Page 18 of Sin & Secrets

“He said if we wanted to keep our spots on the show, we had to…”

“SHUT UP YOU LITTLE BITCH!”

Claudio launches himself at her, crawling across the floor with surprising speed.

I take no small amount of pleasure in stepping on his outstretched hand. The custom metal heel of my Italian leather shoes breaks bone at an agonizingly slow pace.

Claudio’s screams soothe something in my very soul.

“You know that I can’t remember the day you swore your loyalties to my family,” I muse. “Mustn’t have been particularly important to me.”

Sweat and tears pour from Claudio’s face. “I’m loyal to your father, you bastard!”

“But you must know the bylaws you swore to uphold? About protecting our own? Ringing any bells?”

“Fuck you.”

“Perhaps I give you too much credit. From where I’m standing,” I press my foot down harder for emphasis, “you don’t seem like a particularly literate fellow, so I’ll spell it out for you.”

Something snaps under my foot again, and Claudio’s eyes roll back into his head. I sigh in frustration as I step away to grab a glass from the side and chuck the dark liquid in his face.

He wakes up again with a start. “W-what?!”

“Unfortunately for you, coercion and battery aren’t things we tolerate in the Guild.”

Claudio blinks away the sticky alcohol and looks up at me. “Battery?”

“You might think you’re untouchable, but mark my words: you’re a dead man walking if you don’t clean up your act.” I spit on him for good measure. “Do I make myself clear?”

He wipes at his face as he tries to sit up. “I didn’t…coerce her.”

“You may want to choose your next words very carefully.”

“Danny,” he pleads with the woman in the corner, who is still seemingly in a catatonic state. “Danny, tell him.”

But Danny doesn’t even raise her head from where she’s been staring at the floor.

Claudio turns back to me. “We’ve been together for months. I…thought you knew, man.”

Months. The word drops into the endless pit of my stomach like a stone. The entire time we’d been together…

A voice that sounds eerily like my father’s echoes through my mind.A real don wouldn’t stand for this.

It doesn’t matter whether I can muster up any kind of jealousy about Danny. Now this was a slight against my name. Against my leadership.

I kick him in the ribs. “I demand satisfaction.”

Kill him.

I could. It would be so easy. I’d probably enjoy it, even savor it. But…

But. Five years of torment and negotiations would crumble over something like this.

You spent so long wanting to play this part, but now you’re on the world stage, you don’t have the balls to do what needs to be done. You’re weak, Rocco.

I shake away my father’s voice. I can’t focus with him in my head like this.

“C-Claudio?”

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