Luca Vitiello by Cora Reilly
CHAPTER 2
LUCA, 13 YEARS OLD
Father’s grip on my shoulder was tight when we entered the Foxy. I’d been inside the place a few times before when he had to talk to the manager. It was one of the most expensive whorehouses we owned.
The whores were lined up in front of the bar and the manager stood beside them. He nodded at Father then winked at me. Father motioned for him to leave.
“You’re thirteen, Luca,” Father said. Surprise washed through me that he’d remembered my birthday was today. He hadn’t mentioned it before. “You’ve been a Made Man for eighteen months. You can’t be a virgin and a killer.”
I flushed, my eyes darting to the women, knowing they had heard my father’s words. None of them laughed, probably too scared of him. I straightened my shoulders, wanting them to watch me with the same caution they watched him.
“Choose two of them,” Father said with a nod toward the whores.
Shock shot through me when I understood why I was here. Slowly, I made my way toward the women, trying to look calm even as nerves twisted my stomach. At almost 5’7”, I was already very tall for thirteen, so the women were eye-level with me in their high heels. They weren’t wearing much, only short skirts and bras. My eyes lingered on their chests. All of them had big tits, and I couldn’t stop staring. I’d seen a few naked girls in our strip clubs but always only in passing, never this close-up. They were all pretty. I pointed at a woman with brown hair and one with blond hair.
Father nodded. One woman grabbed my hand and led me through the back door. The other was close behind me. Eventually, I was alone with them in a big suite at the back of the Foxy. I swallowed, trying to look like I knew what was going to happen. I’d watched porn and listened to the stories the other Made Men told, but this felt very different.
The blond woman began to undress slowly, touching herself everywhere. I stared but tensed when I could feel my pants becoming tight. The brown-haired woman smiled a fake smile and moved toward me. I tensed even more, but I let her touch my chest. “You’re a big boy already, oh my,” she said.
I didn’t say anything, watching her closely. Then my eyes darted to the blond woman again, who’d started touching her pussy. My mouth became dry. The brown-haired woman slid her hand into my boxers, and I released a shaky breath. “Oh, I think this will work out just fine, don’t you agree?”
I gave a nod, then I let her drag me toward the huge round bed in the center.
LUCA, 17 YEARS OLD
“I’m fucking glad to be away from Father, but I wish we didn’t have to go to Junior to celebrate my birthday,” Matteo muttered, shoving his shirt into his pants and checking his reflection. It was the fourth one he’d tried on. Fuck, how did he become such a vain bastard? It seemed to become worse every year. Now at fifteen, he was pretty much insufferable.
Cesare shot me a look. He, Romero and I had been waiting for Matteo to get ready for the last thirty minutes.
“It would have been dishonorable to decline an invitation from your cousin when he organizes a party for you,” Romero said, sounding twice his age. He’d turned fourteen a few days ago, and he had been a Made Man since his father died a few months ago. His family needed the money, but we’d known each other for many years.
“I don’t trust him,” Cesare muttered. “He and his family are too ambitious.”
My uncle Gottardo and his eldest Gottardo Junior definitely weren’t in favor of me becoming Capo after my father, but that could be said about all of my uncles. They thought they would be better Capos. “We’ll stay a few hours and then we’ll come back here and have our own party. Or we’ll drive back to New York and go into one of our clubs.”
“Do you really think we’ll be sober enough to drive back to New York? It’s a long drive from the Hamptons,” Romero said, frowning.
Matteo chuckled. “How come you’re so goddamn rule-abiding?”
Romero flushed.
“Come, Matteo. Nobody gives a fuck about your shirt,” I growled when it looked as if he was considering trying on another.
Uncle Gottardo’s mansion wasn’t far from ours, so we walked over. A guard opened the gates for us and we headed up the long driveway to the entrance door where Gottardo Junior was waiting. He frowned when he saw us. “I didn’t expect you to bring more people along.”
“Romero and Cesare are always with us,” I told him as I shook his hand before he turned to my brother and congratulated him. We all stepped into the entrance hall. Loud music and voices were coming from the living area. I stripped off my gun and knife holders and dropped them on the sideboard as was expected. Matteo, Romero, and Cesare did the same before we followed my cousin toward the party. I knew most of the men only distantly since they were friends of Junior and his brother Angelo from Washington.
“How come you’re here?” I asked, as I headed for the array of alcoholic beverages while several half-naked girls danced around us. Junior had even set up poles for them.
“I needed a few days off. Business has been soul-sucking.”
I nodded. The Bratva had given us all trouble recently.
Junior smiled widely. “Now, let’s have fun!”
A couple of hours later, we were all trashed. Matteo and I danced with a group of four girls. It would be a long night. One of the whores started twerking right in front of us, her ass cheeks glittery, her thong a thin strip of nothing. Romero had disappeared with another whore in a backroom. Maybe he’d finally get fucked. Cesare slouched in his seat, eyes half-closed as a woman rode him like a pro.
Matteo clapped the dancer’s ass and she squealed, then whirled around and ground against his groin. More girls swarmed around us. I plopped down on one of the armchairs, the alcohol taking its toll, and one of the girls sank down in front of me, massaging my cock through my pants. A second came up behind me and ran her hands down my chest. I was about to snarl at her for being at my back when she fell forward, her cut throat spilling blood down my shirt. “Fuck!”
The whore massaging my cock looked up with wide eyes. I shoved myself out of the armchair and turned at the same time, bringing my arm up just when Junior brought his knife down. The blade grazed my forearm, cutting it open. The whores began screaming around us. Where was Matteo?
Junior slashed the knife at me again and I rammed my shoulder into his chest, then grabbed his throat and shoved him into the wall. Grunts and screams rang out around us. Then, the first shot sounded.
I was focused only on Junior. I was going to crush him to fucking dust. I wrapped my second hand around his throat as well then squeezed as hard as I could. “You fucking traitor,” I snarled. Did he think he could kill me?
His eyes began bulging, and I squeezed even harder until the veins in his fucking eyeballs began to pop and his bones crumpled under the force of my grip. He jerked one last time, and I dropped him to the ground. My fingers were covered in his blood.
Slowly, I turned to find Matteo atop another attacker about to cut his throat. “No,” I ordered, but it was too late. Matteo had sliced open the fucker.
Breathing harshly, I took in the mess around us. Cesare leaned against a wall, looking slightly dazed. He had a cut on the side of his neck and was staring down at the dead body in front of him. Romero was breathing harshly, only in his boxer shorts and a gun in his hand. Two whores were dead, and the others were crying and staring at me like I was the devil.
I walked past them toward Romero and Cesare. Romero was bleeding from a wound in his shoulder. Matteo staggered to his feet, eyes wide, almost feverish. It was the thrill of the kill I knew only too well. “You crushed his fucking throat with your bare hands!”
“Father won’t be happy,” I said, then glanced down at my hands. I’d killed so many, but this felt different. It had been more personal, fucking thrilling. Feeling the life drain out of him, feeling his bones break under my palms…Fuck, I’d loved it.
Cesare regarded my face. “You all right?”
My mouth curled. Did he think crushing my cousin’s throat had bothered me? “Call my father.” I turned to Romero, who looked a bit shaken. “How bad is it?”
He shrugged. “It’s nothing. The bullet went straight through. One of Junior’s friends got his guns the same time I did.”
I nodded, but my mind kept replaying my cousin’s death. My eyes were drawn to the uninjured whores, wondering if any of them had been involved in this.
Matteo stepped up to me. “Fuck. I can’t believe our own cousin tried to kill us.”
“You had your knife,” I said.
“You know I never go anywhere without it,” Matteo said with an unsettling grin.
“I won’t put my fucking guns down ever again.”
Romero came closer, looking a little shaky. “Do you think your uncle and your other cousin were involved?”
“Probably,” I muttered. I doubted that Junior had come up with the plan by himself. It fit Gottardo’s character that he’d talk one of his sons into this instead of risking his own fucking life. Coward.
“Why did he risk it? Even if he’d managed to kill us, there would still be your father, and he’d avenge you,” Romero said.
“No,” I gritted out. “If Matteo and I had been stupid enough to get us killed by Junior, Father would have considered us weak links. He would have allowed Nina to have a child, and then he’d have had a new heir. End of story.”
Matteo grimaced because it was the truth. We both knew it.
“I need a fucking drink,” I growled in the direction of one of the whores. She rushed toward the bar and poured me a whisky before she brought it to me. I regarded her closely as I took a sip, and she lowered her eyes. “Did you know?”
She shook her head jerkily. “No. We were told this was a birthday party and we were supposed to dance. That’s all.”
I walked over to one of the armchairs with my drink and sank down. The whore whose throat Junior had cut lay beside it in a puddle of blood. Eventually, Matteo, Cesare, and Romero sat down across from me as we waited for Father and his men. There was nothing else to do. We’d killed Junior and his friends, so we couldn’t question them, and Gottardo and Angelo were all the way in Washington. I caught the looks Romero and Cesare gave me, a mixture of respect and shock.
Matteo shook his head. “Fuck. That’s not how I wanted to spend this day.”
Father, his Consigliere Bardoni, and several soldiers arrived about one hour later.
Father barely glanced our way before he headed for my cousin. “You crushed his throat?” he asked, inspecting what remained of Gottardo Junior. I caught the hint of pride in his voice. I didn’t want his fucking approval.
I nodded. “I didn’t have any weapons because I assumed I was among family and not a fucking traitor. He choked on his traitorous blood.”
“Like a Vise,” Matteo commented.
“Luca, the Vise,” Father said with a strange smile.
It had been a long fucking day, long fucking weeks, one ordeal followed by another. I wanted to kill every single one of my uncles. “I’m so over them treating me like a fucking kid,” I said as Matteo and I headed for the entrance of the Sphere.
Matteo grinned and ran his hand through his hair for what seemed like the hundredth time. One day I was going to knock him out and shave his fucking hair off to stop his annoying preening. “You’re seventeen, Luca. Not yet a man.” He imitated Uncle Gottardo’s voice in annoying perfection, including the nasal undertone that made me want to rip his vocal chords out of his throat.
I had seen the fear in his eyes—the same fear I saw in many people’s eyes since I’d crushed Junior’s throat. Gottardo was only able to spew this bullshit because he thought himself safe as my uncle. I couldn’t believe my father had believed him and Angelo…Or maybe he didn’t and enjoyed their groveling. He’d definitely upped his security and guards since that day, so he knew there were still traitors among us.
“I’m more man than all of them together. I’ve killed more men, have fucked more women, and I have bigger balls.”
“Careful with the ego there,” Matteo said, chuckling.
“You’ve got a zit on your forehead,” I muttered. It was a lie, but given Matteo’s vanity, I knew it was my best bet to pay him back for being an insufferable asshole most of these days.
As predicted, Matteo immediately felt his skin for the offending flaw, then narrowed his eyes and dropped his hand. I rolled my eyes with a chuckle. We arrived in front of the bouncer of the Sphere. He greeted us with a curt nod and stepped back to let us through when a guy at the front of the long queue waiting to be allowed inside shouted. “Hey, we were here first! And that guy’s not old enough to be in a club.”
Matteo and I both looked at the idiot. He had been referring to Matteo, and of course, he was right. At fifteen, Matteo was definitely not allowed to be in a night club like this, but neither was I—only with my size, everyone assumed I was older.
Matteo and I exchanged a look and walked over to Big Mouth. Some of his bravado slipped off when I stopped right in front of him. “Got a problem there?”
“There are laws,” he said.
Matteo flashed his shark-grin he’d perfected recently after spending too many hours in front of a mirror. “Maybe for you.”
“Since when are boys allowed in clubs? Is this prom or what?” Big Mouth said to our bouncer.
Matteo was about to draw his knife right in front of everyone, and I had half a mind to let him for the fun of it when a woman in the queue spoke up. “He doesn’t look like a boy to me,” she said flirtingly in Matteo’s direction.
“And you look like my next conquest,” added the girl beside her with a smile at me.
I cocked an eyebrow. Matteo with his sunny boy charm was always a girl magnet, but my rougher predator charm definitely had its perks as well. Both women were tall, blond, and sex on legs.
“Let them in,” I told our bouncer. He opened the barrier so they could slip through. “And he and his friends are banned from the Sphere,” I added.
The sound of their protests followed us into the club, but I didn’t give a fuck. I wrapped my arm around the blond at my side, who squeezed my butt and gave me a seductive smile.
Matteo and his girl were already tongue wrestling for all its worth.
“Is there a place where we can fuck?” Blond asked me, pressing herself against me.
I smirked. That’s how I liked it best. Women who weren’t work, easy lays, no questions asked. “Sure,” I told her, reaching for her own ass and squeezing it.
“Is your cock as big as the rest of you?” she asked as I led her through the back door into a storage room.
“Find out for yourself,” I growled, and she did. The moment the door closed, she got down on her knees and sucked any sane thought out of my brain. Her lipstick stained my cock red as she blew me like a fucking pro. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.
“Fuck,” I hissed as she worked me deep into her mouth. She was better than most of the whores I’d been with, and those women had spent years perfecting their craft. I relaxed against the door, getting closer and closer to spill my cum down her throat.
She shifted and tensed in a way that raised my suspicions. Instinct made my eyes shoot open a moment before she jerked something toward my thigh. I lashed out, hitting her arm. She dropped a syringe and scrambled for it again. Grabbing her throat, I hurled her away from me. The back of her head collided with the storage shelves with a sickening crunch, and she slumped to the ground. Breathing harshly, I stared down at the syringe. What kind of shit did she try to inject me with?
I pulled up my pants and staggered over to her. I didn’t bother feeling for her pulse; her neck was twisted at an angle that left no doubt about her death. I bent over her and tugged her pants down, revealing her hipbone. There was a scar where someone had burnt away a tattoo. I knew what kind of sign had been on her skin: the crossed Kalashinkovs of the fucking Bratva that they inked onto the skin of every single one of their whores.
“Fuck,” I snarled. This had been a trap, and I’d walked straight into it, had let my dick rule over my thinking, had lowered my guards. Shouldn’t the incident with my cousin have taught me better?
I jerked upright. Matteo. Fuck. I rushed out of the room and searched the other back rooms. No sign of him or the other no-doubt traitorous whore. I stormed across the dance floor, searching the crowd for a sign of my brother, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Where was he?
I headed outside past the waiting crowd and around the corner until I reached the small back alley behind the Sphere. Matteo was busy getting head. His eyes, too, were closed. We were fucking stupid idiots. No goddamn blowjob was worth forgetting about the first rule in our world: don’t trust anyone.
The whore reached for something in her bag.
“Matteo!” I shouted, pulling my gun. His eyes shot open, his expression a mix of annoyance and confusion before he registered what she was holding in her hand. He reached for his knife and she raised the syringe to strike. I pulled the trigger and the bullet tore straight through her head, throwing it back. She fell to her side, the syringe tumbling out of her palm.
Matteo stared down at the woman, knife in hand and his fucking boner still on display. I moved toward him and revealed the burnt skin over her hipbone.
“I really wish she would have waited for me to come before she tried to kill me,” he muttered.
I straightened, then grimaced. “Why don’t you pull up your pants? There’s no reason to present your junk anymore.”
He dragged his pants up his legs and fastened his belt, then he looked at me. “Thanks for saving my ass.” He gave me a smirk, but it was off. “Did you at least have your happy ending before your conquest tried to end you for good?”
I shook my head. “The Bratva almost got us. We both acted like fucking fools, letting those stupid whores lead us around by our dicks like randy teenagers.”
“We are randy teenagers,” Matteo joked as he sheathed his knife.
I glared down at the dead women.
“The other whore’s dead as well?” Matteo asked.
I nodded. “Broke her neck.”
“Your first two women,” he said with a hint of wariness, his eyes scanning my face, looking for God knew what. “You feel guilty?”
I regarded the blood staining the concrete and the lifeless eyes of the woman. Anger was the prevailing emotion in my body. Anger at myself for being an easy target, for thinking a pretty woman was no threat. And burning fury at the Bratva for trying to kill me—and worse, Matteo.
“No,” I said. “The only thing I regret is that I killed them before they could answer a few questions. Now we’ll have to hunt down a few Bratva assholes and get info out of them.”
Matteo picked up the syringe and I tensed, worried he could get some of the poison on his skin by accident. I had no doubt that whatever was in there would lead to an excruciating death. “We need to find out what’s in there.”
“First, we need to get rid of the two bodies before guests or the police find them.” I raised my phone to my ear, calling Cesare. “I need you at the Sphere. Fast.”
“All right. Give me ten minutes,” Cesare said, sounding as if I’d woken him.
Cesare was more my man than he was Father’s soldier, and I trusted him to keep his mouth shut when required. “Father won’t be happy about this,” I said.
Matteo gave me a curious look. “About us walking into a trap or that the Bratva tried to kill us?”
“The first, and maybe the second.”
“I’m growing tired of people trying to kill us,” Matteo muttered, his tone serious for once.
I took a deep breath. “That’s how it is. How it’ll always be. We can’t trust anyone but each other.”
Matteo shook his head. “Look at Father. He trusts no one. Not even Nina.”
He did well not to trust his wife considering the way he treated her. The marriages in our world rarely led to trust, much less love.
