Page 1 of Bound to Him

1

Huxley

“So, you must have taken her back home after that?”

“Na, man. She took me back to hers.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Hers? You mean her penthouse in the city?”

A smile lifted the corner of Vinnie’s mouth, though he stared straight past me, over my shoulder.

“You sly dog, Vinnie!”

I cocked my gun and rested the heavy metallic weapon on my thigh, staring out the darkened window. We were parked outside a dismal looking warehouse, abandoned and rundown. To any passerby, it might look empty and innocent. But soon, we’d have all the evil spilling out and running in every direction, less their head of operations, whoever the fuck he was. He would come to know a different fate, if I had anything to do with it.

“You ready, bro?” he asked me. Vinnie was always a serious guy, less words, more action. Well, when compared to me anyway. While he kept his girls private—only telling me about his escapades when we were alone in dark cars—I would usually be the one to boast about my catch the moment I finished nutting.

“Let’s do this.”

We stepped out of the car, and I straightened my black suit, sliding my gun into the holster I had hidden beneath.

“Let’s pray that they aren’t with the Rossis,” Vinnie murmured, checking his bullets and sliding his gun into his belt.

“Well, shit. I’d fucking hope not. Antonio will have our asses if we kill a Rossi,” I said, referring to the don of the Moretti family and also, my brother.

“That’sboss, now, Hux.”

“Yeah, what-the-fuck-ever. He’s still my brother.”

The group of men inside were flagged as pushers. Conduits for the drug suppliers of the city, as well as trespassers on what should have been pusher-free territory run by the Moretti’s. We weren’t sure who set this drug den up; it could have been either the Rossis or Romanos—or neither, for that matter—but they were on our turf, and they’d find out soon enough.

“We’d better make sure it ain’t the Romanos.”

“Why?” I asked, lighting a cigarette, then glancing sideways as we crossed the street.

“Boss said something about keeping the peace with them, that he’s got deals to uphold.”

“Mannaggia!And if it is them? We just turn a blind eye to them poisoning our land?”

“If it is, we imprison, not kill.” Vinnie’s methodical attitude was only part of why he was the right-hand man to Don Antonio, as well as his best friend. The other part was his mixture of intelligence and ruthlessness.

I, on the other hand, was the underboss. Second in line, the prince, if you will.

“Fair enough. We’ve imprisoned Romanos before, eh?” I chuckled, we had quite a love-hate relationship with that family—only because we loved to hate them.

“We sure have.” Vinnie’s mouth curved up again, and his eye glinted, remembering a particularly fond memory we shared of beating a bloodied Romano cousin to a pulp. He was a real dick, and he got what was comin’ to him.

With such powerful families covering bordering territories, certain boundaries needed to be set. Even if we loathed one another with a soul-burning intensity, there would be no death of a family member by another family’s hand. That would mean an immediate settling of scores—one family life for the other, and nobody wanted that.

Two years ago, during the wake of our own father, in our home, we’d been hit by the Corestti’s, a family from Jersey. They decided to try and get a foot in the door of power around here, once our father was gone. The fuckers thought they could catch us while we were weak, but they learned a very quick lesson and lost a lot of their men. We hadn’t heard from them since.

I hoped these fuckers inside this dump of a drug den were outsiders because I was itching to not only break some skulls but send a real message out—that you don’t even try to undermine the Moretti’s. We will find you and fucking end you.

Not 20 minutes later, I flipped the toothpick to the other side of my mouth and bit down on it. “At least he wasn’t royalty.” I smiled and shifted the limp body with the tip of my shoe. There was a hole in the center of his forehead, and his eyes remained open. Good. Let his departing soul see the damage he caused. Scattered around him were the lifeless bodies of his buddies, dripping with the same blood I had on my hands and on the knuckle-buster I just put back into my pocket.

I wouldn’t consider myself to be an upstanding citizen or even an innocent soul, but there were certain rules to abide by when you were part of a ruling family. I might stuff that happy dust up my nose all I like, but I wasn’t going to let the drug scene ruin our part of the city. If it wasn’t handled correctly, the streets would be laced with junkies looking for a fix—any fix—and not only would their lives be ruined but the lives of their children, wives, and parents as well.

Families like the Romanos and Rossis chose to handle the drug scene themselves and have a handle on who had the right to distribute. But my late father, Lorenzo Moretti, the previous Moretti don, made the wise decision a long time ago to eradicate the sale of substances in our backyard completely. It meant our turf was the more clean, upstanding side of town, and I was perfectly happy to keep it that way.

---