Chapter Twenty-Two
Enzo Rissi
The first shot had landed in the skull of one of my father’s guards.
When we all ducked for cover, the second shot shattered the wine cooler in my kitchen.
We were sufficiently pinned down. Uncle Giovanni and I took cover behind the kitchen’s center island, and the rest of the family and friends found other parts of the house that provided sufficient cover.
A firefight in my fucking home .
During a party that had been arranged, as Uncle Giovanni told me, by Aria herself.
I glanced at the body of my cousin lying beside the front door. I tightened the grip on my pistol, resolving to kill every one of these mother fuckers who dared to infringe on my home. On my family.
I had never seen Uncle Giovanni look so cold and remorseless. He had secured his position because of the brutality he had shown years ago, but he had become a different man since then. A much more forgiving one.
Aria had seemed to remind him of who he was.
“If Alonzo knows what he’s doing, he sent these men to take us all out. There’s a target on our heads, and they have us pinned. They have the advantage,” I said. “I have something like an armory in the back of my closet—enough weapons to arm all of us and give us a fighting chance. If I can get to it, we might have a shot.”
“Aria did this,” Uncle Giovanni said, shaking his head. “I have always been good at reading people, and I thought I saw her intentions. I thought she was a scorned daughter who wanted to find a place elsewhere.”
“I thought I had a good read on her too,” I told him.
He cocked his gun with a click. “Is everyone else all right?” he shouted to the room. When everyone said yes, he took a deep breath. “Is anyone near the bedroom?”
“I am,” Bartolo shouted.
“In the back of the closet, there’s a hatch with weapons,” I shouted across the room. “556027 is the code.”
“Got it,” he said. I heard two steps before a shot resounded through the room. The sickening sound of a body slamming into the floor brought a different kind of silence.
Bartolo’s twin, Matthew, shouted in what could only be described as genuine agony, and I ground my teeth, knowing exactly what had happened. We were pinned, and there was a sniper nearby. One who was tasked with taking as many of us down as possible.
“Fuck,” I cursed.
I wasn’t going to send anyone else to their death, so I tucked my gun away and got on my stomach to peek around the countertop. The shattered window combined with where Bartolo had fallen told me that the sniper had a view of the hallway leading into my room. But he wouldn’t be able to see this side of the room.
I hoped there was not a second sniper as I army-crawled around the countertop and pushed both feet beneath me. In a burst of motion, I sprung into the hallway and past the viewpoint of the sniper. A shot exploded, but it didn’t make contact.
“Are you good?” Uncle Giovanni shouted.
“Yes.”
I stormed into my closet, opened the built-in hatch, and stripped my miniature armory bare. I grabbed a few smoke grenades and all the weapons I could carry. On my way out of the room, I caught a whiff of a familiar scent that had me turning my head and examining the room. The bed. The place where I had taken Aria and made her cry out my name.
Fuck .
I didn’t allow myself to dwell on the rage that filled my chest as I left my bedroom and stopped at the end of the hallway. I slid weapons across the hardwood floor and into the hands of my family and the guards who were here to protect us. I knew from the lack of commotion outside that those men who had been stationed at the entrances had likely been taken out too.
All because I trusted a woman who should have never been let into my life.
I held up the smoke bomb before pulling the pin and tossing it toward the glass door.
“Everyone move,” I said the second the smoker grew thick enough to conceal our locations.
But it didn’t last.
The front door slammed open, and three men with assault rifles stormed inside, firing in every direction. By some will of God or greater power, the bullets all flew wide as I fired three shots back from a crouch. One into the chest of each man.
“Take cover,” I shouted as I threw another smoke bomb toward the entrance of the house. Two more men came inside, and I fired on them. From the sliding glass door at the side of the room, more men rushed inside, and I watched Uncle Giovanni take them out without second thought.
This was coordinated. This was meant to be an execution, not a battle.
From the radios at the shoulders of the fallen men, a firm voice spoke out. “Retreat at Boss’s command.”
I narrowed my eyes as I rushed to the front door of my home and glanced outside, past the thick fog of smoke.
In the open, it was a risk to fire my weapon, especially in a neighborhood as safe as mine. The gunshot had certainly drawn attention, but as I focused on four retreating figures, I put caution to the wind and fired.
Two men went down, shouting in pain. The others continued, leaving their friends in the dust. I didn’t care. These two would do. They would give me the information I needed, and then I would kill them for what they had done today.
I would savor it.
* * * *
I wasn’t the only one who had captured someone for questioning.
Uncle Giovanni and I stood side-by-side as we looked at the three men strung from the rafters in the maintenance shed.
They had been hanging here for an hour while I sent away the police my nosy neighbors had called when gunshots began firing. It took a few lies and exaggerated claims about a stalker to get them to go away and leave us to our devices. The media attention that had come to investigate were given the same story.
Usually, questioning would occur in our family mob home, but today was different.
This was personal, and I wasn’t waiting.
I stared at the sniper who had killed two of my men. A cousin and a guard—two men who had long been loyal and important to our family. He would suffer for it. Uncle Giovanni finding and bringing him down here showed his agreement.
“We could do this the easy way,” I said, pacing in front of all of them. Two of the men dangled their heads from the exhaustion of their injuries, but they wouldn’t be subdued for long. I ran my finger over the blood-covered tools on a table at my side. “Or we could do this the fun way.”
This was my element.
This was where I belonged, and Uncle Giovanni standing back and allowing me to work told me all I needed to know about the limits he had placed on me.
There were none.
This was how I got my reputation.
“We’re not talking to you.”
“Men do many interesting things to preserve their lives,” I mused. “Two of you are going to be killed quickly and painlessly. One of you will be kept alive for a long while to bear the consequences of what happened today. I know which of you I would prefer to keep alive, but it all depends on who gives me the best information.”
I pulled a circular saw off the table and powered it up. “Eeny, meeny.” I started, pointing to each of them. “Miney…”
I swept the saw across one of the foot soldiers, and the saw sputtered as it went through the man’s flesh and bone. It cut off before I could complete the cut, but his screaming didn’t stop. It rang in my ears, and I smiled wickedly.
“Who has the best information?”
The sniper’s eyes went wide, and he shook his head rapidly. “Alonzo had his daughter here as a spy,” he shouted, eyes veering between me and the saw. I flicked it on for just a moment before allowing it to die. “She orchestrated this. It was supposed to be a take-down. We were supposed to kill both of you.”
I didn’t allow myself to feel the words.
“And?”
“And… and…” He hesitated, looking between both of the other men strung up. “He plans to be capo dei capi. He wants the power of having full control of all of New York.”
“Why didn’t he do it, then?”
There had to be a good reason. There was always a good reason.
“He was afraid it was a setup,” the man shouted frantically, as if giving me information was the most terrifying thing he had ever done. It probably was. “In the past few weeks, he said he was losing his hold of the girl. She was supposed to take out Giovanni, but she refused.”
“How the fuck do you know all of this?”
“I was never supposed to be called in,” he said. “I was on a job in Chicago until a few days ago. He called me in because I’m the best. He was pissed to call off my job. He told me about his brat of a daughter who refused to do as she was told. He… he told me that she switched sides.”
“Aria never switched sides,” I shouted, powering up the saw and taking one step forward.
“She did!” His frantic words overshadowed the rumble of the saw. “He had to ship off his other daughter to be sold in a black-market sale. She didn’t want to hurt any of you, so Alonzo used her sister as leverage to have her organize the party.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you pull the trigger?” I shouted.
“She came back. She returned and gave him something he wanted in exchange for your lives.”
My stomach churned. “What did he want?”
“I… I don’t know. I know she went back to him. I don’t know what she traded.”
Every part of my body stilled. She could have escaped this entire situation, yet she decided to return to that monster, and I couldn’t unpack it all. She was forced into this marriage, and I didn’t doubt she had been ordered to wreak havoc on our lives.
Was he telling the truth?
Did she return to her father for me?
And if so… what did he want from her? She knew about his plans, and she could have ruined his entire grab for power. He couldn’t afford to let her go. He wouldn’t let her spill his secrets.
“Aria planned to kill us, but she turned her back on Alonzo and didn’t follow through, I repeated. “What did she offer him?”
“I… I don’t know. I swear!”
She had betrayed us. There was no question about that. But was it possible that she had been trying to make it right? Aria had told me on our last night together that she had things she needed to tell me the next morning, and I couldn’t help but wonder if she had planned to tell me the truth.
She came into this marriage to betray me.
But when it became more than an arranged marriage, I had seen the love in her eyes. I knew she cared about me.
I didn’t know how far those feelings went—how much influence they had.
I looked over my shoulder at Uncle Giovanni. His eyes darted between the men hanging from the rafters. I had been content letting her go after what she had done to us—after the deaths she had caused.
But I had plenty more information to learn before I had to make a decision.
I restarted the saw with a menacing grin.