Deathless & Divided (The Chicago War #1) (2 page)

“It’s windy for such a nice day.”

The voice came from the line of trees to Damian’s left. He turned on his heel in just enough time to see Dino emerge. The man swung a set of keys around his index finger and held a manila file with his other.

“Shit, make some noise, Dino.”

Dino chuckled. The sound surprised Damian considering Dino was serious in all things—business, family, and life. Lightheartedness and nonsense wasn’t in his game. Damian supposed he could understand that. He’d never been one for whims and fantasy, either.

“Aren’t you supposed to be the ghost?” Dino asked, his teeth flashing as he grinned.

“Wish they’d forget that name.”

“You earned it, D.”

Damian shrugged. “Whatever. That doesn’t mean I like it.”

Growing up without his parents meant Damian spent a lot of time under the feet of others. He’d been a small, scrawny kid. Instantly forgettable. The only thing that made living in his aunt and uncle’s house bearable was his cousins; Tommas, Lea, and Cara. Not that they had it any better. Laurent and Serena Rossi hadn’t been made to have kids. The four kids spent more time moving from family to family than they spent actually living with their guardians.

Yeah, easily overlooked.

A little ghost.

Damian ended up being raised by several people instead of the ones delegated to the task. When he should have been focusing on school, he’d been shoved knee-deep into the mafia and that lifestyle. Looking back on it all, he knew the reality was simple. He’d been groomed for the life. Numbed to violence and business. Accepting of the expectations and rules of their family and ways. He liked it, though.

Damian supposed that worked out well for him. Being forgettable as a kid ended up carrying over to his adulthood and his career in the Outfit. Not every man was cut out to be a killer. No one ever saw him coming. They didn’t get the chance to see him leave. Rarely was he suspected when a body showed up. He simply took the call, did the job, and moved on. No questions ever got asked.

“Figured you would be inside filling your face with food,” Damian said.

Dino eyed his large home. “Enjoying the outside while I can.”

“Trial is coming up, right?”

“A little over two months,” Dino said under his breath.

Getting in some kind of trouble was unavoidable when it came to the mafia. Dino refused to take a deal on the racketeering, laundering, and fraud charges that had been plaguing him for a couple of years. He wouldn’t plead guilty, either. The man had a damn good lawyer though, but everybody knew what he was looking at.

Twenty years max when totaled up.

Damian knew the bastards wanted the maximum and were going for it, too.

“Do you ever wonder why I liked you so damned much way back when you were a kid?” Dino asked.

Damian laughed. “No.”

“Life hasn’t treated either one of us very fairly, I suppose. I probably saw a lot of me in you when you were just a punk-ass kid following us around.”

“You’re not that much older than me.”

“Five years.”

“What is your point, Dino?”

“You never sat around waiting for your pity party, D. When your parents died, you got shuffled around from place to place. When my parents died, we had to pretend like they didn’t even exist. You just accepted the hand dealt to you; we were forced to. So, I guess I liked that about you and the fact we had a common loss helped, too. Made me sympathetic, if anything. Rarely does someone get that from me. Hell, even Theo doesn’t get a goddamn Christmas card from me anymore. You got an invite to the dinner table.”

Damian hid his surprise with a cough. Dino rarely spoke of his siblings. Even when Dino and his younger brother Theo needed to spend time in the same room together, the rival Capos acted like strangers instead of brothers. A five-year age gap separated the two men. Dino’s sister, on the other hand, had been MIA from the DeLuca family for a few years.

If Damian thought about it hard enough, he was pretty sure he could remember a blonde-haired, brown-eyed girl following Dino and Theo around way back when. Apparently, the majority of the girl’s teen years were spent at a private boarding school. Dino didn’t talk much about her. An even bigger age gap separated them, as far as Damian understood.

“Lily is your sister’s name, right?” Damian asked.

Dino cocked a brow. “Why?”

“Curious.”

“It is. She’s twenty-one, almost twenty-two. Her birthday is coming right up.  She spent the last three years after she graduated gallivanting across Europe. Backpacking, mostly.”

“Kept out of trouble?”

“Yes, which I appreciate. Well, as far as I know. Lily isn’t … fond of me. She checked in once a month. It was my only demand.”

Damian was beginning to feel like this conversation might turn into some kind of therapy session. Nobody wanted that shit.

“What did you need me for today, anyway?”

Dino smirked, but it faded fast. “I wasn’t the only one who took a liking to you, was I?”

Damian didn’t know what the hell his friend was getting at. “Pardon?”

“Terrance.”

The Outfit’s boss.

“I do okay with him, if that’s what you’re dancing around,” Damian replied.

“Just okay. Right, Damian.”

“What?”

“You don’t even realize it, do you?”

Obviously not.

Damian was too tired to play word games. “I do what the boss wants, Dino.”

“Christ, Damian. If you spent the same amount of time paying attention to your surroundings as you do working to blend in, you would have it made.”

“It’s not killed me yet,” Damian said, grinning.

“Good thing.” Dino shoved his hands in his pockets. “Joel’s never gonna make it as boss, not under Terrance’s watch.”

“He’s his grandson. It would make sense for Joel to take over when it’s time.”

“So? Like I said, Terrance knows better. A good boss is partly made, but mostly born, Damian. Joel doesn’t have it. Terrance knows it. Hell, the Outfit knows it. What nobody really knows, is who will take it.” Dino barked out a laugh, adding, “Well, I think I know who Terrance is looking at for it.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m looking at him.”

Damian turned to ice in the June air. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me.”

“Hey—”

“That’s not even funny, Dino. I’ve never wanted that or even suggested that I did.”

“I’m aware,” his friend murmured.

“So what the hell?”

“I didn’t say you did want it, Damian. That knack of yours, being invisible, wouldn’t work very well if you’re the boss.”

“Exactly,” Damian said. “And I like being able to come and go as I please.”

“But you don’t, not really.”

Damian didn’t challenge Dino on that because he knew it was true.

“Terrance has never mentioned anything of the sort to me,” Damian said, wanting to get Dino’s mind away from that.

Whatever plans the Capo was scheming up, Damian didn’t want to be a part of them. If someone got wind of that shit, he’d be six-feet under in a makeshift grave before he even got the chance to apologize for anything.

Damian liked being alive.

“He wouldn’t. You’re still young to him, but he’s looking at you. He’s watching you, D. Because to him, you’ve got it. You fucking
listen
instead of running off at the goddamn mouth. You follow the rules, take his calls, and do what he asks. Haven’t you wondered why you don’t have a crew of your own, yet?”

Damian avoided Dino’s heady gaze. “Sometimes.”

“Because you’re too busy with him. Why would he give you more than you’ve already got with everybody else and the boss put together? That would mean you would have less time for his bullshit. And he likes having you close. How many times do the guys call you for the boss, anyway?”

“A few.”

…
times a day
, Damian held back from adding.

“You know what I heard Ben say to Riley when he called for the boss the other day?” Dino asked.

Ben DeLuca was Dino’s older uncle and the right-hand man to Terrance. Damian didn’t particularly like the guy, but he gave him the respect he was owed.

“What did Ben say?” Damian asked.

Dino nodded at Damian. “Said the guy might as well call you on whatever it was first.”

Damian shifted on his feet, uncomfortable. “So?”

“So, Ben is Terrance’s main guy—always has been. The underboss, that’s important. Like how Riley is important as the front boss on the streets and to the feds. Terrance takes Ben and Riley to the Commission meetings, runs shit past them for a second and third voice, and all that other good nonsense.”

“Why do I hear a
but
in there?”

“But … he kind of does that with you, too, huh?”

“I haven’t noticed,” Damian said quietly.

“I think you have. You went along with them to the last Commission, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“How was that?” Dino asked.

Interesting and enlightening.

Damian had done passing business with the major families in New York, including the biggest and dominating Marcello clan, but that was his first time seeing them all together. He supposed he now understood why the families talked about the Marcellos like they were untouchable. They kind of were. Damian held a great deal of respect for the Marcello family. After all, it was better to know who your biggest rival was and admire their ability to be a challenge at all.

“Figured out Terrance isn’t fond of the Marcellos,” Damian said.

Dino shrugged like that didn’t make a difference. “We’re big time in Chicago. They’re big time in New York. Keeping the peace is better than starting a war with another family. Terrance knows that. Nonetheless, he invited you along. You’re the first person he’s done that for aside from Ben and Riley, of course.”

“It would make sense for Ben and Riley to go, Dino. Underboss and front boss, man.”

“But not you.”

“There were other lower associates at the meeting for the bosses.”

“Capos, likely,” Dino said. “Probably men who had a stake with one of the other families. Something to gain for their bosses. You, on the other hand, went there to learn. Terrance just didn’t tell you.”

Damian swallowed hard, feeling an invisible weight bearing down on his shoulders like never before. “I don’t want to be a boss.”

That was not one of his life goals. Being a boss meant constantly being watched. From officials, from your own men, and from the public. It never fucking ended. It also meant being one huge target for anyone that had eyes for your position. Damian liked being invisible when he wanted.

He liked being
him
, for fuck’s sake.

“Not even ten, fifteen years from now?” Dino asked.

“No.”

“Funny, Ben thinks you’re up to taking on the role, Damian. I wonder what gave him that impression.”

“Not me.”

“He doesn’t like it at all,” Dino added like it was an afterthought.

Well, that really caught Damian’s attention.

“Ben?” Damian asked.

Dino nodded once. “That’s what I said. Seems my uncle thinks you’re too independent for the job—you’ve got your own mind, you know.”

“A man with his own mind is a problem for him?”

“It is when he can’t manipulate the boss,” Dino said, chuckling. “God knows he’s tried for years to manipulate Terrance to his bidding and sometimes, he has succeeded. Most times, Terrance already has his decisions cemented before Ben DeLuca even gets thought about. Ben could be a boss if given the chance, but he prefers to sit on the sidelines and have others do the work, not actually be front and center doing it himself. That’s a problem.”

“Good bosses do their own work.”

“Ben just likes to manipulate,” Dino said, sighing. “Getting it, yet?”

Damian wished he wasn’t, but reality was starting to sink in, and fast. When a man was headed to somewhere another man didn’t want him to be in the mafia hierarchy, the best way to fix that situation was by ending the problem.

“Ben is going to come after me,” Damian said.

Dino’s quiet, cold stare didn’t waver as he replied, “It’s a good possibility. He only needs a reason to explain the hit away to Terrance. Something that would justify it in Terrance’s mind. Ben did it to my parents; you’re not even family to him.”

Damian wasn’t hearing Dino, not really.

“Because Terrance likes me.”

“Shitty world we live in when being liked gets you killed, huh?” Dino asked, humor coloring his tone.

Damian found nothing about this funny. Mostly, it bothered the fuck out of him. He wasn’t frightened of Ben, as far as that went, but it was something he’d have to deal with in one way or another. That wouldn’t be particularly easy considering Terrance held a fondness for old DeLuca.

There was also the little matter of Dino. The guy was Ben’s nephew, but he was giving Damian a major heads-up about his uncle’s possible plans. Dino had no reason to be doing that unless he was looking for something, or rather, wanting something from Damian.

Somebody always fucking wanted something.

“But what Ben wants with you isn’t important. He’s not on that path quite yet.” Dino sucked in a deep breath, glancing up at the cloudy sky. “I’ve had enough fresh air for the day. Let’s go inside and get some coffee.”

“We’re done talking about it? Just like that?”

“Oh, no. There’s a lot more left to discuss yet, Damian.”

Yeah, Damian figured that.