Innocence (Tales of Olympus #1)(53)

He’d made a new plan, of course. Marrying Demi’s daughter had struck him as an even better means of revenge than the simple kidnap and ransom he’d initially intended.

It all served the same purpose: to draw the Titans out into the open and make them pay for their crimes. Cora’s father had been the one holding the knife, but his brothers had been there, too.

Marcus had waited a long time for his vengeance but he would have it now.

None of the remaining Titan brothers had children. Cora was the only heir. Demi would go to the brothers. She had no choice, no power on her own.

And if he could make her suffer in the meantime, imagining the horrors he’d visit upon her daughter? All the better.

But there was still no sign or word from any of them.

And today he’d crossed a line he didn’t know how to come back from.

Innocents ought to be spared.

Marcus lived his life by a code and that was its bedrock. He mired himself neck deep in shit doing what had to be done because at least when he was in charge, he could make sure that only the guilty paid.

But it was never meant to touch the innocent.

Like his sister.

Chiara was beautiful. Delicate and pale, her head in the clouds all the time, she’d never seemed to fully inhabit the same grimy reality as the rest of the world.

And that was as it ought to have been.

What should never have been was finding her bleeding out on a dirty mattress in a filthy crack house where the Titan brothers had taken and discarded her.

His parent’s death, he’d understood. His father had started as a lowly immigrant shopkeeper, and built an empire. Vito Ubeli had faced injustices and fought in the face of it, and built an army to protect the weak. That didn’t mean he wasn’t brutal, and one day found death at the hands of an enemy he’d crushed. And when he’d died, his son Marcus was meant to assume control.

But Marcus was only fifteen at the time and he’d waited, thinking someone more qualified would take the lead in his stead. In another year’s time, his sister was dead. He’d never forgotten the lesson: strike first and strike fast, and seize any power to be had.

He was a necessary evil to hold back the chaos.

He watched the city lights fly by as they drove. East of the city, the streets grew narrow together. Marcus had his driver stop at an alley way too small to fit a car into.

“Cover me,” Marcus said, after scanning every corner of the intersection.

“You sure?” The man in black also looked suspiciously down the alley.

A door opened in the side of one building and Sharo’s unmistakable silhouette stepped into the pool of light.

“Wait for me. Should be under an hour,” Marcus told his soldier, and got out of the car.

“Picked one of our men up tonight, late to a drop,” Sharo said. “Went looking for him and found him in a bar on the Westside.”

Sharo emphasized the name of the territory between New Olympus and their sister city, Metropolis. Like Marcus ran the Underworld of New Olympus, the Titans ran Metropolis. And the Westside was currently a no man’s land where Marcus still battled for the same control he enjoyed over the rest of New Olympus.

“Said someone stopped him and took his shipment, so he was hiding out, trying to figure out how to tell us.”

“You believe his story?”

As usual, Sharo’s face held no expression. Lesser men cracked after an hour staring into the mask of rich, midnight skin and fathomless eyes. Like staring into the fucking abyss, Roscoe, one of the capos, would say.

“His story doesn’t add up. And there’s been suspicious activity on his route before, which is why we had eyes on him. We think he handed over the goods to our old friend’s out West, but got them to cash him out and make it look like a hold up.”

“If it’s our old friends,” Marcus used the euphemism for the Titans, his blood heating, “then this driver isn’t just passing on goods. He’s feeding them information.”

The two men walked through the warehouse, passing by rows and racks of garments, until they reached stairs to the basement. The air reeked from the stench of the fabric dyes and detergents. The chemical smells did a good job of masking the scent of blood.

Sharo paused at the foot of the stairs. “Got the boys to soften him up a bit. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Alright,” Marcus said. “We play it like we did with that last switch—what was his name? The Frenchman.”

“Le Mouchard,” Sharo pronounced perfectly, and stood aside, letting Marcus lead the way through between the dye vats to the cleared space where they’d tied the snitch up.

A few men all in black stood around a wretched figure blindfolded and hanging from the ceiling so that his feet barely brushed the floor.

The Shades were Marcus’s soldiers, loyal enforcers who ran his massive empire. They were recruited young off the streets, trained in a central facility, and given every opportunity to rise through the ranks. You can tell a leader by the men who follow him, Marcus’s father had told him time and time again.

The Shades all nodded to acknowledge their leader and Marcus let himself almost grin, before slipping into character.

“What the fuck?” he shouted, and his voice rang out in the empty space. The snitch, a doughy man in a stained wife beater and khaki shorts that had seen better days, started shivering. Sweat ran down under his blindfold, into his sparse beard. Marcus knew the Shades had worked him over a little bit, but left nothing more than painful bruises. His blood had yet to flow.