Chapter 29
Frankie
“W hy not just kill him?” Sal asks.
We’re sitting with Enzo in the office at the club. Joey is back at the house with Elise. Somehow, he keeps snagging babysitting duty. The worst part about it is he still hasn’t taken advantage of the alone time with her. I don’t think he’s even tried. If I could spend some time with her, I’d have her wrapped around me like a fucking boa constrictor. Within Enzo’s parameters, of course; I don’t have a death wish.
But we’ve been working our asses off every night, and tonight is no exception. We still haven’t figured out what to do about Emilio, which brings me back to the conversation.
Enzo takes a sip of his whiskey and answers Sal. “He’s too important. Or he has too many important friends, I should say.” It’s an important clarification. Emilio himself is relatively unremarkable, but he somehow managed to weasel himself into the most influential circles in this city. “It would draw unnecessary attention and be too hard to explain. We don’t need that kind of publicity right now. Especially while we’re the most likely suspects in regards to this trafficking bullshit.”
I watch his hand clench around his glass, a subtle sign that it’s bothering him more than he lets on. We should’ve been able to figure this out by now and put an end to it. My gaze shifts to the window behind Enzo, which overlooks the lounge area of the club. The front door is on the opposite end of the large room, and we can see everyone who comes and goes.
“Things have been calm since the incident with Emilio happened,” I point out. “But I still don’t think we should just let him come back without any repercussions. He needs to know that his influence doesn’t buy him shit within these walls. Which also means we can’t let him buy his way out. People like him don’t care about spending money to get away with all their fucked up activities.”
“His influence bought him his life,” Sal mutters. “Anyone else would’ve been dragged out of here in pieces.”
“We can always install more cameras,” Enzo suggests. “If it happens again, with him or with someone else, we’d be in a prime position to blackmail him. I don’t think all of his fancy friends would care for him if they found out about his depraved desires.”
“You and your cameras.” Sal rolls his eyes.
“We can’t install cameras where the girls are working,” I point out.
“But if it protects them, they might not care,” Enzo argues.
He doesn’t understand how unusual his obsession with cameras is, especially in our line of work. In his home, he views them as a line of defense against anyone who would dare try and come after him. It’s hard to get him to see that most of the people we interact with don’t want anything they do to be recorded.
I try to put it in a way that will make him see reason. “If any footage from this building was leaked, our whole organization would crumble. The Family wouldn’t exist anymore. With all the sophisticated hackers out there, it’s not worth the risk.”
Enzo spins his chair to look out over the lounge. “Well, we need to decide right now what we’re doing about Emilio. That shithead just walked through our front door.”
Sal and I quickly look, and, sure enough, he’s walking through the room like he owns the place. “That motherfucker,” I curse. “Does he have a death wish?”
“Don’t pretend you’re not excited,” Sal teases. He knows my penchant for spilling blood. Everyone does.
“I’d be more excited if I knew I could kill him.” I look at Enzo, and I know there’s a hopeful look on my face.
“No,” he says, his voice stern and his answer final.
“But I can hurt him, right?”
He nods, then says, “Maybe a few teeth would teach him his lesson. Or a couple of toes.”
I smirk. Poor Emilio… The cocky ones never have the mental fortitude to back up their tough-guy attitudes.
As a group, we greet him in the middle of the lounge. He didn’t bring anyone with him, which works out great for us. His expression when he sees us makes me want to just shoot him and get it over with. The guy is a weasel and an asshole, and the world would be better off without him. What all his rich, well-connected friends see in him, I’ll never understand.
“I wouldn’t look so confident, if I were you,” I advise.
Sal adds, “You really are a dipshit.”
Enzo is—as always—the picture of professionalism. “Would you like to join us upstairs for a drink?” he asks. “We have some things to discuss in private regarding your brief hiatus from the club.”
Emilio accepts the invitation. On his way past us, he turns his poisonous smirk on Sal and me, as if he thinks that Enzo isn’t in agreement with us. I turn to Sal, and he returns my smile. “That asshole thinks Enzo’s about to beg for his business, doesn’t he?” I muse.
“Looks like it,” he says with a laugh. “Come on, I don’t want to miss all the fun.”
We hurry up the stairs after them and arrive in the office just in time to see Enzo open the door that leads down to the basement. My basement. Sal may technically own the club, but everyone knows the basement is my domain. And he only owns it on paper; it’s a Family business.
Emilio looks through the doorway, realizes there are just stairs leading down, and panics.
“You motherfucker,” he shouts at Enzo as he turns and tries to make a break for it. Unfortunately, he didn’t realize that Sal and I joined them and are standing in his way. I grab his left arm, Sal grabs his right, and we turn him around before shoving him towards the open door and the dark stairs that probably look eerie to someone being forced down them.
The entire way down, we hear endless variations of “You can’t do this to me!” and “Do you know who I am?” and “You’ll never get away with this!”
I roll my eyes and glance over at Enzo. “How many redundant cliches can spew out of one mouth?”
“I think he watched too much Scooby-Doo as a kid.”
When we reach the basement, Sal kicks Emilio in the shin and pushes him towards the chair in the middle of the room. “Relax, dumbass. Despite my best intentions, you’re not going to die. We just need to talk.”
Emilio looks like he wants to believe what Sal is telling him, but he’s also familiar with the reality of a secret torture chamber in the basement of a mafia-owned club. His panic ramps back up when Sal starts tying him to the chair, and I step in to start the conversation before he makes himself pass out.
“The reason you’re here, Emilio, is you broke the rules. Several of them, actually. First, you asked for a specific girl— knowing what her boundaries were—and took things too far, ignoring her safeword.”
“That slut was asking for it,” Emilio sneers through his panicked breathing.
Sal chuckles, then turns to Emilio with insincere sympathy in his eyes. “You poor, stupid man.”
“Second, you were told to leave and stay gone until you were asked to return. Yet here you are, uninvited.”
“I can go wherever I damn well please! You think your little group of criminals scares me? Have you met my friends?”
Enzo huffs a laugh. “You can keep your friends. People like that will turn on you at the faintest whiff of a scandal. And you know what causes a really good scandal?” He waits for an answer, but Emilio just glares at him. “A grown-ass man who likes to wear diapers while a paid escort fucks him in the mouth with a giant tentacle dildo. No one in a position of power wants to be associated with that.”
Emilio’s fear and anger turn to bewilderment. “What the fuck? I don’t—”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s true. That’s the nice thing about a scandal. A rumor will do all the damage I need it to do. I wonder where you’ll be once your so-called friends abandon you?”
“You think you’re so fucking—”
“Frankie,” Enzo interrupts. “Shut him the fuck up.”
“Gladly.” I rub my hands together, then turn to choose the perfect pair of pliers. When Emilio sees them, he starts trying to break free from his bindings, but it’s no use. Sal has had plenty of practice tying people up—for pain and for pleasure—and there’s no way to escape until someone chooses to set you free. And that’s not happening.
Pliers in hand, I approach my sobbing victim. Sal steps up unprompted to hold Emilio’s mouth open, and I get a firm grip on one of his molars. A gentle tug makes him scream, and I laugh cruelly. They always show their fear sooner or later. I give him a minute to calm down but keep the pliers in place on his tooth. When he looks like he’s about to start fighting us off again, I make eye contact with Sal and give the tooth a vicious pull. It pops free, followed by a second one, and then I shove some gauze in Emilio’s mouth to staunch the flow of blood.
“Look at the bright side. You’re still alive, and those teeth were far enough back that no one will even notice,” Sal offers.
Emilio doesn’t seem to hear him. In fact, he doesn’t appear to be paying attention to any of us anymore. Enzo realizes the same thing and stoops down in front of him to make him an offer.
“You owe us an apology for breaking the rules. That’s a pretty simple way to avoid losing anything else.”
“Fuck you! I know this is all just showmanship before you finally kill me. So just do it already! Or are you too scared?” he taunts.
“Come on, man. You know better than to say shit like that,” Sal groans.
Enzo backs up to give us the room we need to work. He doesn’t have much patience for uncooperative assholes. Sal bends down and takes off one of Emilio’s shoes, and I grab a pair of shears that will easily cut through a toe.
When he sees them and puts two and two together, a wet spot starts to grow in the crotch of his dark jeans.
“Dude! What the fuck?!” Sal shouts.
“Not such a tough guy now, are you?” I smirk, but Emilio just continues to cry.
“Please, I’m sorry! I won’t come back. I won’t touch any of your stupid whores ever again. I don’t want anything to do with this place. Just let me go and don’t cut off my toes. Please!”
“You’re pathetic,” I inform him. Then I turn to Enzo. “What do you think? Do we believe him?”
Enzo studies the blubbering mess on the chair. “I’d tell you to stop acting like a little girl, but that would be insulting to little girls,” he says with disgust. To me, he tilts his hand back and forth, indicating he feels so-so about buying the coerced apology. I interpret that to mean that he can keep his toe. Mostly.
The pliers I used on his teeth are still sitting on the table. I get up to swap out my shears and then squat on the floor in front of Emilio, being careful to avoid the puddle of urine. It isn’t easy to work the pliers into position, but I manage to get a good enough grasp on his toenail that I can push myself to a standing position and the force of my movement brings the nail with me.
Emilio lets out a beautiful scream and then immediately passes out. It’s a fair reaction; losing a nail fucking hurts. While he’s down for the count, Sal and I bandage up his foot.
“Let’s get him out of here,” Enzo says. “He’ll be easier to move while he’s quiet.”
We untie him, then Sal and I each grab an arm. Neither of us wants to touch his legs and get covered in piss, so we drag him—not all that carefully—up the stairs and down the hall that leads to the alley behind the club. He fits perfectly behind the dumpster.
“Hopefully when he wakes up he realizes what a piece of trash he is and feels lucky that we didn’t toss him in,” Sal says.
“I don’t have high hopes for any self-realization on his part,” Enzo replies.
“Do you think he’ll keep his word and stay away from us?” I ask.
Enzo shrugs. “If he knows what’s good for him.”