His Brutal Heart

HIS BRUTAL HEART WEST COAST MOBSTERS 2 LEIGHTON GREENE This is a work of fiction. Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks referred to herein are the property of their respective trademark holders. All trademarks remain the property of their respective holders. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. © 2023 Leighton Greene. All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author. Cover: Natasha Snow Beta reading and consultation: Leslie Copeland Content Warnings: gun and knife violence, murder, kidnapping, abusive parents, facial scarring. HIS BRUTAL HEART I'm a man without mercy. A Mafia heir. Brutality was all that ever made sense to me... Until I saw him. Unfortunately, he happens to be the sole witness to my latest crime. That should mean one thing. Elimination. But one look into those pleading blue eyes, and I lost myself. I let a beauty live… But - beast that I am - I’ve locked him away. Little by little, he charms his way out of his cell and into my bed, until I begin to wonder which of us is the real prisoner. After all, I’m the one trapped by my own brutal heart. And that oh-so-innocent beauty I took and kept? He has secrets of his own. Secrets that could destroy me. CONTENTS 1. Sandro 2. Sandro 3. Teddy 4. Sandro 5. Teddy 6. Sandro 7. Teddy 8. Sandro 9. Teddy 10. Sandro 11. Sandro 12. Teddy 13. Sandro 14. Sandro 15. Teddy 16. Sandro 17. Teddy 18. Sandro 19. Teddy 20. Sandro 21. Teddy 22. Teddy 23. Sandro 24. Sandro 25. Teddy 26. Teddy 27. Sandro 28. Sandro 29. Teddy 30. Sandro 31. Teddy 32. Sandro 33. Teddy 34. Sandro 35. Sandro 36. Teddy 37. Sandro 38. Teddy 39. Sandro 40. Sandro 41. Teddy 42. Sandro 43. Teddy 44. Sandro 45. Teddy 46. Teddy 47. Sandro 48. Teddy 49. Sandro 50. Teddy 51. Teddy 52. Teddy 53. Sandro 54. Teddy 55. Sandro Epilogue Dear brutal babes… Also by the Author About the Author CHAPTER 1 SANDRO I stand over my father’s body, taking in the puddle of blood that has seeped across the desk, and I try to think. Ciro Castellani, Don of the Family, is dead. I can hardly believe it. I need to consider my next moves carefully. News like this spreads fast, but so far, only two other people know: Johnny Jacopo, and my half-brother. Jacopo has just left the house, but I know he’ll stay quiet. He has too much to lose, otherwise. As for Julian, he is locked up tight in the cells below. My father lies face-down on his desk and all I can think about is how proud he was of it—eighteenth century baroque, a replica of one from Versailles, made by the same line of craftsmen, to hear him tell it, using the same techniques, the same wood harvested from the same forest… And yet, still not the real thing. Like my father himself. Everything painstakingly crafted to appear genuine—but not. His blood has soaked into the side of a wedding invitation, discarded on the desk among the other mail of the day. A sales brochure for a penthouse suite in Hong Kong. A bank check for thirty thousand dollars. Seats at the premiere of an upcoming movie he helped produce. His hand lies gently curled on the desk. When I take it hand in mine, it is still faintly warm, and the fingers open with ease. I take the ring from his finger and inspect it. Perfectly polished and untouched by his blood. And I wonder, as I slide it onto my finger, who will dare take this same ring off my corpse, when my time comes. * * * The corridors down to the cells beneath Redwood Manor are narrow and cold, always cold, no matter how warm the weather gets outside. I once wondered if my father kept the passage and the cells chilled to reduce the unsavory odors that inevitably arise from keeping and killing men in them. The darkness is an added atmospheric element. The bowels of the Manor are dimly lit by design, and I have to pause at the entrance of the cells until my eyes adjust. I don’t want Julian to have any advantages over me. He was lying down on the jutting metal bunk when I checked the cameras upstairs, but when I key in the code to open the dungeon door—for this place is, in all senses of the word, a dungeon—he is standing at the bars of his cell, grasping them, staring at me with those unnerving, unblinking, pale blue eyes. There are adjoining four cells, each demarcated by three walls of metal bars and one of rough brick. Each cell is on the left of the long room, except for the one at the end, which runs a little longer, from one wall to the other. Each cell is stained with old blood, old torments. My father would sometimes keep his enemies down here, the ones he wanted to suffer a long and humiliating death. It was Julian’s reward to spend time in here with them, to torture and maim, to kill slowly and sadistically, to enjoy their screams. I let the usual wave of disgust for him pass over and through me before I take a step into the room. He can push my buttons well enough on his own. The only sane way to face him is with stoicism. His eyes dart immediately to my finger, and a knowing smile twists his lips. “What an honor,” he says, “to be visited by Don Castellani himself.” I ask the question I