Page 118 of Ruthless Oath

He drew his hand back so fast, I didn’t have time to move out of the way. His fist pounded my face, hurling me to the floor and slamming my head against the hardwood planks.

“Stay down,” he said. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”

The vomit that had threatened to spill from my gut finally did as I retched onto the floor. I lost the battle of awareness when the pain in my head coerced my eyes shut. The darkness of the room took over in an instant, and everything went black.

Twenty-Seven

Marchello

Men who rancartels waited for no one. Everything was urgent. Time was money. The longer you made them wait, the more money they fucked you out of. If they didn’t try to kill you first and then take everything you had.

It didn’t matter if you were the lead family in your territory, how many jobs you had done for them, or how much money you laundered. When the cartel was ready to do business, you dropped everything and made them front and center.

That was why working with these types of people was profitable. This wasn’t the mafia of fifty years ago when we didn’t need to move stuff for cartels. My people were successful in their own right. We owned the streets. But that was before there were cameras on every corner and inside every business.

How were we expected to shake someone down when the doorbell saw you coming a block away? Hell, even sports betting was legal. If you wanted to survive in this business, you found other channels of revenue.

That was how my father rose to power. He made alliances others didn’t have the vision or street smarts to make. He stayed on top because he knew what these men wanted, and he always figured out how to give it to them.

If I had accidentally destroyed a lucrative cartel shipment six weeks ago, I would have waited for the call, then done everything in my power to make things right.

But it wasn’t six weeks ago. A spoiled mafia princess had blown my life apart, and I couldn’t forget all my responsibilities for her, even to stand by my brother and take care of our shit.

An internal conflict warred within me over what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to handle this.

Milo came into our father’s office and shut the door. I hadn’t seen him all morning because he had been working on leads and trying to figure out what our next move should be. I hoped he was more successful than I had been.

“I have news.” He loosened his tie.

“You got a lead on where Lissia is?”

“No,” he said. “I haven’t had any luck on that front.”

“Did you call Rosalie?”

“Three times.” Milo sat in the chair across from the desk. “She’s not answering.”

“Her mother has to know where she is.” I ran my hand along my rough jaw, noting the effects of not shaving for almost two days. I hadn’t slept or eaten more than one meal either.

“One of our people told me Rosalie has moved back into Gian’s house. As far as they know, there have been no Lissia sightings since she left the safe house.”

“Has anyone seen Collins?”

“None that I can find.” Milo stared at me for a moment. “If I had to guess, I would say he has her. I would also say Gian knows.”

“That’s not what she intended when she left. She would never walk away from me to go to him.”

“I believe you, but if we don’t know where Collins is, we can’t go after him.”

I glanced at my phone, willing it to ring. I needed one of our contacts to come through. We had the description of the car from the cameras. Someone had to spot it and give me a location.

“I want to negotiate something with Gian,” I stated. “It’s the only way I’m going to get her back before we have to deal with all the other shit going on.”

“We can’t make a deal with him. What would you even offer him?”

“I was thinking maybe we could smooth things over for him with the Argentina cartel. If we can fix what we destroyed and still have them work with Gian, maybe that would get him off our backs.”

“We don’t even know what they want from us for getting involved in the first place.” Milo jumped up and slammed his palms against the desk. “You’re not thinking. What the hell is wrong with you?”

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