Page 26 of Sacred Vow

“Again,” I ordered.

Massimo swung his fist, connecting with a bloody jaw. The jaw belonged to a guy tied to a chair in one of our warehouses along the docks, where he’d been caught sniffing around one of a dozen identical shipping containers—one that just so happened to be the only one belonging to the Grassiano family.

Another shipment had been stolen off our docks. The Vitale family could afford to compensate the offended party, but that wasn’t the issue. It made us look weak. Worse, it suggested we’d lost control of our territory. My father’s words came to me when I got the call from Massimo about the missing shipment of cocaine. It was one thing to lose 20 tons of the drug in its raw form, and had it been ours, we may not have had to look as hard, but this shipment was pirated in our shipping lane and was street-ready. That meant that the motherfuckers made off with about two billion worth of product.

“Your life is already forfeit, but if you want your family to live, you better spill.” Massimo’s dark nature could be absolutely terrifying and was why he was considered the most formidable enforcer our organization had.

At his threatening words, the guy in the chair pissed himself. He was a low life, but he knew something, and I was more than happy to keep torturing him for days to find out what it was.

“Give me the drill,” Massimo said casually. He reached out a monstrous hand, covered in rings, blood and gore slowly, making sure the man noticed how completely his hand engulfed the drill.

“Please,” he begged. “I don’t know anything.”

Unmoved, Massimo turned on the drill. “I can poke holes in you for days before you die.” Aiming the drill at the tied man’s hand, Massimo took his time lowering the drill, pressing the button to make acceleration sounds as he did.

The rest of our men watched Massimo work with a queasy sort of admiration. Only I knew it for the performance it was. Oh, he could follow through when he had to, but manipulating fear, not pain, was Massimo’s real talent. He only tolerated the uglier parts of this life because, in his mind, it meant protecting me. We’d talked a while back, after a particularly gruesome evening, and he’d shared that little nugget with me.

“You’re my family, Rom, my brother, and my boss. I would do anything to keep you safe.” And that in a nutshell was Simo, a terrifying enforcer on the one side and a big protective teddy bear on the other.

In the past, he’d had a few girlfriends… they’d felt suffocated. He told me this and I chuckled at his surprise at this information. He really had no idea how intense he could be, but for one lucky woman, someday. He liked finding tiny broken things and mending them back to health, funny for a guy who also killed with those same hands, but that was the paradox of Massimo Di Mauro Vitale.

As the drill lowered, a hair’s breadth from touchdown, the guy finally broke. “Wait! I did see something.”

Massimo raised the drill, but kept it on.

“Oh?” he asked, casually brushing sweat-damp strands of hair away from the man’s left eye, then framing it with one hand meaningfully. “And what did you see?”

“The boss sent me to check on another shipment and there was a group of guys heading out to sea,” the man said in a breathless rush, staring at the drill as Massimo lifted it closer to his exposed, wide-open eye “They didn’t see me because I was behind them as they pulled out. They headed in the direction of the boat bringing in your shipment. When it didn’t arrive, I told my boss what I saw.”

“And could you identify any of them?”

Any soldier worth anything could see the lie in the guy’s eyes when he said ‘yes’. He was just trying to prolong the inevitable.

Massimo straightened, passing off the drill to one of his subordinates.

“End it,” I ordered and left the warehouse. The gunshot was barely heard above the horn of an incoming ship. Done with the unsavory business, I wanted to lose myself in Vittoria’s soft pliant body until the day disappeared, but I wasn’t ready to cross that line yet and instead directed our driver to take us to Club Carnage for our regular Friday Night catch-up session even though I hadn’t attended the last few, not since getting married. But I needed it tonight, time with them.

At our reserved table, I caught up with Gaetano whom I hadn’t seen since the wedding. Our resident surgeon had an apartment near the hospital for when he worked nights. His last shift ended at 6 am this morning, giving him plenty of time to sleep before joining us.

I wanted to discuss his protection detail, but Tano refused to accept that he needed any. Still, I had made sure the best security was installed at his condo, and that there were extra guards at the hospital when he worked.

“Would you look at the ass on that one,” Gio remarked.

One by one, we all looked down and were at once captivated by a group of young women, barely dressed for trouble, grinding against each other to the music.

“They are all pretty hot,” Vinny added. “Maybe I should go and talk with them.”

“Yeah, Vinny,” Fausto said dryly, “take one for the team.”

“What the hell is Little Red wearing? I swear I can see all the way to Albuquerque when she bends over like that. Holy shit, she works it like a pro. Who are those women, Gio?”

“Don’t look at me. I’ve never seen them before, but one seems kind of familiar.”

Almost as if hearing us talk about her, the one in the almost see-through mini-dress looked up. I froze in my chair as her eyes scanned the group until they landed on me.

What the fuck was my wife doing here, and dressed like that!

As if she’d read my thought, she turned around and wiggled her ass at me, then the little minx gazed over her shoulder and blew me a kiss.