Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85490 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 427(@200wpm)___ 342(@250wpm)___ 285(@300wpm)
With one glaring exception.
He was a top Capo in the Santoro Crime Family.
And back before Luciano Santoro was killed by my father’s hands, we were mortal enemies with his organization.
Santoro caused my family so much pain and suffering. Davide’s permanently scarred because of him, both physically and emotionally. Simon drove himself crazy taking down those bastards, and Santoro’s the one that started the attack on the oasis that nearly ripped my family to pieces.
Ever since he was killed, our lives have been better. We don’t have to look over our shoulders anymore. Simon won the war, but he didn’t do a good job rounding up the remnants of the old family.
This is beyond stupid. Marco is my enemy. Or at least, he should be my enemy.
But he’s not a Santoro anymore. The dossier is light on what he’s been up to these last two years, but it mentions a lot of freelance hacking and IT work for various minor crime outfits, which makes a lot of sense. There’s nothing in his profile about hurting or killing specific members of the Bianco Famiglia, which is good, but he clearly was complicit in all the crimes his boss committed against my family.
I should hate him. He’s a Santoro. Except there is no more Santoro Famiglia anymore, and Marco has known about me for a while now. If he wanted to hurt me, he had all the opportunity in the world.
And yet he didn’t. He should hate me the same way I hate him, but he doesn’t.
Now I have to go up there and find out why.
I push open my car door. I’m shaking with nerves as I head to the building. I get lucky, and an old man’s on his way out to walk his dog as I approach. He holds the door for me and I give him a friendly greeting. The front desk is empty, which means I can head straight for the stairwell, and I start climbing up to unit 305.
He can’t be that bad. If my brother knows about him and hasn’t killed him yet, then maybe I don’t have to hate him. If I’m being honest with myself, at this point I’m looking for any excuse to keep moving this relationship forward, because that’s what I want. I can ignore the evidence in front of my eyes for a while if that helps. But there’s a voice in the back of my head whispering with each step: this is going to end badly.
Because how else can it end?
Marco’s my enemy. I keep coming back to it. He was a Capo in a Famiglia that went to war with my brothers, and the second anyone finds out that I’ve been seeing him, all hell will break loose.
I reach the third floor and find his door. My heart’s in my throat as I stand there staring, and a thousand reasons to turn around and run away rush through my brain. Even if this isn’t going to end in disaster—which it totally is—the moment I knock on that door is the moment our game ends and reality takes its place. And how can we make this work in the real world? He’s a Santoro. I’m a Bianco. We hate each other, and that’s the end of that.
I still want him. That’s the sick part. I can close my eyes and see the Jackal standing in front of me, and even knowing that he’s a member of our former enemy’s mafia family, I still want him to pull my body against his and kiss me. He saw my face, which means he knows who I am, and he still didn’t run away. That has to mean something.
I raise my fist and I make myself knock. Three hard, sharp raps, and I stand there feeling like my world is about to end. How’s he going to react when he finds me here? What’s he going to say? I suddenly don’t know what I want from him, and all the careful thinking and planning I did on the ride over desert me in a flash. Do I kiss him? Do I pretend like I don’t know who he is? Do I want him to pull me into his condo and fuck me senseless on the couch?
I stand back away from the door, thinking I should just turn and run away, when I hear it unlock. And slowly, it opens.
I stare at the man looking back out at me.
Marco is Jackal. There’s no doubt in my mind. That’s Jackal’s body, those are his arms and his hands, that’s his throat, his chest, his legs. Except he’s not wearing the mask. Instead, a man looks back at me, an extremely handsome man with those cool gray-blue eyes I’ve been obsessing over since I first saw them all those days ago on the roof of Cage.