I was saying. “I was thinking the same thing.”
“It’s time our family got to work. If the streets are red, we paint them that color so they can be cleaner the next day.”
Dante, Cade, and Bastian had nodded. We’d agreed that we were fighting for a change. It would be brutal, but it would be worth it.
Now, I stood in the room with another man I didn’t trust.
“Sergio, begging isn’t something I do well. I won’t plead with you to tell me what you know,” I told the man in front of me.
“You don’t have to, Rome. I wouldn’t lie to you.” Even the moles on Sergio’s bald head looked like they might be sweating. His buggy eyes and pursed lips were perfect indicators that he was keeping something from me.
“I’ve known you my whole life.” Words that should have been said in anguish rolled off my tongue without an ounce of emotion.
“Right! I knew you when you were just a little boy,” Sergio yelped, willing to jump on anything that might save him. He was tied to a chair in his own house, his buggy eyes darting back and forth, searching for an escape from the secret I knew he was hiding from us.
Maybe I should have felt a pull to spare him. We were close enough. He was part of the family.
Did no one understand though? Katalina had left. She was gone. With her, she’d taken all that was good, all the hope, all the dreams of the future.
All of my heart.
She’d left only the monster.
I couldn’t have kept him caged if I’d tried. He erupted out of hiding, and we went on a rampage.
Katalina didn’t just stir my demon though. She’d had everyone in our unit vibrating with devastation over losing her.
This time, I couldn’t intervene any more than I already had. I had to let it play out, or she’d never ever come back to me.
I didn’t wait well.
I killed exceptionally, though. All I needed was a list, and Cade did a fine job of providing me with that.
One by one, Dante and I went down the line. It didn’t matter if we’d known them a day or a year or our whole lives. We needed a new family, and my immediate unit and I were going to clear ours out until we had the one the city and Katalina deserved.
“Cade pulled your bank statements from the year of Katalina’s mom’s disappearance. A lot of big numbers.” I disclosed to Sergio. “Did you and Mario have something to do with it? Did you know about her?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. The money we moved back then, Rome, it’s all so confusing. We had a lot more—”
“Sergio, remember how my dad would hand you a dollar and you’d say, ‘No, no’?” I knelt down in front of him, trying to get on his level one last time. I motioned behind me to Dante, and he placed Sergio’s sawed-off shotgun into my outstretched hand. “You’d tell him he only owed you ninety-five cents. You counted each and every penny. Your memory hasn’t failed you.”
“My memory isn’t what it used to be. I don’t recall . . .”
So much time we could have had growing a better family, a better unit. I didn’t have any more to waste.
I aimed the gun at his jaw. “Stop playing games. You know I don’t like them.”
His eyes bulged. “Dante!” he called out.
Dante just straightened one of his black gloves. “Answer the question, Sergio. I don’t want to call the cleanup again today.”
“Look, I only set up her foster care. Mario wanted her somewhere she wouldn’t last, okay?”
My stomach turned at his words.
Marvin.
Mario had known that man was a pedophile. He’d known just where to get Katalina placed so that she’d go running straight into his arms.
“I thought he’d spare Jimmy, you know?” he wheezed. “Jimmy was supposed to be good to her, but he got too close to her. It all worked out, though, huh?”
I pulled the trigger. The sawn-off shotgun blew most of his jaw clean off.
“God damn it, Rome.” Dante sighed and wiped a splatter of blood from his cheek. Teeth were scattered across the floor. “Couldn’t you have at least warned me? I would have stepped back.”
“I’m sick of playing games. He didn’t want to talk. Now he doesn’t have a mouth to do so.”
“Or a life, for that matter,” Dante grumbled and started to type out a text that was surely about cleanup.
“We got what we needed from him.” I undid the latch of my chain and removed it from around his hands, then rolled it up my arm to tuck back under my jacket sleeve. “We should just let the cops handle this one. He didn’t struggle enough to have marks on his wrists, and it’s his own gun.”
Dante waved me off. “You’re right, not that it matters. The chief of police called this morning. He knows we’re on a killing spree, and the squad is capable of keeping it under wraps.”
Dante and the chief went way back. Their friendship—along with the security of having the family on your side—was enough for most of the cops in the city to cover up what we wanted. “Then, I’m not messing with cleaning today.”
“I don’t want to be near the fucker, anyway. Damn, man. They all twisted her life. She was a pawn.” He pulled at his hair and then swiped a hand down his face. “I don’t know if she’ll ever come back. Not after we tell her this.”
“We clean out everyone involved. We make her see we’re family.” I pointed at the dead man, his head hanging sideways as blood dripped from the top of his mouth. “He wasn’t.”
Dante nodded and grabbed the gun, shoving it into the corpse’s hand.
I pulled open the front door. “On to the next.”
One foot in front of the other. One kill after another.
Each body was a testament to my love for her. This family had been hiding things for too long. Now, I would bury myself in their darkness and clean up. I was the one who was supposed to live in the shadows and listen to the whispers. I was the one Mario was supposed to trust with his secrets. He’d kept this from me—his biggest secret of all. He’d prepped me all these years to rip apart those who disobeyed, who omitted the truth, who threw their bones in a closet where we couldn’t find them.
Didn’t he know that I lived in that grim closet now? That I collected those bones and hunted down the ones who’d hidden them?
The monster in me had eyes that saw better in the dark, saw the secrets more clearly than anyone.
I was ready to pull down the whole family. This was about trust, now. Our family had a new ruler. Bastian had given us the go-ahead, and it started with transparency. The ones who couldn’t clean up and be open about their past would be wiped out.
“I’m picking up Mario alone,” I told Dante as we got back into my vehicle. I steered us toward the highway that led to Dante’s place.
“I don’t like the sound of that, man.” He pulled his gloves off and shoved them into his leather jacket. “Do Bastian and Cade know?”
“What’s there to know?” My hands gripped the steering wheel, and the leather creaked underneath my grip. I squeezed it harder, like I was squeezing a neck. Turmoil waged a war in all of us. We’d been putting Katalina in the line of fire for far too long. This family had taken advantage of her, of others, even of me.
Dante shook his head. “We should all be there. He’s the man we need to stop if it’s true.”
“If he killed her mother and only took her in for her bloodline, for the union of the bratva and the family, he’s as good as dead today.”
“Then, let him sit in the chair. Let us make that decision together.”
“I’m still going to pick him up alone. Get the unit to the facility. We do it as soon as he lands.” I drove in silence as we passed over a bridge where the river drew a line between upper and lower class for most of Chicago society. I dropped off Dante and headed straight to the airport.
I dialed Mario’s number and listened to him greet me like we were still family.
Yet my blood for him had run cold.
“Mario, I’m positive now that love runs deeper than blood.” I shifted the phone so I could cradle it between my shoulder and neck. “I’m on my way to get you from the airport.”
“Rome, I’ll get one of the units to send me someone. I want you to keep working on tracking down those who need to be cleaned up.”
“Nah. I’m already on my way, Mario. Keep me company. I’m tired of being on the job today, you know what I mean?”
The line crackled, and I pictured him switching ears, something he did when he was a bit nervous. Mario knew I never really cared for company. Or maybe he just knew by my tone. He hadn’t stayed alive so long as the head of the family by being unaware.
“How far out are you?” he asked.
“I’ll be there in five.” I paused and turned onto the airport exit. “It’s good you came home, Mario.”
“You know I love Katie as a daughter. I heard some things.”
“Oh, I know, Mario, I know.”
I pressed the red phone icon on the screen to end the call. Maybe he’d run, get back on the plane, and set up in New York. He had to know that it was the smart thing to do.
Mario held himself to a standard, though. Every plan he’d ever implemented, he stood behind.
As I drove up to him on the tarmac, he stood tall, the inner silk of his navy suit flashing in the wind. The gold buttons on his cuffs glinted in the light of the setting sun. For all he’d been through, for all the years he’d endured as the head of the family, Mario looked well.
I rolled down my window as I pulled up to him, and he started lugging his suitcase toward the back. “Should I throw them in for you?”
“You’re our monster, not our valet, Rome.” He chuckled, but I wondered if he knew about the last two men I’d killed.
Was the rage building in me the monster we all thought we could control?
He got in and turned his mud brown eyes on me. “Bastian wants us to meet at the facility.”
“That he does.” Itching to crack my neck, I tightened my grip on the steering wheel instead. Then I adjusted the air, trying to cool the temperature within the vehicle.
The weather was gloomy, raining on and off, so there wasn’t a need for air conditioning. Still, it cooled down the heated temper flowing through me. Cade had continued to text me, call me, send me more information on Mario.
Mario had dug his own grave. Even his sons had turned on him. I knew from the texts. They’d started with:
Cade: I found a few things about Dad.
Then it’d progressed to:
Cade: I don’t know what the fuck Mario was thinking.
Then even his name was dropped:
Cade: This fucker needs to explain.
From there, Cade hadn’t even added his own commentary. He’d just send encrypted files for me to look over. Billing statements, phone calls he’d found within the phone service system. Nothing was off limits for Cade. He could break into anything, which had me confident that he’d continually been able to block our own lines.
Technology was dangerous in our field, but we had one of the best hackers to cover our asses. The only thing that could save you was him or the trust of the family. Unfortunately, Mario had lost him and our trust. We scoured everything we could for intel on him.
“What’s this all about?” He chuckled, but I saw him squirm in his seat. Mario hadn’t been called home by his son for nothing. Bastian didn’t exert his power over his father ever, nor did he want to sit down for a meal with the old man. Their problems ran deep, and this had made them near impossible to overcome.
“I’m the monster and the valet today, Mario. Not the explainer. I won’t be the one doing that today.”
“Come on, Rome.” He clapped a hand on my shoulder.
I dipped it so he quickly lost his grip. Connecting through a familial touch wouldn’t work, not when it felt like a snake’s.
His bushy eyebrows pulled toward the center of his face. Lines from years of stress deepened across his forehead. “You’re my son, Rome. Just like Cade and Bastian, huh? Tell me what’s got you this way with me.”
He probably could have pulled at Cade’s heartstrings with that one. Bastian and I had always been more distant from Mario. Bastian had to live up to being the heir to the family, and so Mario hardened him with constant pressure and gruesome work. I’d been his right-hand man, the one he turned to for most things. I knew too much to have heartstrings.
When I didn’t answer him right away, his right hand started twitching. He’d risk jumping out of a moving vehicle because Mario had stared death in the face enough times to know he was in trouble.
“Don’t spend your last moments being a coward, Mario. Stay put.” I punched the door lock for good measure.
Mario gulped loudly but didn’t respond. He leaned over and turned on his favorite oldies station, cranked up the music, and shrugged when I looked over at him. “One for the road, huh?”
