Page 6 of Entangled
Fill of death.
Fill of money.
Fill of someone making my choices for me, and watching my every move.
I was sick of looking over my shoulder in case some bastard decided he was brave enough to kill me as revenge towards my father. I couldn’t imagine how paranoid Finn must feel, being heir to the crime throne and all.
I stripped my clothes off and stepped into the steaming shower, letting the stream of water burn my skin, willing me to feel something.
It had been so long since I’d felt something other than anger that I wasn’t sure there was anything else left. I’d been turned into a vicious killing machine who was finally growing tired. I wanted to know what else was out there before I didn’t have the chance to know any longer.
I’d been at this for thirteen years. Ever since the night of my fifteenth birthday, when my father decided it was time for me to become a man by placing a Glock in my hand and making mepull the trigger on a man I didn’t even know who’d evidently wronged him.
It was the first and last time I cried myself to sleep, knowing there was no way I could do it again. But it didn’t take long for me to realize that I had to. I had to bottle everything I’d ever feel on the inside if I wanted to survive the life that was being built for me without my permission. I had to turn the switch off on the pesky emotions that threatened to seep through.
I stepped out of the shower, skin thoroughly scorched by the heat, and wrapped a towel around my waist. My phone vibrated on the counter and I made my way over to it to figure out who could be texting me at almost midnight.
Sawyer
You’re needed back at Matthias’s.
You’ve got to be shitting me.
I could throttle someone. I was so irritated with the fact that I couldn’t hop into bed right now with a book. It had become my nighttime ritual to help calm the voices raging inside my head and even then, sometimes they were just too damn loud to let me get any meaningful rest.
Just because I was a trained killer didn’t mean I wasn’t able to enjoy a good novel or two. I’d never tell my brothers about it though. They’d tease me about it endlessly—more than they already did when we were growing up.
We all had our talents; my brothers just saw mine as weaker. My father wasn’t afraid to let me know how displeased he was with my hobbies either.
“Put that pussy shit away. We don’t become crime lords by reading fairy tales,” He told me once. As if all books were fairy tales. As if he had never read a book before in his life and forgot that he was the one to get me into reading.
That’s what scared me the most. Knowing how much this life had changed my father, and knowing if I let it, if I let the darkness in, it would destroy any scrap of light I had left. No matter how little.
After throwingon a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, refusing to put a suit back on to endure whatever level of bullshit this was about to be, I made my way back to my father’s. I seriously considered pretending I never read Sawyer’s message, but we were at our father’s beck and call, and all that would get me was a beating.
Twenty-eight years old and still getting disciplined by my old man.
Yet another reason I was desperately hoping for some sort of escape from the world I’d grown up in. Maybe if my father didn’t have me under his thumb anymore, he’d start seeing me as a son again. Maybe we could actually have a relationship that consisted of more than just money and blood and death.
“What was so urgent we had to come back so soon?” I ask, waltzing in without a care in the world. Sleep deprivation made me brave. And stupid.
“Check your attitude, boy, before I check it for you,” my father said in a calm tone. I wasn’t to be fooled into thinking that he was actually calm, and that there wasn’t a threat laced in those words. I took a seat in between my brothers and gave him my full, undivided attention.
He took a moment to look at all of us and the handful of men he had in his meeting chambers before he spoke again.
“I brought you all back here again because I’ve been informed of a… situation,” he began, a smirk gracing his lips. It caught me by surprise. My father found nothing amusing, so I knew what he was about to say would not be good.
“Lilah Canella’s men have been spotted putting their noses where they don’t belong. This is not a new problem, but this time it’s over by the new turf by the harbor.Goodturf—which means good business and good money. What should be ours, Canella has decided, should be hers, due to the proximity of Vincent Peirano’s territory, and the fact that her daughter is married to his son.” He paused, folding his hands in front of him and giving a dark chuckle before continuing.
“Anyone with half a brain cell knows any harbor land is ours. But we also know Lilah lacks reason when it comes to money and turf. So, tomorrow evening, we will be meeting with the Canellas and the Peiranos on neutral ground, per their request, to see if we can come to apeacefulagreement.”
He looked at each of us again, staring us down and penetrating us with his gaze. “But be warned, all of you know by now that Luchettis don’t go down without a fight, and we aren’t ones to give things that belong to us away peacefully.”
If this meeting was happening at neutral ground, and wasn’t happening here, then that meant we were traveling into the den of the viper who called herself Lilah Canella.
I took a moment to look at my father then. To truly look at him and see if there was any of the man I once admired left inside. But all that stared back at me were blank eyes. Not a trace of the gentle side that I missed.
At this moment, I vowed that this business with the Canellas would be my last. After this, I was wiping my hands clean of all future wrongdoings. I refused to lose the tiny spark I still had left inside me that kept me human.
