Chapter 24 Tamayo
TAMAYO
Christmas is in four days. Which means Zarina’s wedding is in four days.
Any time I think about it, nausea coats my mouth in a film.
I run my tongue over my teeth to disperse it, but it doesn’t help.
It only spreads further, slipping down the back of my throat, into my stomach, churning and roiling before it crawls back up again.
Four days to get her out. Four days to stake my claim. Four days to see years of scheming come to fruition. All thanks to Zarina.
And the reason I’m at Casa Nostra on a Tuesday evening, acting like I lost the love of my life.
I swirl my third vodka Collins since I arrived an hour ago and watch a woman at the other end of the bar.
Never mind I’ve only actually drank one glass total.
Never mind the cold sweat that clings to my skin whenever I think about touching someone else. I’m playing a part.
No one can know the real reason I’m here. Not yet.
Darius checks his watch, a new one I bought him from Cartier. “We’re gonna be late.”
I let a grin slink over my lips as I hold the woman’s eye. She blushes and ducks her head, glancing back up. Coy. Almost demure, despite the plunging neckline of her dress and heavy diamonds in her ears.
It only makes me wish for the opposite. For a woman with fire on her tongue and confidence in her spine. For her.
I shake off the thought before it can show on my face and instead drag my gaze down the woman’s hair, to her chest, to her hand resting on the stem of her wine glass. “We need to be seen,” I murmur to Darius.
He fiddles with his cuffs and sighs. “Seduce the girl already.”
“You think I’m gazing across the room at wet paint?” I snipe.
“Lesbians.” He shakes his head and drains his beer. “All you do is yearn from afar. Thank god I’m a gay man. I think I’d die without Grindr.”
I laugh, letting go of the woman’s gaze to toss Darius an arched brow. “Millennia of repression and control does that to a gender. No need to rub your privilege in our face.”
He snorts. We’ve had this conversation before, both of us ribbing the other. “Admit it, you’d be on Grindr in a heartbeat if women would use it.”
I hum in agreement and turn my attention back to the woman. She flips her hair over her shoulder, drags her fingers down her neckline, but she doesn’t find my eyes again. “But women wouldn’t use it. And dating apps are only as good as their sea of fish.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He waves off my point, which I’ve made many times before, and checks his watch again. He hasn’t worn another since I gave it to him last week. “Three minutes.”
I throw back the rest of my drink, rounding my total intake to one and a half, and push off the bar to approach the woman.
She leans back in her seat, a smile tugging at her mouth, as I pull on one of my many masks, fit it snug around my body.
My feet are sure, my gait full of swagger, and my face confident in the answer I know I’ll receive to this question.
I slide in beside her, elbow on the bar, arm across the back of her chair and caging her in.
I lean in without touching her, whispering near her ear, “Care to join me for a drink?”
She blushes, ducking her chin and looking down at her hands. So damn coy. “So long as it’s upstairs.”
I smirk like that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. And it is. Just not for the reason she thinks. “I like you.”
“I’m Sandra.” She smiles, her teeth covered in obvious veneers, and steps down from her chair. Directly into my chest. I let her. I let her and try not to gag.
But the urge grows as I slide my hand to the small of her back and lead her out of the lounge then up the stairs.
I introduce myself, ask her if she has Christmas plans, do my best to cover up the disgust building under my skin.
Darius follows a few steps behind as we enter an open room.
Sandra heads for the bar cart as I tug my phone out of my pocket. It’s vibrating, but it’s not a call.
“I have to take this,” I lie as I back toward the door, hand on the handle. “Make yourself comfortable.”
Sandra reaches for the zipper along the side of her dress and holds my eye with what I assume she believes is a seductive stare. “I will.”
I can’t bring myself to react with more than a simple nod as I raise my phone to my ear and leave the room, closing the door behind me.
I hold a one-sided conversation, wandering down to the end of the hall and speaking in low tones.
A private call in a semi-public space. The other doors in the hall are either open to empty rooms or closed for meetings—whether clandestine or business remains unknown. Except for one.
I glance back to Darius. He nods at the top of the stairwell, and I slip into the last room on the left. I glimpse Darius post up outside Sandra’s door before I shut mine with a soft click behind me.
“You’re late.” David Capone stands before the fireplace, flames burning bright behind his legs.
“By one minute, David.” Jimmy Falcone sits spread out in a chair on the other side of the room. There isn’t a bed in here, only chaise lounges and overstuffed chairs. I wonder if it’s meant for business rather than sultry trysts.
David scoffs and sips his drink. “Why are we here? And with so much hullabaloo.”
I stride into the room with the same assurance with which I approached Sandra. Half the game in business and dating is confidence. Knowing that you’ll walk away with what you want. Even when my insides are actually churning with anxious uncertainty.
“The wedding is in a few days.” I tuck my phone into my pocket, leaving my hand there. “You can’t tell me either of you are happy about it moving forward. Not when it means the Gallo-Accardi family will outstrip you both in one fell swoop.”
David scrutinizes me like he can’t decide if he respects me or detests me. We’ve made deals, he’s treated me fine, but I know my sex and sexuality paired with my status as a gang boss disturbs him. I don’t have time to care, and he seems to agree.
“We can’t stop it,” he says.
Jimmy, on the other hand, delights in the chaos Zarina and I have wrought.
Which makes me trust him about as much as I do the weatherman.
He does what he wants within the bounds of the Council’s rules, but maybe once a week, it’s what I expect of him.
Never more. That once a week will be tonight, I know, because Jimmy Falcone will take whatever chance he has to stop the Gallo-Accardi merger.
And I’m that chance.
“But that’s what you’re proposing.” He cocks his head, the ghost of a too-pleased smile twitching over his lips. “Isn’t it?”
David scoffs again, a sound I’m sure will be repeated multiple times this evening. “There’s no way to stop this, short of murder. And I’m not about to go to war.”
I nod, take my time considering his words. On my right, Jimmy’s fully smiling. He has no idea what I’ve done, what I’m about to propose, but he’s reading me, the room, the circumstance of our meeting. I let him.
“If there was a way?” I muse. “Without murder.”
David shakes his head, already out of patience. “There isn’t.”
Jimmy, though, is baring his teeth in what’s meant to be a grin but reads more threatening. “You found one.”
I let a half-smile flicker over my face. “No murder. No war. No weapons at all—unless you count a pen.”
“It is mightier than the sword,” Jimmy quips.
David’s frown pulls his mustache down further. “Fuck the riddles, Andrea. What are you saying?”
I offer him an apologetic nod. “Riccardo and Alessandra Gallo have been selling properties to cover their debts for years. Unfortunately for them, they didn’t do much research on exactly who they were selling to.”
I pull out my phone and send a file to each of them. “I’ve just sent every property I’ve acquired to your email. I think you’ll find it reduces their land ownership more than enough to… dissolve their status as a Cardinal Family.”
Jimmy sits up in his chair, planting both feet on the floor and pinning me with an almost maniacal look. “And raise your status.”
I shrug, like this means almost nothing. Like this isn’t the result of a decade’s worth of blood, tears, and betrayal. “Four Cardinal Families,” I say. “One for each region. It’d be… off-balance with only three, don’t you think?”
David scrolls through the document, brows arching higher and higher with each pass of his thumb.
I wait, hands in my pockets and shoulders at ease, giving off the appearance of nonchalance.
But inside, my organs shift and knot and attempt to crawl out of my skin.
Without David and Jimmy’s support, this whole plan goes to shit and I can’t do the one thing I promised Zarina when she came to me that night so many weeks ago—protect her.
David sniffs as he replaces his phone in his pocket. “I don’t like it.”
“I fuckin’ love it.” Jimmy never took out his phone, never stopped staring at me with that maniacal grin stretching his face too wide, showing too many teeth.
“Riccardo is our peer,” David grumbles.
“And he’s about to be wiped off the map whether you agree to replace him or not.” Jimmy settles back in his seat again, legs spread wide, and finally tames his face into something less unsettlingly deranged. “Besides, we need some young blood. Someone with a good head on her shoulders.”
David wrinkles his nose like he can’t bring himself to agree to such compliments of a gay woman, even if they’re true. “I still don’t like it.”
“Stop being such a stodgy old man.” Jimmy waves away David’s flimsy objection. “This is the answer we’ve been looking for.”
David pushes off the mantel and strides for the sideboard. “Alonso will never agree.”
“Alonso doesn’t have to.” I watch David pour a heavy helping of whisky and immediately slug it back. “It takes a majority vote to instate a new Cardinal Family. With Riccardo removed…”
“We’re the majority.” Jimmy’s eyes are sparkling, like he’s just discovered an escape of the noose tightening around his neck.
I simply nod in answer.
“We’re criminals, you think either of them gives a fuck about democratic process?” David snaps.
Jimmy sighs, squeezing one hand into a fist and releasing it slowly. I wonder if he’s also fighting back the urge to punch David Capone in the throat. “Then why did we spend months negotiating it after the last war?”
“There’s not a simple answer out there, gentlemen.
” I need them to stop bickering and decide.
David doesn’t have a real argument, he just doesn’t want the fallout.
I guess if I had survived more than thirty years as a don, I might feel the same.
But we don’t get the luxury of retirement, not really.
And without an heir, David really has no choice.
I spread my hands, supplicating. “This option, it’s the least violent of them. I understand I’m not your first choice, but right now”—I level a hard stare at David, who’s glaring at me from across the room—“I’m the only choice.”
“Or”—David raises his chin in an attempt at intimidation, but it just reads as petulant—“we sit back and let this play out.”
Jimmy shoves out of his seat, finally pushed into anger. “And allow the Accardis enough power to bury us? Fuck that.”
“If Andrea’s bought up half the Gallos’ property, then what will they have to give the Accardis, hm?” David says.
“The other half!” Jimmy snaps.
“Alonso had less power than he does today and still decimated the Russos.” I keep my voice level and soothing, unwilling to let this devolve into an actual argument. Too much is at stake for that. “The only thing keeping the Accardis in check is the balance of power among the Cardinal Families.”
Jimmy pulls his energy in, smoothing his face into a more neutral expression. “She’s right, David. All we did was muzzle him after the war.”
“And he’s about to unleash himself all over again,” I say.
“He’ll come after you, Andrea.” David points a look at me that might be concern. “It’ll be the Russos all over again.”
I sigh and shake my head, letting the honest defeat at the reality of my—our—predicament show. “Seems to me that’s the case no matter which path we take.”
David stares into his drink for too long. Maybe he can see the future there, scrying in liquor rather than blood. Jimmy and I let him, neither of us pushing, both of us recognizing the need to step back and shut up.
Instead, we wait. The fire pops and crackles.
The clock ticks, counting the seconds between us and the inevitability of this decision.
There’s no other path forward that doesn’t end in Louredo’s destruction.
Because Alonso Accardi will not stop until he sees the vision he set out to make a reality decades ago come to fruition. And neither will Marcus.
David Capone heaves a sigh so heavy, it fills the room with resignation. “I’m too fuckin’ old for this shit.”