Chapter 9 #2
Then there was Dario. The man was on payroll as a driver, but in their business, drivers were always expected to act as secondary security.
He’d been with Santino for half a decade and Santino had never had a reason to question him.
Still, objectively, five years wasn’t a lot considering the weight and scale of the problem.
“Dario,” Santino said, projecting his voice unnecessarily. There was no radio or conversation to compete with.
Dario’s head turned almost imperceptibly to the side, as if he were tilting his ear Santino’s direction. “Sir?”
“I’m going to ask you a question, and I need you to be straight with me, understand?”
“Absolutely.”
Santino kept his eyes on Dario’s profile, on the tension in Dario’s grip on the wheel and the muscles in his jaw, while he spoke in measured words.
“You were with us at the zoo today. You saw. You heard. And what I need to know is simple. If someone, anyone at all, approached you—maybe they didn’t call it a ‘flip’, maybe they called it something nicer, like a ‘transition’, because it’s still more or less staying in the family—how would you respond?
” He only waited a beat before softening the implication in his question.
“This is hypothetical, of course, so if there’s any scenario you can think of where you’d hear them out, now’s the time to tell me.
If I’m underpaying you, or you don’t like your hours, or you’re not progressing to your satisfaction—all that shit. ”
He phrased it suggestively on purpose. If Dario had disappointed him, he wanted the man to slip and come clean while he thought he had the opportunity.
More importantly, if Dario had heard anything he was afraid to speak up about, this was the perfect chance to mention it—a chance so good, he’d get himself hooked if were to be found later having withheld information.
And if Dario knew nothing, had nothing of relevance to share, then his response would be more honest. There was never harm in that.
Dario flexed his fingers over the wheel, flicked on the blinker, and eased them smoothly into the appropriate turn lane as he spoke.
His tone was somewhere between calm and tight, but didn’t reach a level that qualified as anger.
“Since you asked me to be straight with you, Boss … I’d shoot out the fucker’s knees on the spot.
Leave him alive at least long enough to call you, or Armando if you were unreachable, and get instructions.
I don’t have experience running interrogations, but I’d toss his bleeding ass into his own car and drive him somewhere decidedly uncomfortable for someone better qualified to do the job if that was the order. Or I’d toss him off a high-rise.”
Santino felt his eyebrows climb up his forehead as he bit down on a smile. “A high-rise?” They certainly weren’t lacking for those in the city, but it was an awfully public choice.
“So that the rest of the traitorous bastards could see what’s coming.”
The smile broke free and Santino turned his gaze to the opposite side, catching Armando’s eye through the SUV’s side mirror.
Armando gave a subtle dip of his chin. Armando liked Dario. Well, that was also something.
“Okay.” Santino tapped another app on his phone.
“I appreciate your honesty, Dario. And your loyalty.” His thumb hovered over the green button.
“I’m going to make a call, because unless one of you has suddenly become an expert investigator, we need to utilize more resources.
Don’t interrupt me unless it’s urgent. Don’t repeat a word of anything you hear or infer, ever. ”
They chorused their understanding and Santino tapped the button. This wasn’t how or when he’d wanted to call in the favor he was due. But circumstances were what they were.
The line rang twice before it connected and Dante De Salvo’s familiar baritone rumbled in his ear. “Santino, I wasn’t expecting to hear from you.”
Santino leaned back in his seat and hooked one leg over the other restlessly. “Hope I didn’t interrupt dinner,” he said. “I recognize it hasn’t been too long, but interesting things are developing and it seems I need to call in my favor.”
Something that sounded like a squeal cut through whatever Dante started to say in response.
Amusement eased the frustration in Santino’s chest. “Was that the little prince? He king of the household yet?”
A feminine murmur drifted through the line, fabric rustled, and finally Dante replied, “From the day he was born. Now that’s he’s started crawling, I’m convinced he’s going to terrorize the entire state when he hits puberty.”
Santino laughed. “Sounds about right.”
“I would have pegged that for your son, when you have one.”
“I’m working on that.” He let the words hang in the air, because of course that would be news. “And no, that is not what I need assistance with. But once we choose a date, I promise you’re invited to the wedding.”
Dante was quiet a moment. “Finally blackmailed some poor woman into marrying you?”
“I don’t know what you mean. Everyone loves me.” He bit back a sigh. “Except for whichever asshole is trying to build a mutiny in my own fucking house.”
“Mutinies are for pirates. Last time I checked, St. Louis was not a boat.”
Santino whistled. “Someone’s in a mood.”
“Take advantage of it. Tell me what you need, specifically.”
Santino took a breath and explained the situation with Nico, the Segreti name-drop, and his concerns with Danilo.
He added in the less likely but relevant angles of Danilo’s older sister, Adele, who basically slaved away as caretaker for her mother, and their missing younger sister, Noemi.
“So, you understand why I can’t make my own guys do this digging.
I couldn’t trust the information they’d bring back to me if I tried. ”
Dante’s voice had lost the rare, lightened edge when he spoke again.
The Dragon was back in full control. “You could not. I’ll have Mikey get a team on each member of the Segreti line and we’ll run you a full workup.
It might take a few days, but one of us will get the information to you as soon as it’s compiled.
In the meantime, keep your guard up, and be careful of who you trust.”
“Yeah,” Santino said, casting his gaze out the tinted window toward the building they were parked in front of. “That I planned on.”
“And you mentioned a new woman in your life?”
Santino straightened. “I did.”
“You’re sure she’s not connected?”
Anger sparked in his chest. It was objectively a rational question, but the accusation upset him anyway. “Yes, I’m fucking sure. She threw herself in front of Nico’s gun thinking she was saving me and nearly took a fucking bullet.”
Dante hummed. “Then make damn sure she’s protected, because whoever this is will see immediately that you’ve gained a new vulnerability. Especially if they are someone close to your inner circle.”
Santino released an aggravated exhale. “I’ve got guards on her.” But he knew that only meant so much.
Dante didn’t push. “Stay alive until we get in touch again.” He disconnected without waiting for a response.
Santino tossed his phone to the seat beside him and let his gaze slide back out the window.
He enjoyed stepping into the boxing ring and exchanging punches with whoever was willing to stand across from him.
It was great stress relief, as well as a good work-out.
But it was also predictable, and exposed.
Fighting Shape was a semi-legit athletics gym with a focus on boxing, kickboxing, and mixed martial arts.
There were open spaces and defined rules for members who chose to drop in, as well as classes with coaches and personal trainers for those willing to pay higher fees or with more complicated lives.
They were neither the most popular such gym in St. Louis nor among the worst, and Santino was fine with that.
The ambiguity of swimming in the middle made it easier to run money through the business.
Most of their members were family or people family had dragged along and convinced to sign up. That was great, except for this moment, when Santino was forced to accept that he didn’t know who in the family he could trust.
Stepping into a ring with whoever was around and giving them permission to swing at him was potentially suicide. And he wasn’t looking for that.
Santino grunted, irritated, and snapped, “Never mind. Take me home.” The punching bag in his basement would have to suffice.
Reiko sat motionless on her exercise bike, sweat already dampening her hairline despite the morning hour. It wasn’t a nightmare that had woken her with the sun that morning, and she ought to have been grateful for that. But, somehow, it was embarrassing to have had a sex dream about a man she knew.
A man who’d touched her in ways no other had.
Her fingers dropped, again, to the scar barely covered by her lightweight top.
Never in a million years would she have imagined anyone might react so …
intimately, so intensely, to her scar. It had been as if the sight of her wound had wounded him in turn.
She didn’t know if she would ever recover from the power of that reaction.
Her lips scrunched up into a frown and she lifted her shirt enough to reveal her belly to her gaze. He’d seen that, too, of course. Touched it, kissed it. But he hadn’t also seen the flab on her thighs. He hadn’t gotten the full effect.
Whereas she had seen enough to be certain. Santino Guerra was masculine perfection. It was hard to comprehend how he could be remotely interested in her.
She’d had hours to reflect on their long, strange, day together. And she had drawn a couple of conclusions.
First, she obviously should not have abandoned religion, because it was clear her soul needed saving.
She saw no other explanation for why she was neither running screaming to the nearest airport or at least attempting to contact the FBI.
The man had bluntly confessed to being a criminal, to not giving a damn that his security guy had dropped a body in public that happened to be the body of a guy who supposedly worked for him, and her emotional priority was his response to the story behind her scar.
She tried telling herself that was because literally the entire rest of the world, or at least every representative of it who’d had opportunity, had rejected and outright abused her.
There might even have been some truth in that.
But it didn’t matter, really. Santino was, by his own admission, not a good man.
Except when she thought about it that way, she immediately compared him to her father. And if either of those two males were an example of ‘not a good man’, it was her father.
So, if she had already reached a point where she struggled to give a damn about a world that consistently pushed her down and stomped again for good measure, then maybe not being put off by the idea of her self-declared fiancé being a societally defined criminal wasn’t so wild.
The second conclusion she eventually came to was that if Santino had meant every crazy thing he’d said the previous day, then she was going to re-think her job hunt.
She didn’t want to be a kept woman whose job was to maintain the home, but her current goal of throwing her application everywhere and seeing what stuck was also unappealing.
So, when the hour was a bit more decent, she figured she would reach out and ask him when they could talk again.
She had enough savings to skate by for a short while on her own, but she preferred having a plan and expectations.
A conversation was best if it was an option.
Then she would pull down her applications and allow herself to really think about the kind of career she wanted.
And before all of that, she needed to wash up.
Reiko gave herself a shake, powered down the bike she needed to remember to ask about keeping when Santino moved her into his mansion—another brain-melting concept—and made her way for the shower.
Her phone buzzed with a new text as she stepped into the bathroom and for a delirious moment, she expected to look down and see Santino’s name attached to the message.
Instead, in a concerning twist of déjà vu, she saw an unknown number looking back at her. Still, curiosity nagged, so while the water warmed, she pulled the text open to see who it might be. Maybe it was a response to an application.
This is your father. Make yourself presentable. Now that you’ve lost that ridiculous job, it’s time we talked about your future. My car will be there to pick you up in two hours.