Dante (3 page)

“Sure,
Papà
.” Dante smiled and held his hands out palm up for those sitting beside him to join in the prayer. Both his brothers’ palms met his. He waited until everyone around the table were connecting as well before beginning. “Blessed Father …”

Chapter Two

“You’re sure you don’t want to be present for this?” Dante asked his father.

“Nope,” Antony replied on the other end of the phone.

His father said it so nonchalant, as if Dante should have already known the answer, which he did. Two weeks after the surprise no-show at the tribute, Antony had done very little in regards to his Cosa Nostra. Dante, on the other hand, was overloaded.

“Besides, you have more patience for this sort of thing than I do. I’m liable to kill first and ask questions later when it comes to someone encroaching on my business.”

“Well, I like to give them the chance to explain before I kill them,” Dante joked.

Sort of.

“Fill me in when it’s over, Dante. Try not to make too much of a mess.” Before Dante could respond, his father added, “I’m kidding; you’ll do fine.”

With that, Antony ended the call. Dante climbed out of his Mercedes, straightening his suit jacket with one hand as he closed the driver’s door. Lucian and Gio met their brother at the entrance of Gio’s safest club.

Well, safest for a sit-down on a Thursday night, that was.

It hadn’t taken long at all to make contact with the small crew filtering drugs that weren’t a Marcello product onto the streets they controlled. A sit-down was arranged without issue and every demand Dante requested was apparently adhered to. The ease of the competition’s agreement to Dante’s wishes again led him to believe these people wanted to catch his attention for whatever reason.

He was going to find out what that reason was.

“How many people inside the club are ours?” Dante asked.

“About ten spread around,” Gio said.

“And the unknowns?”

“No one, yet.”

“At all?” Lucian asked.

Gio shrugged. “According to my workers, everyone inside is a regular or someone they’ve seen at least once or twice except for a redhead at the bar who has been sipping on carbonated water and scrolling through her phone. She’s probably not the crew we’re looking for.”

“If they don’t show up tonight, they won’t be alive by the weekend.”

Lucian clapped his hands together. “Ready, boss?”

Dante chuckled. “Yeah, I’m ready.”

Thirty minutes and two rum and cokes later, three men strolled into the quiet club dressed in black slacks, black sport coats, and shined shoes. Their gazes swept the floor of the club, landing on the table where Dante and his brothers sat. He’d asked Gio earlier in the day to have the table set into a corner so his back would be to a wall and no one else during the meeting.

Dante tilted his head to the side, catching his brother’s attention. “I believe our guests have arrived. Greet them?”

“Sure,” Gio said.

Lucian and Gio left the table and their drinks behind. Greeting the guests in the Marcello way had nothing to do with a hello and a handshake. Instead, Dante watched his brothers carefully search the three men, and thankfully, not one of them put up a fuss about it. By the looks of it, not one of them had a thing on them but wallets and cellphones, either.

As the three men approached his table with Lucian and Gio right behind, Dante stayed sitting. The tallest of the three looked at Dante, waiting for the man to stand and welcome him. Dante wouldn’t. Bosses didn’t stand to meet lower level associates, and certainly not rivals. They were to bend down and greet him, but he didn’t expect these outsiders to.

“Sit,” Dante said, waving at the chairs across him.

The men stayed standing. The tallest nodded once and said in clear Italian, “
Salve
, Dante Marcello.
Come sta
?”

Dante allowed nothing to register on his features for the man to pick apart. The man’s greeting was formal instead of friendly, which he appreciated.

“
Bene, grazie. Come si chiama
?” Dante asked.

“Gaetano.”

“And your friends, what are their names?”

Gaetano smirked. “Associates.”

“And them?” Dante asked, firmer the second time.

Gaetano canted his head in the direction of the second tallest man to his right. The man sported a scar above his brow. “Carlos.” Then, he gestured to the other man at his left and said, “Pao.”

It didn’t escape his notice how Gaetano offered no surnames for the men, nor did he call them employees. In fact, he used the word associates, which led Dante to believe he considered himself at the same level as the other two.

It was odd, if nothing else. One of these men had to be the boss, so which one was it and why had he allowed Gaetano to introduce them all? Dante didn’t like to be toyed with.

Dante waved at the chairs. “If you refuse to sit again, I’ll ask you to leave without giving you the chance to explain the ridiculous idea that your crew could somehow work on my streets without my knowledge or permission. Believe me, you want the chance to explain. Please, sit.”

After they were seated, Dante waited for his brothers to settle in at either ends of the table before he continued with anything.

“Obviously you wanted to catch my attention, and now you have,” Dante said quietly. 

“
We
wanted nothing,” Carlos replied, sitting back in his chair, almost too relaxed for Dante’s liking. No boss would react so unbothered.

“You must have wanted something,” Gio said to the far right end. “Because otherwise, you’re just a bunch of—”

“Easy, Gio,” Lucian said before turning to their guests. “Where is your product coming from?”

“Not from your importing ventures, if that’s what you’re asking,” Pao answered with a lift of one shoulder. He examined his fingernails as if he were bored with the entire situation already. “Our contacts that manage our shipments have nothing to do with Mexico as yours does. We checked up on a few things, you see.”

“And,” Gaetano drawled, tapping his finger to the tabletop, “… ours comes direct from the source, so we’re not overpaying for the cost of it traveling hands. Some might think it’s a little riskier, say if the only hands before ours were caught … we disagree. It’s a good arrangement.”

“Very profitable,” Carlos agreed. “Although, at the price your blow is selling on the streets, I’m surprised it’s made you any money at all.”

Without barely any prodding at all, Dante immediately disliked Carlos the most out of three men. Really, he hated them all because they were doing nothing but playing word games. Dante was so irritated with the show of these men, he could spit. Still, he stayed quiet and let his brothers talk.

“We had no problems,” Gio pointed out, crossing his arms.

Pao mimicked Gio’s position. “You left that unfinished.”

“How so?” Lucian asked.

“He forgot to tack on ‘before you came along’ to the end of it,” Carlos explained, chuckling.

Dante watched Gio’s gaze narrow. That was never a good sign. Between the three Marcello brothers, Gio was the one who took very little shit off someone before he went for the throat. And he was relentless when he did.

It was extremely unsettling how these three unknowns only seemed to want to pick at the Marcello brothers, not discuss or explain themselves. Dante had sat across the table from quite a few disrespectful people in his life, but they always made a point of getting down to business eventually.

“Why those districts?” Gio asked, his tight jaw. It was the only indication of his frustration.

None of the men answered.

The back and forth with silence in between seemed to go on with no ending in sight. The longer it did, the more irritated Dante became. The men alluded to a leader amongst them, but never spoke as if one of them were actually it.  The baiting continued, though. Dante let it go on for another twenty minutes, just to see if his brothers could pull something from the men, but no … nothing.

It was a possibility that their game was to keep Dante confused, or even all the Marcello brothers, but for what reason, he didn’t know.

No boss would pull shit like this.

Dante looked around the table of men, finally coming to an understanding. None of these men were the boss of their operation. Not a single one looked to any other man around them for permission to voice his opinion, a direction for which he should take, or a leader to make the final call on the sit-down.

This entire charade could have been avoided had Dante realized this sooner and his very valuable fucking time wouldn’t be wasted. Nothing pissed him off more than someone wasting his goddamn time.

“This is done,” Dante said, pushing his seat out and standing.

None of the men stood with him. It was yet another sign that not one of them felt as though they were the person holding the power.

Sickening.

Giovanni glanced up at his older brother with a furrowed brow. “But—”

“But nothing,” Dante snapped, his irritation swelling.

“Dante, we don’t have answers, yet. I want to know why there is shit in my streets that isn’t mine and is taking away business and cash from my crew.”

“Exactly.” Dante flicked his hand dismissively at the guests who had done little during the sit-down but talk them in circles and piss him off. “And from these fools, we’re not going to get anything.”

“Hey,” Gaetano growled. “Fools is a pretty strong word for a small group of men who infiltrated a quarter of your territory in less than a couple of months and managed to undercut your bestselling product by nearly half.”

Dante’s gaze narrowed in on the asshole he wanted to make choke on the barrel of his gun. Playtime was over. The Marcello Cosa Nostra didn’t bother to make nice with little start-up crews like this. They simply took them out.

It was a call he would have to make. Not that he particularly liked it, as it was always better to make peace than spill blood in their world, but he would make the choice, nonetheless.

“When the Marcellos demanded this meeting, we did so with the intention of speaking boss to boss,” Dante said, keeping a calm façade but boiling on the inside. “That was the agreement set up for this night. Instead, what we found was a bunch of thugs playing with drugs who clearly don’t have the first clue about the force they’ve just come up against in the Marcellos. So, we’re done here. There’s nothing more to talk about.”

“Oh?” Gaetano asked.

“Yes, oh. It’s like this, I gave your boss the chance to speak with me face to face so he could explain his motives for being in our streets and he didn’t come. Whatever his reasons for not showing, I don’t give a good goddamn. Shunning a boss is not acceptable in Cosa Nostra and it doesn’t make a single difference to me if you are
la famiglia
or not. When you come into
my
territory, you’re automatically agreeing to play by
my
rules.”

Something akin to a sneer twisted at Carlos’ lips beside Gaetano. “But you’re not actually the boss, either, are you, Dante?”

“Acting boss is just as good as being boss. It means I make all the calls. And since you’re sitting in a club my brother owns, on streets we run, and in a territory our family controls, it would be wise for you to remember you are not the one with the power here.”

Lucian’s lips drew thin as he too stood from the table. “You’re sure this is what you want to do, Dante?”

Dante nodded. “This is it. Care to finish this nonsense out for me? I need a fucking drink after this shit show.”

“Will do,” Lucian said.

“Do be sure they understand the consequences of this farce, too. It’s a fucking travesty when people waste my time. Like I don’t have enough damn problems as it is.”

“Got it.”

Dante left the group at the table without a backward glance. Their nonsense was dropped from his mind the moment he decided they weren’t worth the effort to keep trying to plow them for more information.

At the bar, he rapped his knuckles down to the top and caught the bartender’s attention. “Crown. Three fingers. Neat.”

“Coming up, Boss,” the guy replied.

It didn’t matter how many times Dante was called that, it still hadn’t quite sunk in. Everyone else around him didn’t seem surprised at the shift going on in the Marcello family but him. Antony had set him up well.

Dante suppressed his smile, turning his back to the bar so he could watch his older brother lay into the idiots at the table across the room. Quietly enough that no one else could hear, but guessing by the severe expression Lucian sported as he railed into the men, his brother was doing what he did best: inciting fear.

Maybe he should have stayed at the table just for the show.

Out of the corner of his eye, the curve of a trim waist melding into shapely hips that were covered by a tight bodycon-style black dress drew Dante’s attention.

Dark red curls hanging below her shoulders framed the woman’s profile, but did little to hide her features. Skin the color of peachy cream, ruby colored lips just full enough to set into a natural pout, and high cheekbones gave her the appearance of sweetness and innocence. But her body, that dress, and the black, peep-toe five-inch stilettos tapping a beat to the barstool spoke entirely of sin and sexuality. She kept her gaze on the bar top, dark lashes fanning over her cheeks while the ghost of a smile played at the edges of her mouth.