Chapter 24
Ringo
When I’d returned to CCI, Ellie was gone. I’d cornered Kat who hadn’t a clue as to when she’d left. She quickly called the bar to find out Ellie had been a no-show. As the shit storm Kat fanned grew, Alfonzo Conti-Messina approached.
I practically took him out.
Edward had to tear me off him.
“This is your fault.” I spat out.
“How? I’ve been here the entire time. Unlike you.” Alfonzo fired back.
“Gentlemen, please.” Edward squeezed my shoulder, which was a mistake. It made the skinning I caught ooze blood that trickled down my sleeve and onto the floor.
A woman screamed. Edward’s bodyguards closed in, and we were whisked into a conference room. Kat left to obtain a first aid kit.
Quickly, I outlined what happened.
“He gave you the slip?” Edward asked.
That wasn’t helping.
“That isn’t the only thing that’s slipping,” Alfonzo commented.
“Maybe if you took care your house, I wouldn’t have to clean it up!” I came off my chair ready to pound his face in. Vincent’s aspirations might have been warranted.
“That’s not how we do it here. This isn’t some heathen backwater like Sardinia.”
He really wanted to die, didn’t he?
Edward squeezed my wounded arm again. I almost hit him. “Knock it off.”
“Think, I hope you’re capable of that, or was it only Mario who propped you up?”
“Fuck you.”
Kat knocked on the door and entered with the kit.
I stewed as she managed to clean off both wounds and kept her mouth shut.
It was Edward who ordered, “Leave us and stay away from the door.”
As she slipped out, she sent me a worried look. “I’ll find Ellie.” I promised her that much.
No sooner than the door snicked shut, Alfonzo asked, “What is her location worth to me?”
I cracked my neck with a twist, preparing to fight both Edward and my cousin to the death.
“By that movement, at least three hundred million.”
“You think you’re funny?” Edward wasn’t a comedian by a long shot.
“I know a man who is at his breaking point. It’s my specialty. How many men do I need to send to that building?”
Shit. I lost count. “At least ten, if not a dozen.”
Alfonzo paled. “You killed all of them?”
“Yeah. You’re welcome. You are officially the only Conti left standing in the city… Except me.”
His jaw worked. “She got a call from her sister. Something about checking on a house.”
Allie’s house, I knew where it was. “I’ve got to go.”
Edward stepped between me and the door. “You are going nowhere until I know what’s going on.”
I put it as succinctly as I could. “He’s going to run Chicago. I’m going to pick up my girl.” Then I had to go to Sardinia and explain how I missed killing Johnny Porciello, but managed to wipe out an entire faction of the Conti’s business in under two weeks. That should be fun, not.
Alfonzo smiled as I slipped away.
When I got to Allie’s, I spotted the agent’s car. That made me extra cautious. I slipped in through the back to avoid the sticky front door. I heard Ellie’s voice. I waited to listen to the conversation, and heard enough to bury me. Porciello was here. I had him in my grasp again.
If I could kill him, I wouldn’t have to return home in total shame. I’d have accomplished at least one of Don Manca’s goals. I might be forgiven for the rest.
But I also heard the agent’s voice. Perkins sounded like she had control over the situation. I couldn’t let her keep that, because sending Porciello to the cops would cement the downfall of the Left Hand’s reputation.
I had to channel the ruthless nature of my biological father. I cursed my luck. Just when I had a good life in my grasp, it was snatched away. If I killed the agent, there wouldn’t be a corner I could hide in. If I didn’t, someone would want me dead for leaving loose ends dangling.
Or, if I let her kill him, which she wasn’t going to do, I’d be a laughing stock. The guy who was nothing without his handler.
I stepped in and took Bridget’s gun.
“Ringo.” Ellie breathed.
There was a knife in her leg. “Who did that?”
Forget asking, I knew who it was.
Johnny Porciello was waiting for his chance. He was actively gauging whether he could jump the gauntlet of women tied to the chairs, and beat me to the trigger.
I lifted an eyebrow to let him know he was shit out of luck.
“Ringo? I need to probably go to the hospital?”
Yeah, she did. “How are you still conscious?”
Ellie shrugged. “I guess when it’s my own it doesn’t matter.”
“Like Hell it doesn’t.” I lined up Johnny in my sights.
“Dude, I don’t know who you are but—”
Ellie cut him off. “Shut up Pornstach. Nobody said you could talk.”
“Babe…”
“Bridget, are you okay?”
Trust Ellie to worry about someone else rather than herself.
“I’m okay, I’d be better if I could undo this damn knot.
” She was working furiously on the jumble of electric wires wrapped around her legs.
She’d been through a bit. Johnny roughed her up good.
The blood on her shirt had dried to a dull reddish brown.
Head wounds bled a lot. Luckily, that looked like her only problem, save the chair hobbling her legs.
I couldn’t let her get free.
“Ellie, look away.” I didn’t want this haunting her like Venice did. I wouldn’t be there tonight to keep the nightmares at bay.
“Ringo, don’t. You don’t have to.”
Yes, I did. “I’m sorry. Look away.”
“Dude, please? Don’t pull that tr—”
His words cut short. I sent a second shot through his skull.
Then checked to see if Ellie had listened.
Her eyes were wide. Her face was almost white. “Why?”
I couldn’t tell her that.
She collapsed in her chair, dead out.
I turned to the agent.
I should kill her. “Take care of her.” Having a federal law enforcement officer handling the questions at the hospital would speed things up.
“But…”
“No buts. If you don’t get her to a hospital in the next twenty minutes, I will hunt you down. And you know I can do it. Good luck, Agent Perkins.”
I slipped out, wiping and dropping the gun in a muddy puddle just outside the back door. If the agent searched my exit, she’d see it. I got in my car and didn’t look back.
The airport was a half hour away. I dialed Edward. “I need your plane. It will be in Sardinia. Make the arrangements and bill the Left Hand.”
“Did you get your girl?”
I debated how to answer that. “She’s safe. That’s what matters. If you want our continued service, make sure she stays that way. There’s a federal agent with her.”
Edward made a strangled noise. “Godspeed my friend.”
I’d need it.
As the sky turned black over the Atlantic, I stared at my reflection in the window. “I had it all.”
Was it Loppa or was it Don Manca who told me that eventually I’d have regrets? I didn’t believe them. A month ago, I thought I would when I accepted the bounty for Mario’s head.
Maybe that was a premonition?
But it hadn’t worked like I thought it would. Instead of burying my best friend, I’d lost something more precious.
I winced as the breadth of my purgatory unfolded. I’d lost Ellie. She’d tell her sister, who would ban Mario from ever talking to me. And even if he did talk to me, that would put a wedge between him and his new wife. And I couldn’t do that to him.
By the time I landed, I knew what I needed to do. I approached the citadel where Don Manca reigned. He was up early, feeding chickens.
His guards took my weapons. I wouldn’t need them back. My fate was sealed. “Don Manca.” I knelt in the muddy grass.
He tossed a couple of handfuls of grain toward the flock, scattering it as they fought each other for the kernels. “I hear the pig boy with the ugly mustache is dead.”
“Sì.”
He shook the bucket and dug out a few more handfuls. “And I hear that there is one beaten Conti struggling for scraps.”
Did he mean me or Alfonzo? I kept my head down just in case he meant me.
A moment later his gnarled fingers dug into my hair. “You failed, yet succeeded.” He shook my head.
“Sì.”
He sighed and let me go. “Get up.”
I brushed my knees off and walked beside him. He handed me a rake as we reached the sheep pen. I got to work, mucking out the night’s excrement and laying down clean bedding. He worked beside me, putting fresh grass and water in their feeder.
A spicy ram got a little too close with an attitude ready to pick a fight. I caught it by the horns and tugged it away from Don Manca.
He noted my protection and spoke. “An agent from the FBI took Ellie to the hospital.”
The question on my lips took a moment to form. “Is she okay?”
He sent me a glare from the corner of his eye. “No thanks to you.”
I hung my head in shame. “I figure your son needs a shepherd for a few years.” His oldest son eschewed modern life and the family trade, making a simple life high in the mountains.
He made cheese. The goats ran wild, or near wild on the rocky slopes all summer long.
Living rough in the hills would be better than getting cast out.
But it was as close as I cared to be to being removed from the family.
I hoped Don Manca thought me useful enough for the job. Otherwise, I’d be alone.
He nodded absently. “The newest generation is too young or still preparing to be born, and the current generation is itching to leave the nest. Firenze will take your place.”
He deserved his chance. “Mario’s going to keep working on his knife skills, I hope?”
Don Manca laughed humorlessly. “You care?”
It wasn’t my place. I remained silent.
“Goats? That’s your choice?”
“When I first came here, I thought they were punishment.”
He smiled. “They were. You and my grandson were wild boys. I needed something to tame you.”
“It didn’t work.”
He slapped at the dirt on his pants. His chuckle died. “No. It took women to do that.”
My heart ached.
“Truth,” I said.
I felt his eyes on me. “I never thought I’d see this day.”
“I’m sorry, Don Manca.”
He nodded once to accept the apology. The skin around his eyes wrinkled as he tried to look through me.
“You were the best of us. There won’t be another like you for at least a generation, maybe more.
I want you to know that you were never the bastard son of Gesualdo Conti.
You were always one of ours. The gods willed it so. Never forget that.”
My heart was too wounded to sing, but his words helped. “Anything you need. Anywhere you need it, I’ll be there. I am not retiring.”
He smiled. “I know.”
Thank goodness. I don’t know what I’d do without a purpose. Even if it was the worst possible one in the world, I needed death. I needed this family, the work, the blood…the finality. Otherwise, I’d go insane.
“Go. Hide. I know where to find you.”
I bowed my head and wished him well. “Happy hunting, grandfather.”
He touched my sleeve. “Keeps the wolves at bay, my son.”
The tears in my eyes were shoved deep. I’d have plenty of time to cry once I reached the summer peaks where the goats grazed freely.