Chapter 26
Leo
It’s been a few days since that fateful meeting when Don Vespucci drew a gun and pointed it at me.
My grandmother called it what it is: a clusterfuck. There’s no denying this. And as much as I don’t want to resort to blackmail, I may have to stoop this low, in the end. Nothing will stick with those bastards at the syndicate’s table otherwise.
My days and nights are consumed with trying to find a solution. Mattia and I are looking at every angle. In the evenings, I’m with my twin brothers as they update me about what they manage to find after chasing the white rabbits I gave them. Somehow, it seems they do their best work in the dark—I can never get hold of them during the day. Little vampires, I scoff. They’re proving their worth right now, though. They’re great snoops, and I’m glad I have them in my corner and not working against me.
All this, however, means I am utterly busy. My body and mind need sleep so my brain can stay level and rational, so all my free hours at night, they’re spent in my bed, alone while I wished Bianca was in my arms, that she was under me with my cock buried inside her. I wanted to see her with her hair spread out over the pillow on the other side of my bed. I’m picturing the baby monitor on my bedside table, our son sleeping in his room next door.
But alas, this is not to be. I haven’t managed even a glimpse of them in the past few days, and I need to tamp down my impatience and frustration.
I’m doing all this for Bianca and Enzo, for my family. Being away, it will all be worth it when I’ve cleared up this mess.
My new enforcer, Luigi, has been on the phone with me constantly. It’s his job to carry out the unsavory tasks I might need done, like getting rid of someone, but he’s also my ear to the ground. And Luigi, he’s good at this—he hears things. He’s got a wife and two teenage daughters who are very active and popular in the Italian-American Mafia circuit of the tri-state area around New York, making him a strong vein of intel.
The Dons have been letting it rip about me. Rumors, threats, dissent—Luigi hears all about them and reports back to me. Thanks to him, I’m one step ahead of those cunning old foxes, but I don’t just want to be ahead; I want to put a stop to this. A meeting has been called, where I’m sure I’ll be the butt of all their recriminations. I just may have to pull something from my figurative hat to shut them up.
I’m the last Don to file into the room. There are no outsiders today, and it’s just us and our seconds or consiglieres . Good—nothing will leave this space. We’re all bound by our own version of Omertà which is like a top-secret level clearance regarding information.
The accusations fuse out as soon as I sit down and the door is closed, soundproofing the room. They harp on about war, peace, men they’ve lost, how it’s all my fault, etc. The same litany as last time.
Until Don Salvatore makes the mistake of saying something which seals his fate.
“You’ll pay for this,” he seethes.
So that’s how he’ll play it. I’m not one for blackmail, but I have something up my sleeve. Frankly, this nonsense has been going on for long enough. These old goats have had their fun, and now it’s time for them to shut up.
“You agree with this, I assume?” I ask, turning in the direction of Don Vespucci.
The shriveled-up face makes a grimace as if he’s bitten into a sour lemon. I don’t actually hear what he says, focusing on watching how he’s almost frothing at the mouth in his vehemence.
I nod, then glance at the other Dons around the table. “Anyone else feel the same?”
A few of them frown, but the majority remains placid. In the scheme of things, they’re Dons yet also small potatoes. Each one controls just a small territory or a single small-scale operation. It’s the likes of Salvatore and Vespucci that hold the controlling interests. I do, too, the third in this trinity of power.
I’m not gonna go against these lesser men, at least not today. It’ll be just these two big-mouthed fuckers, then. They’re been preening and throwing their weight around for way too long. It’s time someone brought them down a peg or two…or completely to their feet.
“I’d advise you to be careful,” I state calmly, my eyes on them.
Don Vespucci sputters in outrage, hand going to his jacket.
“DiPalto, get the gun,” I tell his consigliere , who nods at me and stays a hand on his Don’s shoulder.
The man doesn’t answer to me, but even he’s reading the room right and picking up I mean business, unlike those clowns who just like to run their mouths off.
“You think you’re so wise, don’t you?’ Don Vespucci hisses. “You’re nothing but a wet behind the ear child, thinking he can come to grown men’s discussions—”
“Like your son?” I interrupt quietly. “Your heir, Lauro.”
“Don’t you bring my son into this!” he throws out, outraged.
“You brought him in—” I tell him, nodding to his crony at his side, “—when you aligned yourself with this one.”
Don Salvatore stays silent when his friend turns to him. Of course, when the time to step up comes, he’s slithering back in the shadows like the snake he is.
I’m not going to blackmail these men, but I need them to know who they’re fucking with, and ultimately, make them realize they better not test my patience and respect for my elders again.
“He goes to Brazil often, doesn’t he?” I ask. Don Vespucci blanches across the table. If he’s wondering whether I’ll go there , I put him out of his misery by definitely going there with my revelation. “There’s a particular type of women he’s fond of… Ones who have something, let us say, more between their legs?”
He pales and goes mute, eyes boggling. It’s his best-kept secret that his precious heir is into transexuals and indulges fully in the trans community that’s a big part of the Brazilian population.
I know I’ve shut him up. He’s no longer a threat to me, or to anyone else at this table now with his secret exposed. Anything less than a Mafia child being cis-gender and heterosexual brings shame to the family. Don Vespucci’s son has disgraced him. He has no power now, his influence almost zero.
One down, one more to go.
I turn my attention to Don Salvatore. It hurts me to be doing this, because I’ll be throwing his daughter under the bus next, but he also brought this on himself by thinking he could bully me since I’m the new kid at the table.
“I don’t have anything about your heir, Don Salvatore,” I say, inclining my head a little. “But I know your precious daughter has been in and out of a certain medical facility in the UAE. Their specialty is reconstruction of a certain anatomical part a woman loses when she lays with a man…”
Don Salvatore doesn’t pale—he goes red. Is it anger, rage, shame, humiliation? I don’t care. He’s been peddling his precious Paloma as a sainted virgin all this while, and my grandmother was right when she said half the men in Ibiza had been inside that girl’s vagina. Ardian Abrashi noted the first visit to this clinic in his journals four years ago, and my brothers dug up her travel records and hacked into the clinic’s records.
I watch them as silence descends on the room, both these old men now fidgeting in their seats.
“This is preposterous,” Don Salvatore throws out.
Without breaking eye contact with him, I take out my phone, unlock the screen, and hit ‘Send’ on a file that’d been waiting on the device. The phones in the room ping, all of us on the same Bluetooth network.
“All the proof is right there,” I add with a chin nod.
Some of the Dons are unlocking their phones, eyes going wide as they glimpse what I just shared, aka irrefutable proof Paloma Salvatore has been having her hymen artificially reconstructed every time her father is about to parade her on the marriage market in our community.
“You think you’re so clever,” Don Salvatore spits out.
I lean back in my chair, pocketing my phone leisurely. Now’s the time for the coup de gráce. The victim? It’ll be myself.
“I am an open book,” I tell him, then glance at all the men in the room one by one. “I have no secret to hide. It’s true my twin brothers are a little fucked up in the sense neither has had a relationship with a woman so far, but these little shits love sharing a woman between themselves every other night.” I shrug. “I guess some chicks find it thrilling to be taken by two identical men at the same time. As for my other brother, Tristan, he is only my half-brother, yes. Not my father’s blood. Don Eduardo knew this, though, and even if him being married to Tristan’s mother made the boy legally his, he had papers drawn and signed the very day my brother was born, adopting him as his own. His biological father is the tennis instructor Don Eduardo’s wife was having an affair with. Great coach, but didn’t know how to swim, as it was found when he drowned in a pond on the eighteen-hole golf course at the country club he worked at.”
They’re all listening to me, rapt, though Dons Salvatore and Vespucci are squirming a little.
No one would guess Tristan isn’t my father’s son. The apple of his eyes, he was adored. Don Eduardo Pellegrini loved this child who wasn’t his own as much as his own blood, because who else was going to love this innocent baby who didn’t ask to be conceived from an affair? Tristan is the proof of how big my father’s heart was.
“As for me, my secret is that I was indeed having an affair with Bianca Bonucci when she was promised to another man. A man I killed, because no one comes after what’s mine.” I shrug again. “Like father, like son.”
I let this sink in. They know I killed Ardian Abrashi, and it was never confirmed nor denied that my father held the head of the man who’d slept with his wife and impregnated her under the water of the country club pond.
Here’s the thing about knowing people’s secrets and not being afraid to air out your own: it gives you power. If they have nothing over you, but you do over them, they get scared, then. Respect is earned, somewhat by twisting their arm, but earned nevertheless. I can see this dawning in the eyes of the Dons around the room.
The two I’m concerned with, I see defeat in their gazes. I hadn’t dared hope it’d be this easy to topple them off the high branches they’d been hiding in, but it worked, without any need to resort to blackmail. I dare say my father would be proud of me today.
With the silence still deafening, I get up and do up the top buttons on my suit jacket. All the Dons except Salvatore and Vespucci give me nods as they stand up, too. This meeting is over. I’ve clearly won, and they’ve all been given leverage over the two fuckers who thought they’d preside over this council.
We file out and make it to the car. Pano, my driver, opens the door for me. I get in while Mattia slides in from the other side of the vehicle.
“That was something,” he says on a laugh.
I smile. I can’t say I didn’t like the thrill of holding these old goats’ balls in my hands. Though the image makes me grimace, and I give my mind a good wipe-out to erase this very thought. I want to go near no one’s balls, thank you very much.
My victory today, it’s all thanks to Bianca. She brought me the original intel that allowed me to crush these old coots in my fist. Without her, I’d be under their boot. I can’t wait to tell her how it all worked out and also thank her properly.
We’re on our way to Lenox Hill when my phone rings.
“Don Pellegrini,” Luigi says in greeting. “Boss, someone got in touch with me. Says they have intel about a raid that’s planned in the Port Authority region and our businesses there tonight.”
Sighing, I close my eyes briefly and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Says who?” I ask, staring out the window.
“It’s an unvetted source, boss. Says they’ve got a feed and want to do you a solid. I’ve been informed they’ll be in Lighthouse Park on Roosevelt Island all day today, if you care to listen.”
My ears prick. “If I care? They want me to come?”
“Sounds fishy as heck, boss. Let me round up a crew for you.”
I glance at Mattia. “We packing?” I mouth.
He shows me the gun he’s got tucked in a shoulder holster under his jacket. Ahead, Pano nods. “Trunk,” the driver says quietly.
No time like the present. If there really is a raid landing on one of my clubs tonight, it’s a headache I don’t need. Nothing is worth more to me than Bianca and my son, but I also have to protect my people, the ones counting on me to look after them in those spots.
“We’re going,” I tell Luigi.
“Boss?” he asks.
“Dispatch a small crew to each of the clubs in the Port Authority area. Make sure everything’s clean in case we do have the police or the feds landing on us.”
“Got it, boss.”
Pano exchanges a glance with me in the rearview mirror. I nod, and we cruise through Lenox Hill on the way to Queensboro Bridge.
“It’s been a long day,” Mattia says. “Tell you what. Let me and Hana babysit tonight, and you can take Bianca out for dinner. You two have a lot to talk about.”
Especially now, with what’s gone down with the Dons. I need to apprise her, and this will be best done alone, in an adults-only setting.
“Good idea,” I reply, getting my phone out to send Bianca a text telling her to be ready at seven when I’ll pick her up.
It takes us a little under half an hour to reach the island. I take a gun from the trunk, check the magazine and grab a spare, then Mattia and I make it on foot through the park toward the lighthouse structure.
Something feels off, though. It’s a warm early summer afternoon. There should’ve been people crawling over this space. Instead, we’re sharing the esplanade near the lighthouse with a brace of green-headed ducks.
Mattia’s step slows next to mine. I bet he’s also felt it, this chill in the air that has nothing to do with the gentle wind blowing around us.
We’re near the lighthouse when a sudden instinct makes me spin around to check the side of the structure, opposite the doorway and facing the water, making it a total blind spot from where we’re coming from.
A glint of metal catches my eye. Something slashes at my opened hand at the same time my fist closes on a wrist sheathed by the cuff of a shirt. Ignoring the lancing pain, I tug hard and slam the moving mass into the stone structure of the lighthouse.
A grunt resounds, and as I rear back and slam the wrist forcefully again, a metallic ping clatters on the ground. By this point, Mattia has circled around behind me, and the butt of his gun smacks into the back of the head of the person I’m holding by the arm.
The body drops like dead weight. I glance down, noticing a young man with fair skin and dark hair. Next to him lies a shiv glinting where it’s not covered by blood. By my blood. My palm is smarting, a long gash in the middle. Damn. This will require a tetanus shot, and I hate shots.
“Ambush,” Mattia says softly.
I hiss in a breath and nod. “Bring him.”
We’re entirely exposed as we hot-foot it back to the car, with me on lookout and Mattia dragging the body. The very lack of people that would’ve made it possible for me to get shivved works in our favor as there’s no one to witness our retreat.
Pano is quick to judge the situation. He pulls zip ties from the glove compartment to hand to Mattia and a first aid kit from underneath his seat to wrap a bandage around my bleeding hand.
We’re already on our way back to my house when I get my phone—it’s awkward one-handed—to call Luigi.
“It was a setup,” I tell my enforcer when he picks up.
“Boss, you okay?”
“Fine. But I need to know who these fuckers—”
“Stop the car!” Mattia yells.
Pano checks with me for confirmation, and I nod. Mattia’s not given to expressive displays like this. We may have been followed, but I trust my best friend, even though I do want to know what’s going on with him.
“What’s the matter?” I ask, noticing only then he’s also on his phone.
His face is as white as a sheet, and something in my gut stirs.
He puts the device on speaker, and I hear Hana on the other end. She’s speaking so quickly, I can’t make out what she’s saying.
“Hana,” I say, voice low but hard. “Slow down. What’s wrong?”
She takes in a long, heaving breath audible on the line.
“Dino’s dead. I came home from the gym to find his body on the deck. As are the others.”
My heart speeds up. “Bianca? Enzo?”
“Koji’s here. Shaken, and he’s crying. I found him alone in the living room, on the rug in front of cartoons.”
This time, my heart stops.
“He was asking for his maman , Leo. Bianca, she’s…”
“Where is she?” I bite out, having no idea how the words came out, how I could even say them as no more blood is pumping in my body anymore.
“She’s been taken,” Hana whispers.
That’s why she hasn’t replied my text. It’s the only thing I can think of right now…until this thought explodes and merges with others that flood in, bombarding me.
Sending me to Roosevelt Island was a diversion. The guy we stuffed in the trunk, he had no gun on him. This man, he’s expendable in their plot. He would shiv me, one of us would kill him as we’d be armed, and it’d be a done deal. In the meantime, Bianca was alone with our boy at the house, and getting rid of my security men was just a blip on their radar because they don’t hesitate to kill. She was the target all along.
Whoever did this, they didn’t plan on their man making it out alive and certainly not to end up at my mercy. Some things are clicking. That pale skin and dark hair, it’s a trait of the Balkan population, just like we Italians have the Mediterranean tanned skin and darker features.
Balkan, as in Albanian.
The Albanians are behind this, and I’m pretty sure it’s the Accountant’s family behind it all. Their council wouldn’t dare go against the Mafia so soon after the peace treaty has been signed.
This is the work of Jasir Abrashi.
As fury explodes in my blood that starts rushing through me again, I vow to put an end to this.
That fucker is a dead man!