Free By Any Other Name by J. M. Darhower Page B

They'll stalk you, and they'll take you, because you're an easy target, and then they'll do things to you… things that'll make you wish they would just kill you."
    His harsh words left her momentarily speechless.
    "And that's when they'll kill you," he continued. "Only after you ask them, only after you beg them to end your misery. And they'll enjoy it. Believe me. They'll make sure when we find you… if we find you… that we won't even recognize you."
    "How do you know?"
    "How do I know?" He raised his eyebrows. "I know because Mom and Dad couldn't recognize Joey."
    She flinched at his words, as if she'd been punched in the gut. "That's different."
    "Is it?" he asked. "They killed him, Genna, and there wasn't even enough left for an identification."
    "I know that," she said, tears stinging her eyes. "I know what happened."
    "Yeah, well, I remember it, and I'm not going through that again."
    Dante turned the corner, striding toward his car, while she lingered for a moment, casting a look over her shoulder, once more meeting Matty's eyes. He stared at her as if nothing else existed.
    She wished, more than anything, that she could trust that look.
     
    "Badass, huh?"
    Matty tore his eyes from down the block when Genna jetted around the corner, obediently following her brother… her brother, the one and only Dante Galante. Who would've guessed? Not me . Not in a million years. His gaze fell on Enzo as he stood there, staring at him, grinning like a fool. "What?"
    "The Ice Princess," he replied, motioning toward the corner where Genna had been just moments before. "Genevieve Galante. She's a looker, ain't she?"
    Images flashed through Matty's mind: Genna beneath him, crying out his name, violently convulsing with pleasure so intense he saw tears in her eyes. When she came, over and over… Jesus, he'd never seen anything so beautiful before. "She's something, alright."
    Enzo slapped him on the back jokingly. "Too bad she's one of them."
    "Yeah," Matty muttered. "Too bad."
    His day went from sky fucking high to in the shitter, and all it took was that one word: Galante . Ironic, he thought. The name meant gallant, brave, amorous, when as far as he was concerned, those people were anything but. The Galante family bred spineless, callous cowards, led by the biggest heartless brute of them all. Primo .
    How could that girl, that glowing angel dropped from Heaven straight into his defunct elevator, be that barbarian's spawn?
    Matty had been disconnected from the lifestyle for years—most of his life, it seemed—but he knew the stories as well as anyone. His father never failed to fill him in whenever he came to visit.
    "Those cockroaches are at it again," he'd say. "Might have to take it to the mattresses soon."
    Every visit, same thing for years… another war was brewing, much like the one that had ignited the deadly rivalry sixteen years ago.
    He mulled over that as he drove to his parent's house, a vast townhouse near Central Park West. Enzo sat in the passenger seat, yammering away like a little yippee-ass pup. Usually he didn't mind his brother's need for constant chatter, but today he was making it difficult for Matty to think.
    "They'll know you're here now," Enzo said as Matty pulled the Lotus up to the front of the house and cut the engine.
    He glanced at his brother. "Who?"
    "The Galante clan. They saw you're back."
    Saying he was back was misleading, as if he were ever really involved in the first place. His little brother was the one knee-deep in the life. Enzo lived it. Breathed it. Loved it. As far as Matty went? He just tried to survive it. He'd been trying to survive it since he was a kid, too young to have to deal with having a bounty on his head.
    The son pays for the father's sins.
    Enzo burst in the front door of the house, leaping up and slapping the top of the doorframes as he went, creating a ruckus as usual. Sighing, Matty walked in behind him, hearing the soft, feminine voice call out from the nearby