Page 20 of Captured Fantasy

My stomach turned as I looked down at the man, helpless and bound. Jesus Christ, I could see the sweat running from his hair down his naked chest. He’d been beaten at some point, not badly, but just enough for dried blood to scab below his ear. I looked up at Lucien in bewilderment.

“You want me to…take care of this?” I asked.

“You’re moving up in the world,” said Federico, shrugging.

“I’m the head of domestic imports,” I said, meeting his gaze. “Not the executioner.”

Lucien’s jaw twitched in the ensuing silence and he removed a cigarette and took his time lighting it.

“Listen,” he said, his voice tempered. “You want to be underboss someday, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with things like this. These men are my weak points and we don’t leave weak points out in the open. Sympathizers become defectors and defectors become traitors. So you’re going to take that pistol, Barone, and you’re going to take care of it.”

“You a fucking pussy?” Federico said, narrowing his dark gaze.

I forced myself to keep calm, but I couldn’t hold back the poisonous glare I shot his way.

“This isn’t my fucking job,” I said.

Lucien released a quiet sigh, but his face didn’t change. It never did, he was made of stone and ice all the way through. He took a step closer and held out the pack of cigarettes. I took it and he flicked the lighter, his cold eyes fixing on mine for a brief second.

“You know when someone tells you to just…do whatever you want? Romano gives me that order a lot—just lets me do what I please with people.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Do I what?”

Lucien shrugged. “Do you do whatever you want?”

“No, not usually,” I admitted.

He narrowed his eyes, studying me fastidiously. There was a reason Lucien had risen as Romano’s favorite and the most powerful underboss in the outfit. He had an almost eerie ability to read people and figure out what made them tick. As he stood there, his cigarette in his lips, I felt him read me like a book and I hated it.

“No,” he said finally. “You don’t. Because that would be fucking crazy.”

“Yeah, it would.” I nodded.

“But here, you can tap into that feeling. You want to tap into that crazy you keep hidden, Barone? Good, then shoot these motherfuckers dead.”

“I can do this shit, but I’m not your lackey. I’m not your executioner,” I snapped.

“This isn’t about that,” he said. “I’m up here at the top and I want to bring you up with me. You have what it takes, you’re going to be my family. But I need to see it in your eyes.”

“I’m not a pussy,” I said quietly.

Lucien’s heavy stare surged, something almost like heat breaking through the ice. “Then show me you’re not a goddamn pussy, Barone. It’s either that or I don’t think you’re right for underboss. And Romano listens, he really fucking listens to the things I say to him.”

I knew deep inside I was the kind of man who could take his place with the other underbosses and hold his own. Lucien was giving me an opening to prove it. I turned abruptly, rage boiling over in my chest.

Federico stepped back behind us, but Lucien remained where he was as I raised the revolver. The crack reverberated below the bridge and the man before me jerked and fell back, his body crumpling. The other two men shook, struggling against their bonds, their voices muffled beneath the bags over their heads. I shot them too, my mouth tasting of rust and exhilaration as their bodies fell among the rocks and fish bones.

“Good man,” said Lucien softly.

The front of my t-shirt was drenched. It wasn’t the first time I’d killed a man, but it was the first time that it wasn’t in self-defense. The feeling was entirely different and it left my body weightless, like a shock wave had just passed through me. Lucien stood watching me, the corner of his mouth turned up a minute amount.

Federico gave a short shrug and turned his back, stepping down to the shoreline to piss in the river. I shifted. Now that I thought about it, I needed to relieve myself as well, but I wasn’t about to next to a pile of bloody bodies.

“That’s all,” said Lucien. “You can go back to whatever the hell you do all day.”

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