Page 16 of Reluctant Heir

“She didn’t try; she succeeded, which is more than all of your other enemies can say. And more than you can say.”

I repeat the thumb motion over my lip as I peer out the car window. Streetlights buzz past, and dark shadows follow us.

“She didn’t succeed,” I say, turning back to Geo.

He doesn’t appear surprised but merely waits for me to continue.

“She started it, but I finished him. I stuck my thumb in the knife wound and pushed until I felt his windpipe give in. He was going to die either way.”

I don’t know why I added the last part, like I’m trying to rationalize it. There’s no rationalizing a murder, deserved or not. He was a horrible person, but he was still a person. I’m the horrible person for feeling nothing about it. I haven’t felt guilty or upset. I’m just numb.

Geo doesn’t say anything. I don’t expect him to.

We ride in silence the rest of the way to the meeting place. The location changes for each meeting and is planned in advance so that each party has a chance to scout it out and confirm safety measures are in place. Both inside and outside. For being business partners, these men don’t fucking trust each other. But when you deal with the rich and the depraved, what is there to trust? There is only loyalty to the five families. But I’ve torn that loyalty to shreds with my actions against my own father.

Especially today. Everyone will be suspicious of the man beside him, and there will be a thought that niggles in the back of each mind—It could have been you.

I intend to use that to my gain.

We pull up outside the building, and I glance up. It’s a gentlemen’s parlor. Well-known among the darker crowd. A “classy” strip club graces the front, but if you have the money and the proper friends, you can earn a ticket to the back rooms. A fact that my father showed me firsthand before I was even sixteen. It’s a place full of debauchery.

We don’t enter through the front but a side door and are shown to a room. It’s dark and humid, and it smells faintly of body odor and largely of smoke. Not the most welcoming scents.

Two men are already seated at the table, smoking cigars and talking.

Paul is rotund. The jowls of his neck shake with his laughter, and his bulbous nose seems to take over half of his face. The other one, Vincent, is thinner—almost too thin—with a beak-like nose. Since I was a child, they’ve always reminded me of the two creatures who do Hades’s bidding in the animated movieHercules.

They stand briefly once they notice me in the doorway.

“Connor, do come in. So sorry to hear about your loss,” Vincent says in a tone that implies he’s not sorry at all. He gestures to the table as if I were a child and he’s giving me permission to be here. I guess I am a child to him still. “Sit, sit.”

I press my lips in a thin line and grasp the back of the chair in front of me. I sink into it, eyes on the two men across the table from me. I lean back, placing my hands on the armrests of the heavy wooden seat that matches the rest around the table.

Paul and Vincent aren’t laughing anymore. They are eyeing me in silence. For all of Vincent’s bravado when I first walked in, no more pleasantries are exchanged. After all, it’s not a pleasant reason we are meeting in the first place.

I check the time, seeing it’s five minutes after our agreed upon meeting time. The other two are late, which doesn’t surprise me.

There’s no respect between men here, only respect for money. They might have held some sort of loyalty or friendship with my father, but I’m the new one in their small circle, not to be trusted. The five bosses came into this business with children who were already half-grown. It proved to be different, raising older children in this lifestyle than those who were truly born into it. We were raised in it but also held apart from it. They believe themselves invincible, as if we couldn’t rise up against them.

I hold the keys to the largest chunk of the kingdom now, if Bertrand’s records are to be believed. I spent the last two days poring over his books, noting discrepancies and things that seemed fishy—mostly all of it. I think Bertrand has been screwing them out of a lot behind the scenes.

The door opens again, revealing the last two men. Antonio—Geo’s father—and William enter. Geo nods to Antonio and then steps around him and out into the hallway before anything else can be said. No one says anything as the remaining two take their seats, and then Vincent pounds on the table.

These roundtable meetings only happen between bosses of the five families, and now that I’m a boss, here I am. But I know my place. Or what they consider my place. I’ll let them prattle on and bluster all they want. I only wish to upend their whole lives, not their meeting.

“Connor Soltorre, your father’s passing was unusual and, frankly, very sudden,” Vincent starts off.

William pulls open his jacket and extracts a cigar. He lights the end, puffing on it, his cold eyes fastened on me. I used to shiver at his gaze when I was younger, but I’ve become hardened to it. I had to after he forced me to break someone’s finger for the first time. There’s no room for weak men in this life. Either you become tough or they break you and you never make it out alive.

“Yes, we were all surprised,” I say.

“Surprised? An odd word choice for the death of your own father,” Antonio says.

I can feel the tension in the air, and I know I’m on the stand right now, standing trial. They are trying to decide if I had anything to do with it.

It’s not a new story—the one where the son kills his father for power. But I don’t want power, not in that sense. I want answers and the power to make decisions for my own life.

“Forgive me. We are all in a bit of shock. For the maid to find him like that,” I say, stopping and shaking my head. “In this life, we get used to death, to seeing it, inflicting it. But I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing my own family in that situation.” The words taste strange, coming out of my mouth.

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