Sweet Temptation

Chapter 5

Ricardo

Fuck!

My knuckles cracked against his face. I'd told myself the only boxing I would do these days would be against a punching bag. I would change my ways and stop f*****g hurting people.

Six months ago, I'd had a widow turn up at my door with her child, claiming I'd killed her husband. I told her I didn't do it, but what I didn't tell her was I had ordered the hit on him.

She was better off without him. The man had a woman in nearly every state and most likely more children, but it wasn't my business to dig into her love life. No, I wasn't any marriage counselor, for sure. But I did make a promise after seeing her son's blue eyes swell with tears as his mom said, "This is the man who killed your father."

I promised to stop being the monster I'd been for so long, and try and value the life in front of me, unless I really had to put it to an end. Just like a leopard couldn't change it's spots, I knew that I was kidding myself by making such a promise.

I knew even if he was a s**t husband, he was a dad. I'd been paying all their living expenses since the day that had happened, but finding Pa dead made me break the promise I made all those months ago. Everything had gone through the f*****g window.

What mob king didn't inflict violence on another?

None.

I was f*****g kidding myself if I thought I could stay in this line of work and not inflict harm on others. It went with the job description, the one dad had told me from the start. We lived by violence, and we died by it. I had to get revenge on whoever killed the old man, no doubt, like me, he most likely deserved it.

"You going to talk, or you want me to do some real damage?"

Fuck, I sounded so old-fashioned, like I was in my sixties and not my forties. Pa was my only living parent. My mom died by a slit to the throat when I was five. It took dad two days to figure out who did it and exact revenge not only on the man himself but his whole family. He wiped out a whole bloodline when mom died. Dad had been dead a whole f*****g week and so far, all I'd hit were dead walls. It made me want to take out my gun and pop Mario. There was no f*****g way no one knew nothing.

Impossible. Someone knew. The issue was, no one was talking.

"Ricardo, think about mi mama, she'll be alone if you do this," Mario whimpered as I held his throat in one hand, his dark strands wet from sweat and fear thinking I was going to kill him. His dark eyes were half-closed, one eye because Juan had thumped him as soon as we took him. The other eye could barely manage to stay open. I had my gun in my other hand, just in case I got fed up and decided to pop him.

Sometimes, this was the problem with these interrogations. I wouldn't get the answer I needed, and I would pop the mark by accident due to impatience. I didn't want to do with Mario. I knew Ma, Mario's mom was powerful, and if I crossed the line, which I was already doing, it would end in a turf war. I wanted to know who did the hit on dad and be done. This f*****g game of someone does a hit on you; they tread on your toes, so you do the same on them the classic cat and mouse, was tired and old.

Having the control and power to do whatever I wanted all the time, was a dream come true. Until I got older and lost friends, close friends were part of the circuit; they'd died. Always a horrible death and then the same thing would happen, like what was happening now, it was a vicious circle and him talking about his mom wasn't helping.

"How many people has Ma knocked off?"

He blinked a little too long for me to believe he didn't f*****g know. He must have been blind, deaf, or dumb not to realize his mom ran the Northside, not his uncle. Everyone knew his Ma was the balls of the family, but to her sweet innocent son, she was his Ma. Everyone called her Ma for a reason, and it had nothing to do with her skills in the kitchen but more to do with her organizational skills. The idea of him not knowing made me want to stop doing what my gut instinct was telling me to do.

And that was to take him out.

"None. Ma cooks and nothing else. She's my Ma..." he was sniffing and crying like a baby. Not so much because of the possibility I was going to take him out, but because he was completely innocent.

Mario knew nothing; he didn't even know his Ma was the Queen on East side. No, he needed to be saved; I could tell him what he didn't know and use him. s**t, everyone used someone, especially in this business, and I intended to do it now and use it to my f*****g advantage.