Page 9 of Brutal Legacy

“Come on, kid, you’re coming with me.”

I saton the soft leather seat of a town car, staring hard out the window and wondering how the fuck I was going to get out of this one. A man sat beside me. One of the men from the restaurant. Not the rich one and his son. His driver had addressed him asSignore Procuratore.Mr. Prosecutor.

My mama, God rest her tired soul, had always said I was born under an unlucky star. Every single day, the fucking universe proved her right.

The car pulled to a smooth stop outside a squat building painted a faded light blue, jerking me from my moody silence.

Carabinieri.

The local police office. I’d managed to escape Napoli and the people who wanted to hurt me and spit on my traitor father’s grave, just to be arrested in the fucking countryside. There wasn’t a soul in the world with the ability or means to come bail me out. I’d rot in there.

I clenched my hands tightly into fists on my thighs as I considered fighting my way out of the car and making a run for it. My stomach growled, a sense of nervous anticipation running through my thoughts.

“Hungry?” a gruff voice said from beside me.

The prosecutor was watching me carefully.

I shrugged and turned away, putting a hand on the door. I didn’t need this fucker gloating. I tried the handle. It was locked.

I looked back at the man.

He was staring at my tattered jeans and sneakers, one of which was held together with string.

“Did you run away from home?”

I snorted softly. “Run away? How old do you think I am?”

He mirrored my shrug from before. “It’s hard to tell. You’re tall but skinny… underfed. You’ve got swagger and confidence… but the eyes, they tell a different story. You’re hard to place, and you’re old enough to get arrested, I suppose. You fucked around with the wrong person. The De Sanctis family aren’t people to cross.”

My face drained of color, and sudden nausea hit me like a punch. I’d just tried to rob a De Sanctis? The De Sanctis family was infamous in Italy. I’d never seen any of them in person… not until today.

“You’re lucky that they’ve let me deal with your sentencing.”

I glanced meaningfully at the police station. “Yeah, really lucky.”

The man watched me for a long moment. “Do you know who I am?”

“A prosecutor, I guess.”

The man nodded. “I’m not just the prosecutor, but the moral compass of Castel Amaro. Mercy is a good look for a man like me… I’m thinking of running for office in a few years.”

“Weren’t you having lunch with the De Sanctis men?” I pointed out.

The prosecutor smirked and nodded. “Indeed. I love the law, but it doesn’t pay like it ought to. A man can’t be blamed for supplementing. I have staff to pay and a daughter to support.”

I shrugged again, unsure where this man was going with his confession.

“You don’t care that the prosecutor was having lunch with a mob boss?” he wondered idly.

I shook my head. “That’s your business, not mine. I just need to eat something.”

The prosecutor chuckled and slapped me on the shoulder.

“I like you, kid. You’re a survivor. Scrappy… I like that. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you a chance to pay off your transgression. Here is your sentence: Don’t go to jail, work for me. I need a new stable boy. You can sleep in the barn. It’s still warm enough. You can eat from my kitchen, except dinners, that’s for me and Georgia.”

I turned to face the man who held my future in his hands, trying not to show my pathetic hope.

“Just shovel horse shit, that’s it? What’s the catch?”

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