1 — Untouchable, By Vince
No matter who tries to talk me down or how, no part of me will let this pass. Even if I’m breaking my own fucking rules as Don of the Haven Syndicates.
I’m a cold, unfeeling, distant and hardened son of a bitch. Entirely used to the vultures circling and attacking, simply for having been born a Moretti.
My nine month old infant on the other hand doesn’t deserve this shit!
I’m shaking, raging and ready to burn down the whole fucking city my great grandfather built in retribution, for the boy I didn’t even know existed until three weeks ago.
“Call the meeting,” I clip to my identical twin Massimo.
The glittery black shadow and lip gloss may fool most, but not me. ‘Fabulous’ as the man may be, he is as lethal and unforgiving as I am when it comes to business and family.
There is no such thing as rest until I find the fuckers who went against us.
“Be with our boy, I’ll handle this.”
“Vince……” My reign such as it is wouldn’t be possible without him. Any more than I could run these streets without my partner Rourke and Uncle Gio’s backing.
Luke, might as well be my cousin too. Blood or no.
Mass’s need to protect is as fierce as my own, but when it comes to ruthlessness and retribution, it was me who was groomed for it. Beaten and subdued into the rigid role that doesn’t allow me to express my inner workings outside of fucking or a war path.
There are a dozen families on our fair streets, and I’m about to meet every single one of the figure heads for each organization.
Waiting to see who will claim responsibility for the failed hit on the boy that no one is supposed to know exists yet.
“I need you with him brother,” I urge and Massimo nods.
It was pure dumb luck that our boy was spared. Saved by a guardian angel before the worst could happen.
Either way, I’m getting fucking answers.
It’s true that the first attempt on my life was in kindergarten, but everything I know. Everything I’ve done as the Don of all twelve godsdamned syndicates in this city should make this scenario infuckingpossible!
And I’m not going to stop until every one of the fuckers I put in power relearns what untouchable means.
There is a leak, a traitor or both in my midst, and so help me fucking gods, I will personally skin them alive and feed them their own dicks.
Arriving in the basement of a laundromat in central, I ignore the blood, used condoms, crack and over all filth of the Twelve by twelve basement while I wait for the rest.
Questions are clear in Luke’s obsidian eyes as the first to arrive, but being who and what he is, he doesn’t ask.
Lucian Gaines is a true tactician who waits for every piece of information before showing any hand he might have. He also is the most terrifying cut man I have.
Technically Luke is a banker and not officially tied to the Syndicates. But our families go back to the founding and whether it’s a hobby or personal favor, he is my first call whenever I need to know something or make someone suffer.
The First Count of Haven Lucian Gaines has always had that grim Reaper vibe about him.
Tall, thin, pale, black everything with zero expression that conveys what he’s actually thinking. If he weren’t already the richest man in the city, no doubt he could make a killing with that poker face of his.
I move across the space, helping myself to a bottle of bourbon from one of the crates, waiting to see who will show up, and who will conveniently opt out of the meeting.
Before I can make my way back to Luke to get a bead on what intel he may be bringing to the table, the metal door from the building above whines open and slams shut with the darkest greeting in the happiest customer service voice I’ve ever heard.
“Cross Morgue. You kill ’em, we chill ’em.”
“Damn baby I know you’re pissed, but the cold-caller script, really?” A voice that’s equivalent to a glass of bourbon that warms all the way down rather than stings, sounds through the vent.
A bit more muffled and distant meaning the woman is likely in the building while the man she’s talking to is on speaker phone above us.
If memory serves the renter uses the building above as a bakery, and has no access to the basement we’re in.
On any other day, I might be impressed. I half believed the greeting well enough to take a mental note for the service.
“In what world is a fuzzies convention a costume party, Alex?!” The woman drops the pleasant albeit creepy act and irreverently shrills at the man calling her at three am…
On any other night I might be interested. Tonight is not that night.
I hear the surprise in Alex’s throat. The type that says he’s working to hold back a laugh before he answers. “Well people do wear specific……”
“Oh I’m very well aware everyone there was dressed like an animal, and they took the song ’like an animal’ to a whole new level!”
The increase in both her volume and pitch are getting more than mine and Luke’s attention, so I signal Timms to take care of it.
Unlike the fuckers who decided to come after me using my hot button. My people know women and kids are off limits.
The guard Rourke stuck me with for the evening will pay her whatever it takes to disappear and let us get back to where the focus damn well should be.
“It couldn’t have been thaaaattt bad,” ‘Alex’ responds carefully.
“Not that bad? Not that bad?!” Disbelief washes through her tone and there is a sharp, intaking hiss of a breath on the other line, and what she says next has my guy stopping in his tracks.
“So falling into a refreshments table to avoid a group of gropey cows flinging milk on one another like champagne bottles isn’t that bad?!”
Even I have to stop and wonder if she just said what I think she did.
“Everyone at every costume party had to roll through cheap punch and every terrible assortment of finger foods to evade milk sperm before landing on a gorilla’s lap as he sucked a pig’s hoof?!”
And for the first time in the forty odd years I’ve known Lucian, his eyebrows actually lift at the ass chewing that should be on social media, it’s so ludicrous.
“Just a daily occurrence for me to get lost in a mass of drunk, gyrating, smelly, orgasming animals, tripping over my kitten tail down a set of stairs only to get smacked by two booze soaked bunnies waiting their turns to ride his snout.”
Timms has stalled right along with the rest, so I move to him. More irritated than I am intrigued with my son in a fucking hospital bed.
“By the time I found my way out of that cesspit, I started my period and with every matter of liquor, snack food, and genetic material that shall remain unnamed matting my fur, I had to walk half an hour to find the nearest corner store with my phone in a used toilet thanks to the busty bunny rabbits!”
“Baby……” Alex tries to interrupt as two more men arrive and I slap a wad of cash into Timms’ chest.
“Handle it, now.” I hiss as she continues on in an even more rapid pace, that says she’s not even half way through the tangent yet.
“With my new prepaid, cold medicine, Midol and tampons, the homeless man’s support dog was kind enough to eat the cheese puffs off my bum at check out.”
“Again?” Alex says fully defeated, and it’s the second time I have to stop despite everything to make sure the pair of them are actually saying what I think they are.
This is a common situation for them?
“It’s not funny Alex!” I swear I hear a foot stamp through the boards above us, and immediately wish Rourke were here to handle it.
“The clerk was laughing so hard he ran my card a dozen times, and now my account is over-drawn! At least Miss Fran waited until I was gone to howl like that!”
“Baby I’ll……” It sounds like he’s offering to cover it, but she cuts him off before he gets anything real into the conversation.
“Not finished!” The woman sniffs with something that sounds more like a stifled sob than attitude or indignance. To his credit the man shuts up and listens.
Which is generally the part of any conversation I tune out of. That’s what Mass and Rourke are for in my book.
“It was bad, Alex,” she almost whispers with new cracks in her voice telling us that she’s on the verge of tears. “Really bad……”
“Talk to me, Kit Kat…” He urges and I can only hope the metal slam is Timms showing up to spare us the second half. At least until I hear what she says next.
“When I finally got back to dockside, a raging lunatic ran a fancy sedan off the weigh bridge!”
Where the doctors at North Point told me the paramedics brought Tio from……
