Page 55 of Secret Baby for the Italian Mafia Don

I’m rolled onto my back, staring up into a hazy orange light. I spit blood out of my mouth. Someone gathers me by the collar, ready to punch me across the face. I lurch upward, head-butting him hard. He stumbles back, cursing and spitting. The rest of the mob jumps in to avenge him, and I’m overwhelmed by another barrage of kicks and the swing of a pipe against my ribs. I do what I can to protect my head, letting my body take the rest of it.

When you’re outnumbered, overwhelmed, your mind goes somewhere else. The thinking part of you retreats, letting the animal take over and endure pain that thousands of years of hard-won survival have conditioned it for. In the first lull, I still try to drag myself up, working on that one, desperate instinct to not go down without a fight.

A boot comes down on my chest, pushing me down and pinning me there. The pain of broken ribs splinters through my chest and robs the air from my lungs. A door shuts somewhere far off. Someone rips my head back and says, “This is a warning.”

I roll over and spit out the blood sliding down my throat. The cowards flee, scuttling out like cockroaches exposed to light as footsteps approach.

The world swims in my vision. I fall back into a heap on the floor, trying to catch my breath when every inhale feels like a knife in my side.

“What thefuck?”

I hear the words from the doorway, and black combat boots come into my range of sight. I look up. Angel sways over me as I try to blink through the haze. His face really isn’t the first thing you want to see while trying to figure out if you’re concussed or not, and I grimace as he tries to help get me on my feet. I push him away.

“Who the hell did this?”

I knock his hand away.

“Why don’t you tell me?” I snarl between breaths, trying to speak around the pain in my side. “I’ll fucking kill them, I swear to God.”

“Not from there, you won’t.”

I force myself to my feet, biting my groan down behind my teeth.

“What the fuck do they think, Angel?” I demand, furious, sending the drug-carved man skittering backward in alarm. “Do they think I’m doingnothing? I brought Sal an old connect of mine, made him a deal he couldn’t refuse. I’ve got drug routes to manage, a lead on a couple good debts that we can run—two weeks, I could have all of your people getting a cut of the laundry if we feed it through their businesses, I just need the goddamntime!”

“I don’t know shit about this, Nico! It’s not like they ran it by me and got my fucking permission!”

Laughter and voices rise from the locker rooms. Angel lowers his voice cautiously as he goes on, in an angry whisper, “But they just might, if you go crawling to them with those excuses. Cleaning cuts and skimming drug profits is fucking chump change, Nico. You can’t bring them table scraps and tell them it’s a fucking steak!” Our eyes meet, and I see his own frustration there, glimmering in the back of his gaze. I grin to myself, feeling so stupid for thinking Angel wasn’t just as deeply invested as the rest of them.

“I put my name on yours,” he says. “My neck is in the same fucking noose. Youknowwhat you promised us.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t exactly give you a time frame, did I?” I ask.

“Do you know how much Brighton makes off this little ring down here, after Sal takes his cut?” Angel asks, as if I wouldn’t know the numbers.

“About two million a week,” I hiss, as the pain coalesces into a single throbbing through my whole body.

“Two million. The motherfucker isn’t even Italian! He’s some nobody that got lucky on an old property and a good dealdecadesago—we could move the whole fucking operation fully into the family’s hands,” Angel continues. “That’sthe kind of innovation you promised us. Cutting out all these little middlemen, all the extra fat that just weighs the family down.”

It is exactly the kind of deal I can’t make. Not right now.

Salvatore walks the big dogs and makes sure they’re all behaving on their tight, short leash: government, city council, police, the tax man. It would take a position like Marcel’s to change the day-to-day, shadowy business decisions that keep the family machine running smoothly in the background, the business calls that a don doesn’t have time to bother himself with.

But sometimes—not that any of these idiots would understand it—things just workbecausethey work. For decades, this ring has been operating smoothly, in secrecy. No busts, no rival attacks. Just smooth, profitable business, week after week. Only an idiot fries his golden goose for his dinner, but I swallow that logic with another taste of blood.

“This shit can’t happen overnight.”

“Look, don’t appeal to me, man. I’m not the one you need to convince, I’m not the one sending people to jump you, alright?That’s not me, and I don’t fuck with it. But I see where it’s coming from. I mean, we offered you a fucking arsenal, and if you’re not gonna use it for our cause, then someone is gonna use it against you. If something needs to be done about Marcel, I say we skip the diplomacy and reallyhandle business.”

“You kill Marcel, Sal will pin it on me in five minutes flat. I’ll be buried before Marcel’s body is cold. You can’t go for Marcel, or nobody gets what they want.”

“Hey, I never said we off Marcel. I’ve got at least a little foresight, c’mon. Give me that,” he laughs, his hand on my back urging me toward the bathroom where I can wash the blood off. “But the way we see it, the only thing keeping Marcel in the business is his little sister’s ring finger.”

My blood runs cold, all the pain in my body vanishing in one breath.

“And it’s no secret she’s been out here running wild,” Angel continues, oblivious. “She’s a tragedy going somewhere to happen, if you know what I mean. So I say—”

The strangled sound he makes is the only thing that brings me back to the moment, making me realize I’ve crossed the room and gotten my hand around his throat, taken him off his feet and pinned him to the wall. The white patches of his face turn scarlet, his bony hands scrambling at my grip as he kicks like an insect.

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