Page 146 of Deception

“Keep the change.” I absently hand the cabbie a fifty.

“Gee, thanks.” He screeches off around the corner.

My feet carry me straight inside, through the lobby. I’m shown to the elevator, step off to find a waiting room. A secretary.

Dom always liked things business professional. The waiting room has a stack of magazines. All outdated. The woman at the desk doesn’t greet me, she just points at a chair.

Classic New York.

Reading is the last thing on my mind right now. Especially some gossip-column trash from five years ago. TV shows never interested me much, either. Unless they’re really informative, challenging.

That’s why I spend so much time working. Filling my days with my family’s duties.

I look into the girls my brothers bring home, to make sure they aren’t a liability. I follow up on their nights out, where they went, who they were with.

That’s my job.

To know everything at all times. And then come up with how to manage it, erase it, file it, clean it up, or pay it off. Just like this is my job. To face our greatest enemy and try to go to work for him.

I can hardly wait.

Yet it’s up to me to come back, to pave the way for Ciro and Ero and the other members of the family, to ensure that Dom doesn’t hurt our people. Which means I need to do something I don’t know if I can reconcile.

I have to swear fealty to Domenico Vipera. Play secretary to a madman. So, I go over the list again in my head to stay calm.

I’ve known the guy my entire life.

He’s like another brother, or maybe a young uncle. Never really got along with him, but he was always there. I know him like I know Alessandro.

And that is what really eats at me.

Dom is rash.

He’s just as likely to kill me the minute I walk in the door as he is to say hello and give me a hug—like he didn’t just take over the family compound and usurp my brother. Or he’ll act like we never met, playing an angle I have no clue how to navigate.

That’s how my mind works.

Working out every scenario so I’m not taken off guard.

It’s my only advantage.

And it’s the price I must pay, the risk I have to take to stay close, in the know, and make moves to undermine him. The last order Alessandro may ever give me.

Someday, my brothers and I will have our revenge. We will take back what is ours.

I just hate that it falls to me to make that happen. Alessandro is cut out for that, to carry the burdens of being number one. To make the call, expect it to be carried out, and live with the consequences.

You’d think delegating all his orders my whole life would make me well-suited to doing what he does, but it doesn’t. It’s not the same, passing along and carrying out the orders versus giving them.

My only hope is to assume a clerical position.

Run Dom’s books or manage his staff.

Something in the background, something quiet.

“He’ll see you now.” A troll in a suit steps into the hall outside Dom’s office, holding the door. He waves me in with the barrel of his MAC-11.

At close range he could paint a wall with lead, single coat coverage, no primer needed.

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