The Bishop by M.E. Clayton
Chapter 1
Leonardo – 2020~
It wasn’t easy managing a multi-million-dollar empire, but somebody had to fucking do it. And since I was the youngest and the only Benetti to go to college for my MBA, that responsibility fell on my shoulders.
Not that I minded much.
Even at a young age, I’d been good with numbers and logistics. While Luca and Sal were far from stupid, their minds weren’t a singular as mine. My brothers embraced the entire Benetti Family lifestyle where I was fortunate enough to be able to ignore a lot of the mess that surrounded being the most powerful and deadliest Mob family in Morgan City. Hell, in the entire state.
Early on, I knew what and who we were. Our father, Giovanni, hadn’t spared us any details. He had raised my oldest brother, Luca, to be the soulless, ruthless bastard that he was, and it had come back to bite Gio in the ass.
Me and Sal? Knowing that we would never lead, Gio hadn’t paid much special attention to us. His legacy had started and ended with Luca. Me and Sal had been spares.
However, Sal and I couldn’t be more opposites if we tried. Where I had a conscience that I tried to do right by, Sal was a sadistic psychopath. The only person who could control him was Luca and we all knew it. Even Gio hadn’t been able to control the animal in Sal. Still, there was no doubt in Sal’s mind, hell, in any of our minds, that Luca would put a bullet in Sal’s head if he ever thought to betray Luca or the Benetti name.
Luca didn’t fuck around.
And even though we were all blood brothers, Luca being the oldest at thirty-one, Sal the middle child at twenty-nine, and me being the youngest at twenty-seven, everyone knew Luca was a bit detached from us. Sal and I were close despite our different personalities, but Luca was closest to Ciro Mancini and Phoenix Fiore, his best friends since childhood.
The Holy Trinity.
All of Morgan City referred to Luca, Ciro, and Phoenix as The Holy Trinity: The Father, The Son, and The Holy Ghost.
Luca was dubbed The Father for obvious reasons. Even before Gio had met his untimely demise, most of the Benetti Family members had already been following Luca’s lead. Born, bred, and beaten into becoming the best leader this family has ever had, Luca’s potential had made itself known at a very young age.
Ciro Mancini was dubbed The Son because he was Luca’s right-hand man. Always has been. Ciro was the Benetti Family’s number one enforcer, and the man has perfected the art of torture like a true artist. Ciro had no conscience when it came to the way he did things and there was no denying the man has never failed to produce results.
Phoenix Fiore was dubbed The Holy Ghost because if Ciro was Luca’s right-hand man, then Phoenix was Luca’s left-hand man. Luca trusted them equally and both men held equal power in the Benetti Family. But where Ciro was our number one enforcer, Phoenix was our number-one hitman. The man was as lethal as they came, and his kills were executed as if by magic. As if by a ghost.
Together they were untouchable, but throw me and Sal into the mix, the Benetti Family had the benefit of a little bit of everything. We weren’t just aggressive thugs pushing our weight around. No. We were a family first, a business second, and a force to be reckoned with always.
However, there was one thing that separated us from the rest.
Our women.
Unlike a lot of patriarchal rules, Luca didn’t view women as something to wait in the shadows, only to come out when the men needed to be entertained. Luca believed a man’s power could only be increased if he had a powerful woman at his side. He had a very healthy respect for women, so much so that any Benetti member caught abusing his wife was dealt with harshly. Luca believed in the sanctity of marriage and never stepped in between a husband and his wife unless she was being abused. At that point, the only thing the poor bastard could do was pray that Luca made things swift and as painless as possible.
Though, he never did.
The women in the Benetti Organization were our Trojan horse. They were the power and influence no one saw coming. They were our second set of eyes, our way to think outside the box. Us men tend to know only one way sometimes, and having smart, cunning, fierce women on our side helped us to not get caught up in our own egos, potentially missing something.
There was Roberta Mancini, Ciro’s wife, and she was in charge of all our real estate. Analytical and smart, I liked talking to her best. We had the same mind frame, and we were both business orientated. Robbie was also the meekest of the three women, but still a tough cookie. She also just gave Ciro their first child a couple of months ago, a beautiful little girl named Mattia after Ciro’s deceased mother. Mattia was the splitting image of her father with dark brown hair and those eerie yellow eyes of his.
Then there was Remy Benetti, Luca’s wife, and my sister-in-law. Remy was head of our security and she worked with Sal a lot. Before Sal had transitioned to Underboss, he’d been in charge of our security and the clean-up crews. And while the clean-up crews were still his babies, for the most part, he and Remy ran our security together.
Finally, there was Francesca Mancini Fiore. Frankie was Ciro’s sister with the same dark brown hair and eerie yellow eyes, but she was also Phoenix’s wife. In love since they were seven-years-old, Phoenix and Frankie were a couple unlike any other I’ve ever seen. However, Frankie was also Luca’s best friend, even closer to Luca than Ciro and Phoenix were. Frankie was referred to as The Church to Luca, Ciro, and Phoenix’s Holy Trinity. Frankie was the one thing that tied all three men together and they absolutely adored her.
Frankie was also in charge of all of Luca, Ciro, and Phoenix’s legitimate businesses. Even though she just recently received her degree, she’s been managing their monies for a while now. And while she was another person I could talk to on an even level, Francesca Fiore and I never did manage to find a way to mesh well together. She wasn’t rude or mean or even awkward, she just always made it a point to make sure everyone knew where she stood and with who. If Luca didn’t completely trust me and Sal, then Frankie didn’t, either. A part of me wondered if she knew about Luca’s beatings and secretly resented me and Sal for escaping Gio’s special kind of parenting.
Whatever the reason, Frankie was probably the most powerful weapon in the Benetti arsenal, even over Luca’s own wife. Raised with Luca, Ciro, and Phoenix since she was a child, Frankie feared little, if anything at all. Even having given Phoenix his firstborn last year, the woman hasn’t slowed down. Named after hers and Ciro’s late father, Vincent was always with her. That baby was probably lured to sleep by the sounds of calculators and business-related phone calls. The plan had been for her to finish school before getting pregnant, but life had other ideas and she’d gotten pregnant within weeks of coming back to Morgan City.
As for Sal, he was actively single. And when I say actively, I mean just that. Though respectful of Luca’s decree about the treatment of women, Sal indulged in pussy regularly. And even if he wasn’t fucking them, he was always surrounded by women and the man wasn’t particular, either. Hair color, skin color, eye color, fake parts or real, he didn’t care. Thin as a twig or as thick as a woman who enjoyed her food, Sal had no preferences when it came to the women he bedded. For a man who lived his life in a bloody alley most of the time, Sal found contentment in women. He liked everything about them, and he was the only man I knew of who truly didn’t have a type. Other than age restrictions, he didn’t fuss about the rest. Sal didn’t subscribe to the as-long-as-she’s-legal theory on pussy. Sal didn’t fuck any females who were more than three years younger than he was. However, he’d fuck a forty-year-old, no problem.
As for me, I spent so much of my time behind a computer, filing legal permits, auditing our money, or bumping dicks with the IRS, I didn’t leave my office often. That wasn’t a complaint, though. I loved what I did, and I thrived on it. It beat getting my dress shirts stained with blood every weekend and that was probably the only mark against me. While I was a Benetti and I’ve killed my fair share of men over the years, my conscience prevented me from being an unforgiving killer like Luca or an imaginable psychopath like Sal.
But because it was known that I wasn’t bloodthirsty, a lot of people tried to appeal to my softer nature when knowing they had to face Sal or Luca and they were always disappointed when I didn’t intervene on their behalf. Just like Luca and Sal didn’t interfere with my business, I didn’t interfere with theirs.
As for women, pussy has ridden my dick countless times. It has kind of always came with the benefit of being a Benetti. Females have been throwing themselves at the men in our family for years. There hasn’t been a female orifice my dick hasn’t been inside, and I loved a warm, wet, tight pussy just as much as the next guy. However, as busy was I was, it was easier to have steady, available pussy than it was to have to go look for it. As busy as I was, I didn’t have time to hit the bars or clubs or whatever.
It wasn’t easy managing a multi-million-dollar empire, but somebody had to fucking to it.
