Chapter 6 Giovanni
GIOVANNI
“I need to go.”
The color has drained from Meggie’s face. We’re in FAO Schwarz where Amber is trying to decide between Princess Barbie and Clawdeen from a kids’ TV show called Monster High.
I hold Meggie’s shoulders and force her to look at me. The way her eyes are darting around the store as if she’s trying to follow a rogue wasp is scaring me more than her pale face and even paler lips.
“Why? What’s happened?” I keep my voice calm.
Ric is nearby, engrossed in the bright pink plastic car in his hands, and I have bodyguards posted outside the entrance and at the bottom of the elevator. No one will have gotten close to us without one of my men being aware.
“He’s back.” Her voice is barely audible above the constant chatter and laughter of the visitors to the toy store.
I lower my head so that our eyes are level. I can see Amber in my peripheral vision, and Ric has already replaced the pink car on the shelf and is watching us closely. I regulate my breathing, making sure that Meggie copies me.
“Talk to me, fiore.”
“He’s in LA.”
Something cold and slimy crawls down my spine. The video. What are the odds of Steve Barone watching that video in the short window between it being uploaded onto YouTube and taken down again on my orders? Or has he been tracking them all this time?
My mind is frantically trying to figure out why he would follow them to LA and rear his ugly fucking coward head now.
Unless he was already here in the States, and someone alerted him to their presence.
But why now? Does he understand how vulnerable Meggie is so far away from home or is this nothing more than a sociopath trying to finish what he started?
“You’re sure it’s him?”
The fear in her eyes is back ten-fold. The green has darkened to the color of wet leaves in a stormy forest, and the way she looks at me, pleading with me to make this all go away tears my heart in two.
Ripping the fucker’s head off is too good for him.
I want him to know how it feels to be afraid, to understand that his death is going to be insufferably slow, and that no one will be around to hear him scream.
When she speaks, her voice is little more than a whisper. “Someone has been looking for me. Nikki thinks it’s him.”
“Meggie, you’re safe here with me.”
“No.” She shakes her head, tries to pull away from me like I’ve got her trapped.
I don’t let her go. The instant I move my hands from her shoulders she’ll bolt like a racehorse hearing the starting bell.
She isn’t thinking clearly. If she runs, she’ll play straight into his hands because men like Steve Barone will always choose the easy route, the one that presents no danger to themselves.
“I have to get back home.” She twists her head to locate Amber and visibly slumps when she finds her on her knees with a doll in each hand. She faces me again. “I have to get Amber away from him.”
“What will you do when you get back to England?” I need her to think about this logically. Consider her options.
“I-I’ll take her away. We’ll disappear again. We did it before. My dad will—”
“Meggie, do you have any idea how many people live in New York City? Even if someone tells him where you are, he’ll never find you. He’ll never get past my bodyguards.”
“Oh my God.” She swallows hard. “Nikki. What if he…”
“I’ll have Nikki guarded. He won’t get within a mile of her without getting something broken.” I hold her gaze, wait for her to process what I’m saying. “I’ll do whatever it takes to protect you, Meggie. I promised that I would keep you safe, and I never break a promise.”
“But what about you, Gio?”
I smile. “What about me?”
“What if he tries to hurt you?”
I can’t believe that the man she is terrified of; the man she has spent the past five years trying to avoid finally surfaces, and she is worrying about me.
“If he has an ounce of sense, he’ll stay as far away from me as he possibly can, or he’ll find out what happens when someone tries to harm the people I care about.”
A tiny glimmer of hope appears in her eyes. “The people you care about?”
“Si, fiore. I care about you… Both of you. I’ve never met anyone like you before.”
She sucks in a deep breath and manages a small smile. “Is it the accent?”
“No, it’s you, Meggie. It’s everything about you.”
I cup her face with both hands. The panic is subsiding, and I’m confident that she trusts me to not let anything bad happen to them. I’ve only known her for a few days, but she seems to have snuck underneath my skin and made herself at home, and I like having her there.
My lips brush hers as Amber’s voice bursts the bubble surrounding us.
“I can’t decide. Can I have both dolls? Please?”
I release Meggie and smile down at her sister. “You can have all the dolls you want.”
“No, Gio. You can’t say that to a five-year-old.”
But before either of us can put Amber straight, she’s off to find a shopping cart, Ric one step behind her.
“I can’t protect you in London, Meggie.” I entwine my fingers with hers. “I can protect you here. I’ll double my security in the hotel. I’ll triple it, if it will give you peace of mind.”
“But…” She chews her bottom lip as Amber returns with Ric pulling a bright-red plastic cart behind him. “What about Amber?”
“I don’t understand. Where you go, Amber goes, right?”
A warm flush appears high on her cheeks, and she licks her lips. I want to suck her bottom lip right there in FAO Schwarz surrounded by families and wide-eyed children, but I force myself to remember that this isn’t about me.
“I meant Amber should go back to school next week. What about my job? Our apartment?”
“You can homeschool her. Work for me. I’ll pay the rent on your apartment for the next twelve months. Anything else?”
She chuckles. “I can’t let you do that for us, Gio.”
“I’m not asking for your permission. I want to do it. If you’re with me, I know that you’re safe.”
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
I pull her close, wind my fingers through her hair, and whisper in her ear, “Mia casa e la tua casa. Mio letto e il tuo letto. What’s mine is yours, fiore, and my life will be empty without you in it.”
I’ve spent the last few days trying to track down anyone who might’ve been at the 2009 charity event attended by my parents and Steve Barone.
While Meggie dozes during the night, I open up my tablet and scour the Internet for the coward’s name, hitting brick walls and following dead ends at every turn.
I know how easy it is to make someone disappear. I have connections here and in Sicily who could make it happen for me at the snap of my fingers, so the deeper I dig into Steve Barone’s past, the more likely it is that he has the protection of someone powerful.
For now, anyway.
They might’ve made the slight inconvenience of his murdered girlfriend’s corpse go away, but everyone has a price. Everyone. All I need to do is trace his connections back to the puppet master and apply enough pressure to make them realize that the asshole isn’t worth their time or effort.
Then, once he has been cast adrift, I’ll deal with him.
After the text message from Nikki, we cut short our plans for the day and came back to my apartment.
Amber is happy—she has enough dolls to open her own toy store—and although Meggie’s eyes follow her around, she is soon singing along to ‘Sweet Caroline’ while she bakes red velvet cupcakes. Amber’s favorite apparently.
I tell them that something urgent has come up requiring my attention and head down to my office on the level beneath the penthouse.
I sit behind my desk, power up my computer, and explore all my contacts back home in Sicily.
In our world, it doesn’t pay to let acquaintances fade into the background, and this is like returning to a game of chess that was abandoned a while ago.
I trawl through the scrupulously clean records of corporations owned by every mafia family with a connection to the Sabatellis.
I review every charity event, every party covered by the media, every wedding, funeral, and christening that has happened over the past five years.
But when I try to find a link to Steve Barone, I draw another blank.
I’ve saved the photograph with my parents in the background in an encrypted file; I open it on my screen and zoom in on their faces again. They look happy. Relaxed. Cushioned by their wealth and their love for one another despite the dangers that walk hand-in-hand with being a mafia don.
I still miss them. I miss my mom’s smile, and her favorite Estee Lauder perfume, and how she always knew when something was bothering one of her children.
Even when we were grown up and finding our own way in the world.
I miss my dad’s booming laughter, and his fantastical stories about Mick Jagger and Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor.
I miss how safe I felt whenever I went home.
I half-fill a brandy glass and knock back the liquid. It does nothing to erase the frustration building inside me. I will find Steve Barone if it’s the last thing I do.
Then, I spot another familiar face behind my mom in the image on the screen.
A retired don. A man who, when I was finding my feet in the mafia world, was like a second father to me. I quickly switch tabs and am flooded with relief when I learn that he is still alive.
It has been far too long; entirely my fault.
Don Calderone is not the kind of man who will discuss business over the phone or via email. He has always insisted on meeting face-to-face.
I call my pilot and ask him to arrange the next slot out of New York City and into Palermo Falcone Borsellino Airport in Sicily.
That night, when Amber is tucked up safely in bed, Meggie drags some blankets into the living room and creates a makeshift bed in front of the window overlooking the city skyline.
The sun is sinking behind the horizon creating a skeletal shape of towers and landmarks silhouetted against a backdrop of mauve and gray.