Page 95 of Enforcer

His name is Mark. That alone took two hours to get out of him. It only took me another fifteen minutes—and a broken wrist—to get him to tell me his last name, Romano.

One ofthe Five.

“Tell me why your family has been using our docks.”

“I’m only a distant cousin,” he pleads.

This means he’s not privy to the inner workings and thewhy. He’s a low man on the totem pole, doing as he’s told to keep alive.

I hit the trigger on the drill, a favorite of Slate’s and mine to work with.

He cries out in fear. “Listen, all I know is that the Riccis and Bianchis are weak right now. The transition allows us to get some skin in the game.”

“Skin in the game? Trafficking?”

He shrugs.

“Well,” I say, standing and moving toward the table with everything Marco laid out for me. “I guess if you don’t want to keep your neck, I’ll sever it to send a message. You’ll still serve me even if you’ve nothing useful to give me,” I tell him.

His screams are mind-numbing until the ax gets through the third swing, and he silences altogether.

“Fucking silence. It truly is golden, you know?” I ask him, crouching over his head that has rolled toward my foot and stopped, his fear-filled eyes looking up at me.

I consider closing them for a moment, but then I decide against it. I want them to see how scared he was.

Let them witness just how weak the Riccisaren’tright now.

“Marco!” I call, knowing he’s lurking somewhere around here; he always does when I’m working.

“Sir?” he asks, coming into the room.

I lift Mark’s head off the ground by his hair, my bloodied hand fisting into the brown strands as I turn, holding his head toward Marco.

He doesn’t bristle, which is good. Had he, his head would’ve been the next to roll. Riccis don’t accept weakness.

“Deliver this to Don Romano.”

“Any message you want attached, sir?”

I shake my head, wiping my hands down my blood-soaked clothes. “No. I think they’ll understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”

He lifts his head a bit, nodding. “Yeah. I think they’ll get the message loud and clear.”

“If they don’t, the streets will run red,” I mutter as Marco shuts the door behind him.

I look down at my hands, realizing just how soaked they are in blood. It pisses me off. I know her scent is gone now.

I dial Lorenzo and fill him in on what I got and my message.

“Well, we will wait and see if they choose to answer,” he tells me before we end the call.

I have Pauly drive me back to my place to get cleaned up before I go to Alyssa’s and work off some of the restless energy coursing through me.

It’s two in the morning, so I’ll likely need to break in. I don’t have the key to Slate’s townhouse, but I know how to get in. It used to be his father’s. It was his childhood home.

Lord knows why he kept it, likely only so no one else would get their hands on it.

The neighborhood is all made ofold money,and that house has been in the Ricci family for generations.

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