Cassio
“Your speech was lovely,” I tell my wife for the third time. I know she was nervous about it, but she really did a great job. I know she made Jade cry, and if we weren’t in public, I think Dad would have shed a tear or two.
Ana sighs. “This whole day has been lovely.”
That it has.
But the night isn’t over yet, and with a guest list full of gangsters, anything could go wrong. I’m not on edge, per se, but I’m certainly on alert. The only people in attendance are trusted family and friends, coupled with some staff for food and cleanup, but still. Being prepared is the key to keeping everything in order.
My eyes scan the party, catching on the sight of my youngest brother approaching the Morozov table. Having shed his jacket, Matteo swaggers over to Dmitri’s father with his sleeves rolled up and hands empty to demonstrate a lack of threat.
As much as he’s a jokester, my little brother is intelligent too.
Anton Morozov doesn’t greet him with a warm look, but he isn’t exactly a welcoming kind of man. He’s a Pakhan through and through. The chilly stare he hits Matteo with doesn’t faze him, of course.
Sharing the same table, his daughter Anya is flanked by her uncles Lev and Mikhail Morozov. Their icy glares match their eldest brother’s. And still, Matteo greets the group with a wide, boy-ish grin.
I can’t hear him from where I’m standing, but given the absolute shock on Anya’s face, Matteo has addressed her directly.
“Excuse me for a moment, forza,” I murmur to my wife, kissing the side of her face. “I need to go make sure Matteo doesn’t get himself killed on our sister’s wedding day.”
Ana giggles and watches me go. As I pass by him, I grab Ivan by the arm, tugging the man along with me. He doesn’t protest.
“Aw, shit,” he curses, seeing what I’m seeing.
We stop a few feet short of the scene, standing by in case something goes terribly wrong and guns get drawn. Only Matteo hasn’t seemed to piss anyone off to that level yet.
My eyebrows shoot to my hairline as I watch him pull out a pair of handcuffs from his slacks. The three Russian mobsters stare at him like he has seven heads as he locks both of his wrists into the metal constraints.
Finally able to hear him, I listen in as Matteo continues to address the youngest Morozov sibling.
“Now, I know being handcuffed isn’t exactly enough reassurance that you’re safe with me—we are strangers after all. So, I’d like to ask that your father and uncles keep their… aim on me while we dance. That is, if you’d like to? I promise, I won’t lay a hand on you.”
A dance. He’s asking her to dance.
Fuck, he is such a sweet little moron. I know I said he’s smart, but my God. Asking Anya Morozov to dance with you is bold. Even speaking to the girl is brave, in-laws or not.
“My dad’s going to lose his shit,” Ivan whispers, but there’s a glint of hope in his eyes as he watches this unfold.
Anya worries her bottom lip, and turns to her father. She looks almost hopeful, too.
“Jade told us all that Anya doesn’t touch men,” I say quietly, even though Ivan is well aware. “He handcuffed himself and all but told your father to point a gun at him so your sister can dance at this wedding. Matteo is going to let their only point of contact be her touching him while his life is quite literally on the line. Your father won’t lose his shit.”
“Matteo is too nice for his own good,” Ivan mumbles. “If he were anyone else, he’d be on the ground already.”
But he’s not anyone else. He’s a Moretti. And contrary to how some assholes will see it, he isn’t offering her a pity dance. Matteo doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to. He wants to dance with Anya, to make her feel safe and a part of the night.
“Can I, Father?” Anya asks, her voice a bit unsteady. “Please?”
Anton hesitates, but ultimately dips his head in approval. The smile that spreads across Anya’s face in response makes him freeze, like he hasn’t seen it in months or years—and maybe he hasn’t. From what I know, the worst day of her life occurred over three years ago now, when she was fifteen. I doubt she’s spent much of her time smiling since.
Matteo smiles too, standing still while she tentatively rounds the table. “You want my hands behind my back or do you want to step under them? I won’t touch you either way.”
“Would it be too much work to put them behind your back?” she asks, her pale cheeks turning pink.
Matteo chuckles happily. “Nah, I got this,” he tells her smugly.
Bending down he steps through his connected hands one foot at a time. When he straightens back up, he has his interlocked fingers firmly behind his back.
“We’ll go dance near Dmitri and Jade, okay?”
Anya looks hopefully at her father, and again, he pauses before nodding.
“If anyone gets too close to us, I’ll sic Nico on them,” Matteo tells her, walking slowly by her side. “He looks bored anyways, he’d love an excuse to shed some blood.”
Anya giggles and it’s like the sound scares her. She clasps a hand around her lips and her eyes go round. A second passes before she shakes off her shock and she looks up at Matteo.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she says shyly.
Matteo scoffs off the comment. “No one has to ask the prettiest girl at the party to dance, but I could hardly miss the chance.”
Her face flames and she gapes at him like a fish out of water. “You can’t mean that. You don’t have to be so nice to me, you know?”
“Oh, I never lie about pretty girls, Anya.” He chuckles. They’ve stopped walking and are now just standing in the middle of the dance floor, in no rush to start. “Well, I do give Emilio shit about Melani, complimenting her a lot. She’s beautiful of course, but married women aren’t really my thing. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I have a reputation to protect.”
“A reputation as what?” she replies, looking amused to share a secret with him.
Grinning, he tells her, “I’m a bit of a tease. Someone has to keep my tight ass brothers on their toes.”
Anya hides her smile, a bit of her honey blonde hair falling in front of her face as she looks down.
“You can hold my shoulders if you like,” Matteo offers. “Or we can kind of just hover around each other. I’m game either way.”
Ivan holds his breath as his little sister tentatively reaches out, extending her hands to set them lightly on Matteo’s shoulders.
“Fuck,” he breathes in disbelief. “He just made more progress with her in two minutes than we have in two years.”
I nod proudly. “Matteo tends to have that effect on people.”
Ears twitching with awareness, I turn my head from the scene. It’s subtle, but I pick up on the sound of a confrontation.
“Watch him, will you?”
Before Ivan can agree, I’m abandoning him to locate the noise. I’m not the only one who senses something amiss, Apollo is heading in the same direction, shoulders straight and jaw hard. After distancing further from the crowd of wedding guests, the sound of yelling becomes clearer.
We move faster, zeroing in on the conflict, no discussion needed to get involved. Especially since what we find is un-fucking-acceptable.
A teenage boy is guarding a woman with his body while a grown ass man crowds him, shouting in his face and shoving. The woman is struggling to push the teen away, trying to keep him safe, I imagine. She’s here with the catering staff based on her outfit, but she isn’t a civilian. The company we hired is owned and operated by The Casa Nostra.
Known for being a particularly ruthless Italian mafia, our alliance with them was forged when Emilio married Melani—who is the daughter of one of the group’s most prominent Underbosses.
“I swear to God, Federico, don’t you put your hands on him,” the woman hisses, still trying to get between them. “You can hit me all you want, but if you touch my little brother even once, I will poison you in your sleep! Wives get away with that kind of thing all the time, and I won’t be the exception.”
Hearing her offer herself up to be assaulted leads me to believe he’s put his hands on her before, and that won’t do. It doesn’t matter what family she belongs to. She’s at a Moretti event, and that makes her our business. Apollo seems to agree, because he doesn’t even stop to confront the man—he comes out swinging.
A loud crack breaks through the argument as Apollo drops the asshole Federico with a single punch to the side of the head.
“Piece of shit,” he spits, adding insult to injury by kicking the man in the stomach.
“Holy shit.” The boy gapes, stepping back, still protecting his sister. “You’re Apollo Moretti.”
Hearing his name, the woman gasps. “What the hell?”
“What’s your name, kid?” Apollo asks, as I join him, giving the teenager an assessing look. “And hers… she’s your sister, yes?”
“Yordan Todorov,” he replies. “Rayna is my sister, and I am not a kid, I’m sixteen.” His chest puffs a bit, adding a firmness to his words.
Todorov is not an Italian name. She was married into the Casa Nostra, then. Poor thing got saddled with a fucking prick, too.
The corner of Apollo’s lip twitches up. “Sixteen is a man in our world,” he concedes. “Would you like to learn what men do to those who hurt their families?”
“W-what?” Rayna stutters from behind us but Apollo doesn’t look at her. He focuses entirely on the task at hand. He’s testing Yordan as much as he’s offering to teach him.
“I know what they do,” Yordan counters.
“Good,” Apollo comments, rolling his shoulders. Turning to me, he gestures to the half-unconscious piece of shit on the ground. “Ocean?”
“Ocean,” I agree.
I hadn’t come to my little sister’s wedding with the intention of getting my suit wet nor my hands bloodied, but when duty calls.
“Follow us,” Apollo instructs the teen. He listens immediately, ignoring his sister’s soft protests. She’s worried for him, and she should be. Not because we’ll hurt him, but because we’ll change him.
What she can’t possibly realize is that he’s already changed. Seeing your sister being slapped around isn’t something a boy—nor a man—in our world stands for. She had to know what this life would turn him into. She should be grateful that he seems to have a decent head on his shoulders. If any of us had caught a man assaulting Jade, Ana, Cleo, or Melani we would have dropped him in a near instant.
Once we’re waist-deep in the cold water, we’re far enough from the Island to be excluded from the no murder rule.
Apollo slaps a Glock into Yordan’s waiting palm. “Your sister, your kill.” The kid doesn’t even look scared as he accepts it.
“What the fuck?” Federico slurs. “You can’t just tell him to kill me! Do you even know who I am?”
“A wife beater?” Apollo drawls.
“A spineless cunt?” I offer.
“She deserves everything she gets,” he snaps. “She doesn’t fucking listen. She’s supposed to serve me!”
Cocking the gun, Yordan presses the end of the barrel against Federico’s forehead. “I told you I would kill you for hitting her. Rayna didn’t want to risk being stuck with someone worse than you, she begged me not to. But I won’t let her be saddled with another son of a bitch like you ever again.”
Anger is replaced by fear in an instant.
“I’m your brother,” the worthless man tries to plead.
A dark look flickers through Yordan’s eyes. “Says who?”
A shot rings out, and something like pride seems to rush through my brother as a triumphant smirk spreads his lips. We release his now dead weight and Yordan blinks, extending his hand to pass Apollo’s gun back to him.
“You keep it,” he tells the teen, starting to guide him out of the water. “Let it serve as a reminder of what made men do to those who hurt their family.”
“Might need it,” Yordan muses, smiling weekly. “Just killed one of Abramo Guliani’s men with the help of two Morettis. He’ll try to have my head before I can even start to defend myself.”
“You let me handle Abramo,” Apollo says darkly. “You won’t be going back there.”
“We won’t?”
“No, you’re coming home with us.”
Yordan gapes, feet hitting the dry, black beach sand.
“We are?”
Apollo opens his mouth, only to be silenced.
“How dare you?” Rayna demands storming up to us with wild eyes and a sneer on her lips. “He’s just a boy, he has no business killing people! You’ve just given him a death sentence.”
“Tell your sister to pack her things,” Apollo instructs Yordan, flicking his gaze between the Todorov siblings. “We’re staying in the west building tonight, I’ll make sure you have a room there. We leave on the jet tomorrow morning, nine sharp.”
“What are you talking about?” Rayna rears back in shock and outrage. “We aren’t going anywhere with you, we don’t even know you.”
Apollo blinks at her tone, surprised anyone is bold enough to speak to him in such a way. “I wasn’t asking for your input. If you want to be free of Abramo’s wrath, you’ll come with us.”
“So, what? You can give me a price for that freedom that I could never dream of repaying? Fat chance! I am not trading one jailer for another.”
“I’m sure you’ll find I don’t have much taste for holding hostages.”
“There will be no payment,” I inform her, attempting a lighter tone than my blunt older brother. “Morettis take care of women, no questions asked, no compensation required. You want to protect your brother, don’t you? You’ll be safe with our family.”
She shrinks in on herself, like she’s recognizing that she may have overreacted. She shouldn’t be embarrassed or ashamed, there’s no right way to react to Apollo inserting himself in your life, especially in a way that ends up with a dead body.
“Nine,” Apollo repeats the time, pulling off his soaked suit jacket.
“We’ll be ready,” Yordan assures us, grabbing his sister’s hand to calm her. “Thank you.”
Nodding, I make a move to depart. “Anyone bothers you, you come to us.”
Yordan agrees, and as I turn to walk back up the beach, my wife is running toward me. Bare feet, blue dress swaying behind her, and towels in hand, she almost slams right into me.
“Are you okay?” Ana fusses, wrapping a towel around my wet tux. “Did you guys just kill someone? What happened?”
Chuckling at her worrisome expression, I swoop in to give her a hard kiss. Ana grunts, pushing me back.
“Cassio,” she complains. “Seriously, what just happened?”
“Pretty sure Apollo just made a couple more Morettis.”
THE END
