Filthy Marcellos: Legacy: A Legacy Prequel (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

“
Zia
Catrina,” Andino greeted.

His aunt accepted his kiss to her smooth cheek. Even in her late fifties, his aunt had aged remarkably well. The light dusting of gray throughout her red hair, and the laugh lines at the edges of her sharp eyes were the only telltale signs of her age.

Catrina still stood tall. She still commanded a room. Andino knew his aunt was still capable of frightening a man with a few simple words or a flick of a knife, too.

“How is my favorite nephew?” Catrina asked.

Andino chuckled. “I’m not your favorite.”

“Well, you’re all my favorites. But when we’re one-on-one like we are now, I reserve the right for any of you to be my very favorite at that moment. Now, how is my favorite nephew?”

“I’m good. Busy.”

“You should slow down and enjoy what is already around you a little more, Andino,” his aunt said before sipping from her tea.

“Maybe.”

Catrina’s red lips pursed as she regarded him over the rim of her cup. “Never do that, Andino.”

“Hmm, what?”

“What you just did. Say what a woman wants to hear just to please her. It won’t make for a good woman, I promise you. Tell it like it is and how it should be said. Honest, frank, and harsh if need be. She might not appreciate it as first, but she will learn that the truth is better than a blissful lie that will only hurt in time.”

Andino blinked, surprised at his aunt’s candor. “Okay.”

“Is that all you have to say?”

“No. What in the hell is with everyone and me lately?”

Catrina’s brow furrowed. “Pardon?”

“Everyone seems to feel the need to point out to me lately that I am without a woman, and that I should be out finding one as soon as humanly possible to walk her down the aisle.”

“You’re joking.”

“No,” Andino said.

Who would joke about that shit?

“Your mother?” Catrina asked.

“Yes, and others.”

“Kim is finally starting to feel like her house is empty, that’s all.”

“I am not going to fill it for her,” Andino said under his breath.

Catrina laughed loudly. “Oh, she doesn’t expect you to, she simply figures you’re lonely like she is or something.”

Oh.

Well, then … Andino knew both of his aunts and mother had always been close friends, so Catrina’s assumption was probably truer than he really knew. Andino chose to let it, and his mother’s words from the day before, go.

“By the way, why is my father’s and Lucian’s cars outside?”

Catrina shrugged. “Dante invited them over earlier. He does it all the time. They’re upstairs in the office where they usually are. Probably smoking those awful cigars again.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell me that he invited them over when he called earlier?”

“I don’t know, ask him. And while you’re at it, tell him to snuff out his cigar, too. It stinks up the whole upstairs. You can’t even renovate that awfulness out.”

Andino chuckled, gave his aunt another kiss on her cheek, and left her alone in the kitchen to go search for his father and uncles.

Sure enough, as his aunt had said, Andino found his father and uncles in Dante’s office by following the sounds of their traveling voices. The topic of the conversation made Andino slow in his walk as he approached the opened oak doors.

“It’s time,” Lucian said quietly.

“You could wait another couple of months, brother,” Dante said. “Maybe even until after the next Commission meeting.”

“Are you ordering me or asking me?”

Dante laughed dryly. “Between family, us being brothers, that’s all. Not a boss and his underboss.”

“I don’t know, I get being over it all,” Gio murmured.

Andino stopped his walk when his father joined in on the conversation as well.

“I mean, Lucian is sixty, you’re fifty-nine, Dante, and I’m fifty-seven.” Gio sighed heavily and added, “Dad stepped down at this age, too. It’s not like we’re talking about a premature thing here.”

“I know that,” Dante said gruffly.

“Let Lucian do it,” Gio said. “In a few months, we’ll look at someone for me. Andino can handle doing this for a few months. He’ll have his hands accounted for. Trust that he can fill seats with the right men.”

Andino felt a dead weight settle in his stomach.

He couldn’t fill seats.

He wasn’t the boss.

“I want to enjoy my time with my children and soon-to-be born grandchildren,” Lucian said. “My oldest daughters are married, one is already gone, living in Chicago, and Cella is talking about moving to Florida with her husband for his job. Lucia just graduated, and she will be going to college in the fall out of state. And then there’s John …”

“Give him time,” Gio said.

Andino was grateful his father was taking his advice on that issue.

“That’s exactly my point,” Lucian replied. “I need to give my son time. Out entire life has been surrounded by Cosa Nostra. And that would be fine, Dante, if John was like I had been growing up, or even like how you and Gio were with Dad. But he’s not, he’s John. I can’t expect my boy to be like we were when he’s had an entirely different set of obstacles that he never asked for placed in his path. For once, I would like to have time with my son where I am not active in this thing of ours. Maybe then he can see me differently. Just a man, his father. Something. I’m ready to retire. I need to.”

“Fine. Informally, then?” Dante asked.

“Informally works,” Lucian agreed. “We can handle all the other nonsense when we need to.”

“What do you think, Gio?” Dante asked.

“About what?”

“You know what. Andino.”

“He’s my kid,” Gio said, chuckling. “He’ll do okay. He’s a damn good Capo, and he knows how to manage men just about as well as you do, Dante. Andino has been under our feet since he could walk. I have no doubt that he can run this family. He’s your best choice for a successor, the entire family knows it. The whispers are already out there, you just have to listen for them.
La famiglia
wants Andino for the next boss.”

“They do,” Lucian agreed.

Andino was stunned. Nothing had ever caught him off guard quite as badly as this news had. It wasn’t bad, not at all, but he wasn’t sure if this was what he wanted. Being a boss had never been in his goals. Andino had focused on his crew, on being nothing more than a damned good Capo, and that was it. He’d always seen John as his uncle’s successor because he was the older Marcello between them, and John had always been included in more things than Andino.

What had changed?

He knew the answer, but he ignored it.

Would John understand?

Andino didn’t have the answer for that.

Drifting out of his stupor, Andino’s legs finally decided to work. He moved the last few feet between him and the opened office doors. Standing in the doorway, his form caught the attention of his father and uncles.

Not one of them seemed surprised to see him there.

“Did you hear?” Dante asked from behind his large desk.

Andino nodded, but said nothing.

Gio stood from the couch. “This is good, Andino.”

“Is it?”

Things were beginning to make more sense for Andino. The longer he considered it, the more he understood his mother and father’s words to him about settling down and finding a wife. His father had likely known what was coming for him, and Gio probably took the news to Kim.

“Nobody thought to ask me?” Andino asked.

Lucian dipped his head down. “You should have known, Andino.”

“I don’t know that I should have, actually.”

Dante sighed. “What is the problem?”

Andino didn’t know if he was ready for this.

That was exactly the problem.

He was twenty-eight. Being a boss wasn’t as simple as moving up in power when people retired in the mafia. There was a hell of a lot more to it.

His uncle—his boss—seemed to pick up on his inner thoughts.

“We’re never ready, Andino,” Dante said.

“I didn’t ask for this,” he said.

“No one ever does.” Dante smiled. “We either take it, are given it, or are born to it. We don’t, however, ask anyone for it.”

“This isn’t the kind of change that will be made overnight,” Gio tacked on when Dante finished. “It’ll be done over a span of time, Andino. Lucian is ready to step down, which will allow Dante to fill his spot. Lucian’s position as the underboss will put you front row and center for the family first and foremost. You’ve acted as my middle man for years alongside being a Capo. You know how to do this, and it won’t be a stretch to anyone who sees you in the position.”

“Makes sense,” Andino said.

It would work, and Andino understood his family’s choice to advance him, especially if
la famiglia
was already looking at him for the spot. It was still a huge change. One he hadn’t been expecting at all.

“Good,” Dante said, smiling widely and clapping his hands together. “Then it’s settled.”

“You’ll make a damn good boss, Andino,” Lucian said. 

“I agree,” Dante said. 

Gio passed his son a look that Andino didn’t understand.

“You have a while to get everything sorted on the personal side of things,” his father said. “No one is saying that you have to run out and get yourself settled with a wife right this minute, Andino.”

That was that. Andino’s future was decided and he didn’t get a single say in it all.

Duty waited on no one.

Chapter Twelve

The best part of Andino’s day was when nothing was happening at all. Usually, his life was busy, because that’s how he lived, always on some kind of go. He didn’t take much time to relax, but his spoiled dog didn’t give him a choice. There was nothing Snaps liked more than to chill.

Trailing his fingers through the pitbull’s short-haired coat, Andino walked his dog through the silent park. Snaps was happy, content even. So was Andino.

Snaps took lazy strides, staying directly at Andino’s side at all times like the dog had been trained to do. Thinking back, Andino hadn’t wanted a dog, and certainly not one that required all of his attention all of the time. He didn’t have the patience for that nonsense.

And then his father showed up at his door one day with a scarred puppy in his hands when Andino was just twenty-two. Maybe the little pup had reminded Andino’s father of the rottie he’d had all those years ago before the dog succumbed to age and cancer. Andino wasn’t really sure, but Gio hadn’t given him a choice.

No, his father simply passed over the whimpering puppy and explained how he came about him. Snaps had been bred from a puppy mill, apparently. The fools who had been breeding the dogs did so with the purpose of using them to fight. Snaps had been nothing more than fodder to the dogs around him. If he survived, he would live to fight. If an older dog killed him during the period when the dogs weren’t being watched, then so be it.

Another litter would be born.

Gio didn’t like dog fighting—he wouldn’t stand for it. When he’d found out his men were involved in it, he ended it, rescued the pup in the process, and brought it to Andino.

Now, Andino was grateful.

Then, he’d wondered what in the hell he would do with a dog like Snaps.

Running his fingers through the dog’s fur again, Andino could feel the raised ridges of some of Snaps’ old scars under his fur. No one could see them, but Andino remembered vividly what the marks looked like when his dog was just a pup, struggling to eat solid food and needing Andino to feed him liquids through a syringe. Yeah, Snaps had been that young. He wasn’t so young or incapable anymore.

“Snaps,” Andino said, noting the fact that the trail had cleared of people.

His dig’s ears twitched, but Snaps never looked up.

“You ready?” Andino asked.

Snaps snorted, his nose pressing to the ground. Andino flipped the stick he’d been walking with. It was maybe six inches thick and a foot long. A broken tree branch that had fallen on the path and he picked it up as they walked.

“High,” Andino ordered.

Snaps’ head flew up, his gaze trained straight ahead.
Good dog
, Andino praised silently. All that time and training paid off. Snaps loved to learn.

“Get it,” Andino said fast.

The stick flew from his hand in a flash of movement. Snaps probably hadn’t even seen his master throw the stick, but the dog was already going after it. To most people, Snaps looked lazy as fuck. Andino didn’t mind letting people believe that, either.

Snaps was twenty feet in front of the stick before it even began to drop from the air to fall to the ground. In a blink, the dog turned and charged forward. Snaps’ two paws pressed hard into the paved walk and then the dog lunged into the air.

Six feet high, the dog caught the stick. Snaps’ jaw clamped around the wood with an audible crunch. The stick splintered into nothing but scraps. Snaps landed to the ground near silently, shaking his head at the same time. What was left of the stick fell from the dog’s mouth to the ground before Snaps was back at Andino’s side.

Chuffing, Snaps waited for his praise. He always waited. He never pressed for it.

“Good dog,” Andino said.

Snaps pushed his large head into Andino’s palm. Andino stroked the dog back.

When Andino’s life felt like it was going too fast, Snaps always managed to slow it down. Today was no exception. But even worse was when Andino’s life suddenly felt like it wasn’t his own to control, as if he was now someone else’s toy to command, Snaps was still the same.

His dog.

His companion.

After the news Andino learned the day before, he was still trying to adjust to what it all meant. A boss, that’s what he was intended to be. He’d decided it didn’t necessarily feel wrong, but the things he enjoyed most about his life, like being solitary, would have to change.

He wasn’t ready for that at all.

“Whoa, that was crazy,” came a soft, sensual voice to Andino’s left.

He spun fast on his heel, alarmed that Snaps hadn’t alerted him to the fact someone was around. Andino was sure he’d been alone.

Apparently not.

The woman, in her baggy tank and jogging shorts, stood at the mouth of a connecting trail. Her blonde hair, streaked with waves of teal and purple, was pulled into a loose ponytail. She had the lean, toned body of a runner and Andino found himself staring at all the curves of her body, from her hips to her waist, and up to her breasts. She was fit, tall, and by the expression she wore as he kept staring at her, fiery and feisty, too.

Andino liked that in a woman.

The woman put a fist to her jutted hip.

“Do you stare often?” she asked.

Andino smirked, amused at her candor. “I do when something deserves my attention.”

The woman grinned. “That’s what you got?”

Andino just shrugged.

What the hell else could he do?

“I only speak the truth,” he said.

The woman looked him up and down. “Do you often wear a suit when you walk your dog on running trails?”

“Sometimes.”

“Huh.”

Andino cocked a brow. “Do you often question random people on the trails?”

“Sometimes. Is that a problem?”

A smartass.

Fantastic.