Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76501 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
There’s not much resistance, but there is a lot of screaming.
Staff, servants, whatever, young men and women run all over the fucking place. Cooks, cleaners, god knows what else, they scatter like cockroaches. A shooter appears down the hallway and Fio takes him down as we start to clear the lower floors. Only a few more Greeks decide they want to try to take us on, and each of them meets a bloody, vicious end.
Only one man catches my eye.
It’s an old guy. I recognize him instantly and my heart starts to race. I’ll never forget that face, not as long as I live, even though I’ve never seen him in person before until now. The face of a monster.
Perico Eliopoulos, the Butcher of Rhodes, a real psychotic piece of shit with a miles-long list of men he’s killed and maimed, sometimes just for fun, including some of the people closest to me in the world. I hate him with a rage that sears my guts and there he is, standing in the kitchen next to a young man who pulls a gun on me and opens fire. I kill the dumb young bastard and splatter his blood all over the Butcher, but instead of dropping to his knees and begging for his life, the old guy turns and runs. He hits the stairs and goes up instead of looking for an exit outside, which is what most people would do in this situation. I figure the Butcher probably knows where the girl is and I follow, keeping my distance, letting him take me straight to her.
Straight to my future and everything I’ve always wanted.
I’ll take my revenge after I have the girl.
My heart’s racing as I hustle up the stairs. Another shooter appears and I take him down, but it’s a close one as a bullet lodges in the wall over my shoulder, inches from my head. I kick the corpse aside as the Butcher disappears into a room up ahead, and I take my time following him down the hall. I hear him speaking Greek, rushed and frantic, but something makes me pause.
It’s the reply.
She’s speaking English. Good English. She sounds like a California native, like she was born and bred in LA in the hills or something. I knew the Florakis girl spent most of her time in the States and was only out here sometimes, but I didn’t know she was practically American.
We didn’t pay much attention to her because she’s not involved with the association. My family doesn’t exactly have the most enlightened view on women, but the Greeks make us look like fucking feminists by comparison, and they always treated her like nothing more than breeding material at best.
Not that it matters.
This girl is my ticket. I couldn’t care less if the Florakis treated her like shit, so long as she dies now. The Valverde Famiglia is the strongest Sicilian mafia in the world and one of the most powerful in America. We control big chunks of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and I plan on growing until my hands are wrapped around the throat of the entire East Coast. My father’s in charge and will be for some time, but if he makes my ascension official then I can start growing my crew and working toward my dream.
Total domination. My boot on the face of every asshole from Florida to Maine.
All I have to do is kill one girl.
One more dead girl, and I’ll be good enough.
Another body on the pile of corpses I’ve left in my wake over the years, stretching back to when I was a teenager.
I walk forward. As I get close, the Butcher of Rhodes appears in the hall. Memories flash through my eyes, of my little brother laughing, running with me, fishing in a river when our father took us on a mountain vacation, lying in my bed and reading comics by flashlight. The Butcher turns to me with surprise in his face, and I wonder how many assholes he sliced up with those fancy knives of his, how many men he flayed alive for his monster bosses.
I put two bullets in his chest and he hits the floor like a piece of trash. It feels fucking good as I stand above him and put one in his skull, just to make sure the Butcher’s finally dead.
That’s when she screams.
The girl loses it. She staggers back, freaking out. I turn and walk into what must be her bedroom and stare, my pulse juddering, and it’s like my brain glitches to a halt as I stare into her big, bright green eyes, glittering with tears like diamonds in the surf.
“There’s the flower of my eye,” I say, which is something my late mama used to whisper to me when I was little. I don’t know why it comes out, and it immediately throws me off. Why the fuck did I call her my flower? Maybe her name, Florakis? But that’s not it.