“Capture or kill,” he says, voice quiet.
She nods her head because she’d already put two and two together, her blond hair, now pulled back into a slick ponytail, bobs behind her.
Without warning she slams a knife into the man’s right hand, with little effort from her. The black long sleeve crop top does wonders at hiding her muscles, and while she’s not bulky like Alex or anything, she is blatantly strong.
I idly wonder if she works out often, even as the man lets out a high pitched keen of pain.
“Next time you point a gun at a person, make sure you know who you’re dealing with.” Her voice is a void, it sucks out all the emotion in the room, making the mans pitiful cries stutter to a stop.
Vin finally wakes back up from his punishment and must have heard what she’d just said because the cocky fucker looks at her.
“Then, who the fuck are you?”
I step into his view of her, something about him looking at her puts me on edge and twitchy at the same time. Nothing ever good comes from being twitchy, it usually results in heads rolling. I can’t afford the fall out of taking his head, not right now.
“She’s the Priest, here to exorcise your demons, even if it cost you your life.”
She gives a throaty chuckles and my dick jumps at the sound. I am in for so much shit if just the sound of her chuckling gets that kind of reaction, even in this setting when my dick is as an over cooked noodle.
Vin pales even more.
“So you’ve heard of me, I take it,” Priest smiles. “Don’t worry, some of the rumors aren’t true.”
I look her up and down, and I know she can feel my eyes on her, but it’s not just a sexual look. I can’t believe that my future Boss is such a blood thirsty unafraid-of-getting-her-hands-dirty kind of woman. Hell, she’s capable of being even more ruthless than Alonzo, but she does it without needing emotional rationale to get the job done, no anger necessary to fuel her fire…Alonzo cut his teeth on laundering and bookkeeping when he was starting out, violence was and has never been his first option. This girl is a perfect enforcer.
“The real question is how many are lies,” I can’t help but mutter from my observation position.
She turns her head to me, and even though it doesn’t crack her emotional wall she’s erected, she smiles, a toothy kind of grin that lets me know that what the media is reporting on The Priest isn’t even the half of what she’s really done.
Luca
Bones and Cobra crack malicious smiles as we drop like flies while Priest takes to the task of gaining information.
I don’t even care that I am the first guy to drop, I can kill a man and watch the soul leave his eyes without thought, my masculinity isn’t damaged by knowing that my soon to be boss is more than capable and willing to electrocute a man and not bat one of those full black eye lashes in any sense of remorse. Honestly, I’ll probably sleep better at night knowing that she isn’t relying on us to be her knights in shining armor, there to keep her hands clean. Her hands have been stained long before we ever came to the picture, and she is stronger for it.
If not a bit of a monster…
Good thing for her I am a monster too.
“You gonna be able to keep down lunch? She kept it pretty tame, but you wouldn’t and won’t be the last unable to eat after witnessing her… handy work,” Cobra says, like he’s trying to assuage, what I’m sure he thinks is, my eviscerated masculinity.
“I have no doubt that there have been many a man unable to do much of anything after seeing a woman as beautiful and lithe as her do her work,” I say, and I feel my natural smirk tug across my face.
Bones’ eyes flash and its easy to see that there is more than friendship on his side of things. I make a note of that, because that’s what I do for the family. I collect information, any way necessary outside of the traditional beat ‘em and break ‘em; that’s Tony’s speciality.
I pull a cigarette from my pants, something I usually don’t do when the boss is around, but after witnessing that woman, all of those beautiful curves and long neck arches, I’m at my ropes end and need some sort of release, Alonzo’s presence be damned.
Cobra just chuckles and waves his hand in a host like manner to one of the other warehouses.
I look behind me to find Giovani and Alonzo in a hushed conversation, Alonzo’s eyes looking a little wide in shock, and I wonder what he thinks of the woman that came from his genetics. Does he think she’s too much like his father, who had more than just a traditional mafioso’s love of blood.
Alex doesn’t look ruffled at all, but having known him my whole life, I can see the tight way he’s holding his jaw. He was always bad with smells, and the smell of burning flesh has always been a trigger for his gag reflex.
I nod at Cobra and follow him and Bones into the other warehouse, leaving the rest of the Conti family to follow.
Inside the warehouse that appears to be more of a bunkhouse of sorts, with cots in the back, a kitchenette area in the front, and a long family-style table dividing the sleeping area from the small kitchen. There's a tv mounted on the wall opposite a couch, and while the couch looks like the most comfortable seating in the building, all of us take seats at the table.
After a moment Bones gets up and starts making coffee, his large deep brown hands swallowing the white sugar bowl and coffee mug as he putters around until he places the creamer and sugar in the center of the table as Cobra talks.
“Alonzo, you're going to want to be careful with those types of tests,” his voice is guarded and the warning clear in his tone.
Alonzo says, “What do you mean, it seems like she can handle it just fine.”
Bones places a coffee cup in front of the boss with a little too much force for my liking. It makes a large clanking sound before he releases it.
“It’s not that she can’t handle anything you might think to throw at her. She can handle anything,” Bones says a smugness in his voice.
Cobra calls his name and they have a staring contest that lasts a few minutes before Bones finally grumbles under his breath and goes to lean with his back to the nearest wall, ankles crossed as well as his arms, blatantly unhappy with their silent showdown.
“As Bones said, she can handle anything you throw her way,” Cobra says, “She’s grown up in a world where there was no other option. You need to be careful about threatening her people, Alonzo.”
Alonzo makes that scoffing sound before throwing a hand out at us enforcers, “We are her people,” he starts, but Cobra cuts him off with a harsh shake of his head.
“No, you are her blood, but in her world, the rights of blood have to be earned through deed. Everyone she considers hers have already earned that right. She might be a mafia princess in your world Alonzo, but here, out here she’s a crew queen,” Cobra says, then takes a drink from his cup.
“Like a game of chess, the queen is more powerful than any of the other pieces on the board. Do you know why that is Alonzo?” Cobra askes.
Alonzo rolls his eyes, clearly frustrated, “I’m sure you’ll educate me.”
Cobra just rolls his eyes back, before speaking, “I have a theory, you ass. When you look at how many of the kings of old ran their kingdoms it was for power, with an emphasis on gaining more power, very little did it ever cross their minds to tend to the people in those kingdoms unless that tending led to some benefit for the crown. Men were quick to start wars they did not usually see action in. Now, the queens who ran their kingdoms...women usually view their people as their children to be taken care of and are more likely to negotiate with other kingdoms. While men might start wars, women are more vicious and have more machinations up their sleeves...all for the betterment of their people...not only do they love their subjects, their subjects love them. Queen Elizabeth used her hand in marriage as a political tool, to the betterment of her people and gave them many years before being forced into a conflict with Spain...something a king could not have done. All for her people. Women
rulers tend to be like wolves, loyal to their subjects and ready to tear the throat of any who would threaten their pups.”
We all take a moment to think on this while Cobra takes his time adding more cream and sugar to his coffee cup, then continues, looking Alonzo directly in the eye.
“Priest doesn't take threats to her people lightly, and you've already done it twice in the span of what? Two hours? Do not go for a third Alonzo, because like a wolf, if you make her feel like you might actually do it, you will no longer get the growling and bared teeth...you will be silently stalked in the dead of night and won’t know it until she stares you in the eyes as she rips out your throat.”
Bones rolls his eyes at Cobra before muttering, “No wonder Priest calls you a creepy-ass chess player behind your back.”
Cobra doesn’t even try to hide the smile that plays around his lips at that, but he reigns it in quickly to look at Alonzo.
The boss is looking at Cobra like he’s considering his words, more than the average man would get.
“Way to get all philosophical and whatnot, but you know that that probably isn't going to be possible right? She's going to have to get herself ready for my world where fluffing ourselves like cocks to dance around each other before calling a bluff is as common as the cold, right? I can't do that unless—” Alonzo starts but gets cut off by Bones.
“Unless you're what? Pissing her off to the point that she walks away from a world she never even knew she was a part of? Have you been paying attention to her at all?”
That earns a glare from Alonzo, “I doubt she’d actually walk away.”
That gets him a look form both Bones and Cobra, heck even I have trouble keeping my face blank at how blind he’s being.
“Then you must be some kind of crazy,” Bones says, and looks like he might say more but Tony walks in. Tony to untrained eyes would look unaffected by his time watching Priest. His face is still in it’s typical half smile, his default expression, and he had his usual bounce in his step.
But I can see that he’s found something about her compelling by the way he holds his jaw, and the small ways he’s rubbing his hands down his pant legs like they’re sweaty. But then again, I’ve been around for every crush the man has had since before hitting puberty.
Tony clears his throat forcing everyone to look at him, and I note the small grimace on Alex’s face as he notices the look in Tony’s eye too.
“Boss, I'm not trying to second guess you or anything, but I think you should heed their advice. We've swept in, dropped this large bomb on her about a dad she didn't know she had, a life her mother never mentioned. Hell, that'd be hard for anyone to adjust to, but we also keep putting her people into the crosshairs. She will snap back, and we don't want that quality burned out of her.”
Tony clears his throat again as everyone just keeps staring at him. Tony is typically not the most observant of social situations, and the fact that he’s noticed that much about her personality is telling. While that might be obvious to me or Alex, and surely true for Giovani, Tony is the kind of guy who typically runs in guns blazing before ever thinking of the repercussions.
Tony continues, “We can find other things to test her around, another way because as we can see she is lethal. Hell, she's currently torturing the underlings of another famiglia, we know she is loyal and understands the meaning of being bound to her word and protecting her own.”
Alex is nodding the whole time Tony is talking, so its not superseding that he too chimes in.
“Boss, we don't have to come at this issue as we would typically, is what Tony's trying to say. She's not coming in completely blind to the life, and while Mafia and Crew aren't identical experiences, it takes grit to have the amount of respect I saw them give her. It takes all the same skills you have to garner that respect, which she seems to possess in spades.”
For a moment I forget that this isn’t just a meeting with us enforcers and speak my mind, “It doesn't hurt that she's hotter than sin and most of their gang is dudes. I could see myself happily following orders if they come from that,”
Alonzo cuts me off, his hand clenching the coffee cup with pure rage and strain evident in the whiteness of his knuckles.
“Luca, if you fucking finish that sentence, I promise you will regret it. That's my fucking daughter.”
Cobra looks at me like he wants to strangle me, but it’s Bones who startles us all. He laughs, downs the remaining amount of his coffee in his cup, slamming the ceramic to the tabletop before speaking, tone mocking.
“Who is still very much like a stranger to you. It's going to take time to learn her, but I am going to tell you that she will not appreciate you trying to treat her like some precious white rose.”
Alonzo goes to open his mouth, but Bones continues on before he can get a sound out, “She's not some naive little girl who has been waiting on you to show up. In fact, she was taught to live her life never expecting help of any kind from anyone outside of the Crew. She's a twenty-three-year-old woman who has had sex with a multitude of partners, not some twelve-year-old little girl you seem to have hoped you'd find frozen in time.”
Alonzo’s jaws snap shut, and he doesn’t seem to know who he wants to glare at more, Bones or Cobra, but since neither of them seem to be care what he thinks, they just stare at him.
“Have you been one of those partners?” Giovani breaks the stare down between Bones and Alonzo with his calculated question.
Giovani takes in information and locks it in that vault of his, and knowing him as well as I do, I know this is him not so subtly trying to figure out exactly the extension of Priest and Bones relationship.
Bones glares as he answers, “No, I haven't because I have too much respect to think that I'd be happy with a few nights, the max amount of time she allows most of her partners,” he releases a sigh and looks at Cobra.
Cobra sighs as well, before talking, “Losing Lene had bigger effects on her than she'll let on, usually. But her want for intimacy, that took a big hit. She doesn't want to allow anyone close enough to be able to hurt her, and while that's already a lost cause with Bones and I, and a handful of our Crew, she refuses to give anyone that kind of sway over her ever again.”
Everyone is quite for a moment, before Cobra speaks again, this time his dark eyes trained on me like he’s assessing ever weak spot ready to exploit them all. There is now emotion on his face, much like priest’s face when she’d begun her information gathering.
“Also, Luca was it?” I nod, warily, “If you ever, and I mean ever imply that Priest came to her position because of her face, Alonzo won't be able to find your body. Not only is she supposed to be your new boss someday, she has already outshone your ability to do your own damn job and should have earned your respect. She's managed to catch your boss, as well as yourself, off balance with the ability to pull a gun before you can even begin the thought process to decide your gun is a necessity. If any of the crew had heard you say that,” Bones startled gurgle of a laugh cuts Cobra off.
“The few women of the crew would claw out your eyes and feed them to Priest, and the men would probably beat you within an inch of your life before hog tying you and delivering you to her doorstep. Crew is ruthless, especially for her. Probably because of how ruthless she is for them.”
Priest
I sent Tony back to the warehouse so I could have a moment to myself, to try to wash away the numbness with the blood. I wash my hands, unhurriedly. I am not ashamed of what I do for the people I love, the ones I protect, and maybe that in itself is wrong, that I don’t feel like I need justification beyond protecting my own?
But I really don’t care.
Tony held the whole time, and never seemed sickened I think that it’s probably because this is close to what he does. The other three enforcers all looked a little…prim, less likely to get their hands as messy as mine. It made me look at Tony a little different that he didn’t run, made me think that maybe his monster and mine could be friend
s and share a bag of chips while swapping stories.
I wash my hands meticulously, taking a breather before I have to face all the drama I’m sure to walk into. I knew I wasn’t going to like being dragged into this fucking world, but now, after finding all this out, its looking like I don’t have a hope or prayer of just walking the fuck away like I want to.
I don’t even try to hold in the sigh as I wipe my hands on the black towel and head to the warehouse next door. Mrs. Tamayuchi was kind enough to “rent” the warehouses out to the crew, knowing full well what goes on in them both. While I’m sure at one point in her life she probably would have frowned upon what I did, those old sentiments left a long time ago when I took care of her daughter, Misa, when I stepped in during a domestic dispute at a bar.
Sometimes it pays to be a vigilante, not that taking down abusive husbands and pimps was the noblest of vigilante acts, but I did what I could for those suffering.
Anyway, now Misa is back at home with Mrs. Tamayuchi and back in school for nursing.
So, as I walk out I nod at the security camera she’d had her son install when she got worried about my safety when extracting information.
I slip into the other warehouse unnoticed, not even Cobra seems to notice my presence, and I listen for a bit.
I’m not surprised to find Bones and Cobra trying to enlighten the poor idiot I have for a father about being in the crew. Okay, so maybe idiot is too strong since we don’t know each other at all. But damn does he presume a whole lot.
I remain quiet, just observing the whole thing, until he says, “You realize she's going to have to leave this crew, right?”
He spews the word crew out like it’s some dirty word, rather than the promise of family and protection and security that Cobra, Bones, and I have made it. I enjoy the startled jumps he and everyone else in the room makes when I finally interject.
“I don’t have to do a goddamn thing I don’t want to, and I can't just leave my crew. Blood in and blood out.”
Lost Girl Page 6