Page 20 of The Devil's Deal

He’s the only one currently alive in this warehouse, but not for long. When we get what we need, he’ll be dead, and just as pretty as the rest of them.

“I swear I don’t know,” he cries.

Actual fucking tears. Pathetic.

My brother Dante is holding a gasoline canister behind me, opening and closing the top, taunting him. “Maybe if we pour this over his head and light him on fire, he’ll talk faster.”

“Please!” Greg begs. “He and his brothers are in hiding! No one knows where they are. He didn’t tell us.”

Smart. I didn’t expect Faro to tell anyone where he is.

It makes no difference to me. I plan to kill every soldier, every capo, in the Palermo crime family if I have to. Until I kill the don himself, Faro Bianchi, along with his three brothers.

If anyone in their organization stands in our way, they’ll pay the price.

But before we kill the Bianchi men, we’ll burn every legitimate business they own and enjoy watching it go up in flames.

I look Greg up and down, the blood of his soldiers smeared across his white t-shirt. It looks much better now. Adds a little character.

“It’s unfortunate that you don’t know where they are,” Enzo says from beside me. “Without that information, you’re damn useless. Kinda like them.”

He gestures toward the twelve dead bodies with the gun in his hand.

“What else can I do? Please. Come on,” he openly sobs. “I don’t wanna die. I didn’t do shit to no one.”

“That isn’t true,” I spit out, clenching his shirt in my fist, the anger for anyone who associates with Faro spiraling through me. “We know who you are. You work for that piece of shit. You kill for him. You sell guns for him. You’re as bad as he is.”

Greg here isn’t some low-on-the-totem-pole moron. He’s a captain in the organization. A capo, as they call them.

He leads the crew of the now-dead group of soldiers and works directly under Benvolio and Agnelo, two of Faro’s brothers. It’s not common to have two underbosses, but I guess good old Faro couldn’t choose just one. His other brother, Salvatore, is his consigliere, the right-hand man, the one who’s supposed to be giving him advice.

“My family’s gotta eat, man.”

The tears shining in his eyes have no effect on me. I only tighten my fist around his shirt.

“He’s my boss,” the sorry son of a bitch continues. “I don’t know what he did to you, but I’m sorry, man. Please, let me go. I’ll do whatever the hell you want.”

Dante chuckles, walking around me, his shoulders shuddering as though someone’s just told him the funniest joke he’s ever heard.

He reaches to the back of Greg’s head and yanks on his long, brown hair until their eyes meet.

“Do we look like we’ll let you come out of this breathing, my man? Have you not been here when we were slaughtering your pals over there?” He twists Greg’s face toward the dead bodies.

Greg sobs worse than a kid who’s lost all his Halloween candy. But soon, his fear will be gone. He’ll be nothing more than rotting flesh.

I don’t pity him or any of the dead men here. That’s what they get for working for a man like Faro. The one who destroyed my family fifteen years ago when he pulled the trigger on my eight-year-old brother, Matteo, and my father. And for that, he must pay with every ounce of his blood.

They all must.

His brothers were there and did nothing to stop him.

I vowed to get revenge, and every day of the last fifteen years has been building up to their deaths.

When he took our dad and brother from us, he killed my brothers and me in the same moment. We turned numb, and any values our parents instilled in us, like “thou shalt not kill,” vanished.

And when I helplessly watched them die at only thirteen, I suddenly grew into a man within a boy’s body. My mind became filled with nothing beyond their blood, their cries, their screams for mercy.

We were my father’s everything. The only reason he was slaving in the bakery he’s owned since before we were born. He and my mother put every penny they had into that place, and it became really successful.

---