Man of the House: A Dark Bad Boy Romance(109)

As it stood, I was more or less the only person who gave a shit about her. The other captains would use Kaley in their war faster than I could spit. Lucas and Natalie might be on my side, but only so far.

No, Kaley was my responsibility. I’d let her into the house knowing that it might be a bad idea, and so I had to protect her.

But I was torn between her and the mob. I couldn’t just lie to her and tell her that I’d do anything to keep her safe, because there were lines I wouldn’t cross.

I’d grown up in the mob. I didn’t have a family and had no clue how to handle that sort of responsibility. I didn’t know what it meant to be a father, let alone to have one. As far as I was concerned, the mob was my father and my mother.

I cursed again as I walked down the hallway and stopped outside Arturo’s office. I took a deep breath before knocking.

“Come,” he called out. I pushed open the door.

It was filled with cigar smoke inside. Arturo was puffing away, along with Alfonse and Gian. Lucas was sitting in a chair, his shirt half open, drinking what looked like whisky.

“Vince,” Arturo said. “Nice of you to join us.”

“I was sleeping,” I said.

“Russians hits us,” Lucas said.

“What happened?”

Lucas filled me in. Only a few hours after we hit them, a squad of Russians rolled into one of our pizza shops and shot up the place. They only killed the wise guys who worked in the back counting money. Two were dead and two more were wounded.

“Bastards,” Arturo said. “In f*cking broad daylight, the f*cking scum.”

“What’s the plan?” I asked him.

“We hit back.”

“We escalate,” Gian added. “We f*cking kill them.”

“With those guns you got, we’ll win this, and fast,” Alfonse said.

“Have they said anything about it?” I asked Arturo.

“We got one message about the girl, but f*ck them,” he said. “Fuck them up their disgusting Russian *s.”

“Maybe we should revisit the girl now that he’s here,” Alfonse said.

“What about Kaley?” I asked.

“They’re thinking about giving her back,” Lucas said. “Without the kid though.”

I blinked. “Why the f*ck would you do that?”

Arturo shrugged. “Wars are expensive.”

“What happened to killing more Russians?”

He laughed. “We’ll give her back after we do that.”

“No,” I said.

Arturo raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“We have to keep the girl. That boy is my son.”

“We’ll keep the boy safe. Russians don’t want him anyway.”

“And the girl is his mother,” I said. “We keep her, too.”

“It’s a good move,” Gian said. “We’d save money.”

“Arturo,” I said, “listen to me. If we bend to the Russians now, what will people say?”

“True,” he said, nodding. “It wouldn’t look good.”

“No. It’d look awful. We get hit, what, twice? And we’re already giving the girl back?”

“Weakness,” Lucas said. “That would look like weakness.”

“We can’t be weak,” Arturo said.

“But we can’t be dead and poor,” Alfonse said.

“Who said we’d be dead and poor?” I asked him. “We can win this war without using the girl.”

“How do we do that?” Arturo asked me. “Seems like the girl isn’t worth all this trouble.”

I laughed. “This was never about her. You said it yourself.”

“True. I’ve been looking for an excuse to kill Russians for a long time.”

“Don’t listen to these cowards,” I said, gesturing at Gian and Alfonse.

“Yo, motherf*cker, who you calling a coward?” Alfonse said.

“I’ll f*cking strangle you,” Gian added, standing.

“Gentlemen,” Arturo warned, and the two captains took their seats again, but they looked pissed.

“Arturo, we can win this war. Let me watch over the girl. I’ll take care of her.”

“Aren’t you already?”

“Of course,” I said. “But I’ll keep her out of the way.”

Arturo looked at Lucas. “What do you think, son?”

“We keep the girl. We kill the Russians.” He shrugged. “Seems easy to me.”

“Fine. We keep the girl.”

“Isn’t this something the council should vote on?” Alfonse asked.

“Fuck the council,” Arturo said. “I made the call; now live with it.”

Alfonse sat back in his chair, looking annoyed.

“What now?” Gian asked.

“Vincent here will make a plan to hit the Russians back. Right, Vincent?”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“Meanwhile, everyone calm the f*ck down.” Arturo nodded at me. “Go get to work.”

I turned and quickly left the room. Lucas followed me out, shutting the door behind us.

“You should have heard them earlier,” Lucas said. “They keep pretending like they want to fight this war, but as soon as we talk about our dead guys, they’re suddenly all about giving Kaley back to the Russians.”