Chapter 17 – Peter
Chapter Seventeen
Peter
Aricia’s pissed off, and there’s nothing I can do about it because I’m hours away in Pennsylvania seeking vengeance on the bastard who hurt her in the first place and put us in this uncomfortable position.
I suspect there’s much more than the pregnancy test bothering her judging by her voice but…
she hung up on me. I’ll have to have a serious discussion with my alpha female when I get back to Buffalo.
That crap might work on other guys, but it drives me crazy when she hangs up on me and I can’t tolerate for a second not working out and fixing whatever the fuck she needs me to fix.
“Are you done getting chewed out?” Michael says gruffly, as if I haven’t put up with his bullshit relationship issues over the years.
“Yes.”
We didn’t bother sharing with Lorena that her boyfriend isn’t just about to die tonight, but he’s also a two-timing loser.
The same man who entered the forced marriage with Angela is the same person she has been dating.
That was ultimately the connection between Buffalo and Pittsburgh – a cheater who had Lorena wrapped around his finger.
For the time being, the annoying woman and her desire for revenge might help us out.
Part of what consumed our day was confirming our lead with Flora, who assured us that Felice Gravina, Lorena’s boyfriend, is the same man who forcibly married Angela Taviani as part of some incomprehensible power play from the members of the Pittsburgh mob, who still appear to be working out the power gap from Carmine Corsini’s death.
Luigi allowed the marriages to persist, but he has no control over Felice’s cheating, especially since as far as I know, Angela hasn’t spoken to him. She hasn’t forgiven any of us for allowing her to get captured by the Pittsburgh mob despite Luigi’s provisions for her survival.
“We gotta break in there and grab Felice,” Michael says. “Luigi finally got her to pick up the phone. Angela claims she hasn’t heard from her husband, but we can’t tell if there were people listening in on the call and goading her to say that.”
“So it could be a trap.”
“Exactly.”
“Fun.”
“We’ll be out of there once we find out what this weird fuck stands to gain by drugging you or Aricia.”
“She’s not the target here.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Michael says with sudden severity that reminds me of how his life has changed over the past couple of years.
He’s not just a father now, but he took on a new role within our family organization that exposes him to a new side of our life and a new moral code to weigh his choices against.
“We’ll find out.”
Luckily for us, Felice picked a pretty isolated place, so we don’t worry about anybody spotting us breaking into the lower level of the split-level ranch out in Erie.
Once we open the door, I know something fucked happened in here.
The stench hits me and I retch violently, stumbling backwards and pulling Michael with me in an effort to save my brother from the wave of death emanating out of the house.
A dead cat would have smelled bad enough to turn my stomach, but there’s something much bigger than a cat in there.
We both throw up on the front lawn with no shame in it.
The body responds against your will to the scent of rot, but with experience you can force your body to recover quickly.
We cover our faces with bandanas, ignore our searing eyes and walk straight into the house…
It’s a fucking mess, but the mess isn’t as big of a problem as the body. Shit. Naturally, we’re the ones who stumble upon a mess like this. It doesn’t take us long to follow the stench and loud buzzing from the flies to then discover the body.
He’s facedown in bed, which could be a murder or a suicide, so there’s nothing definitive there.
Michael and I independently scan the room for further details.
This suddenly makes me worry about Aricia more than before.
I can’t say this man was killed to buy his silence, but I can’t say for sure that he wasn’t.
The entire situation is beyond disconcerting.
Blood soaks out of the mattress from the bloated corpse, and there’s no immediate signs of what might have caused his death – no gun.
On the man’s desk, there’s a laptop. A pretty standard HP computer.
Michael gestures towards it with his chin and we both walk over.
Michael opens it up, but there’s a passcode.
“Lorena might know.”
Lorena didn’t know her boyfriend had a wife back in Pittsburgh, so I have my doubts she’ll know the password, but right now she’s the only chance we have at answers.
“Who’s gonna tell her?”
Michael gives me a look like it’s obvious. He expects me to tell her that her boyfriend probably died about three days ago judging by the level of decomposition happening here.
We remove all the evidence we can that we entered the house and leave with just the laptop and a wallet that Michael takes off the kitchen counter.
There’s a Pennsylvania driver’s license in there which matches the identity of the man we thought we were tracking – Felice.
No answers yet, just a laptop and a suspicion that whoever drugged me and Aricia would kill to keep this a secret.
We have Lorena stashed near Pittsburgh with Aunt Viviana – another reason this took so long.
The little pipsqueak thinks we were really going to take her along with us.
Aunt Viviana said she would make a good maid, which didn’t exactly get their relationship off to a strong start but…
I’m hoping they have it worked out by the time we get back.
I won’t be available to hold Lorena’s hand through the loss of her boyfriend.
Michael and I drive the laptop back to our aunt’s place. She’s outside, smoking a cigarette while Lorena sits on the porch, handrolling a cigarette for our aunt. I don’t relish having to tell Lorena what happened to her boyfriend, but I can tell that Michael expects the burden to be mine…
“Did you find him?” Lorena asks.
Michael gives me an angry look as if my moment of hesitation represents some massive failure to handle the situation cautiously.
Strangely, I think about Aricia as I try to find the right things to say, and thinking of her causes me to treat this little troublemaker with a little more gentleness than what comes naturally to me.
“Your boyfriend is dead.”
Michael makes a soft grunting noise as if I did something wrong. Lorena’s face contorts and her dark eyes grow even wider. Fuck. I can tell she’s about to cry, but I’m not in a good position to escape her tears…
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
Her face worsens. Her medium-brown cheeks turn a purplish red color and tears form a giant pool in her seemingly thick eyelids.
Oh God, she’s going to cry loudly, most likely, and I’ll be the one stuck here comforting her.
Michael remains stoic, keeping me in the dark over whatever mental calculations he might be making right now.
Lorena lets out a loud sob and wraps her arms around me.
It’s weird and overemotional considering we hardly know each other, so I make my best efforts to pry her off of me.
She squeezes me tightly, with an innocent yet desperate effort to find some human emotional connection as she accepts this loss.
I don’t want to tell her that he was married… unless it helps us get into the laptop.
“What happened?” she sniffles after a few minutes of unceasing tears. “Where is he? Can I see him?”
Michael responds quickly as if I’m at risk of taking us off course.
“You can’t see him.”
“What happened?” Lorena asks, pulling away from me so she can search my face for answers that she’ll never find unless I want to give them to her.
“What do you know about Felice’s connection to Pittsburgh?
” I ask her, keeping all the information I have locked behind an unreadable calm facial expression.
Lorena sniffles and wipes her tears away on her sleeve, trying to gain some control over herself so she can process the shock and what to expect next.
“Was he killed?”
Lorena isn’t stupid – whether that serves my greater interests or not.
She might have a ridiculous nose ring and even more ridiculous hair but I don’t think she’s a fool.
Getting tricked by a man several years older than her just makes her young and inexperienced.
Hopefully, she learns from this one day.
“Yes,” Michael says. “And if you don’t help us, you could be killed too.”
Lorena looks to me for confirmation. I nod, because it’s most likely the truth.
“We need his password to get into this laptop. It’s our only chance of finding more evidence of who could have hurt him.”
More importantly, who could have put this pipsqueak up to drugging me and Aricia. I ought to punish her more for that, but she currently seems truly pathetic.
“I don’t know it.”
“You know him better than we do,” Michael says. “Check out the hint and open it up. Sit.”
Lorena gives him a dirty look, but she obeys. I take the moment to play the good cop and get her a glass of water.
My aunt Viviana says good night to us and heads to bed without asking too many questions or seemingly thinking about anything other than finishing her cigarette. We say good night to her and I watch her disappear, pleased that this hasn’t escalated to any kind of family drama.
It’s good. She’s been helpful to us so far, but most of the women in my family are temperamental at best, downright cruel at worst. I’m glad we don’t have to navigate her moods tonight and I’m glad we don’t have to share more of our secrets with her. The fewer people you have to trust, the better.
Michael sets the laptop in front of Lorena, who opens it slowly, sniffling and allowing tears to pour down her cheeks as she slowly faces the terrifying reality of her boyfriend’s death.
I don’t understand how sad she feels or what that grief might look like, but the man probably wasn’t worth the tears.
I feel a strange pity for her. Lorena navigates over the login screen, hovering the cursor over the password hint. The sentence is completely incomprehensible to me.
“You seriously don’t get it?” she asks.
“Get what?” Michael asks, barely containing a growl. At this hour, he probably wants to be curled up in bed with his baby sleeping on his chest.
“The only thing Christopher ever published,” she says. “From the Sopranos?”
“I don’t watch television,” Michael responds impatiently. “Type the password in if you know it.”
Let’s hope this password also provides us with a motive.
Otherwise, we just went through all of this and exposed ourselves for nothing.
I want to go back to Aricia with real answers, not just an unexplained disappearance.
The need to prove to her that I can take care of things and give her a normal life is… extreme.
I have no lofty position in the mob, making it particularly unfair that my life should be marked by my family ties.
It’s not about an absence of loyalty, but I want a life that exists for more than just pleasing my family and carrying out their will.
Some part of me wants to have a legacy that can be carried on.
I would be foolish not to see Aricia’s value and how she could improve my life…
I’ll just have to convince her to see my value and that means plunging the depths of this dark mystery that brought us together until I’m in firm control of ensuring Aricia will never be in harm's way again.
“It’s Cleaver,” Lorena says, typing the password in once incorrectly and then adjusting the capital letters until she gets it right.
The laptop screen flashes to a mostly empty desktop with two folders located in the bottom right corner of the screen with a single color navy blue background.
“What do you see here?”
She clicks his email and the screen populates with a screen showing several emails. Lorena opens a new tab. She doesn’t give a fuck about his email.
“Hey!”
“Wait,” she says. “Felice told me he didn’t use Facebook, but there’s a Facebook page in his bookmarks.”
Michael and I exchange glances as if to say, “Who gives a fuck, he’s dead?”
But Lorena is both grieving in her own way and helping us.
Perhaps it’s for the best if she uncovers his infidelity now.
The pipsqueak could be potentially useful to us as a spy of some sort when we’re done here.
I don’t want her following me back to Buffalo and potentially showing up to ask for money again and again.
You have to be careful who you take off the streets.
Lorena opens up a Facebook page and covers her mouth. She makes an anguished gasping sound and then bellows, “He has a WIFE?!”
Neither myself nor my brother are equipped for this crash out.