Page 2 of Malevolent King

“Fuck you,” he ground out.

“Tell me, and I’ll take mercy on you.”

He blinked at me, his furious eyes burning into mine. Pain was something many people could endure, but hope? It was deadly.

“New Jersey, Casa Nera, the De Sanctis compound.”

“And how does one get out of here without attracting attention?”

He wetted his thick lips. “There are woods at the back. They go nearly the entire way to Trenton. You can climb the wall.”

He had barely finished speaking when his eyes bulged, and red frothed from between his lips. He mouthed a word as the slit in his throat sprayed his lifeblood against my neck.

“Thisismy mercy,” I told him, getting up. It was the only type I knew.

I stood in the sudden stillness of the dark garage, death hanging in the air. I waited to see if the struggle had alerted someone, but no one came.

I could get out of here. I was well on my way, but I didn’t know who was outside or what the layout of the compound was.

I needed someone for insurance.

Someone important.

I knew just the one.

2

SOFIA

“Sofia, you’re a lifesaver,” my best friend, Chiara, gushed in my ear.

I climbed out of a cab outside heavy metal gates framing a long stone driveway. “Hm, sure. You owe me. Again. Don’t forget,” I said, a smile forming despite the pain helping my friend hide her secret relationship with my bodyguard was proving to be.

Chiara was the only daughter of a high-up made man in the De Sanctis family.

My famiglia.

Angelo was the stoic bodyguard who’d been watching over me for years. As the only daughter of a don who ruled New Jersey into Philly and even New York, I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere alone. Especially not the trip from art school in New York to my home in New Jersey. The warm and cozy connotations of the wordhomewere hardly appropriate for the sprawling compound from which the De Sanctis family reigned from, but it was the only one I’d ever known.

Today, I’d taken a cab home to give my poor, hardworking protector and my best friend some alone time. An act that was against my father’s, my don’s, rules. A rule I’d never broken for myself, but for my best friend? It was worth the risk.

I stood outside the gates, eyeing the black stone plaque mounted on a sandstone wall. It read “Casa Nera,” and was carved in a scrolling cursive. The tension I always felt coming home crowded my shoulders like an invisible noose around my neck. A leash. I might be the prized and protected daughter of the powerful Antonio De Sanctis,capo di capiof New Jersey, but I was as far under my father’s thumb as any other family member. A pretty dolly my father trotted out on Sundays to impress his men. At worst, a pure, untouched bargaining chip in a potential future alliance.

Turning a winning smile on like a switch, I pivoted toward the guard post sitting on the left side of the gate.

Luckily, I recognized the man on duty.

“Gino, how are you doing today?” I asked, leaning my body into the gap in his plexiglass partition and batting my eyes at him.

He narrowed his in return. “I know what you’re up to, Sofia. It won’t work. I have to report it.”

“But you don’t when you think about it. I’m fine. No one else saw… you don’t want Angelo to get in trouble, do you? He was the best man at your wedding.”

Most of the De Sanctis men at Casa Nera were as familiar to me as uncles. Made men who’d been around since I was a little girl, tagging along behind her older brother and playing hide-and-seek on the sprawling grounds of the compound. I had thirty men just like Gino, who I calledzio,but he was one of my favorites.

Gino sighed and looked at the security feeds, checking that no one else had witnessed me arriving home in a cab.

He swallowed hard, cracking his knuckles with nerves. “Fine, but only because your father isn’t here, and today is tense as hell, and I don’t want either of you getting in trouble.”

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