Page 68 of Forgotten Sacrifice

Uncle Joseph extends his gun handle side out, and I don’t hesitate, taking it from his hand. It’s heavier than I expected as I get a feel for the weapon, aiming it at my father’s skull—his eyes wide with terror as he tries to mumble something, but his mouth is taped shut.

“You ever fired a?—”

I pull the trigger, my ears ringing as my old man’s body tumbles into the pit. The recoil knocks me on my ass.

Uncle Joseph laughs boisterously as he hoists me to my feet. “Alright, my boy. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Chapter

Twenty-Seven

Luna

“Carbon copies, my old man and yours,” Vince admits, lost in the past. “I got me and my brother out of that situation when I became a bookie.”

“How old were you?” I wonder.

“Sixteen.”

“How old was Aldo?”

“Six.”

“You weren’t lying about raising your brother,” I comment. “Is that why you don’t want kids? You had to be a ‘parent’ so young.”

He shrugs.

“There were times growing up I wished I had an older sibling; someone looking out for me,” I admit for some reason. “Your brother was lucky to have you.”

“No such thing as luck,” Vince says dismissively.

I cross my arms. “Whatdo you call it, then?”

“Odds.”

“But wasn’t your brother lucky to have such good odds?” I counter.

Vince shakes his head. “Luck and odds don’t belong in the same sentence.”

“Are you going to give me some kind of statistics lecture?” I groan. “Because I fucking hated my statistics course.”

“Numbers never lie.”

“What about mobsters?”

“Mobsters never lie,” he parrots.

“Liar.”

He chuckles as we pull into the Italian social club

I follow Vince to the back, and he unlocks the door. We walk past the kitchen, and he disappears briefly, returning with a box of cookies.

I go to reach for them, but he holds the box over my head. “Only if you’re a good girl.” The second the words are out of his mouth, I can tell he wishes he could take them back.

The air’s become intolerably thick between us as I lean in and whisper, “You know just how good of a girl I can be.”

Vince shoves the box at me, stepping a few feet away as he leads me down the hall to his office.