“Hey, laugh it up while you can, bro. That’s gonna be you in three months.”
Hades makes a face as Ares clears his throat again.
“Anyway. This can be brief, but…” He rolls his shoulders, turning to glance at each of us. “We need to talk about the Italian elephant in the room.”
Deimos’ brow furrows. “Nero?”
“Nero,” Ares grunts, nodding. “We all knew there’d be some upheaval and drama when the Carveli family went down in flames…”
Beside me, Callie shivers a little, hugging herself. I drop a heavy, comforting hand on her shoulder, which she seems to appreciate, turning and smiling at me a little.
I doubt many people ever had a good experience with the Carvelis. But Callie especially doesn’t look back on them with any fondness. There was a while there when an old blood marker our father made with the Carveli family betrothed our sister to the sleazy, cruel, sixty-year-old father of the late and unlamented Don Massimo Carveli.
“However,” Ares continues. “We didn’t expect the De Luca family to be the one filling that fifth slot on the Italian Commission. The problem here is—”
“That Nero is a fucking violent, unpredictable lunatic,” Deimos grunts from where he’s still leaning against the bookshelves near one of the windows.
Hades scowls. “Great. So another fucking Massimo.”
Ares wags his head side to side. “Not quite, but he’s definitely a wild card. They’ve been calling him the young lion, both because of his ferocity and the fact that he’s got something to prove. To make things even more interesting, apparently Nero has bad blood with Davit.”
I wince.
Shit.
“Guess it’d make things too easy if all the criminal scumbags in this city would kiss and make up and stop trying to stab each other in the back, huh?” Callie mutters.
“I’m not sure anyone has ever accused the Albanians of setting aside grudges,” I grunt before turning to Ares. “Just how ‘bad’ is this bad blood?”
Ares looks grim. “Davit and I had a talk this morning, and he promised to turn Little Italy into Kosovo if Nero so much as mispronounces his name.”
“Super,” Callie groans.
Ares is right: this is a problem.
Davit Kirakosian is the head of Te Mallkuarit, aka “The Cursed Ones”—an Albanian crime family deeply rooted in mysticism and old-school religion, with a knack for smuggling and a penchant for cutting the heads off their enemies.
I mean that extremely literally.
They’ve also recently planted roots in New York. Normally, since they haven’t made a single move on any of our territory or interests, we’d be leaving people like Davit and his merry band of head-chopping psychos alone. But that was before they made a hard play for the same development site on the west side of Manhattan that we were.
Word that Vito Barone was going to be offloading the building overlooking the Hudson River that he got for a song years ago garnered a ton of interest from every developer and investor in the city. Vito’s not a huge fan of our family: somewhat because of old Greek-Italian rivalries from way back, but in huge part because of a Deimos.
Before Dahlia, my brother was a member of Club Venom. I don’t know, and I’m sure I don’t want to know the details. But apparently there was an incident of some kind at the club between him and Vito’s niece, which resulted in Dante revoking my brother’s membership.
Needless to say, Vito hasn’t exactly looked kindly in our direction since. But money talks, and we were able to make ours sing and fucking dance when it came to being the top bid for his property.
The Armenians did come in swinging there for a while, with money I genuinely didn’t know they had. But pending some last-minute details of the sale, we’ll be taking that property off Vito’s hands, not Davit.
“That reminds me.” Ares turns to nod in my direction. “Davit wants to give…well, lend…us a token of goodwill. Things got a little tense there during the bidding war for Vito’s property. But I think this is his way of settling it between our families. Plus, I’m pretty sure he’d actually like to do some business together sometime. Anyway, I need you to go pick it up.”
I frown. “Okayyy…but why me? And what exactly is this token of goodwill?”
“A 12th century statue of the Crucifixion, and I’m asking you because it’s huge and weighs a fucking ton.”
Great. “How heavy are we talking?”
“Davit mentioned bringing a truck.”
My brows shoot up. “What’s this fucking thing made of, gold?”
Ares smiles, slowly shaking his head.
“Human bones.”
“Yeah, no. Fuck that,” I shake my head. “I’m out.”
“Kratos, I need you to do this. It’s gotta be someone from the family, or it’ll be perceived as an insult. I’d go myself, but I’ll be real with you, brother. I’m fucking tired. Like, seriously. I’m asking you to do this as a favor for the family.”
I sigh heavily.
“Jesus, I’ll go with you, ya big pussy,” Hades snickers, grinning at me. “Okay?”
“Fine.”
Callie frowns. “The Albanians were aggressive with wanting that property. The peace offering, however creepy, is a nice gesture. But if they go to war with Nero, and Nero is allied with the Barone family, and we’re doing business with the Barone family…”
Ares nods slowly. “I’ve already spoken to Davit about this, as well as Michael Genovisi of the Scaliami family, and Cesare Marchetti. No one wants an all-out war. Even Davit is aware how bad that would be for business, and for all his obsession with honor and shit, business comes first.” My oldest brother sighs heavily. “But it’s a big, flimsy powder keg right now. All it’s going to take is one spark, and we’re going to have huge problems.”
