Ever wonder what it would be like to have a living mirror of yourself?
Benito Guzzi wasn’t curious at all.
“Shots!”
His identical twin’s shout danced over the loud bar where they and their friends gathered in the club for most of the night.
“Bene,” Ashton, one of their mutual friends, said as he stressed the ay ending to Benedetto’s nickname, “you’re going to give us fucking alcohol poisoning. We can’t handle liquor like you two, fuck, man.”
“Beni?”
Down the bar, his twin cocked a brow in his direction. Some might think it looked like a challenge. Others would take it as a question. Beni—his name differentiating from his twin’s with a hard e at the end—didn’t wonder what that look meant when he shared everything with Bene. From looks to style, and even his behaviors and attitude.
When he said mirrors of each other, that’s what they were.
And it was their twenty-first birthday.
So …
“Shots,” Beni said with a nod.
Cheers from their group lit up the bar. The party was far from over, and if all went well, they would drink far into the morning. People knew Beni and Bene Guzzi for their desire to have a good time.
All the damn time.
“Where are your brothers?” the guy to his left asked. “Shouldn’t they be here celebrating?”
Beni shrugged, more interested in the way the bartender had set up the shot glasses in a perfect line along the bar. Grabbing a bottle from the built-in shelves behind the bar, the glass gleamed from the lights. The bass from the music pumped through the floor, vibrating the soles of Beni’s Italian leather loafers while more liquor poured.
Straight vodka this time.
They had to go easy on some of them.
I guess, he thought.
Bene, having heard the question posed to his twin, answered for Beni. “Corrado’s in New York … Chris is—don’t know, whatever. And Marcus?”
Beni scoffed. “Fucking Marcus.”
“What’s that mean?”
Somehow, unlike the small army of their older siblings, Beni and Bene made friends outside of the life. That life being la famiglia. The mafia. Despite their interest and involvement in the family business, considering their father was the boss and their oldest brother followed his footsteps, they still surrounded themselves with people who had no idea about the other side of their life.
Beni and Bene shared a look.
A grin.
Knowing.
Sly.
Amused.
They liked to keep friends that weren’t in. The two of them communicated easier in their strange way. The same thing they had been doing since before they could talk, if someone thought to ask their parents. Gestures, silent looks, body movements, or even a click of a tongue.
The two had a whole nonverbal language. It was a hell of a lot harder for them to communicate with each other when they were around their family, and they didn’t want people knowing what they were saying.
“Marcus is Marcus,” Beni settled on saying, “too busy being our father’s mini-me to come out and have fun with us.”
Marcus used to be fun, though. Then, he graduated, attended a few of years of a university for business, and went straight into the mafia to mentor under their father. Once Marcus was in, and got his button for the mafia, he was all the fucking way in. Unfailingly responsible—they counted on their oldest brother no matter what.
And sometimes that was just boring.
“Ready?”
Bene held his shot glass high into the air. The strobe lights flickered with a higher intensity in the background of the club, making his brother look like a statue. The club was banging, though, and for more reasons than their friends would understand. It was one that wasn’t Guzzi owned, because God fucking knew the twins hated when tales of their night out got back to their parents, or brothers.
They worried.
Bitched.
The twins didn’t understand why.
It was unnecessary.
Couldn’t they just have fun?
Okay, maybe that was a bit of a stretch. Their fun usually included trouble—the wild ones their family called them because from the time they were old enough to run, the two never stopped. He figured, hey, at least they ran together.
That was the thing about Beni and Bene.
If they had each other, shit was cake.
Easy.
Life was fucking good.
“Ready,” Beni said, picking up his own shot and holding it high, too.
Literal mirrors, he thought as he stared at his brother from the other end of the bar. From the way they held their shot glasses, to the curve of their smiles, and the carved-from-glass line of their jaws. Even the browns of their eyes could be mapped by the gold flakes that they’d taken from their father. That playful, but sly smile came from their mother, though. Standing side by side, the twins stood equal in height at six foot, two inches tall. Their weight was almost the same, too, at a solid, lean one-ninety, give or take a pound.
They were identical in every way.
Their stance.
How they carried themselves.
The style of their clothes.
All of it.
“Drop ‘em back!” Bene called.
Beni wasn’t sure if it was instinct, or just nature, for him to throw back his shot at the same time as his twin. He often found himself echoing the movements of his twin like they had when they were kids. Bene moved left, and Beni moved right. One smirked with the left side of his lips, and the other with his right.
It could be strange and disconcerting for new people who didn’t know the twins. It took getting used to, but the twins had never subdued their strange habits for others. It wasn’t in their nature to look out for anyone else but each other, after all. Even like that.
Shouts and hollers lit up the bar all over again as shot glasses clinked down to the glossy, red top. Bene was already waving for the bartender who had moved further down to serve a group that came up for refills while the Guzzi boys were taking their round with the rest of the group.
“Another round,” he called. “Henny next!”
“Fuck,” Beni groaned, “now you’re trying to kill me, bro.”
People liked to act as though Hennessey tasted great, but in fact, it was shit. Absolute, and total garbage. Add onto the horrible taste of the liquor, and it almost always had Beni puking by the end of the night, but especially when he mixed it with other spirits.
“Are you calling it a night, then? Gonna pussy out, Beni?”
Fuck his twin for knowing the right buttons to push.
“Never,” Beni muttered, flipping his own hand up at the laughter of their friends to wave for the bartender, too. “Another round—Henny.” He pointed a finger at his twin, adding, “But then we’re doing Fireball.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Yeah, exactly.
Because as much as his twin knew his secrets, Beni had all of Bene’s locked up tight, too. He could play that game, if his brother wanted. He was good for it, always.
When the bartender didn’t come as fast as they wanted, their calls for the man became louder, and more obnoxious. But wasn’t that every fucking twenty-one-year-old man, anyway? They were just trying to have fun.
Of course, trouble always followed.
It was the twins’ way.
“Fuckin’ Guzzis thinking they own every goddamn place they step into,” someone from the group down the bar muttered. “Why don’t you all crawl into one of your holes, and party there?”
Beni tipped his chin up, not bothering to give whoever that was his attention. Instead, his gaze drifted to his brother at the other end of their large group. Bene matched his posture with wide shoulders going stiff, chin raised in defiance, and an almost manic gleam in his eye.
Savages.
Piss off a Guzzi, or bad mouth them, and the savage came out to play.
It didn’t matter.
No one said a goddamn thing about a Guzzi without it being answered, and usually, violently. Beni didn’t know if it was a pride thing, or what. A thick rush of rage filled his bloodstream with every beat of his heart because fuck all of that.
The guy wasn’t just insulting him and his twin—but to be honest, that was enough to make him want to break the fucker’s neck—but his entire clan. His father, the other three Guzzi brothers, and their mother, too. He didn’t even have to name Cara Guzzi; didn’t have to breathe a single word about her. He simply had to lump all Guzzis into one bunch, and they were insulting the boys’ mother, too.
And no.
That would not fly over.
Ever.
Bene, who had still been toying with the empty shot glass in his hand, set it down to the top of the bar a bit harder than was necessary. Beni turned when his twin came around their group of friends who had all gone suspiciously silent.
They knew what was about to happen.
The guy—Bene knew which one made the comment, given he had been staring that way—didn’t even see the twins coming for him. Fists flew after they yanked the fucker from his bar stool to the floor.
Soon, a whole crowd was fighting. Their friends. The fucker’s friends. Some random guy that got knocked sideways during the scuffle. Even the club’s security that rushed in to try and break it up.
The wild Guzzi twins struck again.
You’d think people would learn.
“Call the fucking cops!”
