That’s what she was to me. She was a treasure. One I wanted to keep for myself, one I would die saving. If it was the last thing I did.

“Come on.” I tucked the gun back into my jeans and gripped her hand and squeezed.

Luckily, the street was more of an alleyway so it wasn’t exactly flooded with people, and Vegas was full of crazies. We got as far as Freemont when I got a text from Nixon. They were waiting for us back at the hotel.

At least they hadn’t been captured. Not yet.

Nixon

The restaurant back at The Golden Nugget wasn’t crowded in the least. We took a booth in the very back and sat. Nobody spoke for a while. I’d never seen Luca so quiet in my entire life. I mean, this was Luca we were talking about. He fed on small children and laughed when people bled out. I wasn’t looking at the same man. I was looking at a man afraid — and to see a man as terrifying as Luca afraid? It didn’t sit well with me. It made me think that maybe this was bigger than I’d originally thought.

I slid a small Glock .9 toward Trace; her eyes flickered shut before she gave a quick nod and put it in her purse. She knew what I was asking her — what I was communicating to her. I needed her to protect herself at all costs.

We’d gone over her escape plan more times than I’d like to count. She had seven passports that would gain her access into the countries I’d previously chosen. Countries where I knew she’d be given asylum. I’d also assigned two men who would leave with her and protect her until the day I could either find her again or until the day we were reunited, that is, if God even let people like me into Heaven. If not, at least Trace would be there. I could live with that. A private account had been set up so that she would never want for anything. She’d hated me for it. But it was necessary. If she wasn’t safe… Hell, I couldn’t even think about it. My mind couldn’t wrap around the idea of a world where she was no longer breathing, a world where her heartbeat wasn’t slow and steady next to mine.

“I think we need to talk.” Frank ordered a bottle of wine and placed his weathered hands on the table.

Luca shook his head. “Talking like a bunch of women will accomplish nothing.”

“Try,” I urged through clenched teeth.

Tex plopped down on the other side of Trace and crooked his finger at Mo. Wordless, she took a seat and waited in silence like the rest of us.

“We wait.” Luca nodded. “For Mil and Chase.” He nodded again as if he was convincing himself that it was the best plan imaginable. Then he pulled out a cigar and began puffing on it like it was his only lifeline.

“Here they are,” Trace whispered.

I turned around. Mil’s face was white as a sheet, and Chase looked like he needed something a hell of a lot stronger than wine. His gaze flickered to mine and then back to Mil as he put his arm around her and pulled out a chair.

Now that was interesting. Usually he looked at me, then at Trace, and then back to me again. What had changed?

“Loose ends?” Luca said without looking up.

“None.” Chase swallowed. “One dead.”

“Anyone important?” Sergio spoke up for the first time. We were huddled in a dark booth where we were all facing out so that we could see anyone or anything that dared approach us. They’d be dead before they could open their mouth in greeting.

“No.” Mil’s voice shook. “Just Tanya’s bodyguard.”

“And Mrs. Campisi? How does she fair?” Luca blotted out his cigar and poured himself a healthy glass of wine.

“We left her.” Chase cleared his throat and popped his knuckles. “She’s dead anyway.” His knuckles were caked with blood, but other than that he seemed clean, so he must have been telling the truth. Then again, Chase’s style of killing was cleaner than mine. While I’d rather beat the shit out of someone and torture them until either my name or God’s was the last on their lips, Chase used guns.

He liked guns.

Guns liked him.

They had a good relationship. Chase hated loose ends, and he hated getting his hands dirty when the gun could do the job for him. To each his own, I guess.

Trace placed her hand on my thigh. I reached down and gripped it, each of us waiting for someone to say something that would be helpful.

After taking another sip of wine, Luca spoke. “You were young when you were both chosen. Rare for a boss to fall into power at eighteen, Nixon, even rarer to earn the respect of your elders at fourteen when your own father nearly killed you.” Luca shook his head. “You and your friends were all sons of bosses, important men, too important for us not to initiate you into the family once we deemed you old enough to know what was going on. I thought of it as a brainwashing. What fourteen-year-old doesn’t want to bring pride to his family? Luca swallowed. “And you, Nixon? You did not scream.”

“What?” Trace whispered.

“He didn’t scream.” Luca gave a sad smile. “When his father crushed his skull. Not one single tear either.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “My own men were terrified. They asked, ‘Who is this boy? Where does he find his strength?’ I envied you.”

I winced. “I set off airport security with my metal plate, not much to envy.”

Frank pinched the bridge of his nose as if the violent talk about the Abandonato family was too much for him to take.

“We initiated the four of you that next week.” Luca nodded. “Phoenix followed, as well as Chase and Tex.”

I remembered it all too clearly. The dark room, the metallic smell of blood, and the knives. Never in the family’s history had they initiated mere teenagers. We’d been forced to grow up before our time. Forced to become men, when we should have been playing baseball and going to the movies…

A knife sat to my right, a gun to my left.

“Prick your trigger finger with the knife,” Luca instructed. His voice sounded confident and smooth to my fourteen-year-old ears.

I did as he said, hands shaking the entire time. When the blood pooled around my fingertip, he squeezed until a drop of it fell onto a card he held in his hand. He repeated the process for each of my friends.

“You are now family,” he said in a low voice. “By this blood you are united, by this blood you will die. You live by this very knife.” Luca picked up the knife. “You die by this knife. Do you accept?”

“Yes,” we said in unison, our voices cracking because they’d barely begun to change. I knew the seriousness of what was happening. My father watched from the corner of the room, his smile predatory. It took everything in me not to grab the knife and throw it at his head. I was going to be boss someday, and when I was, the first thing I was going to do was kill the very man who claimed to be my father. I would end his life, and I would smile when his warm blood ran cold through my fingers.

Luca handed me the card with my patron saint, Blessed Saint Antonio Lucci. I held it in my hand, my blood dripped on the card.

Luca lit a candle and then held it out to me. “Repeat after me.” He held the flame beneath the card and spoke in a low voice. “As burns this saint, so burns my soul. I enter alive, and I will have to get out dead.”

I repeated the words, knowing that getting out meant my death. But getting in? That meant my survival. It meant my revenge…

“Sorry.” Tex shook his head. “Not that I mind going down memory lane, but what the hell does this have to do with the fact that Luca looks ready to run for the hills?”

Tex had reasons for hating that memory. When he should have been initiated as a Campisi, he’d been initiated as a made man, initiated into a family who, even though we’d said was his blood, was nothing like it.

Luca looked at the wine in his glass. He swirled it around and sighed. Some liquid dripped off the edge of the glass; it reminded me of blood, of the blood that would continue to spill if we didn’t fix what was happening.