I perhaps should be. Still, it makes no difference. No matter how much I drink, I cannot dampen the unprecedented thrill that surges through me every time I think of Dani.
I watch as Levi makes his way across the dance floor. Even though Levi isn’t exactly what one would consider a classically handsome man, the club girls are all over him. That is how it is with the women who come to our clubs regularly: they’re hungry for power.
He eventually pries himself loose of the piranhas in tall heels and tight dresses and mounts the stairs up to the raised booth where I am seated. I know he likes sitting up here, where they can ogle him. Maybe I like it too, sometimes. But tonight, I’m weary of being on display.
Levi wrinkles his brow as he slides into the seat next to me. “Why the sour face?”
“Because an ugly bastard named Levi Mancini has just disturbed my peace and quiet.”
“Peace and quiet?” Levi laughs. He gestures at the massive speaker stacks lining an entire wall. The music is deafening.
“Just peace, then.”
He raises his glass. “To disturbing the peace.”
We clink glasses together and I take a small sip. It burns, like it always does, but not nearly as much as the irritation that churns in my chest when Levi broaches the one topic I’ve been avoiding, as I knew he would: my father’s goddamned ultimatum.
“Have you given it any more thought?” he asks.
“Father and his fucking demands,” I growl. “I’ve been serving this Family for years. I’m not going to get married just because he tells me to. I’m his son, for fuck’s sake, not his puppet. I understand that he wants me to have an heir, a family …”
For a second, I think about Mother. I remember being a young boy and standing in the doorway of the kitchen, watching her and Father dancing together as the scent of fresh carbonara drifted into the air. I remember seeing the eternal worry lines etched into his face actually relaxing in that moment. As if that was all that mattered to him.
Is that what he wants for me? To be so distracted by a woman that I lose focus on the empire we’re trying to cultivate, to retain, to dominate?
Fuck that. I spend my nights with the faceless whores who populate this nightclub because they do exactly the opposite: they remind me that business is all that matters.
“It’s my time now, Levi. You know it. I know it. Father even knows it. He’s getting old. He’s grown too damn soft for his own good. That shit with the baking powder … do you think he’s going to retaliate against Dujar? No. When Dujar lies and tells him it was an innocent mix-up, which surely he will, Father will pretend to believe him. ‘Diplomacy,’ he’ll say. He always fucking says that.” I shake my head. “It’s a fucking joke. Someone needs to shake the old man from his roost.”
“You sound like you’re considering a power play,” Levi says cautiously.
“Against my own father? The man who took down the Irish? Who slayed the Elephant? Who put the whole city under his thumb in one fell swoop?” I shake my head. “He was a force to be reckoned with, once upon a time.”
“Not that he’d ever admit it.” Levi grins.
I can’t help but smile ruefully. “But the men he keeps around—Nario, his other lieutenants—they’re not so tight-lipped. I remember Nario telling me about the time the Russians stole three crates of a fifty-crate shipment. Three crates … a thing like that, today, he’d just let that go. Back then, he walked right into the Russian bar—alone, with only a fucking pocketknife for a weapon—and demanded to speak with the Bratva boss. When the man came out, he told him straight up to return the crates or there’d be war. Just like that. Now here was this Russian mob boss, this old grizzly bear-looking motherfucker, looking down at this twenty-five-year-old kid. And what did he do? He returned those damn crates.”
“I remember that story. Carlo made a deal with him,” Levi says, nodding. “They worked together for years. You have to give it to him, Angelo—he has an eye for business.”
“I have never denied that,” I say. “It was his idea to start selling this shit to the partiers. And look where it’s gotten us. We’re richer than God. But that’s the problem, Levi. Being rich has made him comfortable, and being comfortable has made him