Page 45 of Niccolaio Andretti (The Five Syndicates)
To them, innocents are fair game.
Fuck that shit.
I can’t live somewhere like that.
And while the Camerino family isn’t as bad as the De Luca family, there’s too much going on in their politics for me to risk being seen there right now. They’re at war with the Rossi family, and not the passive war the Romanos and Andrettis are engaged in, where no one really remembers why we’re mad at each other.
Their war is fresh and angry and unrelenting.
So, here I am.
Homeless in Maryland during the fucking cold ass winter.
I sigh when my break ends, and I reluctantly enter Phantom, the club where I bartend every night. I make a fair amount of money here, but it’s better for me to save it in case I need it on the run.
I made a mistake by transferring all of my money into an offshore bank account under my real name, but I was in a rush, didn’t have an alternate identity set up, and wasn’t thinking straight, having just killed my uncle.
Now, I’m paying for that mistake with every dollar I choose to save instead of spend on a warm bed. I’m not sure how much longer I can take this. Living on the run is against every instinct of mine.
I was born to fight and live the mafia lifestyle.
Being idle and on the run is my worst nightmare.
But it’s also my only hope of survival.
Which is why, when I hear a clank in the alley I just left and open the back door of Phantom a bit to investigate, I wince at the familiar site of crazed blue eyes and scruffy brown hair. There, standing in the dark alleyway with a man I don’t know, is one of my former friends, Ignazio Colombo.
And in a car that just blocked off the exit to the alley is someone I’ve only met once but would recognize anywhere.
Asher Black.
“We’re gonna fucking be legends,” Naz says to the guy beside him, his voice splicing the silence.
I groan in my head, because anything Naz thinks is a good idea is one hundred percent bound to be a horrible idea.
Naz is a reckless idiot. He’s a total, complete, unbelievably dimwitted idiot that is, without a doubt, about to get himself into trouble right about now. And I may be Andretti enemy number one right now, but he’s still an old friend of mine.
Naz used to work in Florida with me—until he shot an innocent civilian who he thought looked like a Romano caporegime, because in his idiotic mind, it was logical for a Romano caporegime to be entering a goddamn Baby Gap in the heart of Andretti territory out of the fucking blue.
The civilian survived Naz’s piss poor aim, lots of men in blue were paid off, and Naz was sent to the border, where he’d be someone else’s problem.
And right now?
That someone is me.
Chapter Eighteen
Holding on to anger
is like grasping a hot coal
with the intent of throwing
it at someone else; you are
the one who gets burned.
Buddha
