Page 54 of The Sicilian Bastard
Luciano
Well, this keeps getting better and better. I can't stop fucking up. I disobeyed a direct order from Vito and now I was on a flight out of New York to Las Vegas. When this was all over, I owed Vito an ass whopping. He swore that when he came back to the States, we would deal with the cartel and keep Araceli safe. He told me to wait for him. I didn't want to, but I did. It was two days later, and Vito rescinded saving Araceli. He didn't want to use the resources. He didn't want a war on another front. So, I said fuck it and slipped out. I hopped on the first flight to Vegas. The closer I got to my destination, the harder it was getting to breathe.
When I landed, I headed straight to The Four Palms Resort. I checked in as quickly as I could. I figured I'd need a place to bring Araceli back to. I had no idea what state Araceli would be in. We didn't have reach here. The police looked the other way on some of our activities, but we don't have the foothold in Vegas like we did in New York and Philadelphia. That meant I was hunting from scratch. I didn't have any eyes here. I couldn't take to the streets and ask questions. I needed to plan a method of finding the information I needed and then a plan of attack. As I was leaving my room, I ran into someone.
"Watch where the fuck you're going," I snarled, not looking up.
"Is that any way to treat me,fratello?"My brother Vincenzo, the middle sibling, stood in front of the door of my hotel room.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" The last thing I needed was Vincenzo getting in my way.
"I heard you flew off the handle and broke off your leash. For a piece of pussy you stole from our club, no less." Vincenzo was a forgettable face. His blue eyes were dead, and out of all my brothers, I liked him the least. He was quiet, but also when he opened his mouth to say anything to anybody, it was boring. If it wasn't boring, it was offensive.
"If you disapprove, why the fuck are you standing here?" I pushed past him and started towards the elevators.
"I have a present for you,fratello."Vincenzo followed close behind me as we both headed to the elevators.
When the elevator dinged, Vincenzo took the lead. I followed him out of the hotel into a dark tinted truck. "We don't do business inside the hotel," was all he said. We took off and drove for a while before turning off into an empty warehouse area. There were a ton of warehouses in the area. Most looked abandoned. Vincenzo pulled the truck in front of a very dilapidated warehouse and nodded his head towards the door. We walked inside and there was a Hispanic man strung up to the ceiling by his arms. He had duct tape on his face and his eyes were flashing with rage and defiance. His body language screamed that he hadn't been tortured yet. That would soon change.
"What's the gift for?" My brain was still catching up to the fact that my brother did something nice for me. It was a change I wasn't used to.
"When I heard from Agosto you were having issues with the cartel, I sent eyes out to the streets. We focused more on the Hispanic males in the area until we found them. It was subtle at first. An exchange of goods, a sleight of hand, a head nod in the right direction. All of it was done out in the open. Not down in some back alleyway. That's how I knew they were cocky as hell and didn't think they could be stopped. I caught a few men, but they were lower level and didn't have much information. This man, though, he's about second tier. I couldn't grab an inner circle member, but he reports directly to them. I saved him for your arrival."
I forgot how smart Vincenzo was. Out of everyone, he was the most overlooked. No one had any expectations for him and he couldn't let anyone down. Father ignored his presence and his mother acted like he wasn't even her child. Maybe he wasn't. Who knew? I rubbed my hands together. This day was looking up. I couldn't torture and kill the inner circle members, not yet anyway, but I could take care of this scum and get answers while I was at it.
"Thanks,fratello,but I didn't bring my tools. I was in too much of a rush." I couldn't very well treat Vincenzo like dirt on the bottom of my shoe when he went above and beyond for me.
"I thought of that too and I bought tools you'd like. I also brought a new way of getting answers if you'd like to try it." He waved at a table in the back of the warehouse. It was covered and hidden in the shadows. I nodded in agreement and jogged over eagerly. Vincenzo sat backward on a chair and lit a cigarette he had hanging off his ear.
"You should quit that habit," I murmured. I never really cared one way or the other that he was a smoker. But now that life was too short, it was even shorter from smoking. Vincenzo made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat and kept puffing.
I pulled back the showman's drape Vincenzo covered the table with and stopped in awe. Not only did he get every tool that I had in my arsenal, but he also brought a cage full of rats. Rat torture wasn't something I normally did because it took so long to get results. But this time I didn't care. This man deserved to have everything he had in his mind taken from him nice and slow. Now, most people felt fear and revulsion when it came to rats or any other rodents. Not me, I wasn't afraid of anything.
"We are going to have to take him down. Do you have a table?" Vincenzo laughed and left the room for a bit. My current victim was wriggling in his restraints.
Vincenzo wheeled out a steel medical grade table with restraints hooked to each corner. Two for his hands and two for his feet. It took both of us to untie him and strap him down to the table. He fought hard and even managed to thrust his head into Vincenzo's forehead. There were three rats in the cage, but for what I was planning, I only needed one. I grabbed a steel bowl and lifted a rat by its tail. I placed the rat over my victim's abdomen and covered it with the bowl. Then I strapped the bowl down in place. Vincenzo started whistling. He knew the score. I grabbed the next item off the table. The blowtorch. I held it in one hand and ripped the tape off my victim's mouth with the other.
"What's your name?" I always started simple. He was screaming and trying to get out of his bonds. He clamped his mouth shut and looked away. I repeated the question. Still no response. Well then.
"Did you know that when a rat is stuck in confinement and it starts heating up, the rat will tear through anything soft so it can burrow?" My conversational tone belied the darkness that was threatening to overtake me. My victim stared at me, his eyes unbelieving.
"I'd trust what the man says," Vincenzo warned him. He still didn't believe me. I guess I was going to have to show him rather than tell him.
I heated the bowl a little bit and could hear the screeching of the rat as it scrambled around trying to find a way out. I knew when the biting began. My victim squirmed even more and tried to get away from the painful gnawing.
"Stop! Stop!" he yelled.
I smirked down at him but eased off, giving him a brief reprieve.
"My name is Mario. Mario Estevan. I'm a low-level drug dealer." His eyes avoided mine when he said that last bit. That was a tell. He was lying. I'd bet he'd be fidgeting if he could move around.
"Who do you work for?" If he had any more tells, they would show and even though I knew this answer, I needed to make sure we could see the lies he was bound to start with.
"Man, I work for myself. I don't have anyone in charge of my operations." His eye twitched slightly. Only the left one. The twitch was so small, someone would have to be staring hard to see it, which I was.
"Wrong answer, Mario." I heated the bowl. The rat that had been quiet and docile started scrambling again once the heat reached it.
"Okay, okay, man. I work for the Castillo cartel, but that's all I can tell you. If I say any more, they'll kill me." I laughed out loud at this.
