Thinking about it made me fucking sick.
When I discovered the full extent of his involvement, I refused to be drawn in any further. Needless to say, after a huge fight, we came to an arrangement that suited us both. He recruited the DiTonnos, and I concentrated on managing the gambling activities and our car export business.
My dad had opened my eyes to a world drastically different from my hometown in Nebraska. Part of me was thankful I had so many opportunities. I had more money than I could spend in this lifetime. I owned multiple homes. I paid off my mom’s hobby farm and bought her the building where she operated her dance studio.
The other part of me hated he’d exposed me to the shadowy underbelly of organized crime at such a young age. Life would have been simpler. I could have gone my entire life without knowing how drugs traveled the globe and how weapons made it into the hands of dictators and terrorists despite embargos and laws to the contrary.
“So you plan to rope the Trassatos into your side of the business?”
“Why the hell not? Nico and Dominick are first and foremost businessmen. Once they see the numbers, they won’t be able to resist, and they have more power and territories than the DiTonnos. It’ll be a win-win.”
“Just so ya know, I don’t want anything to do with the transport of girls. I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to see it, and I sure as fuck don’t want to negotiate the terms.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kon, this isn’t about the girls. You know I only do that once or twice a year. It’s a big payout, but I have to grease too many hands and there’s a shitload of paperwork. It’s a lot of work for an old man. There are easier ways to make money these days.”
“I’d rather we stayed the hell away from that kind of work,” I grumbled.
“You act like I don’t have feelings. That’s not close to true. I’m not fucking Stalin and I’m no saint either. I do what I have to do to because when you lead a life like mine where someone’s always itching to take your spot or eliminate you, you have to scrape, kill, and outsmart your rivals or you might as well dig your own grave.”
“If not for the girls, why did you invite them here?”
“I want to renegotiate how much protection money we pay them to keep people away from this warehouse.”
“They won’t agree. We’ve gone down this road with them before.”
Currently, we paid them five percent on every car we sold in Russia. Basically, we had guys stealing cars all over the DiTonno controlled territory. They delivered them to our warehouse and we shipped them out less than twenty-four hours later, stuffed inside crates lined with mattresses and labeled as ordinary household goods.
The DiTonnos had decades of infrastructure and connections that we didn’t, including port authorities and police officers, so we paid the DiTonnos to keep everyone off our backs. In turn, they did what was necessary to make sure all the appropriate authorities looked the other way. They were the whores of the Italian mafia. They’d do anything to make a buck, unlike the Trassatos, who pretended they had honor and morals.
“Oh,” he smiled condescendingly, “they will and they’ll do it with a fucking smile.”
A knock sounded on the metal door leading to the outside.
“I guess that’s them,” I said, removing one of the guns from the holster strapped to my chest.
My dad keyed in the code to disarm the alarm and flipped the deadbolt. “Thanks for joining us.”
Alesio D’Orizio sauntered into the room, Renzo following closely on his heels. He had two black eyes and a split lip from our confrontation a couple of nights ago.
Anger pulsed through me. My heartbeat kicked up a notch, and I stormed forward, my gun pointed at Renzo. “What the fuck is he doing here?”
Alesio pulled out his gun, aiming it at my chest. Renzo froze, his hands raised next to his head in the universal sign of surrender. My dad stepped between us, one hand on Alesio’s chest on the other on mine.
“What the fuck is this about? We’re not here to fight. We’re here to discuss business.”
“Tell that to your son,” Alesio sneered, his dark eyes wild, his jaw muscles twitching. He was one sick fucker, and he’d done more than one stint in the big house. I shouldn’t have provoked him. He killed more than his share of people as he climbed the ladder to the job of underboss for the DiTonno family. “What the hell is wrong with him?”
“That punk,” I jammed my gun in Renzo’s direction, “came into my club a couple of days ago causing a shitload of trouble and harassing one of my guests.”