17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Seventeen
THEY WILL NEVER brEAK ME
Antonio
Three hours had passed since I was handcuffed and removed from my home. I spent a few hours in a holding cell with a drunk guy named Mickey Donovan who rambled off the names of all the officers on duty when he was brought in, despite being wasted. While the information was useless to me and my current situation, simply because I wasn’t dealing with the locals but the Feds, Mickey helped the time pass quickly.
I was handcuffed to a table in a room with a one-way mirror, waiting for someone to arrive another hour later. I wasn’t stupid. I knew they were trying to get me to sweat. But I wasn’t like others. Most men in my situation would piss their pants knowing that the Feds were tearing apart their homes. But I’d sat in this place before. When I was younger, I’d been the prime suspect in the murders of two Puglisi soldiers. A wrap I beat although I was guilty as hell. Sitting in this room wouldn’t make me break no matter how much Grasso thought it would.
Feeling exasperated, I let out a deep sigh. I was tired and ready to go home. The combination of the powerful odor from the cleaning chemicals, the lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke, and the aroma of old coffee was intensifying my headache and irritation. The cold hard chair was torture on my back, but I bit back the pain while continuing to stare at the one-way mirror, like I’d been doing since they pushed me in here and handcuffed me to the table.
I had a feeling Agent Grasso was standing behind it, hoping I’d break. I was a Rizzo. I was my father’s son. I was Don and boss of bosses for a reason. No dumbass Fed would ever break me.
As the door clicked shut, my focus was immediately drawn to the two Agents who had visited my home a few hours ago. Agents McGuire and smug ass Agent Grasso. I kept my emotions in check as Grasso sat across from me with a smirk on his face. I couldn’t say that same bravado extended to his partner. Agent McGuire looked like he’d shit his pants.
McGuire took his seat and opened a manilla folder before looking at me. “Mr. Rizzo...”
I held up my hand to stop him before he even got started. There was no way I was answering any fucking questions.
“No use in getting started, gentlemen,” I said. “Not until my lawyer arrives.”
“People who are innocent don’t lawyer up,” Grasso said, a little of that confidence from earlier dissipating. “Are you ready to confess your crimes?”
“You can leave me in here, or you can take me back to my cell.” I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me. I have the right to remain silent. I have a right to an attorney.”
Grasso stood, flattening his palms against the stainless-steel table. He leaned over, getting in my face, only a few inches separating us. If we’d been on the street, he’d be dead where he stood. Lucky for him we weren’t. Lucky for him, I was cuffed to this damn table. But despite everything, I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face. He had an extreme hatred for me. It made me very curious about him. It made me very curious about who he was. This was personal for him. I needed to know why because I’d never heard the name Grasso other than knowing it was associated with Campania, Italy.
“You don’t have any fucking rights in here, Rizzo,” he sneered. “You think you’re in control, don’t you?”
My smile grew larger because I was in control, he just refused to see it.
“Let’s see how much you’re in control when I strip you of everything, including that fuckable wife of yours,” he taunted. “She’d look so fucking good sliding up and down my cock.”
A look of glee spread across his face, while Agent McGuire’s features were covered with shock. Although I remained still, he must have seen the rage in my eyes. The only weakness I had on this entire fucking planet was Aaliyah, and then this ass wipe thought he could fuck her. Fed or not, that was a death sentence in my book.
The door to the interrogation room swung open and in walked one of my lawyers, Mr. Samuel Donaldson. “Not another word, Antonio,” he ordered, then took the seat beside me and I relaxed further into my seat. It wouldn’t be too long, and I’d be out of here and it wouldn’t be too long, and Agent Grasso would be dead.
“I thought your sister was your attorney?” Agent McGuire asked, confusion marring his face.
Samuel chuckled. “You should be grateful it’s me sitting at this table and not Chantal. She’d eat both of you alive.”
It brought me immense joy to see the reaction of both agents, causing a smile to appear on my face. My sister was a beast in the courtroom. Nothing would ever stick as long as she was in my corner.
“Now, Mr. Rizzo will not be making any statements at this time and all charges have been dropped.”
“Dropped!” Grasso shouted, while disbelief covered Agent McGuire’s face. “There’s no fucking way.”
“Yes, dropped,” Samuel continued. “If you have any questions for Mr. Rizzo, you can reach me or Chantel Rizzo-Douglas at these numbers only during working hours.” He slid a business card across to Agent McGuire. “And I expect every single item you confiscated from the illegal search of my client’s home be returned immediately to Mr. Rizzo in the same condition you took them.”
“There was nothing illegal about that search!” Grasso shouted. “Or that arrest!”
His rage was all the satisfaction I needed.
“Fucking unbelievable,” Grasso mumbled.
“Well believe it, gentlemen,” Samuel said, not commenting on Grasso’s claim of the search not being illegal. “Now, uncuff my client.”
Neither Grasso nor McGuire made a move to remove the handcuffs.
“If you gentlemen need me to call the Director of the FBI, I can do that. But I don’t think John would be too happy to hear from me at this hour. I’m giving you one last chance to take these cuffs off my client now, or you’ll be looking for another job before morning.”
Standing up, Agent McGuire leaned over the table and unlocked the handcuffs. I gently massaged the barely visible bruises on my wrists.
“Let’s go Antonio, Martha is waiting for me.”
I ignored Agent McGuire. He was clueless in whatever Grasso had planned. As I left the interrogation room, I gave Grasso a wink. He thought he had me. But he underestimated the power of the Rizzo’s.
***
Everyone had gathered into the study. For the last two hours we’d been trying to come up with a plan of attack, which was hard when you didn’t know who orchestrated everything. What we did know was somehow Agent Grasso was involved but didn’t know why he was targeting me. We had the cryptic note sent to Aaliyah along with the contracts that had been placed on the wives of all the major players in the criminal world.
“We haven’t been able to confirm my mother was involved in my father’s death, but with everything going on it makes the most since.”
“Sins of the father?” Abasi questioned. “This has to do with your father, Antonio. When Aaliyah’s father was alive, he never stepped foot in the U.S. Do you know if your father was involved in anything that he would have kept from you?”
“The Commission,” Aaliyah said, her voice muffled against my chest.
As soon as I stepped through the door, she’d done like she had always done at the beginning of our relationship, jumped straight into my arms. Now she insisted on sitting on my lap, clinging to me like I would vanish. Not that I minded. The closer I could get to her the better.
“What’s the Commission?” Chantal asked.
She arrived about two hours after Abasi. To say she was pissed at me being arrested based on little to no evidence was an understatement. Razor was the only one who could calm her down when she got in that kind of mood.
“I’ll let Aaliyah explain,” I said. “I don’t know because the Feds came in just when she was about to explain it to me.”
“The Commission was sort of like a board who oversaw all the other criminal organizations that your father started with the heads of all the criminal organizations.”
“When you say all,” Chantal said, “what do you mean by all?”
“Everyone. The Bratva, Irish Mob, Yakuza, and Camorra.”
“Shit,” she mumbled.
Alessandro whistled. “What the fuck was he thinking?”
“Same thing, I thought,” I chimed in.
“Anyway,” Aaliyah continued, “I haven’t been able to find anything they were actually involved in. The only thing I could uncover was all the heads were in Stavanger, Norway, thirty years ago at the same time, except the head of the Camorra.”
“The safe house?” Alessandro questioned.
“That’s the only place we have in Norway that I’m aware of. And why wasn’t the Camorra there?” I asked, my voice filled with curiosity and confusion.
“I don’t know, but I did find out about a week later one of the heads of the Camorra clans was found dead,” Aaliyah said.
It was like a fucking lightbulb went off in my head.
“They sanctioned his death,” I mumbled in disbelief. “They sanctioned the death of one of the bosses of the Camorra Clans.”
“Why?” Chantal asked. “Why sanctioned the death of someone with the other heads of organizations? Papa had power, why wouldn’t he just take him out if he needed to? Why get permission from anyone?”
“Because Grasso was a boss,” I responded.
What the hell where they involved in?
“As the head, we can’t take out the leader of any other organization without the blessing of the other heads,” I continued. “That’s the way of most criminal organizations. Each boss gives a yes or no on a death motion, so a war isn’t started between the groups.”
“Who was the Camorra boss, Aaliyah?” Abasi asked. “If it’s true, he had to be the most powerful Camorra boss at the time. There should be some kind of record of him.”
“I have no idea,” she said, frustration in her voice. “I’ve done a deep dive, but the history of the Camorra around that time has been scrubbed. I’m still digging. If there’s something out there, I’ll find it. It’s just taking longer because Papa Rizzo did a banging ass job of covering all this up.”
“I may have a quicker way,” I said, reaching for my cellphone and dialing Vincenzo De Maio, head of the notorious De Maio Clan of the Camorra. If anyone knew anything he would.
I placed the phone on speaker.
“Rizzo?”
“You’re on speaker,” I said.
He let out a sigh. “I assume this isn’t a friendly call then?”
“I’m calling in what you owe me,” I responded. “And it has to remain between us. No one else.”
“Okay, I’ll help as much as I can, but we are even after this,” Vincenzo said.
“A little over thirty years ago there was a death of a Camorra boss. I can’t find any information on him or what happened. I want a name and any other information you can find on his death.”
“Is this going to cause problems?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but I need that information, Vincenzo.”
He let out another sigh. “Give me seventy-two hours to get back to you.”
“Twenty-four hours, Vincenzo,” I said. “Time is of the essence.”
For a moment, there was nothing but silence from him.
“Vincenzo?”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said confidently, and with that, he ended the call.
“Now we wait,” I said.
“I hate waiting,” Aaliyah said.
“Me too, but if there’s any information out there, Vincenzo will come through.”
I couldn’t stand waiting either, but I needed to confirm what I thought was true. Agent Grasso had to have some connection to the Camorra boss whose death was sanctioned by the Commission. Now how my mother fit into all of it, I had no fucking clue.