“We will,” he promised. “For now, you’ve earned some sweet dreams.”
And even though there were still countless questions that needed answering, pasts that needed decoding and futures to plan, I believed him and fell swiftly in my first deep, dreamless sleep in weeks.
12
TIERNAN
Four levels below street level, there was a room I liked to use for situations like these. Concrete floors and walls, the former stained with faint rust-like splotches around the center drain from years of spilling enemy blood.
I had Santo hanging there now, suspended over that middle drain by chains manacled to his wrists. His arms were wrenched nearly out of their sockets, blood streaming down his torso from the split in his right cheekbone where my knuckles had cut through flesh.
I studied my false friend as he hung like a side of meat from the ceiling. I’d known Santo for years. He was often called in to do the work too dirty and dangerous for Bryant to pass off on even his least favorite son. In recent years, he’d joined the Belcante crime family under capo Monte Belcante, but before that, he’d been a thug-for-hire the Morelli family put to good use.
In the past, we’d strung up men exactly as Santo was now, and the irony wasn’t lost on me.
Hank had gagged him before I entered the room, and I took my time laying into him. His entire torso would be one large bruise tomorrow, but he deserved that and more for threatening and terrifying Bianca. I didn’t care if he was her uncle or fucking God himself. Anyone who raised a hand to my little thing deserved to nothing but pain and misery.
Santo took it like the man and mafioso he was, barely groaning as each of my brutal hits landed, but now he hung, swaying slightly, as if in a coma. My own body was aching from the beating, my fight against Lucian the day before, and the bullet wound still healing at the top of my shoulder so I decided he’d had enough and ripped the gag from Santo’s bleeding mouth.
I rolled my shoulders back, ridding myself of the last of the tenderness I’d felt when I was with Bianca so I could face Santo as the cold motherfucker I usually was. It was hard, after the last thirty minutes I’d spent with Bianca, with the taste of her still on my tongue even though I’d washed my hands and cock in my office bathroom like a whore after setting her sleeping form on the couch.
My old friend lifted his head slightly and glared at me from under the tangle of sweat drenched hair falling into his face.
“There was no need for this,” he told me blandly. “If you wanted to fight, I’d have been happy to have a go in the ring.”
“You put a gun to the temple of my ward, my need is for more than just a fight.” My voice was mild as I stalked over to Hank and took a bludgeon from his grip. “Do I need to extract my pound of flesh now or will you tell me what the hell you were doing first?”
Santo’s chuckle was hollow and bitter. “Your ward? Fuck.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I look away for a few years and this happens.”
“Look away from what?” I demanded, even though I had Bianca’s voice in my head saying ‘my uncle.’
“From my sister.” He shifted in the restraints even though it hurt so he could fix me with a level glare. “From her children.”
“Bianca mentioned she thought you were her long-lost uncle. Funny, in all the years I’ve known you, you never one mentioned family. The orphan taken in by the Belcante family, that’s how the world knows you.”
“You never wondered about her last name?” he countered.
“Belcante is a common enough Italian surname. It would have been a pathetic stretch to assume a widowed mistress and her two kids living in Bumfuck, Texas had any association with the New York crime family.”
“Maybe so, but it’s true.” Santo spat out a wad of blood saliva. “I’m not an orphan old man Monte took in out of the good of his heart. Aida and I were his bastard children. I think you know a little about being born out of wedlock?”
I snarled at him in response, but he only smiled thinly.
“Our mother got the hell out of town when he rose in the ranks and he couldn’t find us for years. When he did…” he shrugged. “He intended to marry off Aida for connections and make me his successor because he didn’t have a legitimate heir. Instead, Lane Constantine met my sister one day when he was negotiating with Monte and within a month, he’d taken her away.”
My brain was slower because of the recent orgasm, but I found myself connecting the pieces of the story in quick succession.