Page 20 of Seek Him Like Shelter

“Do you think the Bratva will retaliate?” I asked.

“Not if we make it seem like the Brook Boys did it,” Rico said, meaning the other gang that the Bratva had turned against us.

It was a common strategy in the playbook. Take out a few members of one crew, make it seem like a rival crew did it, and let them finish taking each other out while you sat back and watched.

Both of our gazes slid to the boss, who sucked in a deep breath and nodded. “Do it. We can’t keep sitting around letting this shit happen. This won’t stop the Russians from coming for more of our turf, but at least it cuts the numbers down against us.”

“I’ll get it done,” Rico said, nodding. “Coal has been chomping at the bit for a job. You good with me taking him on it with me?” he asked.

Coal was a kid who’d originally been working against us. But when he’d been chained to a chair and tortured without breaking, Renzo had developed a grudging respect for the guy. And eventually offered him a job on his crew. He’d been relentlessly working to prove himself since.

“Yeah. He’s done a lot of fucking people up so far, but it’s probably time for him to make his bones,” Renzo said, nodding.

We all had to do it.

Make bones.

Take a life.

It was a rite of passage to eventually become a made man in the mafia.

Coal had been working as an associate for Renzo for a while now. But if he got ‘made,’ he’d be a soldier. And possibly on track to becoming a capo some day.

We’d all been Coal’s age or younger when we’d been made. Of course, back then, shit had been different. Renzo had been making a power grab to get control over the area after decades of shitty leadership that left the Lombardi crime family a laughingstock of the Five Families.

He, and by extension all of us capos, had needed to be hard and ruthless to get this borough to bow down to and respect us.

It was still a daily struggle, little crews deciding they didn’t want to kick up to us anymore. Or local businesses claiming they no longer wanted to pay for protection. But it was nothing like it’d been back then, the bodies practically piling up, blood always staining our hands and clothes.

I knew I spoke for all of us when I said I was glad those days were behind us. But with this threat of the Bratva getting bigger by the day, I couldn’t help but wonder how close we were to having that be our reality all over again.

If we couldn’t get this under control.

If I couldn’t get this under control.

But that wasn’t exactly comforting. Because if this was a move right out of the criminal playbook, then they had a copy too, they’d been studying it, they would know to look toward us as the ones who’d carried it out.

“Should we be worried?” I asked, thinking of my family, of my little sister the most. Not exactly little anymore. She was an adult. Just barely. But she was young and carefree. Because everyone in this area knew they better not put their hands on her.

But if the Bratva wanted to strike, they would know the best way to do it would be through those we loved the most. The wives, the children, the siblings who weren’t in the organization.

And because these fuckers were into sexual exploitation, it wasn’t a huge leap to assume that they would take our women and girls and force them into that fate.

My stomach twisted at the idea of any of those fucks putting a hand on her.

“You’re worried about your sister,” Renzo said, looking at me.

“You’re not worried about Lore?” I asked.

His face darkened at that, and I knew I’d struck a nerve. His marriage might have been a simple arrangement at first, but he’d clearly fallen hard for his wife since then. He’d almost lost her once. He’d be damned if he let that happen again.

“If I am worried about Lore, I can send her to her family,” he said, even though I knew it gutted his pride to say that.

The Costas, while an ally of ours now, weren’t exactly our friends. We’d spent our lives fighting against their reign, their determination to stay on top of all the families, and impose their rules on us.

The bitterness ran pretty deep.

But, at the end of the day, Renzo was right. If there was one safe place in the world for Lore to be if the war between us and the Russians got worse, it was back in Manhattan with the Costas, with those five brothers of hers who would move heaven and earth to keep her safe.

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