The Boss (Dead Men #2)
CHAPTER 1
Luna
I hold my breath as I sneak down the dark hall.
It’s a silly habit from childhood. I’ve turned the security cameras off, I’ve checked for Papa’s snoring and I know that for the next fifteen minutes, the night guards are on the other side of the property.
Even if I meet a soldier, a few bats of my lashes with a fib about how I’m just fetching Papa’s favorite pen, or some other nonsense, and they’d be pacified.
They’re not going to tattle on the Boss’s daughter in the dead of night.
And the Boss himself would just remind me of his rules and go back to sleep.
Still, I feel better clamping my mouth shut and sprinting the last few steps.
Once I’m safely behind the massive wood doors, I exhale. Then I breathe deep. I have always loved the smell in here. Leather, smoke, the spicy remnants of various brands of mens’ cologne.
Power.
That’s what this room smells like to me.
I walk across the space in the dark, knowing the grooves of the thick oriental rug by heart.
I don’t have to use my hands to feel for the few chairs ahead of me, the sofa to the side by the grand fireplace, the lamps here and there.
I have completely memorized the room I’m not allowed to be in, so I head straight for Papa’s desk and sit.
I pull the bottom right drawer and as usual, it opens. I sigh. Papa really is too trusting. Sure, our security is top of the line here. Suffocating, even. But he should lock the drawer that holds his infamous black book.
I turn on the small table lamp and set the bulky ledger on the mahogany desktop. I pull my own black leather journal out from where it’s tucked behind my back. Ledger…journal—those aren’t the right words, not really.
I open both sets of records. I feel the familiar awe as I look over his handwriting.
There are actual ledgers before me, but the scribbles on the pages go well beyond record-keeping.
There are names, addresses, passwords, memories, photos, sketches, dates.
Everything except the absolute most secret and sacred bits of information, which he’d never write down.
This bound collection of ink and paper is my father’s brain.
It’s the heart of the Italian mafia that controls a large portion of America’s economy.
And Papa leaves it in an unlocked drawer.
Do better old man, Fai meglio, vecchio!
I roll my eyes and get a pen out of the marble penholder near the lamp.
There are some new entries, shipments from the last couple days.
But I’m not interested in the recent accounts, which I know about already anyway.
As usual, I’ve already made changes, mimicking his tight handwriting.
Thanks to me, deliveries run faster and with fewer men.
Product is triple checked instead of double checked. Margins are increased, bloat decreased.
What I am interested in is solving the puzzle that’s been nagging me for weeks. I flip back until I reach the dates and names I’m looking for.
Here it is.
I start to rewrite all that I know on a fresh spread in my own ledger.
Someone kidnapped my best friend, Eleanna Delgado White, the niece of the Spanish American mafia, and her husband Mark White, a United States Senator.
The Delgados control the majority share of drug flow into the U.S.
via the southern border. Senator White is on the committee that oversees funding and security for that same border.
If you have the small army and fat bank account needed to go up against the Delgados, the couple is not a surprising ransom target.
The Russians or Irish, even the southern cartels or Canadian clans up north have proper motivation. Kidnap the couple, demand a giant ransom by way of a bigger share of product or profit.
What is surprising is that my cousin Elio claims to have been the mastermind behind the operation. On his own. To impress my father and make a name for himself.
Bull.
Shit.
Elio is as sharp and strong as a cooked linguine noodle. He couldn’t mastermind his way out of a one-stall public bathroom, let alone a large-scale high-priority kidnapping.
Papa didn’t buy it at first either when the senator swore up and down it was us. According to his notes, my father dug deep into the gutters of all four major crime families. Spies, ex-mafiosos, PIs and crack heads in every city offered nothing but confirmation.
All stories say Elio traveled to Texas in the weeks prior, hired local mercenaries, was shot in the gut and taken to the hospital. There are itineraries, receipts and medical records to back it all up.
Fake, all of it.
Yet, he fooled my father and all the other syndicates. Which means Elio is being propped up by someone else, someone big. My best guess right now is the Irish. They are the most reclusive clan out of the four syndicates, and the smallest.
But why change the game mid-play and pin the kidnapping on us?
What went wrong? If they chose Elio as their spy within our family, that was ill-advised.
Because again, he’s limp pasta, and because Papa immediately exiled him for almost starting a war with the Delgados, and for daring to touch the best friend of his principessa without authorization.
I write said best friend’s name, underline, and circle it. Because, Ellie, what the hell? Initially she gave a very clear, detailed account of the attack but when I ask her directly, she claims her memory is “murky.” Murky, my ass. Her husband is in on it. Has to be.
And! She bounced back from the whole ordeal like it hardly happened.
One day she’s watching her husband get tortured, the next she’s back to baking bacon maple croissants.
The video made me sick for days, seeing her in that cement torture room, she should have at least gone into some intensive therapy.
Unless she knew her husband was in on it.
Unless she knew that they weren’t actually in danger of being killed in that room. That makes the most sense, deep in my gut. Which is why I underline the same conclusion I come to every time.
My best friend, oldest friend, my only confidant outside mia famiglia since I was fifteen,
is.
lying.
to.
me.
My only comfort right now is that I still have her, so to speak. I can watch her closely, ask seemingly benign questions and dig around without her suspecting. She doesn’t know I’m onto her.