Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
C hainsaw…
Axe and I rode for Marchesi’s and parked down the block. It was a restaurant with a bar that tended to stay open late, but our beef wasn’t with any of the servers or back of house. Just management.
I smoked more than usual when we were on this kind of a mission, and this was no exception.
I smoked and ground out the butts against the bottom of my boot, but I wasn’t stupid.
I policed my butts and put them in the pocket of my jacket, beneath my cut, until I could dispose of them properly in a trash can well away from any potential crime scene.
The hours wore on until the wee hours, and Axe and I remained. As soon as we saw the last young waitress released from her duties, we made our move, walking our way to the front door and testing it with a gloved hand.
Unlocked, lucky us. We pulled bandannas up around our noses and mouths. Our cuts were stowed carefully in our locked saddlebags away from any blood splatter or trouble.
We slipped into the closed establishment, Giancarlo Marchesi counting the till at the front of the joint, calling out, “Yo, we’re sorry. We’re closed.”
“Not for us, you aren’t, you fucking traitor.” I grabbed him by his lapels and dragged him bodily over the counter surrounding the place’s register and front safe.
Once I had him over and fetched up against it, I had my weapon out and pointed, covering the back while Axe did his thing.
I was covering us, but Axe? He was the true artist when it came to pain, and when he wasn’t fingerpainting with a man’s blood?
He used broad strokes to paint them up one side and down the other in their own fear and despair.
“You got one chance to make this right, Marchesi,” Axe breathed into the man’s ear, a straight razor held to the side of his neck.
“What’s it gonna be?” I demanded.
One of his goons was coming up the hallway, but I got the drop on him, and he raised his hands and his gun to the sky.
“Get in here and have a fuckin’ seat with your boss. Tell whoever’s back there to stay back there. We hear one siren, we take you all out and start on the rest of your worthless fuckin’ bloodline tomorrow.”
There was no need to pull back and cock the hammer on my gun, but it did serve to get the fuckin’ point across that I was dead-ass fuckin’ serious to bro-chacho in the hall.
He called back my instructions behind him into the kitchen as he walked up the hallway.
“It’s all good, Francesco,” Giancarlo said, but he damn sure didn’t sound sure or like anything was alright. So, for as dumb as he’d fuckin’ been, he damn sure knew he’d fucked up this time.
“When did Ruth come around, and what did he offer you?” Axe asked.
“Who?” Giancarlo tried playing dumb and got one-half of a Glasgow smile for his trouble, Axe slicing him from the corner of his mouth almost all the way back to his fuckin’ ear.
Giancarlo started screaming and tried to staunch the flow of blood. I fired one shot into Francesco’s dome, painting the other half of Giancarlo’s face red.
“Try again,” I demanded.
“I got this,” Axe declared. “Go get another one.”
I marched down the hall and turned into the kitchen. A guy tried to raise his gun, and I said one word, “Don’t.”
I heard Axe’s voice indistinct with distance out front, but with the lilt and curl of a question mark at the end.
“Okay! Okay! Just don’t!” Giancarlo cried.
I waved my gun and told the people in the kitchen, “Out this way, one at a time. Leave your phones on the counter there.”
The dude with the gun, I told him, “Drop it in the sink there.” He looked into the sink filled with dirty water, and then back at me.
“Now!” I barked, and the woman crouched by the counter nearby yelped and put her hands higher, terrified.
I couldn’t bring myself to fucking care, picturing our girls’ terrified posture on the screen of Hex’s phone in our clubhouse barely twenty-four hours and some change ago.
The woman went first, then another guy in a cook’s stained outfit, and then the suit with the gun, only this time without his weapon because it was at the bottom of that mess of a sink.
Giancarlo must’ve given the wrong answer to Axe again, because he was out there screaming and hollering. Then the woman screamed hysterically, and the cook tried to hold her back. She got loose and went for Giancarlo, who was screaming at her, the ruin of his face flapping and pouring blood.
“Alessia!” He took the girl into his arms, and Axe asked, “Wife, sister, or both?”
I tried not to snort a laugh as Giancarlo tried to snarl and look intimidating. I shot the other suit in the head.
Alessia started screaming and screaming, the cook dropping to his knees and pissing himself as Axe laughed maniacally.
“We’re almost there.” He grabbed Giancarlo by the front of his hair and slammed his head back against the front of the counter, putting the razor to his throat.
“Where, the fuck are they?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” I cocked my gun and dragged the woman by the hair off him as he screamed, “No! No! No! Alessia!”
“Last chance,” Axe declared and looked to me. I started to squeeze the trigger, and Giancarlo broke.
“Look! Ruth came in, played on a bunch of favors we owed him, and paid us a gang of money just to ask y’all to go out on a wild goose chase and act as muscle up in Baton Rouge! I didn’t wanna do it, but my father made the final decision and you know how family is!”
I threw the woman into his reaching hands and blew the cook’s head off, because they sure as fuck had inconvenienced us, and payback was a bitch.
“You go on an’ tell Daddy that we want a word, and every time you look in the fucking mirror, you remember that we were not the fuckin’ ones!” I shouted.
Axe looked up at me and then back down. “Wife. Sister. Or both ?” he demanded.
“My wife! She’s my wife!” he screamed even as Alessia screamed and wailed and clung to Giancarlo pathetically.
Axe looked up to me and raised an eyebrow as if to say it was your girl in the line of fire – your call.
I gave a barely imperceptible shake of my head, and Axe stood up.
“Deliver our message to your pops, don’t even think about trying to narc us out, and wifey gets to live,” he said. Giancarlo nodded and nodded fast.
“You got it, you got it!” he said.
“We’ll be in touch,” I said. “You got time to clean this shit up and to go back to business as usual, but you owe us restitution, and you’re gonna fuckin’ pay it until we say you’re done fucking paying. You got that?”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
Axe and I stepped over the bodies and walked out. He slashed the tires of all the cars left in the front parking lot, and we loped across and down the street, mounting up and riding off.
The Marchesis were an old family. We’d done enough damage.
Three dead to our one didn’t seem fair, and you’d be right.
Honestly, we should take out more, but we were trying to color just inside the lines.
We didn’t need to trade the Bayou Brethren for another set of enemies.
We’d taken out low-level henchmen and a cook.
Giancarlo was disfigured, but apparently needed the daily reminder on who not to fuck with – and Alessia?
If she was smart, she would make out in the divorce and take her and whatever kids to Tuscany, find some other hot Italian motherfucker, and have great sex to the backdrop of some expensive-ass vineyard.
Who was I fuckin’ kidding? She’d stay with him. He’d inherit from his daddy dearest once we were done with him, and he’d learn to stay in his fuckin’ lane or he’d be next.
We pulled over and called LaCroix, gave him our brief coded rundown on how things had gone, and tagged Saint and Bennie in on the Marchesi patriarch. They’d get it done, but our duty, at least for tonight, was fulfilled.
Axe handed me the burner at my gesture, and I got on.
“My lady still with you?” I asked.
“No. Hex took her home a while ago.”
“Ah, was gonna say, tell her that I love her and I’m headed out to the Bayou house for tonight.”
LaCroix grunted non-committedly and ended the call.
Axe and I headed off to clean up and dispose of whatever evidence we were wearing.