Page 3 of King of Obsession

‘Cazzo, it’s so I keep an eye on y’all,’ I growled. ‘I see the details others miss. I also pick up the pieces so you can party. Like I’ll be doing tonight, on famiglia business as you shake your ass.’

He lifted his hands to his lips, our family’s double-fingered salute, wishing me well.

I checked my watch. ‘I’m off. Don’t wait up.’

Lorenzo smirked. ‘I won’t because you’re a buzz kill.’

With a blasé wave, my brother sailed off, leaving a waft of expensive cologne in his wake.

I shook my head, a reluctant smirk tugging at my mouth. Lorenzo and I may have been born of the same mother, but we’d been stitched into different men.

Where he adapted the smooth charm and urbane airs, I retreated to shadowed alleys and underground rings.

While he glided across glittering ballrooms, I prowled the streets looking for a fight.

Massaging my bruised knuckles, I huffed a laugh. No, my brother and I were nothing alike. To be honest, I preferred it that way.

Lorenzo was the Lothario of our family, but I sensed that, like me, he was a one-woman-for-life kind of man who hadn’t found his soulmate yet.

I was still holding out on finding a wife. Unconvinced anyone would ever handle all of me.

A loudspeaker screeched, and an uncle, once removed,stumbled onto the stage to announce speech time.

I prowled away, thanking the gods I was evading the long-winded verbose from the wedding party.

Sliding into my Pagani Zonda sports car in the castle’s parking lot, I headed to the center of Naples, away from its thriving neighborhoods with old-world homes, plunging into its gnarly underbelly.

The Europa Guesthouse loomed ahead, its neon sign flickering in the night. Caught between a hotel and a hostel, it was about as genteel as a motel got in this part of town.

I pulled into an adjacent side street.

The place was infamous for its small elevators, a slight chance of bedbugs, teens hollering from the bodega next door, broken glass, and half-drank bottles in the hallways.

It wasn’t the Palazzo Caracciolo or the Ritz, but what did I fuckin’ care?

I had a job to do.

No one was at reception, so I powered on, my nose wrinkling at the odor of stale cigarettes and cheap freshener rank in the air.

Music thumped from one of the rooms, and the sound of laughter and shouting from another.

I inched past a room where I caught the vigorous noises of banging against a wall and a woman’s wails as she was plumbed to oblivion.

With a nod, I slipped by two wrinkled, sleazy men exchanging packages, light spilling from inside the drab room they stood in front of.

Moments later, I eased toward the darkened doorjamb of Number Fifteen.

My instincts churned like a beacon in superstition’s night,a loaded foretelling packed with omens of foreboding.

Weapon ready, I was about to tap on the door when my inner alarms went off.

The sliding casement next to the door glided open.

I stared at it as a slender arm reached out and dropped a bag and a pair of worn sneakers to the ground under the window.

An interesting turn of affairs.

Still, I prided myself on my fuckin’ patience.

---