Page 4 of Wicked Rivals

“No, please…” he begged. “Please don’t hurt them.”

I shrugged, let go of his hair, and then landed one more solid punch on his body before turning my back to him.

“Start talking, Mark, and I’ll have no reason to harm them.”

Bile rose to the back of my throat, burning it. I swallowed it back down. Threatening a man’s family turned even my stomach, but if that was what it took, then it had to be done.

No doubt I had become a monster. Same as my father.

That didn’t mean I liked it or liked what my ambitions forced me to do. But if I slipped up now and went soft on the guy, I would lose the power I’d already worked so hard to gain.

Not power over Mark, he was nobody.

The power of my reputation.

No man in this business respected a don who went easy on anyone, not even with a nobody like Mark.

Respect, more than anything else, became the one precious commodity among men with enough drive and steel to fight their way to the top. Men like me.

I had already come so far, earning the respect, the reputation, and by the end of the week… hell, by the end of the day, I would be the most powerful man in New York.

So no matter how distasteful I found my work or how much I reminded myself of my father in those moments, the option for choosing a different path didn’t exist for me.

I took a second to recover my resolve.

With that last blow to Mark’s battered body, I knew something in him had snapped, physically and mentally. Even so, I turned to face him again, ready to get back to it, because I still meant business.

And business was fucking business.

But I didn’t have to hit him again…

He slumped forward, hanging by the chains, hardly able to lift his chin and make eye contact with me as he gave in.

“Okay, okay,” he gasped. “Fine.”

“What’s fine, Mark?”

I grabbed a white towel from the table with my tools and used it to start casually cleaning up the brass on my fist.

He panted and grunted.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“The Commission knows you’re marrying the Capaldo girl. They know you killed her brothers too. And they’re…”—he coughed up more blood—“they’re looking at you for the disappearance of her uncles.”

“Hm. I’m not seeing the value in your information, Mark. Don Capaldo broke with the Commission years ago. Everyone knows that.”

Although my statement was true, and I had delivered it in a dead-even tone, my thoughts raced.

What he’d said wasn’t all that wrong.

In two days, I would marry Benedict’s daughter, Benedetta Capaldo. And I had her brothers killed. Her uncles too, but no one should’ve noticed they were missing. Not yet, not until after the wedding.

I tossed the cloth and headed back over to Mark.

“I still need you to make this worthwhile for me to end your pain. So…”

“So they know you want more than just her father’s men,” he blurted. “They know you want to wipe out the Capaldos and the Maltas. Absorb ’em into the Vignali empire. They don’t want that to happen.”

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