Chapter 51: Book 1: Chapter 20 (Part 1 of 2) POV shift Claudia Gattosi

Claudia Gattosi

I played with my razor-sharp nails as I watched my twin brother Luca on the street below, over the balcony of the hotel room, holding court like he was some kind of fucking King.

He was surrounded by a bunch of fawning bootlickers that looked up to the arrogant piece of garbage. If only they knew him as I did, how much of a coward he was, deep down.

Luca wouldn’t have dared act as he had if Papa hadn’t been visiting the old country with his top guys and had instead been home in Detroit when the world changed. My brother knew the consequences of acting without our father’s approval first.

Papa was the head of the Gattosi family and Luca knew it.

He still feared our father, even with him being thousands of miles away, despite the added strength he had stolen from me during the Framework integration.

I glanced at the mirror perched on the dresser of this gaudy hotel room Luca had ordered me to stay in. I saw my long tawny hair, the feline eyes a curious shade of emerald and the sharpened incisors. If it hadn’t been for the tail I kept tucked out of sight and the base of my nose which was almost black in colour and slitted where my nostrils flared, it would be difficult to tell I was no longer fully human.

Unlike Luca, he had adopted as many Leonine features as possible and loved it.

Then again, he’d always been overly proud of his hair and good looks, so it must have hurt badly when he realised that he was balding at the young age of twenty-five. Thousands of dollars and countless hair-care products couldn’t arrest the thinning.

Papa forbade him from any surgery or transplant procedure. He said it made him look more Italian, that all the greatest members of the Cosa Nostra had a receding hairline, but that hadn’t assuaged Luca’s angry bitterness.

Now he had a thick, dark, untameable mane which he played with more than his tiny pecker.

Initially, I was furious with Luca’s choice to make us Leonid, but I had to say, as I took in my reflection, the look was growing on me. The extra few inches in height and the toned and athletic body that came with it hadn’t hurt either, I supposed.

Those few pounds of fat I’d spent a decade trying, and failing, to shed, gone overnight.

Which necessitated a brand new wardrobe, obviously.

It may have been a cliché, but I did so love to shop, especially now I could largely take what I wanted thanks to my brother’s incipient reign of terror. He wasn’t entirely useless.

“He’s so handsome,” Carla gushed from the second storey balcony. “I know he’s your brother, but you have to agree, right?”

“If you’re into the furry Simba look, then sure, I suppose he is,” I replied, infusing my words with as much civil disinterest as was possible.

Carla looked at me sharply, there was an unhinged zeal behind her hazel eyes. We may have grown up together in Detroit, but I couldn’t forget she was more akin to a prison guard than a long-standing family acquaintance.

We’d never been friends.

Carla had always been obsessed with Luca, who had abused that obsession since we were teenagers. The lovestruck fool honestly believed he cared about her.

Luca only cared for one person, Luca.

I sighed and uncurled my long legs from under me, sprang off the bed, and padded over to join her on the balcony. I had to show my willingness to support my brother in his endeavours to take control of Grand Rapids. Carla’s vapid smile returned as I joined her and we stared down on the street below, where the Grand Rapids podium had been erected.

Luca was down there, surrounded by a bevy of his armed goons. He didn’t have full control of the city yet. I’d overheard that the podium continued to recognise Mayor Trilby as the leader of Grand Rapids.

Tragically, despite this speedbump, his victory was all but assured.

Credit where credit was due, Luca had achieved a great deal in just a few days. That he’d done it by stealing my potential during character creation only added to my current bitterness.

He’d managed to unite or seize control of every significant criminal organisation in the city.

While the police and the populace for the most part panicked. Luca forced his people to take classes if they hadn’t already, levelled them up, through murder if necessary, and went on the offensive last night.

A cache of smuggled assault rifles and ammunition had helped too.

Since then, his ranks had swelled as every two-bit hoodlum, wannabe gangster, and all-purpose shit-stain had flocked to his banner. His class, Criminal Kingpin, helped in that regard.

There was a commotion at the far end of the street that drew everyone’s attention.

A squad of Luca’s loyal followers were ‘escorting’ a family with bags over their heads towards the podium. They forced the man, woman, and two children onto their knees in front of my brother and removed the hoods.

With the hoods off I recognised the middle-aged woman, it was Susan Trilby, the Mayor. The others had to be her husband and children. The mayor blinked in the sudden light and then looked up at the leonine face of my sneering brother.

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“Ah, Mayor Trilby. Good of you to join me,” Luca guffawed.

His loyal goons laughed along with him, and Carla giggled demurely beside me. I just shook my head at his grandstanding.

“Am I supposed to know who you are,” Susan Trilby rasped.

Her words were defiant, but her tear-stained cheeks robbed those words of any real bite.

“How rude of me. I am much changed, but I’m sure you’ve heard of me. Luca Gattosi at your service,” Luca smarmed.

“Gattosi? I’ve met your father. We don’t see eye to eye, but at least he was a gentleman. All I’ve heard about you is that you’re a cheap hoodlum with delusions of grandeur,” the mayor commented savagely.

I winced as she said the words. Not because I didn’t agree, I wholeheartedly did. However, my brother had a short temper and a vicious streak to match.

His paw-like hand whipped out and slapped the mayor, he hadn’t retracted his claws and they sliced across her face, leaving red bloody streaks.

“You will not speak to me like that, you saggy cunt,” Luca screamed in her face.

Then he straightened up, smiled cruelly, and nodded to his best friend and ally Maurice.

Unlike many of the Gattosi soldiers and associates who had chosen to become Leonid like Luca, Maurice had become a shadowborn elf.

Maurice stepped up behind the mayor’s husband and produced a garrotte from his inventory which he wrapped around the poor man’s throat and pulled tight. The man struggled vainly, scrabbling at his neck, while as was choked to death over the course of a minute.

Mayor Trilby and her children wailed and wept loudly but were held in place as they were forced to watch their loved one be murdered in the street.

Blessedly, for them, it was over relatively quickly.

Maurice was brick-shittingly scary, but he was efficient and emotionless when it came to murder. He unwound his garrotte from the man’s throat, pushed the body forward and cleaned the wire with a handkerchief before he stepped back to the circle of people that surrounded my brother.

Mayor Trilby’s head had sagged into her chest as she sobbed for her loss. Luca stepped up to her and roughly pulled her head up by her hair.

“You understand who is in charge now, don’tcha’ bitch,” he smirked and snapped his fingers.

Another of his guys stepped up with a sack in his hand, the contents of which he tipped onto the road at Luca’s behest. Three decapitated heads bounced and rolled onto the ground.

“Take a look,” he breathed at her with menace.

Then he signalled his guys holding her and they pushed her head to the ground and practically rubbed her face on the heads.

“Anyone you know,” he laughed shrilly. “No help is coming. That’s the chief of police, the chief of the local FBI office, and the DA.”

“Bring her,” Luca ordered to the two guys holding her down.

Luca walked over to the podium and waited as the mayor was dragged over and then lifted to a standing position.

“Larry! Is everything in place,” Luca addressed a nervous, mousy-looking man who had been standing by the podium.

Larry was one of the Gattosi family’s accountants. Super-smart, but also super-creepy. Hence why he was here in Grand Rapids and not with Papa in Detroit.

“Yes, sir. The leadership transfer of Grand Rapids from Mayor Trilby to you has been keyed up. All she has to do is put her hand on the screen and approve,” Larry croaked hoarsely.

 He was an inveterate smoker. His office stank of cigarettes so badly I would gag just walking by it. Then gag some more at the thought of the slimeball within.

“You hear that Susie,” Luca jeered and cuffed her around the head to get her attention. “All you’ve gotta do is put your digits on the screen and say yes.”

Then Luca grabbed her by the hair again, leaned in and spoke quietly, but my new feline hearing picked it up. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you can spite me and say no, that I can’t hurt you because I need you alive to perform the transfer. Not true, bitch. I can take the city when you’re dead, this is just quicker.”

My brother stepped back from her and opened his arms magnanimously. “Do me this solid and you and your lovely daughters are free to go. You have my word. Deny me, and I swear to fucking god, their pleading, terrified, bloodshot eyes as they choke to death on Maurice’s garrotte wire are the last thing you will ever see,” he threatened.

With tears openly pouring down her cheeks the mayor’s shoulders slumped, all fight leaving her. She reached out and pressed her fingers on the screen.

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