Never Truth

8

I’d walked the path to my room a million times in my life, and it was hard not to feel like the lost little girl I’d once been as I retraced those same steps. It was precisely why I never went up there after I moved out. Even when I stopped in on Sunday for our obligatory family dinners, I stuck to the ground floor. Seeing the closed door was hard enough on my battered heart, but the reminder of Nico was more than it could take. Rather than unpack, I curled beneath the covers of my double bed and allowed the strong hands of grief to drag me down beneath the surface of its icy waters. OceanofPDF.com Everyone in the outfit had been on edge for the past twenty-four hours after Alessia Genovese was kidn*pped. Word got around when she’d been located, but tensions were still elevated to a stifling degree. s**t behind the scenes must have been bad because Alessia’s father, Enzo Genovese, stepped out of the shadows for the first time and took ownership of his role as boss of the Lucciano family. My boss. I was sworn member of his outfit—whether I had wanted to be or not. Now, it was an accepted part of my life, but that hadn’t always been the case. Once I was initiated, I had no choice but to accept my fate and settle into my role as a soldier in the organization. I was a grunt and well aware of it, which was why it surprised me to receive a summons to attend a meet. Soldiers were pawns. Our capos gave us our marching orders, and that was generally as far up the chain as we had contact. When I stepped into the Manhattan conference room at a building I’d never been to before, I was stunned to find myself in a room full of capos along with Enzo Genovese himself. I only knew two men in the room by sight—my capo, Gabe, and a longtime friend, Tony Pellegrini, who was already seated on the opposite side of the room. He gave me a lopsided smile and a chin lift but stayed seated. I didn’t know any of the other men, but judging by their age and expensive clothes, I was likely the only soldier in the room. I tried to keep the tension from coiling in my shoulders—guys like these could smell unease—but it was hard when I had no f*****g clue what I was doing there. Gabe had greeted me when I entered the room, but I hadn’t been given any other information or instruction. Resorting to my normal MO, I took a seat in one of the chairs along the wall of the room and sat back to observe. My dad was a degenerate gambler, and his worthlessness had colored my perceptions of the outfit when I discovered he was a member. It didn’t take me long once I’d been taken into the fold to realize there was a lot more to the life than my father. Every corner of the Earth had its share of addicts and miscreants. But in the family, those guys never made it past the bottom rung—soldiers, if they were lucky, but many were only ever associates. The room was full of successful businessmen, powerful and well-established in the organization, and I had no idea what the f**k I was doing there. “Alright fellas, let’s get started.” Enzo didn’t have to holler over the murmur of voices to seize the attention of everyone in the room. At his simple command, the room went silent as a mortuary, and all eyes turned to where Enzo stood at the head of the table. “As everyone here has heard, we recently suffered an unforgiveable betrayal. My trusted underboss, Sal Amato, set my daughter and me up to be killed and has been sullying the family name, angling for a war. He attempted to use my anonymity to usurp my role as boss. Everyone here knows that we prize secrecy above all else to protect ourselves and our families, but my removed presence left us vulnerable from within. I say ‘us’ because this wasn’t just an attack on me. Sal’s actions have affected us all.” His searing gaze swept the room as he addressed the group, his voice resounding with certainty. “We don’t call meetings like this anymore because it’s not safe to have us all in one place, but this needed to happen, if only for a few minutes. Things are going to change. I want every one of you to hear it straight from my mouth. I’m taking this outfit back.” He didn’t get another word out before the room erupted in cheers. I joined the group in clapping for the return of strong leadership in our organization. Although the same man was still in charge, it made an enormous difference with how we were perceived when our leader stood proudly front and center. I might not have been the typical goodfella, but I was a part of the outfit for life, and I had no desire to see it run by a man hiding in the shadows. “As the first matter of business moving forward,” Enzo continued, quieting the crowd. “I’m pleased to name Gabe Fiore as my new underboss.” He gestured to Gabe who stood from his place at the table to clasp Enzo’s hand. It was clear this wasn’t news to Gabe, and I silently cursed the man for not giving me a heads-up.