Brutal Legacy

Chapter 1 Episode 1 The shots rang out in the restaurant, sending panicked cries and screams up from the patrons. People hit the floor, and I was no different. Broken glass littered the tile, cutting into my knees. I crawled under the table. Someone was crying, and someone else shushed them. Whimpers of fear filled my ears. A room full of people desperate to live. A hard crunch sounded. Footsteps over shattered glass. Crunch. Which way were they going? Crunch. Were they getting louder? Crunch. Dark dress shoes appeared in front of my hiding place. Shiny, leather brogues. They looked expensive. Handmade for sure. My terrified brain fastened onto the mundane to keep me from screaming. I clamped my hand over my mouth to muffle any sound from escaping. The shooter shifted, taking a step to the left, and I nearly fainted with relief as they walked around my table to the side. He’d gone. Moved away to terrorize another table. The relief had barely hit when the table above me scraped hard over the floor. One second, I was cocooned in reassuring darkness, the next, I was crouching in a pitiful, cowering ball while the table shielding me flipped over and crashed on the floor. Light stung my eyes. I was totally exposed. I could feel the gunman standing over me. His presence sent goosebumps over my skin… like Death himself had come to collect me. This is it, Georgia, the end of the line. Maybe I should have gone to church once in a while in the last fourteen years, or believed in something… maybe then, kneeling before my end wouldn’t feel so desolate. What did I have to show for my thirty-three years on the planet? A shitty apartment with half a dozen unfinished designs? A broken heart that had never healed right, and a grudge the size of the moon? So big, that fourteen years of carrying it had destroyed the possibility of anything else good in my life. Silence had fallen and stretched out endlessly. Was this when your life flashed in front of your eyes? Was this like in the movies when everything moved in slow motion? Or was the man with the gun really just standing over me, staring down? Did he want me to glance up at him before he killed me? Just in case that was true, I kept my chin tilted mulishly down. I was nothing if not stubborn as f**k. “Get up,” a deep voice commanded. I tensed even more. Everything screamed at me to refuse. “Get up, now, or I’ll shoot a person in this room every ten seconds until you do,” the deep voice continued, unbothered. Like he wasn’t just threatening to kill people. “Ten, nine, eight…” he started. I pushed myself to my feet, fighting a gasp as my hands ground into the jagged glass on the floor. “I’m up. Don’t hurt anyone else.” My voice was surprisingly stronger than I’d thought it would be. “I won’t as long as you do what I say, but every second we waste here, their lives are in danger.” His odd wording sent my eyes up to his face, finally. He was tall, well over six feet, and dressed like he’d been in a stock portfolio meeting and decided to step out and shoot up a restaurant. A custom-made black suit, crisp white shirt. He had that aura of power that only emanated from the truly wealthy. But he wasn’t your average rich guy… there was something very different about him. Maybe it was the tattoos liberally decorating the backs of his hands and neck; clearly the guy had some serious bodywork going on beneath the three-piece suit. Or maybe it was how his face was spattered with someone else’s blood. But on closer inspection, no, it wasn’t just the tats or the flecks of red against his cheek, though they certainly added to the aura of his presence. It was just him. The way he stood, cocksure, but ready. Lethal and confident. A man who had done terrible things and would again. A man who could take any danger. A man who was the danger. He wrapped a hand around my arm and tugged me to him. My feet had forgotten how to work, and I fell clumsily into his chest. He didn’t even sway at the impact. “Where are you taking me?” I asked, searching the little I could see of his face. He had sunglasses on, fitting for the California sun falling through the long windows of the restaurant. His jaw was square and tanned, shadowed with just a hint of dark stubble. He had strong cheekbones and an aquiline nose. Dark winged eyebrows and shorn black hair. There was something vaguely military-esque about the strictness of that cut. He was criminally good-looking. Shouldn’t there be a rule that the most dangerous guys couldn’t also be the hottest ones? “Wherever I want,” he said simply. “What?! You can’t!” I squeaked out in a panic. “And who is going to stop me?” He asked simply. “You can’t just steal a person,” I murmured, knowing I was wrong. This madman could. He was. “I can do whatever the f**k I want.” He turned from the c*****e of the restaurant and pulled me beside him, pushing me out an exit. A hard object poked into my side. The gun? I couldn’t see it, but clearly he had it pressed into my rib cage. I had to fight. I had to do something. I tried to step on his foot, but he barely flinched. “Let’s be clear. If I say jump, you say how high. I say kneel… you hit the f*****g deck, got it?” he growled at me, perfectly certain that I would comply. His hand was around my neck, his strong fingers biting into my skin. “Or?” I shot out, anger at his unshakable confidence pushing my fear from my mind for a second, before it came back, tenfold. He spoke with that same perfect confidence. “Or — you’ll die.” La Seta was packed to the seams with Napoli’s most beautiful. Skin carefully revealed in titillating patches, perfumes meant to seduce, hair swinging and enticing, smiles tempting… But not to me. I moved through the swaying mass of desperate, clawing people like a dark arrow through a cloud of cotton candy. I wasn’t here for fun. I was here for one purpose. To do my job. Ahead, my target was laughing at the bar, downing shot after shot, lowering his guard even more. Some people really made this easy. I leaned against a nearby pillar and watched him in the mirror across the way. My biggest problem somewhere like this was blending in. I didn’t sway. I didn’t smile. It kind of made me stick out in a place where everyone else was riding a chemical high of some kind, be it drugs, alcohol, or pure endorphins. “Ciao, bello,” a female voice purred beside me. A hand snaked down my chest. “I haven’t seen you here before.” I had her wrist in a tight grip before she saw me move. Her hazy, half-closed eyes widened in alarm. “And you haven’t seen me this time,” I advised her quietly. Her smile returned; she assumed I was flirting back. She leaned into me, and the manufactured scent of her perfume was harsh on my nose. Femininity in a bottle. I wished I could unsmell it. “Sure, I haven’t. Why don’t we get out of here and not see each other a little more?” she suggested. I let go of her wrist. “I’m afraid that’s not in the cards. I’m not what you’re looking for.” “You’re a man, aren’t you?” Debatable. “Maybe so, but I don’t have the parts you want.” She pouted for a moment and then leaned in. A last-ditch attempt to seduce me. Her hand landed on my crotch, and she squeezed me through my dress pants. “You feel like you have everything I need.” This time, I didn’t bother moving her hand. I simply dropped my mildly pleasant mask and let her see the man beneath. She stilled as my eyes drilled into hers, and she saw it all. The madness, the anger, the simmering violence only just contained. The monster without his man disguise. She dropped her hand and stepped back. “That isn’t the part I’m missing, signorina.” “What is it then?” she asked, muted now. “What are you missing?” I caught sight of my target leaving the bar ahead of me and stepped forward. My missing parts were far more vital than some appendage. My missing parts made me incapable of mercy, or gentleness… It had been that way for as long as I could remember. Since her. “A heart,” I told her curtly and stepped past her, intent on my target. He was a De Sanctis made man. I’d also been a De Sanctis for the greater part of my life. Service to my capo and the familigia had been my sole reason for living for the last decade. The family was rooted in Naples, though that grip was weakening gradually with the decline of Salvatore De Sanctis’ health. I lived in the second De Sanctis stronghold, New Jersey. My capo Renato, Salvatore’s nephew, was visiting Italy with his new wife, and where they went, I went. I was his shadow, his right hand, and his personal executioner. Since I owed him my and my sister’s life, it was only fitting. One of the most satisfying parts of my job was rooting out corruption in the heart of the family. Death before disloyalty was a motto I lived by. I wasn’t a merciful man, but I conducted the bloody and violent business of being sottocapo to a brutal Mafia as professionally as possible… But a traitor in the familigia? They got special attention. I enjoyed delivering them the consequences of their actions, and I was so very good at it. I was a natural-born killer and could never be anything else. I’d lived in hell and brought the demons back with me. I might as well use them in service of my family. I followed my target toward the back of the club. I had no worries about repercussions from the police. The Italian police were some of the most corrupt I’d ever met. I’d learned that lesson young. Let them chase their tails. My mark had entered the men’s room. I stood outside and kept my face carefully angled away. I had a black baseball hat on and tinted glasses, as strange as it was to wear them in a dark club. Thankfully, enough Italians were fashion-conscious to get away with it as a normal outfit.