Page 59 of The Leader

Gio stared at the report Jackson handed over to him. His brother didn’t say a word, just sat across the desk from him. After Gio had read it, he understood his stony silence. A part of him wasn’t entirely surprised about the latest development in the ongoing investigation on their parents’ murder. After all, they lived in a dog-eat-dog world, in which only a very few people were to be trusted. It did explain, though, how Bianchi had managed to lure their father into that warehouse.

Still, he wished the report was wrong. Just this once.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Positive,” Jackson said. “You know what this means.”

Sadly, he did.

“Unless…” Jackson shrugged. “Unless you decide to not to take any action.”

“That’s not just my decision to make.”

“No, but youarethe one who has the most to lose if you do take action, no matter what you claim. Think of what will happen. This is your future we’re talking about here. You can’t just—”

“Where are we on Bianchi?” he interrupted his brother, before Jax would start summing up all sorts of rational reasons why Gio should ignore the information he’d just read. As if ignoring it made it any less real.

Jax sighed. “Oscar Bianchi seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.”

Of course he had. Bianchi was like a rabid dog who had lost everything. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Thing was, rabid dogs could become dangerous if not put down.

But Jackson was right on the other thing. Before he made the call to set in motion an irreversible chain of events, he had one more person to talk to.

The San Quentin state prison reminded Gio of what his life could have been like if he had followed in his father’s footsteps. It also reminded him of his failure to protect his brother, Luca. Luca, who had put down a rule about only being visited once every few months. He guessed his brother didn’t like being reminded of the outside world, any more than Gio liked the inside.

As he sat waiting in the visiting room that practically reeked of pain, misery, and the loss of hope, a part of him was glad that his father was dead instead of being locked up. Which was probably a fucked-up way of thinking, but a part of him was glad to never have seen his father, a man larger than life, being reduced to living behind bars. His dad had lived by the sword, and had died by it too.

Protect and provide.

In the end, his father had failed on both accounts. No one had protected or provided for the Detta boys after his death. His father had never fathomed that his wife could be taken out on the same night as he was killed. They had been lucky that their estranged grandmother had claimed them. It couldn’t have been easy, taking care of a bunch of little boys, at her age and on her pension, but she never complained. And they always managed to get by.

When the Scolini family was wiped out, together with the family that had attacked them, it had created a power vacuum that had been swiftly filled by the Bratva. Which made it all the more ironic that Gio paid the Russians to keep his brother safe inside.

Of the four of them, Luca was the one who liked the finer things in life the most; always surrounding himself with the best of the best. Gio understood him all too well. When you spent most of your youth with other people’s hand-me-downs, you went all out once you made it. He understood, because he hadn’t denied himself Jocelyn Rossi, the second he’d touched her.

He looked up when Luca entered the room in his orange jumpsuit. It seemed like every time he visited, his brother’s once sleek and toned body was getting more buff.

“I hear congrats are in order, big brother.” Luca gave him a hug, ignoring one of the guards in the back. They were paid well to turn the other way when Luca ignored the prison’s “no touching” policy.

“Wish you could have been there.” The reception hadn’t been big, and a fast arranged one, but the only ones he cared about attending were his brothers anyway.

“You’re the first of the Dettas to start the next generation. To protect and provide, brother. I really hope she’s worth it.”

There was a bitterness in Luca’s voice that hadn’t been there before. Luca had been the easygoing one of them. The Golden Boy with a knack for investments. That is, until he got locked up. The second he was arrested, his fiancée had left him. As far as Gio knew, she had never visited him in jail.

“Jocelyn is…different. It was difficult to get a hold on her at first.” Well, it had been, but that was over now. Once the lion had caught his prey, she was his to do with as he pleased. And fuck, did she please him.

Luca raised a brow. “Why do I feel like there’s a story behind that?”

Gio shook his head. They had more important things to discuss. “Let me make a call to our Siberian friend.” He changed the subject. They had this conversation almost a year ago, when Luca had been sentenced and the chances of an appeal had seemed bleak.

“No.” Luca was adamant about it. “I don’t want you to owe that Russian.”

No one did. If Gio was named Black Ice, then Kristoff would be just Ice. A man had to at least have a heart for it to be black.

“He’s half-American.”

Luca was being unreasonable. It wasn’t as if Gio didn’t know where his sudden loathing for anything Russian stemmed from. His fiancée had sure done a number on him.

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