by Sonya Jesus
“You don’t have to do this, Addie,” I protest.
“A television,” she says, her mind already planning ahead. “So you don’t have to watch nonstop cartoons in the lounge, and you can paint it black if you want. Is that your favorite color?”
I laugh because she’s referring to the gothic-ish style I’ve had to adopt with this new identity. “No, my favorite color is yellow.”
“Yellow,” she echoes back to me. She turns for the door, and before exiting, asks, “Like lemon yellow?”
I nod enthusiastically.
“That was my daughter’s favorite color too.”
3
Happy Birthday
Breaker
“A report!” I shout to no one in particular, as I drop the small takeout box with my saved VHS videos on the tiled floor near the entrance door. This massive, opulent house has always been a stone box, cold and unwelcoming. Costa never let my mother add any finishing touches, and when Kelsie came to live with us, he didn’t give her the option of being a girl.
The Beneventi mansion is not a home; it’s a staple of power.
The moment someone walks inside, they know who holds the upper hand. There’s no hiding it.
The high ceilings intimidate, the ornate details of the staircase and the crystal chandelier exude wealth, and the light colors of the interior emanate control and cleanliness, which is perhaps the most formidable of all. It implies we clean up here—blood and all.
I remove the paper bag with the tapes and head to my father’s office. The long corridor captures sound and intensifies it; rapid breaths echo back, intensifying them tenfold. That one may be a crock of shit. But many made men walked through this hall never to come out again, so who knows.
“Office. Now!” I call for my men again, demanding my daily report. My voice amplifies a bit, but nowhere near tenfold, but no reply comes.
My body tenses, and I tune into the sounds of the house… Silence.
A couple of men are always inside, in case of a breach, and four secure the perimeter. Someone let me in, but I didn’t even check to see ... Shit. A string of possible outcomes come to mind, and I don’t know which would be worse right now.
In this bag, I have five reasons for the Feds to connect me to Lyla.
The Commission, if Lyla went to them, will expect answers. My recent rise to power hasn’t been the smoothest transition. Even though the Commission understood, not all of my father’s men believed my euthanasia story, and since epidemics of doubt crumple empires, I cured my empire by eliminating the doubt. Dead people don’t snitch. The most vulnerable time for Bosses is the time between ascension and respect, and gaining respect isn’t easy with a hindered cash flow. Thankfully, the Cabralis have graciously provided some numbers to fill in the gap.
These men get paid every month, and unless I find those safes, I’ll need a quick fix.
And then there’s Magdalena Cabrali. She’s unpredictable. One minute she can be helping me out and screwing me, the next she can be screwing me over. Neither of which is pleasurable. To think she’s going to be walking around here one day, bossing my men around, irks me more than anything else. Joining forces with the Cabralis wasn’t one of Costa’s worst plans, but I wish he had chosen someone a bit more stable. He’s getting back at me for the twenty bucks he thought I stole to buy her chocolates back in the day.
I stop in front of Costa Beneventi’s office and drop the bag inside, quickly glancing around and checking the area. I shut the door silently and feel for my gun in its holster, as I drum up the last ten minutes in my mind and rerun the last thirty minutes for any clues.
Nothing seems off.
Magdalena prefers the bloodier method, I remind myself as I poke my head into the living room and dining hall before stepping into the kitchen. Figures outside the window still me.
In the darkness, I stealthily creep toward the smaller window, which faces the wraparound porch and area that leads to Kelsie’s guesthouse. Two bored men lean against a pillar, smoking and chatting, like two bitches getting their nails done.
Stupid idiots. I pull the gun out from the holster and tap the metal barrel against the glass of the larger metal doors until I catch their attention. Lucky for them, it only takes two taps for them to have their weapons pointed at me and their lit-up cigarettes tossed to the ground.
I switch the lights on.
“Boss?” one of them asks.
“Shit!” The other scowls and stomps on the cigarettes, putting them out.
Incompetent fucks. I rub the gun along the center of my face, using the protruding front side of the barrel to scratch the furrowed skin, soothing the itch to shoot them and ease my nerves. Control, I tell myself and hold my breath to count backward from five before expelling the air trapped in my lungs.
I still want to shoot those damn idiots.
I use the gun to motion for the men to come inside. They take the lateral door, and meet me in the kitchen, looking terrified. The gun on the counter, just within my reach, doesn’t help the situation. I don’t know their names, but I recognize their faces. Stone must have promoted them to patrol before taking off to California with Kelsie.
We really must have a shortage of men. I can smell their nervousness from here.
“Don’t worry,” I ease their tension. “You get fifteen-minute breaks with every four hours you work.” I open the cabinet and remove a glass, placing it about a foot away from my gun.
The younger one, who can’t be more than twenty, cracks a smile, obviously picking up on my tone.
“Oh,” the stupider one says. “We—”
The smarter one elbows him in the side, shutting him up. “It won’t happen again, Boss.”
“It’s been a long day?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been here since ten in the morning,” the stupid one replies.
I glance at the large ornate clock on the wall and get slightly agitated. “Why are you two on patrol for fourteen hours?” Not that I care much about them, but they get tired, and tired means sloppy.
“I just got here, Boss. I’m not on the schedule. Franco sent me,” the younger one with the blonde hair and blue eyes answers.
He looks familiar. “Why?”
“Because I called him,” Stupid steals the conversation. “The schedule was short a few men today.”
“Short a few men?” How is that possible? “Did someone fuck up the schedule?”
“Yes,” Stupid answers.
I raise my brow at his bold admission. “Do you know who does the schedule?”
“Silvano, sir, but I tried calling the emergency number.”
I smirk. He has no idea, does he? Silvano is Stone’s given name, before he legally changed it. Our mom hated my father’s choices, so she nicknamed us. Stone because he never cried, and Breaker because I’d hold on to her finger so hard, she joked I’d break it. At least, that’s what she used to say. I think she nicknamed me Breaker because she knew if the truth came out about my legitimacy, it would break everything Costa had worked for.
Knocking the thought to the back of my mind, I ask, “What did he say?” Stone must have decided to put his given name on paper for some reason. Some of the capos aren’t big on Stone being back in, especially not Franco.
“He asked me if I had a death wish,” Stupid answers, and removes his gun from the holster. “Then he told me if I called again, he’d put my gun,” he holds it up for emphasis, “in my mouth and shoot me with it.” He places the gun on the island and tries to come off unafraid of the threat. He fails because his fear is as evident as his disrespect.
I hate young mades who think a gun gives them power. A glimmer of hope for my brother surfaces. Threats aren’t usually his style. I doubt he would shoot Stupid, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t.
“So, you decided to call Franco and interrupt his work?” I shake my head. “And you?” I ask the other, while deciding the worth of stupid made men.
The more intelligent, or at least mor
e perceptive one, glances at me and quickly lowers his eyes. “I didn’t speak to Stone, Boss. Franco was with me when he got the call.”
I take a sip of my drink and nod. “Yeah, my brother isn’t a fan of being interrupted.”
“Silvano…” Stupid trails off. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry, Boss. I didn’t realize.”
I wave my glass in the air, dismissing his comment. “My brother’s an idiot who messed up, and you called Franco to fix his mistake. Now I know.” Snitch.
Stupid skeptically glances at his partner and then at his gun, sealing his fate.
“Why don’t you two take a break?” I pull out two more tumblers, then pour a couple inches of whiskey into each of them before sliding the glasses toward them. “Take a drink with me.”
Stupid approaches the island, taking the invitation. “I’ll apologize to your brother in the morning, sir.”
I really hate when they don’t call me Boss. “No need to. I’ll be making sure to bring up the schedule next time we speak.” I point toward the glass. “Take a break.”
“Really? Mind if I get some ice?”
“Sure.” I inch closer to my gun, eyeing the other guard who hasn’t moved. “Help yourself.”
That should’ve been a clue. Never help yourself in the Boss’s house.
Stupid turns toward the freezer. The second he opens it, my gun is in my hand and the bullet is piercing through the back of his skull.
The remaining one, out of fear or pure intelligence, steels his spine. Once Stupid stops sliding down my fridge, he says, “I’ll get that cleaned up, Boss.”
“Good.”
He grabs his phone and sends a message before dialing, I assume, Franco.
While he waits for Franco to answer, I ask, “What’s your name?”
“Romolo Russo.”
That’s where I know him from. “You were the recruiter who brought Lyla Vaughn in?”
He nods and puts the phone on speaker, just as Franco answers with a gruff, “What?”
“You’re needed at the mansion.”
Franco groggily answers in a consecutive string of curse words, which end in, “Be there in fifteen.”
I grab the two untouched glasses and glance at the body slumped in my freezer, bleeding on my floor, and use it as a teaching lesson. “Guys like him are liabilities. They don’t understand loyalty, respect, and how to keep their mouths shut.”
Romolo nods in understanding and takes the glass in my hand.
I step aside and over the blood, which is going to seep into the grout if Franco waits too long. “Come on, we need to talk about Lyla.”
Without question, Romolo follows me to Costa’s office and takes a seat in the leather chair in front of the desk. “Have you been here before, Romolo?”
Not many recruiters make it inside the Beneventi walls.
“No…I honestly never thought I’d be here, much less inside your house.” He glances around the extravagant room, his eyes landing on the chair where Costa used to sit for his dialysis treatment and the couch he’s had for years. “I’m sorry about your father.”
“Thanks,” I force out, as I tuck the videos in my safe. He’s not my father. “He’s no longer suffering. Toward the end, he did things that were unexplainable.”
“Yeah, sickness really messes with the mind.” His sincere tone comes from experience.
“Did you know my father?” The word is like a knife, slicing my vocal words, and preventing me from saying anything nice about the man.
Romolo answers, but I don’t hear anything after no. I haven’t been in this office for months. It still smells like the man I idolized growing up—the man I wanted to please—despite my father’s attempts at distancing the two of us.
My mind is on Costa Beneventi. He acted like my father, doing everything to secure my takeover, even sending Kelsie on a caccia to hunt down the people who know the truth about my legitimacy and take out anyone who could interfere with the family’s power. He would’ve managed to eliminate everyone, even Kelsie, if his little assassin hadn’t fallen for number thirty-one on her hit list.
Hayden, or Jason West, had been holding onto a pen drive his father left behind. Lucky for me, I now possessed that little fountain of knowledge. Stone and Kelsie decided to reveal the information and bargain for Hayden’s life at the New Year’s Eve party.
That’s when I found out the man I thought was my father sent me to kill my real father—Fabrizio Salvatore—his right-hand man in Jason West’s home. Fabrizio and my mother had been having an affair and working with the law to bring my father down and end the human trafficking ring. My mother killed herself, and to screw my father over, left little love notes full of secrets to fuck up his life and ours.
She told me Costa wasn’t my father. However, she failed to tell me the identity of the man who was. Had I known, I wouldn’t have been so eager to please Costa by killing Fabrizio. Until the last day of last year, I had lived my life free of guilt or remorse—and now the feeling is familiar.
It eats my insides every time I think of the man. My chest explodes, bombing me full of memories of my real father’s last moments. He didn’t fight me, he didn’t raise one single finger, he simply nodded and said, “I understand, Son. Tell Kelsie I love her.”
Son. A confession, not a plea.
I will the thoughts away by running my hand through my hair, glancing back at Romolo, who is still talking about a father or someone with cancer, as if I give a shit.
I turn back around and close the safe, taking the opportunity to recompose myself. I shut my eyes, but all I see is blood splattering. The gnawing feeling rots my resolve as I shake shake the images loose, but the shot loops in my head and rings in my ears, reminding me I shot Fabrizio point-black and at close range. He looked me in the eyes until he closed them forever.
I didn’t stop there though.
I asked Franco to come clean up. On my order, he chopped Fabrizio’s head off, and when he was interrupted by Hayden, Franco bashed his face in until all the bones were broken, rendering him unidentifiable, and then tossed his head under the crawl space.
The day I discovered the truth, I changed. None of the people in that room realized a piece of me died the second I heard Costa’s revenge plan and how he used me in it. My true father let me kill him. And after all of that, Costa wanted me to kill my sister. All this time, I thought I was the favorite. Turns out, I was just the idiot who did whatever he wanted.
So, I ended it.
As Breaker Beneventi, I made my bones by killing my real father, and as the bastard son of Fabrizio Salvatore, I made my bones by killing the man I idolized.
“Boss?” Romolo calls, holding his cell phone to his ear. “Franco’s here.”
I didn’t realize he had stopped talking to me. “Tell him where to find the body. He knows what to do.”
While Romolo conveys the message, I send a quick text to Kelsie, who has been busy avoiding my calls all day.
Romolo places the phone on the desk. “It’s on speaker,” he announces.
“B,” Franco says, still refusing to call me Boss. “Where the hell do you want me to put this? If the Feds are looking into us, I can’t just have his body in the back of my car, now can I? I’ll have to disassemble here.”
My stomach turns at the thought of him hacking Stupid up in pieces on my kitchen island, the expensive gold-flecked stone covered in guts and blood. “Do what you got to do, but do it in the guesthouse.”
“Don’t want me to carve where you eat?”
I take a seat behind my desk. “I’m already going to need a new fridge. I prefer to keep this place clean. No traces that can be picked up with luminol.”
“I can always chop him and store him in the fridge. Do it old school?” He chuckles at his attempt at a joke. “I hear Fabrizio used to take some members out like that.”
“Be serious,” I snap, not enjoying his grave humor or him mentioning my real father. Only Kelsie, Stone, and I know the truth.
>
“Fine. Where do you keep the activated oxygen? And none of that cheap stuff.”
Romolo squints his brows, not understanding what the heck Franco is talking about.
“There’s detergent in the laundry room, but he’s probably staining my grout as we speak. So you know the drill, bleach it first.”
“Then the powdered detergent…I know. Hope you have enough in the laundry room.”
“Actually, we need to be extra cautious. I know you hate this, but I want you to use the hydrogen peroxide mix.”
According to one of our more legitimate investments, the mixture of peroxide and vinegar helps break down the hemoglobin, so luminol won’t be able to pick it up. Something about sodium percarbonate dissolving in water and active oxygen. I don’t care for logistics, I just care that it works.
The cabinets open and slam shut as he checks for what he needs. “This is going to make a mess.”
“You like messes.” I glance at Romolo, who doesn’t seem fazed by all of this. “Clean it up, and if you need to store the body or body parts, keep it all in the guesthouse until you can get it out of here. Make sure you’re not being followed.” Costa always used to pay Franco extra for unexpected body disposals. Overtime. Very expensive overtime I can’t afford at the moment. Large withdrawals from my personal account will trigger suspicion at the bank, and if the Feds are watching us, it may give them a reason to investigate further.
I need to end this. I end the call and gesture for Romolo to put the phone away.
When he does, I lean back and ask, “Tell me everything you know about Lyla.”
“I don’t know much.” Romolo shrugs and places his almost untouched drink on the floor. “I was near FHU, meeting up with a friend at a coffee shop, when I saw Lyla searching the help wanted board for a job. I waited until she tore off a couple before approaching her.”
“What did she do when you did?”
“She smiled and blushed when I tucked a strand of her bright hair behind her ear.”
My stomach hardens at the thought of his hands on her. “Then?”