CLEMENTE, MY SHINING KNIGHT

This time I move. My fingers curl around the warden's throat, my arm rearing forward to ram him against the wall. I lift him until his feet are off the ground and hold him in place without struggle. For me, anyway. He squirms and gags for air with his eyes popping out of his sockets. I take in a deep, calming breath. Already my muscles loosen and relax. How I fucking missed this.

"Something got you on edge?" My fingers tighten. "An ace up your sleeve you'd hoped to hide?"

He jerks his head in short and clipped movements. It's kind of hard to shake your head with a hand permanently indenting your throat. I widen my grip by just a hair, and he pulls in a greedy lungful of oxygen.

"No," he rasps. "I'm not hiding anything."

I can hear Vincent coming up behind me. "You've got to be really fucking stupid to lie to my brother when your life is in his hands. Are you really fucking stupid, Warden?"

He shakes his head with even more aggression. "No. I swear."

"On who?" I take a step forward and drop my voice to a whisper. "Your wife, Henrietta? Your daughter, Molly? Would you swear on them? Because if you're lying, it's their lives I take. And you get to watch."

"How generous of you," Vincent mocks.

The warden thrashes wildly against my grip. He becomes a madman at the mention of his family. Did he really think I wouldn't do my research and make sure I was prepared? My time spent in jail seems to have done more damage to my reputation than I thought. It's a good thing I plan on redeeming it immediately.

"Bastard!" He spits. "Don't you go fucking near them!"

The gall he has is...incredibly stupid. Vincent winces before a cackle tears out of him. The guard beside me visibly stiffens. And the warden instantly stops his fight. But the damage is done.

"I...no, I—" he stammers, chest heaving with panic. "I didn't mean to—no! It was instinct! You threatened my family, and—no! No!"

"Just because you tell me no doesn't mean I'll listen." I take the gun from Vincent, who snatched it off the guard. The warden continues screaming as I drag the head of it up, up, up, until the opening is sitting neatly under his chin. "Bastard, you said? Who are you speaking to?"

"Please," he whispers, gasping for air. His tears dampen my fingers still locked around his neck.

I click back the safety of the gun, and he cries out again, shaking his head. "Who. The fuck. Are you speaking to?"

"C-C-Capo."

"Say my name."

His throat bobs once, twice, mouth working nervously.

"Stop giving the air a blowjob and answer my brother," Vincent growls, slamming his palm above the Warden's head and sneering at him.

Caged between us brothers, he breaks out into a visible sweat. "Marino."

My finger settles on the trigger. "Repeat yourself. Loud and clear."

"Clemente Marino, sir."

"Better," I muse. "Hand me your phone."

His eyes grow impossibly wide with panic. Got him. Before he can even shake his head in argument, Vincent grabs a bunch of his hair and slams his head back into the wall. The warden cries out as Vincent leans down to speak harshly in his face.

"Again and again you deny my brother. Did he not abide by your stupid fucking prison rules from the moment we were incarcerated? I'm not sure what he's waiting for, but deny him one more time and I'll kill you myself. It won't be quick, either."

The warden moves, his quivering hand reaching into his pocket and handing his phone to me. My nostrils flare when I feel how wet it is and glance down to the front of his pants, soaked. I snap my gaze back to his dreaded one.

"I'm sor—"

I pull the trigger.

The bullet goes through his chin and out his head, his brain splattered on the wall behind him. His dead body drops to the floor when I release him, and in seconds he's covered in his own blood.

"Took you long enough." Vincent shoulders past me and into the room.

I turn to the guard who'd been watching everything unfold quietly. Never uttering a word or putting up a fight. He, unlike his boss, has brains.

"Tissue," I snap.

Wordlessly, he retrieves a handkerchief and hands it to me. I wipe my piss-covered hand and then the phone before throwing the cloth to the ground.

"What happened here?" I ask him calmly, twirling the gun in my hand.

He hesitates just a moment. "The Warden tried to attack you when you mentioned his family. You shot him out of self-defense."

"And the cameras?"

"A glitch in the system. Went down two minutes ago."

We both know they didn't. I nod once. That will do.

Normally I don't have to take such precautions. I have power in this city and have judges and policemen eating out of the palm of my hand. Or I did, until a rival Familia got my brother and me locked up. Our status was shot to shit, our Familia even more so. All for what? They pointed their fingers in the wrong direction, and now we will point our guns in theirs.

I meet Vincent in the room and set the phone on the table between us. He buttons his suit jacket, already changed, and scrunches his nose.

"Smells like piss."

"At least your hand isn't covered in it."

"That's what you get for straying," he smirks. "Stick to your pain-in-the-ass big brother act and leave the reckless shit to me."

"Your logic is severely flawed."

"And my hand is piss-free."

I glare at him. He has an unfortunate point.

"We're not getting out of here that easy," he continues.

I strip off the disgusting prison uniform and put on the clothes I handed off the day I was incarcerated. A three-piece Kiton suit sitting nicely at around ten thousand dollars—the cheapest suit I own. After all, I had no intention of dressing up for jail.

I only answer my brother when I've buttoned my jacket into place and feel a little more like myself. In control and dangerous, as I know myself to be. That I need to remind myself of the fact is an insult to myself and one I deliberately ignore. "Has anyone ever marveled at your intelligence?"

He's too busy going through the warden's phone to throw a jab back. "Maybe you should have gotten the passcode before you ripped through his skull."

"He seemed a sentimental man. Try his anniversary."

"Does it fucking look like we bumped dicks over a five-star dinner?"

I snatch the phone from him and enter the date myself. My brother knew everything about weapons and killing and torture. Unfortunately, he was too preoccupied getting messy to bother learning that in this world, you needed to be as smart as you were lethal. Father taught us both, but Vincent always had a bloodlust stronger than mine. I loved a good kill, but I loved a game of chess even more.

The phone unlocks and automatically opens to a text thread the warden had left open. Vincent breathes down my shoulder in the same anger I feel coursing through me at the sight of these messages.

"We have company," he chuckles coldly.

"Let's greet our guests."

I grab the handgun. Vincent snatched from the guard and handed him the gun I was incarcerated with. He got lost in the fight when he'd leapt to protect me.

Vincent curses just as I check the ammo in my gun. "Seven bullets between the two of us. The messages said six men will be waiting."

I pull my suit taut, feeling a tiny smirk stretch my lips.

"Then we'll have an extra bullet when we're done here."