Indebted to the Mafia King

Dante

I step into the basement beneath Piacere and shut the door behind me. Flickering fluorescents light the racks and racks of liquor, spare stool, and coils of velvet rope. To the unknowing eye, the perfectly legal basement of a perfectly legal club owner. I snort and head for the third alcohol shelf from the left on the far wall, then rap on the metal I can just reach through the glimmering glass bottlenecks. After a brief pause, the whole section of wall swings aside, and I cross into the real basement.

Here, the lights are brilliant and steady. Only the best for my men. Clean, crisp metal lines the walls and the floor. Easy to clean. Hard to escape quietly over. Tony pushes the button to send the decoy rack careening back into place. "Took you long enough." He wipes the back of his hand over his forehead, and I see blood over his fingernails. "Not that the bastard's broken yet."

I nod. My shoes click against the floor as we stride to the corner of the basement where the capo he pulled out of the auto shop before they wrecked it waits. We need to take the Lombardi family out once and for all, and that means finding a way to Luca.

The capo lolls in a metal chair, with his arms and legs bound to different parts of the seat. Blood streams from a cut on his forehead and bruises purple his bare chest, but he smirks at me as I walk up.

"So, I rate the big guns?" he says. "Interesting."

"Is it?" I grab a meat tenderizing mallet and test its weight, then pull the capos hand onto a low table. "Interesting to who, Luca? Is he the heir?"

The capo shakes his head. "I'm not telling you shit."

I sigh and glance at Tony, who shrugs. I bring the meat mallet down on the capo's index finger with a crack. He barely smothers his scream.

"Not bad." I nod. "I see Frank trains his men to endure pain. But rest assured, Frank didn't have enough brains in his thick fucking skull to come up with the kinds of torture I can. We're just getting started. You want to tell me about the lines of succession now?"

The capo hisses out a breath between his teeth and says nothing. I crush another finger without waiting, and this time, he yelps.

"Getting there." I roll my eyes at Tony. "Almost a word. Do we want to try something easier? How about your name?"

"Leo," he grunts.

"Leo, good." I smile as Tony circles around behind him, and Leo twists in his seat, trying to see my capo. "Well, Leo, who inherits the Lombardi farm?"

There's a pause. I crush two more fingers and grab his thumb.

"Gotta be faster than that, Leo." I chuckle. "Just one left. But I'm getting tired of the mallet. Tony, can you grab me the pliers?"

Leo goes white.

"Yeah, I think I'll take the fingernail." I lean my weight on his broken pinkie as I twist his thumb painfully back.

Leo chokes on a scream.

"I've got a bit of a collection," I lie. "You'll be surprised how badly it hurts."

"Fuck!" Leo squirms. "What do you wanna know? You want to know about those fucking Greeks we just dropped?"

I grin at Tony, who hasn't moved. Tony frowns back at me. He doesn't care.

"What do you know about Frank's dealings with the Calimeris family?" I grab a knife off a nearby table and twirl it between my fingers.

A bead of sweat drips into Leo's eyes. "Frank's been obsessed with their daughter for going on two years now. Offered a bunch to the family to take her off their hands, but they fucking refused." He starts to laugh, but it turns into a cough as I slam the hilt of the knife into his chest.

“What?” he gasps. “I'm telling the truth."

"Tell it without the color commentary," I hiss.

"Color commentary or no story." He smirks as if he's got the upper hand.

I spin the knife in my grip and trace the point over his skin.

"Fuck, fine." He shakes his head as if to clear it. "Frank's been yammering on about giving her to Luca, and he finally put the screws to the dad. Doubles the fee, says he's collecting early, the whole nine. Dickhead wouldn't cave, so Frank sent a guy in to explain what happens to people who deny Frank, and put me on delivery duty."novelbin

Ice seeps through my veins. I'm looking into the smiling, bloody face of the man who'd kidnapped Eleni from her childhood home. To hear him tell it, he hadn't touched her dad, but I didn't believe this sniveling sack of shit any more than I was going to let him see the light of day again.

"Oh yeah," he says. "I carried the little Greek slut out. Have you slapped her ass yet? It's "

I withdraw my gun and fire a single bullet directly between his eyebrows.

"What the fuck?" Tony demands. "Even I didn't think he was done yet, and you're usually the last one hanging on."

I blink. A little of the white-hot, all-consuming rage that came over me when Leo called Eleni a slut starts to ebb. Tony's right. He might've had more.

Still, I clean any residue off my palms with a handkerchief and tuck my gun away. "I was done with him. Clearly, he was just trying to piss us off."

"Yeah, it's a good thing you stay so calm." Tony shakes his head at the corpse. "Well, shit. Seems like a safe bet that Luca's slated for the top spot."

I nod, and we start to walk out together. The cleaning crew will deal with Leo's body.

"If that's true, then that Eleni girl is still in the middle of this." Tony huffs a breath. "That is, if Frank told his son about his chosen bride."

The word bride makes me start to see red again. I shake my head to clear it. I'm the boss of the goddamn Staten Island Saints, not some kid sticking up a gas station with a BB gun, and I have to act like it.

"She's in the middle of this no matter what," I reply.

Tony frowns at me.

For the first time, I don't know how to explain what I'm thinking. All I know is that I've seen something in her. I saw a flicker of it at the virginity auction, the determination that infused her when she refused me, when she decided to sleep with me. I saw it when she told me to kill Frank without flinching. And I saw a little of it at my house earlier, when she told me she wasn't staying. Eleni might dress like a nun and act like the girl next door, but she's got some backbone under all that. There's a fire in her. One I want to stick my hand in just to see what burns.

But if I can't do that-and I very much can't, with the mess she's at the center of I want to let it loose and see what happens. She won't be satisfied with Frank's death. It was too quick, too easy. She'll want more revenge. And that means she might be willing to play the game. If she's as tough as I think she is, we might be able to take out every sprig of the Lombardi tree. I smile. If I can get Thano on board, we can even split the city between ourselves.

"Hey." Tony nudges me. "What the fuck are you thinking? What are you going to do about Eleni and her mom?"

"That"-I face Tony with a wide grin-"depends on Eleni."