Corrupted Heir

Dominic

Two trucks pulled into the lot and disappeared inside the last old rickety warehouse behind me. Our trucks, of course—though you wouldn’t know it by the ridiculous cartoon fish scrawled across the sides. A smile on its face while it dangled on a hook. Grotesque, really, but why not? It was as good a logo as any, and it looked right at home here on the docks. No one would ever guess there wasn’t an ounce of seafood in the back of those big white trucks.

Not that there was anyone around to notice. All the dock workers were long gone for the day. It was just me and Leo, waiting for a bunch of lawless, savage brutes. An ordinary Thursday evening in my world

—the underworld of vipers and wolves. But Leo and I were Lucas, the top of the underground food chain.

Bullet whimpered behind me. Fucking mutt—my father’s fucking mutt, to be precise. “You want to do something about that?” I barked at Leo.

“What the hell do you want me to do?” he barked back—one of the few men in the world who could do that and not lose his tongue for it.

“Pet it or muzzle it. I don’t give a fuck which, just shut it up.”

What the hell my father saw in the pint-sized ball of fur, I had no idea, but when Vincent Luca told you to watch the dog, you watched the dog.

Leo leaned over and grabbed the Chihuahua from the back seat, plopping it down unceremoniously onto his lap. The mutt panted happily and licked Leo’s hand while Leo smiled down at the thing.

“You two need a room?”

“No, but you’ll be needing a hospital room if you don’t take better care of Bullet.”

He was probably right. Dad loved that thing, maybe more than he loved the rest of us. Pretty soon, he was going to start parading the mutt around as the Luca family mascot. Wouldn’t that be a sight to see?

“When you two are finished, you want to get to some business?” I asked, nodding toward the three vehicles that had just turned into the lot.

Big, black Cadillacs, of course. Was there a bigger sign to say “cartel approaching” than that? The Free Bird Cartel, stupid-ass name, if you asked me. Those motherfuckers were anything but free. They were forced into working for the “big boss” to pay off debts. A backstabbing recipe for disaster. No respect. No loyalty. Not like the Lucas, who would fight for every one of our brothers and sisters—even if it meant dying in the process.

I patted my slate gray jacket as the cars crawled forward, feeling for the familiar outline of the Sig Sauer P226 that waited in its holster beneath. The gun had gotten me out of countless bad situations in the past ten years and killed more men than I could count with all my fingers and toes. The Free Bird Cartel might be backstabbing motherfuckers, but they’d never get the chance to stab me in the back.

I swung open the door of my McLaren 570S—no black Cadillac for me, thank you very much. Their pathetic engines didn’t have anything on my baby.

The moment I stepped out of the car, Bullet lunged across the driver’s seat and out of the car onto the cracked pavement. Fucking wonderful.

“What the hell, Leo?”

Leo flashed a glance toward the oncoming cars then back down at the stupid mutt running laps around my legs. He shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

“Just get out here and try to look like you’re not the proud owner of a pathetic fur ball.”

“Gotcha.” Leo nodded a little too happily then opened his door and got out. “Don’t worry, big brother. No one’s going to fuck with the almighty Dominic Luca no matter what mutt he’s got trailing along behind him.”

“I’m not worried, I’m pissed. Next time, you can stay home and babysit the damn dog.”

“And miss listening to you bitch about it? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.” Leo smiled a goofy grin, checked his reflection in the blacked-out passenger window, then turned, straight-faced, toward the first of the three cars that had pulled to a stop twenty yards in front of us. They’d fanned out in a V formation, and while the front-runner had shut off his engine, I could hear the quiet purr coming from the other two cars. They were ready to move, but to flee or to attack? With the Free Bird Cartel, you never could tell.

“Game time,” I muttered under my breath.

Ignoring the dog who had yet to sit still for a split second since loping out of the front seat, I walked toward the lead car. Leo fell into stride beside me, his shoulders back and chin high; all remnants of my goofy younger brother gone for the time being. It was difficult to tell he hadn’t been making trades like this all his life. Difficult, but not impossible. I could see it there in the way his teeth dug into his lower lip and the way he clenched and unclenched his fists like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands. It wasn’t his first time out by any means, but he was still wet behind the ears. Make no mistake though; Leo was just as lethal as the rest of us Lucas.

Three doors swung open on the lead Cadillac, and three men stepped out. Three men I’d never seen before. The tallest of them—younger than the other two by far—took the lead with a briefcase in hand, walking toward us in a navy blue suit that was stretched across his unnaturally large shoulders. Steroids, for sure. He would have been better off putting his money toward a better suit. Even from this distance, it was clear the thing was a department store find that had seen better days. If he was self-conscious about his cheap façade, he tried not to show it. He walked with his nose a little too high in the air, his wide shoulders pushed back a bit too far.

The lackeys that flanked him were dressed no better and equally as broad-shouldered. Maybe there’d been a three-for-one sale on steroids.

The three men moved closer. The back of my neck prickled. A sixth sense borne from years of experience, it had never steered me wrong.

“Keep your guard up, Leo,” I said under my breath.

“No shit, Sherlock,” he grunted, but he stiffened his spine and looked poised to reach for the gun concealed beneath his jacket.

“Easy, fratellino. Keep your head clear.” It sounded like a simple enough instruction, but keeping one’s mind sharp under pressure was no easy task.

Leo breathed out in one slow huff, but his eyes widened just a little as they settled on the lead guy. “An old friend of yours?” I asked quietly enough to keep the conversation between the two of us. “Yeah, a real piece of work. Don’t trust him, Dom.” Leo clenched his jaw.

“No shit, Sherlock.” I scoffed. “Just stay focused.”

Leo nodded just as the trio came to a stop two yards away.

The prickle at the back of my neck felt like needles poking into my skin. Something definitely wasn’t right. It was all I could do to keep from shooting all three of the motherfuckers and calling it a day.

The lead guy nodded to me then turned to Leo.

“Cute mutt, Leo,” he joked with an ugly, toothy grin. His teeth were yellowed, and it looked like his incisors had been filed down into wicked points. “Got yourself a new girlfriend?”

My hands clenched tight, and I could feel blood throbbing in my temples. Nobody spoke to a Luca that way. Ever.

Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him. I repeated the silent mantra over and over again, resisting the urge to put a bullet right between the fucker’s eyes. No goddamned respect—that was the problem with this cartel. Someone needed to teach them some fucking manners. But since Vincent’s orders had been to make the trade, no mention of teaching these lowlifes a lesson, I unclenched my fists.

I committed every feature of the guy’s face to memory. Every pockmark, every bristle of his goatee.

Maybe today wasn’t his day, but no one disrespected a Luca and lived to tell the story.

“Where’s Alejandro?” I asked between gritted teeth while Leo took another breath. Alejandro was a piece of shit—he’d sell a man out for a quick buck—but the devil I knew was better than the devil I didn’t.

The guy smiled. Damn, what fun it would have been to yank those ridiculous incisors right out of his mouth.

“Alejandro’s been… retired,” he said, crossing his meaty arms over his chest and dangling the beat-up briefcase from one finger. “I’m the new point man for the Free Birds now. Just think of me as the new team mascot.”