Taking The Mantle

Chapter 14

The SUV comes to a halt beside the warehouse. Gunshots ring in the air as Italian and Spanish yelling overlap each other. The driver opens my door and I climb out before looking around. Just about every guard for the Sinaloa's lays dead on the ground.

"I know what you're lacking as the Don," Antonio says casually as he comes to stand next to me.

"Yeah?" I chide, "enlighten me."

I start towards the building and Antonio walks at my side, "you need a Marino."

I look at him with furrowed brows, "what?"

"Luca and I both had you," he starts, the chatter of my men growing louder the closer we get, "Giuseppe had your dad and so on for fucking generations. You need someone like that, someone you can trust to hold down the fort."

"I know," I reply simply.

"Have you given it any thought?" he asks.

"I'm considering Rocco," I inform him. He's one of our best and most loyal soldiers. Luca trusts him enough to guard Victoria and the kids and that's no small feat.

"He's young," Antonio points out and I nod in agreement.

"We were even younger," I remind him.

"Fair point," he shrugs, "he's a trustworthy and loyal man; that's a good choice."

"Let's go do this," I say, jutting my chin towards the warehouse.

We cross the threshold and the men are already dumping gasoline. This warehouse is mostly used to store money but we have more than enough. So instead of stealing it, we're going to burn it all to ashes.

The walls are lined in metal shelves, completely full with stacks of cash. Dead bodies litter the floor and I carefully step around them; I don't want blood on my shoes.

I move towards the back of the building where blueprints say an office should be. Sure enough, a cheap wooden door is tucked away in the corner of the building. The door is slightly ajar and I walk right in.

Papers are splayed across a metal desk and two laptops sit amongst the chaos. Fast food wrappers and empty soda cans cover the floor. I walk over to the desk and glance at some of the pages.

There's a lot of blueprints spread around but when I look closely my brows furrow. Some of these buildings are ours, mostly the smaller warehouses by the water where we store cars and motorcycles. But the others belong to the other families; Franchesci's casino and Galvanize's marina amongst them.

What the fuck are the Sinaloa's up to?

I shuffle the papers together and as I reach for one of the laptops, a sharp pain rushes down my arm. I glance at the blood coming from my bicep before looking at the doorway.

A man is crouched down with his gun aimed at me. He fires again and the bullet lodges itself into my bulletproof vest. The air is temporarily knocked out of my lungs and I take a step back as I pull my gun. He pulls the trigger again but the gun clicks. His eyes widen as I cross the room, tucking my gun into my waistband with a smirk.

I grab his hair in my fist and drag him to his feet, "you the one in charge here?"

He spits and it lands on my cheek, "get your goddamned hands off of me you fucking mutt."

I bring my free hand up to wipe his spit away before giving a dark chuckle.

"See, now I was going to go easy on you," I tell him as I drag him towards the desk, "but you don't deserve the mercy of a quick death."