Total pages in book: 53
Estimated words: 49562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 248(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49562 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 248(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“For Nero’s tea.”
“Right.” She nodded, dusting her hands off before taking them. “I need to run to the store to pick up some soup for him real quick. Would you mind staying here and watching your brothers until I get back?”
He began dusting his own hands off. “I can go pick up some soup—”
“No.” She shook her head. “You finish that then go be with them. You haven’t seen Leo, Nero, and Maria in a while, and they’ve missed you.”
He didn’t know why, but his hands wavered before digging back into the dirt.
Every made man was given a penthouse at his father’s Casino Hotel, and so he had been sleeping there most nights. It had been a few weeks since he had been home, too busy assuming the responsibilities of being a soldier to return.
“Okay, then I’ll stay,” he finally agreed.
“Good.” She happily smiled and got up. “Oh, look, the sun’s setting,” she noticed, her attention diverted once again by the beauty of the sky. “Come sit with me for a few minutes.”
Lucca dusted his hands off once again before following his mother to her favorite spot in the garden. The white gazebo lights flickered on, as if on cue, as they sat underneath them together on the bench their father had order for her.
The two of them sat in the garden until the sun had set, the stars now beginning to twinkle in the sky above. His mother then left with the sun. It was a moment Lucca would soon treasure forever, not knowing it would be their last time together in this place or on this earth, as Melissa was soon set to depart.
Being gunned down in the grocery store parking lot wasn’t how anyone had pictured Melissa Caruso going down, but it was as if Lucca had always known his mother’s time here on earth was limited. She was too pure and good for this city, and having something that delicate married to the mafia could only mean one thing.
His mother was always Dante’s one and only weakness, and all his enemies knew it. Lucca knew it because he planned to one day sit on the same throne his father did.
It was exactly what he would have done if he wanted to take it.
THREE
LITTLE PSYCHOPATH IN THE MAKING
LUCCA, AGE 18
One word flashed through Lucca’s mind since his mother’s death.
Kill.
And after burying her, the voice only got stronger.
It had turned out his father was fucking weaker than he’d thought. Lucca knew exactly who had killed his mother, and even though he hadn’t pulled the trigger, that didn’t mean he wasn’t the one responsible for Melissa being six feet in the ground. Dante, however, needed “proof” to start a war between the two families, but what did proof matter? The Lucianos were the only thing that threatened the Carusos’ hold on this city. After the last war, yes, there had been a lot of casualties, but in the end, the Carusos’ victory had been hard fought, taking most of the city as theirs while they gave the Lucianos the shit part of it that none of them wanted to step their Italian leather shoes on, anyway. The next war could result in the Lucianos’ extinction … and that was exactly what Lucca planned for now.
His Escalade bumped high over the railroad tracks, and the bright lights of the city quickly dimmed the deeper he drove into Blue Park. You were lucky to find a light post working properly on this side of town; they were either completely out, flickering on their way out, or shined a yellowish-brown tint.
Cutting his light, he pulled over a few houses down from the one Sal had given him the address to. He took the time to put a cigarette to his lips and light the end with one of his matches he always picked up from the bar of the Kansas City Casino Hotel. Taking a few draws, he scoped out the house. Nothing—absolutely nothing—could have prepared him for the state of it.
It was the stark opposite of the house he had grown up in. His white mansion was surrounded by a garden; this one was a shack, to put it nicely, that barely held a blade of grass under the litter surrounding it. Normally, he wouldn’t have given a single fuck about the state of a house, but this one resonated with him because it supposedly held the same amount of children his had. He couldn’t imagine Nero or Leo living in a place like this and, God forbid, his sister, Maria. It was like seeing how his life could have turned out if the Caruso-Luciano war had had a different outcome … and he actually might’ve given a tiny fuck if Lucifer hadn’t killed his mother.
Speak of the devil.
Watching Lucifer exit the shabby house, he could practically see the steam coming out of his head. Whatever had just happened inside couldn’t have been good, which made Lucca grateful for who his father was for the first time. While Dante wasn’t the best of fathers, he wasn’t the devil, at least, and it was obvious that even Lucifer’s own children weren’t safe from him.