Page 88 of Killer Love

I hold his stare. “You never gave me a choice.”

Antony shakes his head once and recoils from me. He looks at Luka. “Your father will—”

“My father is dead,” Luka says.

Antony stops. “Nikolai is gone?”

“Gio killed him.” Luka pauses and takes the next few seconds to study Antony carefully. Shock, confusion. Fear. It all bleeds from his old eyes in a span of seconds. “It’s time for the two of us to negotiate a new truce.”

Enzo reaches behind his back and pulls out the pistol hidden in his belt.

Antony shakes his head. “Gio would never—”

“I’m not going to waste time proving it to you, Antony,” Luka says. “The fact is, starting tonight, you no longer have three sons.”

“Excuse me?”

“Gio is dead. Dead to you. Dead to me. And, especially, dead to Sofia.”

Antony glares at me again. “Now, hold on—”

“In addition to losing Gio, your family will abandon Italy completely.”

The old man’s jaw drops. He laughs, taking a step back to look Luka up and down. Marty and Enzo chuckle behind us, but Luka keeps his features sharp and serious.

Antony waves a hand in the air, clearly fed-up with us, and three guards appear from the corners with pistols drawn. “Get this piece of shit out of my sight,” he says to them, gesturing at Luka. He squints at me, the whites of his eyes nearly swallowed by his anger. “The girl stays.”

Luka doesn’t move. “I’m not leaving until we’re done negotiating.”

“You were done the second you stepped in here.” Antony points a finger. “You walk into my casino alone with my son’s whore on your arm and tell me to abandon my boy and my homeland, and you expect… what? To walk out again?”

“Yes.”

He scoffs, deepening the anger in his forehead. “You are too outnumbered to have balls so big, Lutrova.”

“I assure you, the size of my balls is more than adequate.” Luka smiles. “I didn’t come here alone.”

A man slides off the barstool in the corner. His face lies obscured under the shadow of a baseball cap, but I can make out the scar drawn down his left cheek.

Fox pulls a pistol from his coat and rests it against Enzo’s ear. “Give me your gun, please,” he says, extending his free hand.

Enzo doesn’t move, his jaw sagging with amused disbelief.

Antony chuckles. “You brought one man?”

Luka tilts his head. “Not quite.”

The room falls silent. Dealers and players rise out of their chairs, standing up from the game tables and the bar to head in our direction. They move in waves, each taking their place in a circle around us until the entire casino points a gun at Antony Zappia’s face.

All of them.

Luka smiles. “As I said, I’m not leaving until we’re done negotiating. Give your guards a break and let’s talk.”

Antony stands still, his eyes withholding a screaming tantrum. Finally, he nods at his guards to back down. Enzo drops his gun into Fox’s open palm.

“Not bad, kid…” Antony murmurs.

“Turns out, it doesn’t take very much to convince people to knock the Zappia clan down a notch,” Luka says. “You’ve pissed off a lot of people.”

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