27. Portia
27
PORTIA
I can’t get out of the warehouse fast enough.
Both my heart and mind are racing. I can’t begin to calm myself down. Everything I’ve heard and witnessed has made it impossible.
Sergio Sacrimoni and his crew of soldiers are escorted out of the warehouse by Il Diavolo’s men. It’s an embarrassing defeat for the newly promoted caporegime , who I’m guessing was supposed to fill Luigi Grasso’s shoes after his murder.
Yet, in only a matter of days, he’s screwed that up.
He didn’t see the trap that Il Diavolo had set up for him. He walked right into it, hook, line, and sinker.
Though I hadn’t either. I hadn’t known that following Milos Popovic and Sergio Sacrimoni would result in meeting up with Il Diavolo at the place alleged to be his base of operations.
Milos himself didn’t even realize he was being played. He thought he really knew the location. He claimed he’d been given a tour days before.
I don’t doubt that he had. After finally witnessing Il Diavolo in the flesh, something tells me that was intentional on his part. He must’ve set up a fake tour to make Milos think he had been shown his compound. He’d done so knowing full well that Milos would never keep it under wraps.
The second Sergio and the rest of the Tucos came knocking, he’d sing like a canary.
Still, I never expected what happened to unfold.
Tonight I got confirmation that the Belluccis are behind the new psychedelic drug called Nectar that’s being sold at U4EA and every other popular club in the city. They’re flooding the streets with it, likely raking in untold levels of dough from sales.
The Tucos had the same plan but were slower to roll theirs out.
Now Il Diavolo is demanding sole ownership of the drug. He wants a complete and total monopoly.
If Titus Tuco refuses, possibly the biggest mob war in American history could unfold right in our city.
It’s the biggest story of not just my career, but possibly the decade. I’m the journalist with the scoop.
With the voice recordings and videos saved on my phone.
I couldn’t capture everything or else risk being caught, but I got enough to blow everything wide open. All I need is Finkle’s backing to air it on Metro News.
And if he doesn’t agree…
My mind lands on Rafael. I had been so shocked when he appeared that I had to cover my mouth or I would’ve gasped out loud and blown my cover.
He was meeting up with gangsters like Il Diavolo and Sergio Sacrimoni, confirming what I had suspected.
Rafael was affiliated with the mob.
But then things took another twist. As it turns out, Rafael wasn’t connected to the Belluccis, at least not intentionally . He had stake in some of the same companies and properties as the crime family, but as he pointed out, so do many businessmen.
That would be because the mob involves themselves in legal business to cover their illegal tracks.
He happened to be loosely tied with the Tucos as well, which was what seemed to piss Il Diavolo off. A tyrant like him demanded allegiance even from people who were not under his organization.
Rafael hadn’t been brought in because he was actively working with the mafia. He was brought in, because he wasn’t cooperative enough.
I had it all wrong.
Guilt pools inside me as I flag down the taxi I’ve called and step closer to the edge of the curb. The taxi came miraculously fast considering the neighborhood. Then I realize it seems to be the same taxi I had gotten in earlier. The license plate matches the car I had ridden over in.
I assumed the driver sped off, but he remained in the area the whole time.
I draw the rear passenger door open and slide inside.
“Oh… you’re someone else,” I say, startled.
The driver behind the wheel isn’t the bespectacled bald man I’d had on the ride over. A man with thick gray hair and a large nose has taken his place. He smiles at me in the rearview mirror.
“New shift,” he clarifies. “Where to?”
“5678 East Hallow Avenue, please,” I rattle off, buckling my seatbelt. “I didn’t realize my last driver was at the end of his shift. It explains why he sped off.”
The man merely chuckles but says nothing else as he pulls away from the curb and starts down the road. The warehouse slips into the background, followed by the rest of the meat-packing district.
I breathe in relief, a rush of endorphins hitting me.
I really took some dangerous chances tonight. Going to U4EA on my own was bad enough, but then I followed literal gangsters to a negotiation at a warehouse. Things could’ve gone so far left, I really could’ve been hurt… or worse, I could be dead right now.
But it was all for my story. In pursuit of the truth.
I won’t ever apologize for doing my job as an investigative reporter. Someone has to take these kinds of risks.
I decide I’ll revisit everything that’s gone down tomorrow. I’m overstimulated and exhausted as it is. My feet are aching in these heels and I’d love to strip my bra off to give my breasts some freedom. All I want to do is take a hot shower and go to bed.
And call Rafael.
I owe him a huge apology. I really blamed him for things that were outside his control.
My untrusting nature strikes again. I’m so wary of being hurt by a man that I always leap to the worst possible conclusion, then promptly push them away.
It’s time I move past this defense mechanism and do better. Rafael deserves a woman who will be as patient, loyal, and trusting with him as he has been with me.
My hand slips into my wristlet and I pull out my phone so I can text him. Maybe we can meet up tomorrow morning and talk about things.
We brake for a red light. I look up expecting to see familiar streets. We should be closing in on the Crosby neighborhood soon.
The street sign reads Church Street… which is on the opposite side of the city to Crosby. We’ve gone further out from where I live rather than toward it.
“Sir,” I say from the backseat, “this isn’t the right direction. You need to reroute the GPS.”
“This is a different route we’re taking.”
My brows knit. “That makes no sense. You’re driving further out from the Crosby neighborhood. You need to turn around right now.”
“That is not possible.”
“What do you mean it’s not possible?”
The relief and ease I had been feeling only seconds ago vanishes. My heart rate is spiking all over again as I sit up in the seat and realize what’s happening.
This man is intentionally driving me somewhere I don’t want to go. He has nefarious intentions and could very well be kidnapping me. He could be associated with the mob. He has the look, even a couple tattoos on his arms of symbols I don’t recognize.
What if I didn’t escape the warehouse as unseen as I’d thought I had? Could this be one of Il Diavolo’s men or someone from the Tuco camp?
I don’t want to wait to find out.
My gaze lands on the door as we wait out the red light. The driver seems to draw the same conclusion I have. As I quickly unfasten my seatbelt and then reach for the door handle to jump out, he locks the doors with a menacing click.
The street light blinks to green and he hits the gas. The car slips into motion again, going faster than it had earlier.
No more steady, casual pace to put me at ease. The jig is up. We’re both on the same page now.
“Let me out of this car right now!” I demand.
“That will not be happening. I have orders.”
“I don’t give a fuck what your orders are, let me out!”
I fumble with my phone, quickly hitting the emergency button on the side. He realizes what I’m doing and his arm stretches into the back seat to snatch it from me.
“Don’t touch my phone!” I scream at him.
His long, thick fingers grapple for it as I push him off. He tries again, twisting toward the back, only half steering from the front with his other arm. The car veers sharply to the lane on our left. Luckily, there’s no other car next to us, otherwise we would’ve knocked right into them.
“HELP!” I scream into my phone. “I’M BEING KIDNAPPED! HELP!”
The man slams hard on the brakes and jostles me forward in my seat. I collide with the seat in front of me as his fingers lock around my forearm and he wrenches me toward him.
The fight turns nasty. I swipe at his face with my nails, gouging at his cheek. He immediately retaliates with an open-palmed wallop that knocks me sideways to the floor of the taxicab.
I’m reeling for a couple seconds to come. My cheek stings and I blink away the dots in front of my eyes.
Phone no longer in my hand and car at a standstill in the middle of the road, I need to get the fuck out of here.
But he’s unbuckled his seatbelt and gotten out. He steps toward the rear door and forces it open to reach for me. He’s livid, his teeth clenched as he leans into the backseat and wraps his hands around my throat.
I go into survival mode, kicking and slapping against him. He tightens his hold, pushing me onto my back, hovering over me as he glares into my face and squeezes.
My breath’s cut off, the pressure bearing down. The panic is immediate, making me flail even harder against him.
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe and this man only chokes me harder.
The world starts to blacken at the edges. It’s like I’m being dragged under dark waters, and no matter how hard I resist, it only wrenches me further down.
The panicked voice inside my head screams all sorts of things at me. Things like maybe this is how I’ll die. In the backseat of some taxicab, murdered because I dared to eavesdrop on the mob. They’ll dump my body and nobody will ever know what truly happened to me.
Jayla will be devastated. Mom and Dad will never recover.
My big scoop will be buried and never see the light of day.
I’ll never get to make up with Rafael…
But then another part of me screams to hold on. Just hang on a little bit longer. I pressed the emergency SOS button. The authorities had to have been notified. They had to be tracking my location and coming to the scene… right?
RIGHT?!
My vision continues to dim until I feel twitchy and out of control of my own body. I can’t even fight anymore, going limp as he throttles me with no mercy and my nervous system seems to go haywire.
This is how you die.
I’m closing my eyes. My lids can no longer stay open. They lower as I go still on the floor of the taxicab and sink into the darkness.
Then, suddenly, the hands are gone from my throat.
The man pressing me into the floor is no more. His heavy weight is lifted and I’m left lying half dead, barely conscious.
I can’t move. I can’t even think. I’m just trying to figure out how to breathe again.
“You fucking imbecile, what do you think you’re doing?!” comes the enraged voice of what I distantly recognize as Sergio Sacrimoni. “I didn’t fucking say to kill her! We need her alive… for now… at least ’til we can use her to bargain! Move out of the way!”
The fake taxicab driver is shoved aside.
A different man reaches into the backseat to scoop me up and pull me out. I’m carried limply in his arms toward a different vehicle—one of the black Escalades I had followed over to the warehouse only an hour or two ago.
I’m dumped in the back where two more men are seated. They promptly secure my wrists. I can barely sit up, let alone hold my head up like normal. It lolls onto my shoulder as I cough and my bruised throat tries to open back up.
He crushed it so much under his grip that I worry he might’ve done real damage.
Sergio has my phone. He must’ve snatched it off the floor of the taxicab. He holds it up in front of my face to unlock the screen and then starts swiping and scrolling through whatever he wants.
“So you’ve been investigating us a long time,” he says conversationally, like we’re speaking about sports or the latest episode of some sitcom. “You think we didn’t know about it, dollface? Believe me, we knew. We knew all about you sticking your nose where it didn’t belong. Why do you think we shot up that charity dinner of yours? And that boat party? We’ve tried our damnedest to get you out of the picture. Then we realized who you were dating.”
Though I’m out of it, his words set off alarm bells inside me.
I had been so confused by the shooting at the Rise and Thrive charity dinner. I hadn’t known what to think of it, or what could’ve been the cause.
Were the Tucos targeting me all along?
I had eventually concluded they’d been after Rafael…
“Anyway,” Sergio goes on, “you might be more valuable alive than dead. Your boyfriend’s no friend of the Belluccis… but he damn sure might be willing to work with us when he finds out what we’ve got. Funny how that works, huh?”
Sergio flashes me a nasty grin with his trout mouth, looking like an evil, menacing fish.
He juts his chin at the henchman on my right. “Knock her out. Don’t hurt her too much. We don’t want any damage just yet.”
I’m struck in the back of my head with what must be some kind of club or baton. It collides with my skull and the consciousness I’ve fought to regain wipes out. I slump against the men in the backseat, finally pulled under into the darkness.