Page 37

Dante

Holdingthe phone against my ear, I stared into the thick glass with narrowed eyes. “Talk.”

“Not like this and you know it.”

“Then why am I here?” Squeezing the receiver, I wanted to jump through the glass and punch my brother in the fucking face.

And if no one came rushing in to stop me, I would wrap my arm around his fucking neck and feel the life get sucked from his body. Sesto was a fucking piece of shit.

He did the one thing he wasn't supposed to do, the one thing that would get him killed.

Sesto talked.

“I need protection, Dante.” His hard, damaged hand raised and lowered submissively onto the table. I could tell the joint hadn't been nice to him. His skin was tensed against his forehead, the remnants of a black eye barely visible except for the yellow and green tint the skin held around his socket. A year wasn't that long, but he'd aged like he had been in here for a lifetime.

Every inch of him looked nervous, visibly shaken—as he should be.His fingers were twitching one by one, each single digit pulsed against the colorless steel, tapping soundless notes.

I wasn't planning on ever coming to see him, the fact he even asked for me to come was insane. At least he knew better than to call me himself. After everything he did, all the information he gave up. I didn't even know why I was actually even here.

I guess I wanted to tell him to go to hell in person, I had the balls to do that for him. But inside I was hoping he would come clean, tell me everything himself. It wouldn't change the way I felt about him, but at least he could die a man, and not a coward who was too weak to be honest with me.

He owed me that much.

He owed our father that much.

If he had any respect for us, he'd tell us the truth. I shouldn't have had to hear it on the news, or read in the paper the shit he told the cops.

Fucking rat bastard.

We were brothers, but right now that was the only thing we had in common. And it meant nothing to me. He broke that bond the second he turned on us.

“Fuck you. How's that?”

“Dante, we're brothers, you should know me. You know I had nothing to do with what went down.”

Letting out a sarcastic laugh, I shook my head. “Good luck in there. Hope no one else gets you before we do. You know what's coming your way, hopefully I'll be the one you're looking at when it happens.”

Slamming his fist on the hard metal table, Sesto growled through the phone. “Fuck you, brother, fuck you.”

“Don't call me that. We're not brothers, not anymore.” Glaring at him through slit lids, I ground my jaw so hard I thought I felt teeth start to crack. How dare he use that word with me? Brother . . . Fuck him. “So this is why you wanted me here? To ask me for help?” Leaning back in the chair, I looked around the room. No one else seemed to be watching, but I knew they were always listening. “You'll never get another thing from me or the family. You burned that bridge when you grassed, man.”

Sesto looked agitated as shit, his voice growing with rage. “I didn't—” Shooting a look over his shoulders, he leaned in and lowered his voice. “I didn't fucking talk, you have to know that.”

He was really starting to piss me off. Some of the shit the cops knew was only known by a handful of people in our family. We never told all our guys our every move or where we had our hands. Some of that shit was only for the family to know.

But they knew.

The cops came and took a lot of shit, impounded more than half of one of our biggest hauls. Then they raided a few warehouses that weren't on the radar, and took down a few of our father's top guys. A dozen men got busted, but my brother was the only one who seemed to get off easy.

So who ratted?

Yeah, he made it easy to figure out.

“I don't have time for this.”

“Well you need to make time. I need protection, I'll need you when I get out, I didn't do this shit.”

“Do you have any idea what we lost? Do you have any idea what you've done to the family? And now dad had to take things into his own hands to get back what was ours. Do you even realize how fucked up this all is?” Sesto stared at me, his eyes light and worried. “You have no idea, do you?” Shaking my head, I clung to the phone, ready to throw it at the glass. “If you didn't, then who did? Because what went down went far beyond our jockies, it went way over their heads.”