“Ah, ah,” I chastised. “Hands up, Rocco.”
“This is a mistake, Salvatore,” he warned. “You don’t want to be doing this.”
“Oh?” I cocked the gun and leveled it straight between his eyes. “I think I do.”
“You want to leave the Camorra crippled, huh? It’ll hurt your own business in America, you do that.”
“Every dictator thinks the world will far apart without their rule.” I smile ruefully. “It is the bane of all powerful men to realize that one day, they won’t be needed any longer. Today is that day for you.”
“I have men who will come as soon as I scream,” he tried.
“Scream,” I suggested pleasantly. “I’ll shoot you through the mouth before you can get a single note out of that fat throat.”
“You want to pretend you’re some good guy, Dante?” he snapped, his viciousness coming out in the flush of his face and the gruff hatred in his voice. “You’re no better than me. We’re fucking camorristi. We fight each other to get the top and we kill those we count as enemies. You’re a murderer and a villain just the same as me.”
“Never said I wasn’t.”
He hesitated, scowling at is inability to rile me. “You got that slut wife of Frankie’s in your bed, don’t you? She make you come here and do this? She got her hands so tight around your balls you––”
I pulled the trigger.
A bullet wedged in his hand where it lay palm down on the desk, clean through the center. The exact same place I loved to plant a kiss on Elena’s hand.
His scream was delayed by his shock and before he could get more than a note out, I was lunging across the desk, slapping a hand over his gaping maw and my gun to his temple.
I seethed, my breath hot as fire against his face. “You don’t talk about her. In fact, you shut your mouth unless I ask you a goddamn question or I’ll kill you right now.”
He warbled against my palm, his face contorted with pain.
There as a jar filled with pens and utensils on the desk. Carefully, I moved my hand from Rocco’s face and plucked a letter opener from the cup.
“Now, tell me who the hell you were plotting with on the phone?”
He glared at me, one small, black eye twitching.
I sighed.
The letter opened when down through the bullet wound in his hand, embedding itself in the wood beneath it.
He howled, but I cut off the noise by shoving my gun in his mouth.
“Who. The. Hell. Were. You. Talking. To?” I growled.
He mumbled something around the gun, but I didn’t remove it.
“I can’t hear you,” I told him calmly.
He tried again, this time louder.
It was pathetic really. A camorrista should be strong and resilient, unafraid. Death was nothing to us because it was such a frequent bedfellow. It could find us through any means, because we were in the wrong place at the wrong time, we insulted the wrong man, or our boss got on the wrong side of another capo or rival family. Rocco’s sniveling lack of resolve made me sick.
“I was speaking with la Cosa Nostra,” he mumbled around the gun when I took it slightly out of his mouth. “Agostino di Carlo.”
Fury flashed through me like a flood.
“You were working with the wanna-be capo of the New York Cosa Nostra,” I repeated quietly, the words so heavy they fell between us like stones.
“He is the capo now. Killed the consigliere two days ago and won the title.”
“Why would you go against your people?” It was almost unheard of for a mafioso to switch clans let alone mafia affiliations entirely. Usually, turncoats like that became dispensable to either side.
“The bastards in Sicily were encroaching on Campania,” he growled, referring to the Camorra territory. “Agostino promised to reign them back in.”
“Sei debole,” I told him flatly.
You are weak.
“Oh, there she is,” Rocco almost purred as his eyes darted from me to the door. “Ciao puttana.”
I pistol whipped him across the face, but he only laughed.
Elena appeared in the doorway with her gun held to a guard’s temple. “He was about to ambush you.”
“And you got to him first.” I was impressed and more than a little aroused by the fact. “Lottatrce mia.”
She grinned at me as I moved forward to take him from her. “Point that weapon at Rocco for me.”
She did.
I twisted my torso and landed a massive, cheek crunching punch to the other man’s face then watched implacably as he fell like a log to the floor.
“Now,” I shook my hand out a little, blood spraying to the floor. “Rocco, did Agostino mention anything about a traditore in my organization?”
His eyes widened, a manic smile seizing his bloated face. “Not so clever as you think you are, Salvatore.”
“Cleverer than you at least.” I rounded the desk and carted him up onto his tiptoes with a hand around his throat squeezing tight. “You’re going to die now, Rocco, and I want you to know why. It’s not because I am better than you because you’re right, I’m not. You and I are both villains, men with corrupt souls and greedy minds. I don’t deny my darkness. But I also don’t deny the light. You think you can force a girl into marriage just because she loves a woman instead of a man who chose for her? You think you should kill a man because you’re jealous of him? Beat someone because they disagree with you?”