Page 40 of Lordes

“I don’t need a gun.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I just feel like you should stay strapped at all times. You’re in a concealed carry state. I saw the glock and I thought of you.”

“I’m not in any danger.”

“Not today but the world is a dangerous place.”

“Maybe the world you live in.”

“Chicago is hot right now. There’s a war going on. Bodies are piling up.”

I remembered something my Gram mentioned months ago. I had a memory that never rested. “Those murders out in the burbs a few months back. Execution style. Was that you guys?”

“The family and the dogs? Yeah, yeah, Cenzo took care of it. We had to make examples out of them. That’s why we left the bodies and cut their tongues out.”

“Did you cut out the dogs tongues?”

“Yes. What you are fucking PETA?”

“I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

“I sleep like a newborn baby sucking on his mothers tit.”

“More like a homicidal bad seed.”

“It’s easy for you to deny this life when you haven’t lived in. Once you jump in you never want to jump out. It’s a thrill better than any roller coaster. It makes your cock harder thin a gold brick. Being the King is better than any blowjob, millionaire business deal, or any fucking narcotic. It’s a high that will never go over. Being King is power beyond anything you could imagine.”

“You’re not the boss, your father in the boss.”

“Boss, underboss. I’m next in line. Dom has already given me his blessing. I know everything he knows. I’ve been groomed for this since I was a shitting my pampers. I’m the heir.”

“True, you are, with three spares.”

“No, no, my sister doesn’t count. There has never been a woman in BMF dating back to Sicily.”

“So the mob is sexist.”

“Yeah of course, and racist and homophobic. That little Black beauty you have could never be married to a boss. Only Italian Sicilian bloodlines run the show. I had to marry a Capello and Gloria is a beauty but I probably would’ve married that hot Mexican girl worked in the deli at the ___ years ago.”

“An organization full of stupid prehistoric rules. Why would I want to have any part of that?”

Nicco shrugged. “It’s exciting.”

“Jumping out of an airplane is exciting but I don’t have to experience it.”

“Everyone doesn’t have the balls for this life. I tell you we killed a whole family and cut their tongues out and you didn’t even blink. You see a dead ten year old and you don’t even flinch. You’re cut out for this life and you don’t even know it.”

“I don’t know why you think your lifestyle is okay with me. It’s not. Why did you kill that kid?”

“What do you mean?”

I leaned up in my chair. I wanted to look him in his dark eyes and get an authentic response from him. I needed to see if there was any inkling of humanity left in him.

“Why did you kill the kid?” I asked again.

Nicco brushed his hair back with his fingers. “I didn’t kill the kid.”

“I’m not stupid. I know technically that young guy Jamal did it. That doesn’t make it better.

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