Chapter 10 Stan #2
Jackie Van Der Mils was as old money as her husband—the family fortune had come from paper products. She had a rep for being a whack job, but I’d never seen it.
To me, she seemed to be a cowed wife.
“No. One of our hookers.” Luigi rubbed his nose. “Definitely on blow. Maybe Red, considering they were practically fucking in their section. Never mind that they were in a group. It was turning into an orgy before Chad and I broke things up.
“I’ve seen plenty of shit on the streets, Stan, but they made me blush.”
“You told Rory?”
“Of course. There was plenty of blackmail material there.” Offended, he groused, “What do you take me for?”
“Apparently someone who’ll close off our goddamn VIP section!”
“We had no choice!” he repeated, but he gulped at my annoyance. “And it wasn’t a unilateral decision.”
“What happened?”
“One of the Albanians dragged another VIP onto the dance floor. I separated them and hauled the moron into the bathroom. I managed it without anyone in their circle noticing. Then…” Luigi hesitated. “It went to shit, Capo.
“I’d called in Chad by that time. They started arguing and drew guns on each other. We managed to contain the situation, but Chad didn’t want to make a move without consulting you, seeing as you were on your way.”
“Has anyone on the lower floors noticed the gunfight at the OK Corral?”
“No. We instructed the DJ to play louder than regulation permits, but it’s kept everyone distracted.”
“That’s something at least.”
Luigi nodded as we headed into the staff elevator that’d take us to the VIP section.
“How many Albanians now?”
“One in the restroom. One tried to get him out…” He swallowed. “There may be some damage.”
I sought and failed to find patience. “Great.”
“Then there are twelve—”
“Roaming around our VIP section?"
Luigi tugged on his ear. “Not exactly roaming, Capo.”
“How did they gain entry?”
“Still working on figuring that out, boss. Don’t know if Giuseppe took a bribe or if he needs glasses.”
Impatiently, I motioned at him to open the doors.
Reality was better than the carnage my imagination cooked up.
To the throbbing beat that hammered my synapses, I scanned the scene and accepted that Chad’s decision in shutting off the section had been a good call.
No, twelve men weren’t roaming around, instead they lay face down on the floor with guns pointed at their backs.
Had to assume that was the only thing keeping them contained when I saw a stack of weapons my men had confiscated over in the farthest corner of the VIP area—fucking battalions of soldiers came armed with fewer guns than these bastards when they sacked a town!
Assuming Chad had taken control of the head honcho, I shouted at him over some horrific techno music, “This the lead?”
“Unknown. But he was the main instigator.”
“Made men?”
“Think so, boss. You know they’ve been spreading out since that mess in Kentucky. They’ve always had gangs pocketed around the States, but it’s like they’ve consolidated or something,” he complained.
The Irish had insisted on an escort today because of said mess in the Bluegrass State. Everyone was trigger-fucking-happy thanks to these insane cunts who had no respect for demarcated turf lines and who, for whatever fucking reason, had decided now was their time to shine.
I had no problem with Albanians. Had visited the country once or twice and some areas were gorgeous, but the gangs in the US—Rory thought I was feral? Ha!
Only the desperate touched Albanian coke because they laced it with fentanyl. Seeing as they used their own product, it turned them into goddamn animals.
But Chad had a point—I’d started to suspect the gangs had become an outright mob. Considering we’d forged a similar path to power, we were perfectly placed to recognize the signs.
The Albanians now had a centralized power figure.
The other factions could argue until they were blue in the face about it, but my gut told me otherwise.
Rather than scream over the music, I stamped my boot between the shoulders of the fucker I thought was the leader here. His scream combined with the crunch I felt under my heel had him bucking beneath my foot before sagging as I kicked him over.
From here, I could see he was high.
Because time = money and every second we had the VIP section cordoned off, we were losing bank, I asked Chad, “Are the rooms out back occupied?”
“Yeah. Got that money lender on the take in one and a bunch of gangbangers behind the drive-by on that bookie’s office in the rest.”
I did some quick mental arithmetic on the warehouses closest to us that would contain fourteen of these fuckers.
“Okay. Hog-tie and transport them to warehouse five.”
He nodded but flicked a glance at Luigi, who spread out, looping each of the men into my instructions.
I cast a withering eye over the group, watching for dissent.
One Albanian lifted his head and scanned the scene, but it was the faintest twitch of his lips that had me zeroing in on him.
I didn’t know if that minute smile was drug-induced euphoria or a smug smirk. Either way, I smelled a rat.
On edge, I headed his way. He caught my eye a second too late and shoved his forehead into the floor.
Pressing my heel into his skull, I took a moment to savor his scream, then I stomped down hard until he passed out.
Shifting tracks, I clicked my fingers at Luigi, who raced over to me. “Change of plan. Don’t take them to the warehouse.”
“Where shall we put them, boss?”
Even as I strategized, I couldn’t erase that smug smirk from my memory.
I might have been overreacting, but I didn’t want them anywhere near warehouses stocked with our merchandise, not even number five.
“Take ‘em to that construction site near the ballpark.”
Luigi’s brows lifted, but he drifted off to fulfill my command.
Forty minutes later, we regrouped in Queens. Eleven Albanians shuffled in their bindings with three more dead to the world—the fucker from the bathroom, the guy who’d tried to help him, and the moron whose head I’d kicked in.
All of them had been laid out as I’d requested—hog-tied and kissing dirt. Apart from the leader, whose wrists and ankles Chad had staked into the earth.
The early morning might have been silent elsewhere, and EDM no longer bounced off the walls of my brain, but this construction site worked 24/7.
Despite the different type of cacophony, I could think again, and the more I thought, the more I felt certain this was a foiled hijacking attempt.
Because he’d let the fuckers into Russu, I’d brought Giuseppe in on this little meeting in Queens. That came with consequences. Painful ones.
I almost hoped this was a pre-planned ambush with Giuseppe turning traitor, because I itched to delete the fucker and his constant screwups.
The man in question tugged on his collar, seemingly aware that he had my attention.
Now that I could smell his anxiety, I turned to my target. “What were you doing in my club?”
Unease rippled through the men gathered as I spoke in Albanian. That meant my Stidda didn’t know what I was saying and the Albanians knew they couldn’t bullshit me by pretending not to speak English.
The guy blinked, but it was drowsily, the drugs catching up with him. “Dancing, o pidh. What else?”
I squatted beside him. “I think something else was going down. I think you tried to infiltrate my club with hidden intentions.”
“Hidden intentions?” He laughed like a hyena on badly cut coke. “I wanted to get fucked. That was my hidden intention.”
I stared at the glob of saliva on my Ferragamo slacks then shifted my attention to Luigi, who, with orders preset, sat behind the wheel of a concrete mixer. Clicking my fingers at him triggered the turning over of the engine.
The Albanians jerked their heads up to locate the source of the noise, including the man whose spit decorated my pants.
He frowned as the vehicle beeped now that it was reversing, and Luigi, who’d driven eighteen wheelers professionally in his late twenties, maneuvered the hulking piece of machinery toward us.
“What the fuck, man?” the guy on the ground garbled out, eyes growing wide with horror as the cement mixer continued its approach.
“Feel like getting run over by a twenty-ton truck?” I inquired in English, straightening and strolling out of Luigi’s path.
“We wanted to get laid,” he shrieked, accent thicker as fear spread, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth, inadvertently this time, while his limbs jerked at the bindings in a vain attempt to escape.
“What do you think, Chad? Believe him?”
“Not as far as I could throw him, boss. I think the fact that they were packing more ammo than I did in the sandbox says it all.”
“I swear!”
“What do you swear it on? Your first dog’s life?
” I scoffed, triggering a snicker from Dante Graziola—new to my Stidda, in possession of a sick-as-fuck sense of humor that lined up with mine, and a fighter worthy of a showdown with Muhammad Ali when he had the bit between his teeth.
“You think this is first grade? Do I look like a kindergarten teacher?”
“You’re fucking insane!”
“Keep it coming, Luigi,” I hollered, waving my arm like he needed the guidance.
The fucker on the ground screamed again as the wheels ate up the inches between his kneecaps belonging to him and transferring ownership to the concrete.
When his howls of agony echoed around the clearing and blood had spattered onto the dirt, joints and cartilage with it, I crouched low and pressed my knee to his gut.
“You want me to leave you like this? I can leave you here all fucking day and night and you can scream and cry and wail for your mama, but no one on this construction site will so much as look at you as you piss and shit yourself while you plead with God for morphine, and then you wish for death.” I grabbed his chin and forced him to look at me, his eyes loaded with agony, suffering too much to stare at me with hatred.
He was, I knew, inches away from passing out, but the drugs were working against him.
“Don’t bother asking God because God doesn’t run this fucking playground.
I do.” My top lip curled into a sneer. “You want morphine or a grave, my friend?”
His face, bright red from the exertion of screaming, snot making his face gleam in the spotlights, turned away as he sobbed, “Might as well be dead if I talk to you.”
“Then, you have options.” I pointed to the cement truck with my thumb. “Option one.”
“What’s option two?”
“Bullet to the temple. Option three…” I slipped a hand into my pocket and retrieved a baggy of pills. “One of these and it’s night night for good.”
His mouth quivered rather than form an answer, so I flicked a look at Chad, who dipped his chin.
As he slammed his boot onto the severed joint where the Albanian once had a working knee, the guy bayed in distress. “BULLET!”
“Good answer.” I smiled. “Now, who the fuck are you working for, and what were you dipshits after at Russu?”