“As a hard ass?” I offered.
“Your reputation is that you’re blacker than sin and each time you get shot, your own soul is refused entrance into the afterlife.” Chase rolled his eyes.
“I’ve only been shot three times. All times flesh wounds. Truly, people exaggerate.” He waved us off and stomped out his cigar. The last thing we needed was a flicker of light to give us away.
“It was a good idea to park the car next door. They’ll investigate, leaving only a few guards near the entrance.” I pulled out my binoculars. “And there they go.”
Three men strutted outside and slowly walked toward the abandoned car.
I waited until they were close enough and hit the button.
The car exploded, throwing all three men at least thirty feet.
“Gotta love explosives,” Luca muttered under his breath. “Though by the looks of it, we’re only going to have thirty minutes to get in and out before the feds come.”
“Well, let’s hope they respond to our little invitation.” I smiled and aimed my gun at the door.
Sure enough, five more men ran out of the building.
“Shit, it’s almost too easy.” Chase picked off the first three.
“Like playing video games with guns and real people.” I hit the last two men and waited. The door opened again, and this time it was Tex’s head that poked out, followed by Campisi. He looked in our direction and gave us the bird.
“Geez, he could have at least offered us dinner or something,” Chase joked. I smirked and hit him on the back.
“That’s our cue.” I winked at Luca. “Go back to the car. Make sure the girls are safe.”
“On it. And have fun, boys. Do save a few for me.”
“Always,” I promised.
Chase and I slowly approached the building from our viewpoint on the lake. Our hands were both up, guns out of our hands. We were going in without guns blazing, and I hoped to God it would be enough to throw Vito off.
“Ah, so the cavalry has arrived,” Tex said, his lip swollen and both eyes bloody, but otherwise looking like his assy self.
“Honey, we’re home.” I blew him a kiss.
He caught it mid-air.
“Bunch of idiots!” Vito spat, throwing Tex back into a metal chair and aiming his gun in the direction of me and Chase. “This is not how business is done! We do not joke around. We do not make light of these situations. Do you not realize I will kill you? I will bring hell down to earth to destroy you.”
I nodded. “Just a ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Capo?”
“At least you respect your elders.”
“Oh, sorry.” I winced. “I wasn’t saying it as a term of respect. I meant to say Crappo.”
“Shit for brains,” Vito mumbled. “And now you will die.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “You okay with that, Chase?”
“I’m good.” He stood his ground. “Should I close my eyes or something?”
“Eyes open,” Tex said from the chair. “It always goes better that way.”
“Idiots!” Vito yelled.
“Where are all your men?” I asked in a calm voice. “A Capo? In the States? And you have what? Fifteen men?” I looked around the room. “Maybe less, since we just killed seven in under two minutes.”
The men that were still standing behind Vito started looking around the room nervously.
“And by the looks of them, they’re B-team at best. Not made men. Just associates. A made man wouldn’t run out of a warehouse waving his gun all over the place. A made man wouldn’t get close enough to a car to even be touched by a bomb.”
Vito’s eyes narrowed in hatred. “A twenty-million-dollar bounty causes some to question their loyalty. And apparently good news — or news about money — travels fast. I imagine my phone was ringing before you even hit end on the call. So I chose to go into hiding until I killed you. Seemed a more intelligent choice.”
“Oh sorry.” I lifted up my hands in surrender. “I wasn’t aware of your plan, but now that I am, I have to admit to something.”
“What?” He waved his gun at me again.
I hadn’t counted on him being terrified. Then again, he was old. He was on his way out. Twenty million did that to people. And the fact that the De Langes, the very family that he’d tried to control all those years ago, had ordered the hit? That meant the De Langes, the bottom of the totem pole, had risen to the top, which basically just made our families look like the toughest shit ever to hit Chicago.
And it made Vito defenseless.
All within twenty-four hours. We had successfully brought down an empire that should have never been erected in the first place. No man should have so much power; no man should think of himself as more than that — a mere man. A mortal, given the chance to share the same air that God used to breathe when he walked the earth.
Shouts filtered from the outside.
And then the doors opened.
Mo, Mil, Frank, Luca, and Trace — damn it. Trace. They were all being escorted very nicely into the warehouse, at gunpoint.
“Shit,” I heard Chase mumble.
“A bit of a miscount?” Vito laughed.
We were outnumbered, not by a lot, but enough to sway the odds. If it turned into a gun fight, lives would be lost.
“Forty,” I offered. “I’ll give forty million dollars to the first person to hit the bull’s-eye.”
“He’s bluffing!” Vito shouted! A vein pulsated across his forehead. “He’s a lying prick! The Abandonatos stole my son!” He began pacing. “I just want him back! All I want is my son back, and I’ll leave. I’ll leave! No more killing. My old heart, it just can’t—”
“Lies,” Tex spat, pushing away from the chair and approaching his father. “Say my name.”
“No.”
“Afraid of a little curse?”
“For the last time, it is not real!”
“Vito Nicio Campisi, Junior,” a female voice said from behind me. It was too late before I realized it was Mil. I yelled as Vito raised his gun, directing it at her head. She stood firm.
The warehouse doors burst open again, and what can only be described as a miracle took place, as men I’d never seen before in my life poured in. Most of them looked like they’d seen better days. But there were sixty of them. And they were heavily armed.
“Hey, Joe.” Mil shrugged. “What took you so long?”
“Oh, you know.” He cocked his gun. “Vegas traffic.”
“No!” Vito fired.
Chase yelled and ran in Mil’s direction then fell to the ground in a heap. More gunshots rang out. I ran toward Trace, but paused when she pulled out her own gun and started firing at Vito’s men.
I hated how turned on I was at the sight.
Within seconds, it was all over with. No lives lost on our side — at least… not yet.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chase
I’d always wondered what it would be like — to sacrifice yourself so another person could live. It wasn’t like I was morbid or anything, but in my line of work it was just a daily reality. You don’t work for the mafia and not think about it. Death was at your door constantly. Shit, it practically camped there.
I just thought it would come knocking a little bit later in life, you know? Every muscle in my body tensed as the second gunshot rang out.
Funny, how at the end of your life, you think about the beginning. Even crazier? It was her smile that had first attracted me to her. The way her entire face lit up, the way her eyes said she’d eat me alive if I didn’t watch it. Damn, but so many things had changed over the course of a few weeks.
I don’t even know how it happened, how she’d maneuvered her way into my soul, how she’d made it so that I was overcome with madness for her — a type of obsession that I never wanted to be done with. She had destroyed me, and in my destruction, I’d found my salvation.