Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Caleb
“ H ow do I woo her? Tell me. You’re good at this shit,” I say to my buddy a week later when we’re out for a drink.
Cristian chuckles. “If I have to tell you, you’re going about this all wrong.”
“She won’t talk to me,” I grumble, knocking back more of my beer and avoiding looking at the woman across the way eye fucking me every time her boyfriend gets up from the table. “It’s been a week, and she’s dating that douche and avoiding me. How do I fix this? How do I get her attention and get her to agree to give us a try? How do I woo her?”
“You know who she is, Caleb. You already know how to claim her attention.” He taps my temple. “You have that knowledge up here. You just need to unlock it.”
“What if I don’t have the key?”
He chuckles. “Man, I never thought I’d see the unconquerable Caleb Accardi tied into knots over a woman. Elisa really has you in a tailspin.”
“I’ve lost my appetite, and my sleep is shot to shit. She has consumed my brain, and she’s all I think about. Even all this mafioso crap isn’t distracting me from my Lili. I need to be with her, but she has completely shut me out. I think she blocked my number too as my text bounced back last night.”
“I know you’re hurting, but I’m proud of Elisa,” he says, earning him an elbow in the ribs.
“You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am on your side, but you’ve got to admit it’s poetic justice at its finest. Elisa was your little puppy dog for years, and you gave her scraps, Caleb. Fucking scraps .”
“I know all the ways I’ve fucked up. I don’t need you to rehash it.”
“Think about how you’d feel if the shoe was on the other foot.” He arches a brow as he pulls his bottle to his lips. “Imagine her out there screwing her way through the city.”
“Do you actually want me to put a bullet through your skull?”
“The truth hurts, bruh.” He clamps a hand on my shoulder, fighting a grin. “You pushed her to her breaking point. You forced her to move on. If you want to prove you are serious, you have to show her. No matter how long it takes, you go the distance, Caleb. You prove you can be loyal and patient. Just like she’s been.” He eyeballs me with a solemn look. “Are you committed enough that you’d wait years for her like she did for you?”
“Yes,” I reply without hesitation.
He shakes his head. “You haven’t dived deep enough to answer that with complete commitment. Until you do, don’t chase after her. Give her space, and when you’re sure you are completely committed to her, and only her, when you’re prepared to wait for her, no matter how long that is, then and only then should you pursue her.” He finishes his beer and stands. “You’ll only get one shot at it. Don’t blow it.”
“What’s this about?” I ask Joshua the next day as we meet bright and early at Commission Central for an emergency meeting.
“I don’t know. Must be an update on Vegas or Florida or maybe Cruz.”
“Thanks for meeting on such short notice,” Massimo says, opening the meeting when we are all seated around the table. It’s the first time the four new dons are here. The official announcement was made recently, and now all made men in the US are aware The Commission is a ten-man fully representative board.
“I have some intel to share, but first I’d like an update on the situation in Vegas.” Massimo hands the floor to Mantegna and Agessi.
“The territory is a mess,” Mantegna confirms, placing his palms on the table in front of him.
“Some things never change,” Ben says, smoothing a hand down his tie.
“There are legacy issues, no doubt.” Agessi sits upright in his chair. “Loyalty hasn’t always been forthcoming. Saverio was a lazy asshole who never recovered from his underboss’s betrayal. Catarina kept his house in order,” he adds, eyeballing Massimo. Massimo’s wife and Dario Agessi’s wife are best friends, and Dario was her consigliere until he took over running the operation in Philly.
“Maybe she should step in now,” Joshua says.
“No.” Massimo instantly dismisses the suggestion. “My wife is not getting dragged into Vegas’s shit again. We keep Cat out of this.”
“How loyal are the men to Cruz and Anais?” I ask, drumming my fingers on my knee.
“There is little love lost or loyalty for those two,” Mantegna replies, and it’s not really a surprise. “Some of the older men are loyal to Anais because of her father, but most intensely dislike her. Cruz hasn’t won many fans either. Those who were loyal to him were with him in A.C., and none of them have returned to the fold.”
“We wiped a lot of them out,” Cristian reminds everyone.
“He still got away with fifteen or twenty men,” Volpe says.
“And he has allies,” Joshua adds.
“Vegas needs to be on high alert. We can’t let it fall back into Cruz’s hands,” Massimo says. He eyeballs Mantegna and Agessi. “How do you suggest we best protect it?”
The two men exchange a knowing look. “Neither of us can afford to be away from our territories for an extended period of time. We propose to alternate shifts. One week at a time so one of us is always there to oversee a restructure,” Mantegna says.
“That seems like a workable solution,” Fiero says, tossing his tie on the table. “The rest of us can take it in turns coming down for a day or two to help out.”
“That would be good,” Agessi says. “Morale is low, and seeing we have the support and full backing of The Commission will go a long way toward repairing the damage.”
“We need to strengthen forces in the city and watch the airports and ports for any sign of Cruz. We need to devise a plan of attack that we can implement immediately should Cruz resurface in Nevada.” Massimo looks directly at me. “I’d like you to go to Vegas this week to work out a strategy with Dario and Dom.”
“I can’t go this week. We are still rebuilding things at the grassroots level, and I’m making inroads with our men.” Being on the ground every day, talking with the men and getting to know them, is already paying dividends. I’m confident in time we will have completely rebuilt loyalty, but we’re still on shaky ground. I can’t fuck off now without ruining all my progress. “If I take off for Vegas, it’ll send the wrong message.”
“I’ll go,” Fiero says, and Massimo nods.
“What about Florida?” Massimo eyeballs the older man with the salt-and-pepper hair and sharp gaze.
“There has been no sign of Cruz,” Volpe confirms. “He hasn’t shown up there.”
“And he hasn’t been in touch with Don D’Onofrio either,” Pagano adds. “We have bugged his home, his cars, his cell phone, and his computers. We have drones and cameras watching his every move. They aren’t in contact with one another.”
“What were they involved in?” Cristian asks. “We know from Anais that Cruz was making weekly trips to Florida.”
“He has a woman there,” Volpe supplies.
“Cruz has women everywhere. That isn’t the draw,” I interject. “There is another reason those two became friends, and we need to discover what it is.”
“Take shifts down there,” Massimo says, eyeballing Pagano and Volpe. “Use the excuse we expect Cruz to make an appearance and we’re concerned about the territory. It will explain the additional men I’m assigning to travel with you. I want our people all over this. Get them to befriend the Florida soldati . Someone knows something. If we can’t get it from D’Onofrio, we’ll get it from his men.”
Volpe and Pagano nod their agreement.
“We learned some valuable intel from one of the men in the bunker,” Massimo says, staring at Joshua and me. “He was one of the Barone we picked up in A.C. He says they were tasked with breaking into Joshua’s office to get to the files in the locked room.”
“Why?” J asks, his brow puckering. “What were they looking for?”
“He didn’t know exactly what it was just that Maximo wanted something in those files. Something that was clearly important.”
“What’s in the files?” Agessi swivels in his chair to look at us.
“They were our father’s files,” Joshua explains. “When we were clearing out the old apartment to sell it three years ago, we came across them buried under a mountain of crap up in the attic.”
“We went through them at the time,” I say. “Carefully reviewing everything because it seemed important he’d keep them at the house. They were mostly intelligence reports, details of business deals, and money in and out etcetera. Nothing stood out.”
“Yet you still kept them,” Pagano says.
“The one thing our father instilled in us was the need for insurance,” my twin says. “It seemed remiss to just toss the files. We didn’t know when they might come in handy, so I had a small storage room installed in the office and secured the files in there. Only Caleb and I have access via a retinal scanner. It has an alarm system, and we have cameras inside so if anyone breaches the room we’d know immediately.”
“We need to find what my father was looking for in those files.” Massimo’s gaze dances between us.
“I’ll go through them with a fine-tooth comb,” J says.
“I’ll help,” Ben adds. “I was around for part of your father’s time in charge, and something might stand out to me.”