Page 25 of Where the Wicked Reign

But this last one, the guy was trying to reason with him, trying to spare himself.

Poor, stupid bastard didn’t know that there was no reasoning with Nico when he was in this state. Not until he’d gotten his fill. And that wouldn’t ring true until this last guy was a writhing mass of blood and bones, like all the rest.

While Nico wouldn’t show mercy, that name coming out of the guy’s mouth had managed to pull him up short.

“What?” Nico demanded.

I pushed off the metal floor-to-ceiling rack I’d been leaning against and approached, stepping over a couple of bloodied and disfigured bodies along my path, limbs skewed at awkward angles.

Nico had the guy up against the wall, one hand around his throat and the other grasping his dislocated shoulder. The guy’s greasy blond hair was doused in blood, his nose broken, several deep gashes leaking down his face. His eyes were glazed over, one so swollen it wasn’t even fully open anymore. And four of the fingers of his left hand were broken.

“It was… Carlo Benzino… he hired us… to do this. Burn down this place… was an initiation… so we could… become something.”

Nico snarled in his face, and the guy trembled.

And then he yanked him off the wall, spun him around, then smashed his face into it, knocking him out cold. He released him with a growl and the guy slid down the wall, blood trailing all the way down, until he landed in an unconscious heap.

Nico spun to face me.

I gave him the time I knew he needed to come down from his current state and just watched patiently as he shoved his blooded hands through his hair several times and fought to even out his breathing.

Moments passed, and then I finally saw his shoulders slump and that blackness in his eyes retreat.

He looked out at me clearly.

“This is bad, Nico.”

“Unfortunately, an understatement.”

“Carlo must suspect this Lynch deal.”

“Well, my father has ventured out of the city to meet with him, something that wasn’t known to any of us until after it had already taken place, but it’s possible Carlo Benzino had eyes on him and had his soldiers tail him.”

“And this is his warning for Marco to stay in his lane?”

“Possibly.”

“How do you want to handle it?”

He looked out at the mess of the guys littering the warehouse floor, contemplating carefully like he usually did, weighing up the options and working through them to anticipate how things would play out.

“If Benzino involvement in this gets back to Marco, all hell will break loose.”

Nico nodded. “It will start something that can’t be undone.”

“Want me to call in Rocco and the boys and have these shitheads packed up and transported out of the city ASAP? If we move now, we can get it done before we need to move the coke tonight.”

“There’s only one option acceptable to the Marchetti Syndicate,” an all-too-familiar nasally voice rang out, a moment before Leo Marchetti, Underboss and uncle to Nico, rounded the corner and strode toward us, that ridiculous black leather trench coat of his sweeping around him as he moved. His long, black hair, just like Nico’s—and Marco’s—was pulled into the usual ponytail held there by a rubber band of all things. He wasn’t a particularly muscular guy, but he sure carried himself as though he were.

His brown eyes lit up as he took in the unconscious guys lining the ground.

“What are you doing here?” Nico demanded, making his displeasure known.

“Gio got word that these troublemakers had crossed onto your territory. When you didn’t call in your soldiers, it had me concerned for you.”

“For me?” Nico scoffed. “Sure.”

Leo glared at him for a moment, the two of them entering into a staring match for several long seconds, before Leo grunted when Nico didn’t back down, then looked away and at the fallen troublemakers. “Bring a few of your soldiers down here with chainsaws. Maybe a bone saw too. Chop these shitheads up and send them back to Carlo in pieces.”

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