Page 1 of Final Installment
Prologue
Seventeen Years Ago
Rainpeltedtheheavilytinted windows of the sedan.Luka tapped his fingers atop his knee, trying to stifle the nervous energy zipping through his body.In the last four days, he had slept a total of thirteen hours.His youth helped, but the amount of caffeine and the pills Zec had shoved into his hand to keep him awake left him feeling electrified and on edge.
What am I doing?
This wasn’t supposed to be me, not yet.
I’m too young.
I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
I’m going to get people killed.
But he’d already killed people.More than a dozen.Not by his hand, of course, but under his orders.
The weight of that sat heavy in his gut.There was no coming back from the orders he had given.
I’m a killer.
There was little consolation in the fact that he’d become a killer out of necessity.He’d done it to avenge his father and uncles and cousins and other blood relatives who had been killed by the traitorous Dushku family.He’d done it to protect his baby sister and his ailing mother and what little family he had left.
Knuckles rapped on the window, startling him.A moment later, the door opened.An umbrella held by one of his father’s long-time bodyguards covered him.The deference of this older man he had once followed around like an eager puppy was a chilling reminder of how everything had changed.
I’m the boss.Me.A fucking kid.
And all because these dirty fuckers now standing in the rain on the tarmac had wanted to take what wasn’t theirs.
He buttoned his dark jacket and glanced over at his cousin Kristo, his genetic doppelganger who had been serving as a decoy during the last few weeks of this bloody mafia war.They were dressed exactly the same, right down to the cufflinks and watch.Kristo fell into step behind him, ready to take a bullet that might come in from behind.
Zec, the family’s most violent enforcer, took the lead.Besian, his uncle, walked at his side.They said nothing as they crossed the tarmac.Back at the safe house, he had been given counsel and advice from these two men and his elderly great Uncle Toma who had been to the mattresses dozens of times in his long life.
Say only what needs to be said.
Be firm.
Show no mercy.
He repeated the advice as he tried to emulate Zec’s predatory stealth and Besian’s arrogance and confidence.Although he was tall for his age and mature in his face, he was still just a fucking kid.Sixteen and a mafia boss?It was a nightmare.
I just want to wake up.
They arrived at the meeting point halfway between his car and the private jet idling nearby.Besian and Zec stepped aside to reveal Ana Dushku, a beautiful woman in her early thirties, holding a crying toddler on her hip.One of the lone survivors of her husband’s entourage held an umbrella over her, shielding her and the boy.Her two daughters stood next to her, both of them soaking wet as the rain poured down on their bare heads.The youngest girl, a blonde like her brother, clung to her big sister’s hand.
Luka didn’t know their names, and he didn’t care to learn them.They were the hell spawn of that vile piece of shit who had murdered his father.They were evil seeds that, by rights, he should have buried with their treacherous parent.But he’d spared them and their grandfather to make peace.
Carlo Raffaelli, the head of the Raffaelli mafia family, stood on one side of the congregation.Vasily, a representative from the Prokhorov mafia family out of Saint Petersburg, stood on the other.The two men had brokered the peace deal that would end the violence.
Right now, everyone’s business was at stake, and INTERPOL was salivating to get their hands on all of them.Peace, even at this high cost, had to be achieved.
Earlier that day, Luka had pledged an outrageous sum of money to the Raffaelli family, leaving it in their control as collateral to ensure his good behavior.The Duskku family had done the same, but they’d come up short.They would continue making payments every month—or else one of the children would be taken hostage.
Luka had also given over control of a wide swath of a narcotics corridor they had taken from the Duskku family a year earlier.Ostensibly, that move by his father had been the start of the war.Luka didn’t agree with that, but the Italians and Russians did.So, he’d given away the territory until the final piece of the peace agreement fell into place.
A marriage between him and one of the Dushku girls and a baby that would someday inherit everything.
Luka stared at the two daughters.The younger one had been chosen for him.He wasn’t sure why Ana Dushku had made that decision, but he didn’t care one way or the other.The girl couldn’t have been more than six which meant there were at least a dozen years of freedom in his future.
