Read Online Sempre (Forever) by JM Darhower - Free Book Online Page A

abrasive you come off,” Dominic said. “You don’t even have to say a word. It’s the way you look at people.”
    Carmine shrugged. There wasn’t anything he could do about that. It was just the way he was. “Whatever. There’s obviously something wrong with her.”
    “Have you taken the time to ask her what it might be?”
    “Didn’t have a chance,” he said. “Like I said, she runs from me.”
    “Well, maybe if you took an interest in her, she wouldn’t act so sketchy around you.”
    “Is that what you did—took an interest?” Carmine asked. “I’m not sure Tess would be happy about that.”
    Dominic shoved him, spilling some of his cereal. “I was nice to her, bro. You should try it sometime.”
    Carmine brushed some of the stray Lucky Charms from his lap, glaring at the wet patch from where the milk had soaked into his pants. “Asshole.”
     
    *  *  *  *
     
    Vincent DeMarco was an easily recognized man. The people in Durante knew him as the talented doctor, the dedicated single father, the wealthy bachelor that women rigorously pursued. With his deep olive skin and chiseled features, he wasn’t hard to look at, either. Although he had accumulated a few wayward gray hairs, he appeared younger than his forty years. He was like his father in that way. Antonio DeMarco had died at fifty when he looked more like a youthful thirty-five.
    Genetics, Vincent thought, was a peculiar thing.
    Although he was well-known, very few people actually saw the man behind the mask. Vincent felt like he was living two vastly different lives, both equally real yet at odds with each other. He liked to believe he was that family man the others saw him as, but he knew he was also committed to a different type of family.
    A family not bonded by genetics, instead forged by spilled blood and sworn oaths. LCN, the government called it, short for La Cosa Nostra , but it was known by many different names: la famiglia , borgata , outfit, syndicate. It all meant the same. The Mafia.
    He’d taken a step back from the life years ago, moving away from Chicago and the center of the action, but there was no leaving the organization. Once it had you in its brutal grasp, you were indebted to it for life. He was kept on as an unofficial consigliere to the Don, Salvatore Capozzi. Vincent’s job was to play the middle-man for him, to give advice when asked and come when called, and he did so obediently, taking care of whatever needed to be handled. But just because he was good at what he did, didn’t mean he enjoyed doing it.
    Vincent sat in the smoky den of the mansion in Lincoln Park, holding a full glass of scotch in his hand as he listened to the swarm of men debate business. There were nearly twenty of them, but Vincent wasn’t sure why half were there. They had no say in how things were run, some of them so new they hadn’t earned their buttons. There was no reason to trust them—no reason to confide in them—considering there was no blood on their hands.
    Not to say he wanted them to be murderers. The opposite was true. He envied their clear consciences and wished he could warn them all to turn away. Get out, while they still could, because someday it would be too late… and that someday would probably end with a lengthy prison sentence.
    Or a hollow-point bullet to the brain. Vincent hadn’t yet decided which outcome would be worse.
    But he couldn't warn anyone. He'd sworn an oath to put the organization first, and if the organization wanted these dime-a-dozen thugs, then Vincent would deal with his ill feelings silently. He’d been initiated young—one of the youngest made men in history. Usually guys struggled for decades trying to prove themselves worthy before given the honor of joining the ranks, most never surviving long enough to see it happen. But not Vincent. He’d slipped right in the door while his father was in control.
    He wasn’t the youngest to do business with them. Far from it. Kids are recruited fresh