1:11 Untouchable, By Vince

... Three Months After That ...

No matter who tries to talk me down or how, nothing in me will calm. 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 one-year-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 grandfather built in retribution.

There are a dozen families on our fair streets, and I’m about to meet every single one of the figureheads for each organization. Waiting to see who will claim responsibility for the hit on the boy that no one is supposed to know exists yet.

It’s true that the first attempt on my life was in Kindergarten, but I was at least old enough to speak.

Everything I know. Everything I’ve done makes this scenario infuckingpossible! Still, as my partner Rourke texts me updates from the compound I’ve stashed Tio in, I can’t find any other possibility.

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.

“Call the meeting,” I clip to my twin. The glittery black shadow and lip gloss may fool most, but not me.

‘Fabulous’ as the man may be, Niccolo is as lethal and unforgiving as I am when it comes to business and family. There is no such thing as rest until we find the fuckers who went against us. “Be with our boy; I’ll handle this.”

“Vince....” It’s easy to see the pull in Nico’s questioning eyes. A tug of war match to be in two places at once that I’ve never felt.

Not with him and I being exact as we can, sans the make-up. All the while parent trapping Haven.

Even so, being the one who was beaten and subdued into the rigid role we share doesn’t allow me to express my inner workings outside of fucking and or a war path.

It also makes me better suited for this than him.

Gods know how he maintained a sense of softness. Nico, rather than me, always wanted children, but can’t nut without a dick up his ass.

Man is as maternal as breast, and right now, he needs to understand the best way to protect me, to protect us, is to protect my beating heart currently resting in a hospital bed.

“I need you with him, brother,” I urge, and Nico nods. All our differences and arguments over the last few weeks were tabled the second Tio was at risk.

For a kid, I didn’t know about until a few months back, there was still no need for a paternity test. Not when Nico, myself or the few we told about him to could distinguish the pictures we snapped of him from the ones out of our own baby books.

My twin isn’t a pushover by any stretch of the imagination, but we both have our strengths and weaknesses. Rourke, won’t leave our boy to do what he’s best at until Nico is there.

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 may have been a decade older, closer to my Uncle Gio than us, but grew up with us all the same.

I have no doubt that Nico told him what happened, and that Luke is here for vengeance more than moral support. I also won’t complain about it, considering the banker or money of the syndicates is the most terrifying cut man I have.

That sickly sweet promise of a horrifying end clings to him, even if his pale expression remains neutral.

Terrifying as the son of a bitch is, he’s Tio’s godfather, slash Uncle, and probably the most prepared out of all of us to deal with the situation of a stripper leaving a baby on my doorstep, other than Giovanni.

In a way, we’re all bosses who stick to our own territories with the syndicates but, when shit hits the fan, I do depend on my family.

My real family.

IE my twin, the robot, the giant and the mad genius, that taught me from a tender age how to win every argument on merit. That or fry anyone I chose on a technicality.

Giovanni Farrelli isn’t the most sought after defense attorney in the entire country for nothing.

His sister was my mother, and even though Luke isn’t blood related like Gio, our families have had a friendship from the beginning.

Luke is very much like me in the fact that he can’t traditionally express his emotions. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t have them. Frankly, though, given how stiff he is....... It’s probably best that I never met his father, Ivan.

I swear the Luke has never met a calculator he wasn’t turned on by, and part of me truly wonders if he was born without a penis and is some advanced AI tech in certain moments.

Especially come four a.m. when I swear the banker hasn’t moved so much as an eyelash.

His hands remain hooked behind his back, and he hasn’t shifted his weight once in the hours I’ve gone between pacing, sitting, drinking, cursing and pacing again.

It’s not like anyone offing me gets them the multi-billion dollar conglomerates we run.

Old days you wack a boss or their heir, you got the keys to the kingdom. These days, it’s as much corporate ninnies and shareholders I have to manage.

All anyone coming after me gains is bragging rights and a few million in less than legal proceeds.

Outside organizations are where I want to put the blame, considering my people follow a strict no-women-and kids policy.

A rule that has stuck harder than white on rice since the Senate made an example of the Carpellis. The point and time South Point became no man’s land.

Every last member of the branch was slaughtered by the Senate’s hit man X. Literally butchered like cattle with their body parts hung on pikes to mark the southern line into the runs.

A line none of us dared cross again.

The docks are technically South Point, but adjacent to the Hollow rather than included. Given that we have a lot of trade coming in and out, there were no real negotiations in our maintaining control.

A position I made clear I wanted the Triad in rather than the Irish. Kinnys may have been there longer, but were too close to the Carpellis for comfort.

If it were trafficking, I’d point at them.

As far as Tio is concerned though, my main suspicion would be directed at the Ruskies. Whispers of the newest accepted branch being in South-Point are none too reassuring.

Considering both Hollow and Bratva are a lot alike in the fact that you never know what their agenda is, only that the lunatics are always up to something.

When they’re not drinking.

Actually, especially when they are drinking, which is always.

I extended an invitation for the meet to Gorsky, curious to see if he’d cash in along with a South-Syndicate representative. It’s unlikely either will show if they have anything to do with the attempted hit.

Then again, we’ve already established that they’re lunatics.

I wish I could say the situation is unprecedented, but has happened. Though few and far between, I side with the Senate in the fact that people pulling this shit, should be wiped out, no questions asked.

Eventually, I will raze through all the families, but not without reminding the twelve of my position. The people I’ve placed around the city, based on their experience and influence.

Betraying me is the dumbest thing anyone could ever do, and not worth the true hell storm that’s about to come down.

Making emotional rather than sound decisions based on a whole is something I never did before Tio, but I can’t deny it’s probably going to be a standard whenever my son is involved.

Whoever is looking to take a shot at me using my hot button is about to re-learn what untouchable means. Could be the Kings themselves, for all I care.

Nothing is stopping me from a swift and merciless payback.

Same as the Senate with the Carpellis and same as my father with the NODE scumbags who came after me and Nico in Kindergarten.

One of the very few redeemable qualities about Frederico Morretti was his insistence that the women who chose us and the kids that came from that were to be protected and respected at all costs.

At least until boys could fend for themselves. Wives and daughters, on the other hand, were sacred and never involved in business, period.