Chapter 32 – Renzo
Chapter Thirty-Two
Renzo
Ihold my son against my chest as my heart pounds. Anger. Rage. Hurt. Fury. This has to be Nicki’s fault.
Geralynn is gone…
My breath struggles to regain its steadiness. Only my son keeps me steady. He’s fine, but Geralynn isn’t. I can’t let this consume me, but I already can’t stop the violent thoughts from flooding my head. I will kill whoever did this.
Gino pulled up the cameras and they give us an almost clear view of what happened – except for who took them. This can’t be happening. I can’t unfreeze my grasp on Roman but if I have to chase after his mother and my sister, I’ll have to put him down.
Right now, I don’t even know who to call. Gino helped me search the rest of the house. My son can tell us apart better than most adults and he cries whenever I’m not the one holding him. Gino finds very little to suggest what happened.
There are signs that a cup of tea was spilled – a damp, minty puddle of liquid trailing from the table to the floor.
She would have cleaned up. She was taken, I know it.
The bottle of wine must have been my sister Nicki’s.
Geralynn and I both avoid alcohol as much as possible ever since the incident with my sister.
Plus, she wouldn’t let her guard down around Nicki.
It turns out that even letting my sister into her life a little bit was too much.
“We saw what happened on the footage,” Gino says, lighting up a cigarette as I lean against his car, urging the last traces of alcohol to leave my body as I clutch my son against my chest and glare at Gino who at least has the decency to blow his nasty smoke in the opposite direction from my son.
“A black car pulled up. They got out with guns and grabbed Geralynn. Nicki pulled out a weapon–”
“Which she brought to the house where my son sleeps,” I mutter under my breath. Gino glares at me for interrupting, but how can he expect me not to hold onto that? My sister has caused enough trouble in my life as it is.
Gino continues in defiance of my sullen demeanor. “Nicki shot the guy. It seems like she got him. But the other one took Geralynn. Nicki tried to run for the house.”
“She must have made it inside.”
“The indoor cameras caught a little bit of the scuffle,” Gino says. “But not much. Dude had a mask and dragged her out again.”
“Are you sure it was a dude?”
Gino looks at me inquiringly. “You piss off any women enough lately for them to turn into she-hulk?”
“I’m keeping an open mind until we have facts.”
The only fact I really need is the fact that my sister Nicki was involved in this whole debacle.
This is her fault. When I get my hands on Nicki, I’ll finally do what I wanted to so long ago and I’ll feel completely justified in doing it since she put Roman and Geralynn in danger.
The only bright side to this situation is that there’s no way in hell Geralynn trusts my sister.
“Do you think this could be a play from Pittsburgh?”
“For Nicki?”
“Yeah. We’ve been waiting for a stealth attack thinking they’re coming after our money or control over the city but what if they want something else. Like… if they’re just as fucked up as the women in our family.”
He means Nicki, our cousin CC, and Angela.
They all performed the most fucked up sleight of hand to influence the bloodline of our mafia family and considering how far they went to drug us and several women, it might not be so far-fetched that the Corsini family in Pittsburgh – or some branch of them – might have come up with the idea to get a baby with Taviani blood.
Nicki would be much easier to kidnap than Angela.
There are more women in the family who would be better mothers, but Nicki is a little over five feet tall and thinks that her loud mouth means nobody can hurt her or overpower her.
I guess she had that shitty little pistol but that didn’t stop a masked stranger from carting her ass off in a black sedan.
“If we can get the sedan from another angle and get the license plate, we can at least see if they’re out of state.”
Roman wakes up properly and sensing my agitation or perhaps his mother’s absence, he starts up a gurgling noise that immediately verges on crying.
“How can I do that while my son cries?”
“Breathe,” Gino says. “Geralynn survived you. She can survive anything.”
“We heard gunshots and screams.”
“But Geralynn wasn’t shot,” he says. “We both know Nicki was probably the target of this whole thing since she can’t keep her ass out of trouble and because… well… it makes the most sense.”
“Still doesn’t mean two guys kidnapped them.”
“True,” Gino says. “We won’t know until we get the plates. Call Luigi and fill him in.”
I freeze in place, completely reluctant to tell my older brother that I’m involved in something as messy as this.
After everything I’ve done to prove myself and the situation with Michael Corsini almost ending in my own death, I’ve stayed out of trouble and focused on just applying myself to the business side of our family.
I applied everything I learned at our Italian university and introduced my father to new investment opportunities.
I might not ever become a leader within our family and for the first time in my life I accepted that I could find some other purpose.
Being a father to Roman. Being there for Geralynn and supporting her.
She makes me feel better than killing ever did, which is something I never expected from a woman who used to make me feel immense discomfort whenever we were in the same room.
“What’s the problem?” Gino asks. I hate that he’s so sensitive to the parts of me that I want to hide. And that he’s comfortable bringing everything to the surface.
“Nothing.”
“Fuck, Renzo. We don’t have time for your bullshit. Just call him.”
“Do we need Luigi to get involved?”
“This will go ten times faster since he has contacts in every town from here to Pittsburgh, not to mention access to more hired guns than either of us.”
“I don’t involve Luigi in my personal affairs.”
“What, he doesn’t know you have a kid? He’s got Instagram, you know. He’s not a dinosaur.”
“He has limited access to my profile.”
“What are you, a fucking celebrity?” Gino mocks me. My agitation rises again and Roman threatens to start crying.
“We need to get food for my kid before we do anything else and I don’t know what the fuck to do because my girl is the one with the tits.”
“Your girl?”
I hate how fucking smug he sounds. Yes. My girl. Yes. The woman I love. Yes. Fuck. I feel everything impossible for Geralynn and I want to fucking admit it. I want to do a lot more than that. Nobody else wants to hold onto the old ways – why should I make myself miserable for the past?
“Yes. My girl.”
“Finally.”
“Finally what?”
“You love that woman. It’s taken you a long fucking time to admit that to yourself.”
“Are you done?”
“Sure,” Gino says with a grin. “I’m done. Let me pull up the footage and you get over yourself and call Luigi. He won’t judge.”
“All he does is judge.”
“We need his help, Renzo.”
I know he’s right. I hate to admit it to myself but… he’s right.