Chapter 43
FORTY-THREE
STAN
Playlist recommendation:
West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
When Star tracked Diana’s location to a dive bar between Chinatown and Two Bridges, I knew the cunt had figured she’d covered the ‘V’ on her cheek well enough to scurry around the city like a cockroach wearing a rat’s coat.
But I begged to differ—makeup plastered the scar, giving it a faintly green cast, but I was a pro at scouting the proof of enmity with my family.
I’d been there when Diana had earned that scar so she recognized me.
Her eyes widened before they darted left to right.
Clearly, she was up to her old tricks, what with the way she was drooling over some asshole who had no hair, no teeth, and a paunch that weighed as much as she did—soliciting, as Aurora would call it.
My lips curved when she dashed around a pool table but didn’t move fast enough to avoid one of the cues hitting her in the side.
“What the fuck?” the player snarled because it screwed with his shot. “Get outta here before I shove this down your throat.”
“I don’t know,” I rumbled. “I’d pay to see that.”
Diana’s perfidy didn’t hinge solely on her returning to the city. It was lingering in a bar on our turf.
Was this a special brand of ‘fuck you’ or proof that drugs had addled her brain?
My statement, too low to carry over the TV, still settled like snow onto the busy bar.
I was a Valentini, after all.
The Capo.
The patrons took a collective inhalation that they held as, frozen in place, they watched the showdown.
Diana yelped, rubbing her side with a hand as she raced for the ladies room.
Watching her scurry around like the vermin she was, I intoned, “Carry on.”
“Nothing to see here,” Dante agreed, stepping behind me, but the rictus of my expression was enough to have everyone staring at the floor without him as backup.
“S-Sir?”
When I gave the barkeep my attention, he blanched. “Se?”
“There’s no exit that way. No window, either.”
“Your assistance is appreciated.”
He released a relieved sigh. “No worries.”
“The back door?” Chad’s gaze was as stony as his tone. “Fire exits?”
The bartender pointed out both, leaving Chad to nod in thanks.
Knowing that the rat couldn’t leave the sinking ship, I slowed, hoping Diana’s fear would amp up when she realized she’d trapped herself in the restroom.
When I shoved open the door, a stranger shrieked at my presence then hissed, “This is the ladies room!”
“Nothing about this dive says ladies come here. Now, get the fuck out before I help.”
“Can’t even piss in peace!”
“Doesn’t look like you’re pissing to me.” I shifted to the side to let her leave, gaze on the only stall door that was shut.
“Animal.”
“You got that right.”
My dark smile had her stiffening. She snatched her cheap purse to her chest and steered clear of me on her way out.
Heading farther into the restroom that stank of weed, I leaned against the sink and crossed my feet at the ankle. “What on earth made you think you could return to your old stomping ground, Diana?”
“I’m not Diana. M-My name’s Mary Gillespie.”
“That ‘V’ on your cheek says otherwise. You think I wouldn’t remember the day my brother sliced you up for being a treacherous slut and the worst mom in the country?” I pshawed at her prevarication. “You got an ID that backs up this Gillespie crap?”
“Will you hurt me if I come out and show it to you? I don’t want any trouble.”
Bullshit. “I’ll hurt you whether you do or whether you don’t.”
She whimpered.
Now, I wasn’t a man who enjoyed inspiring fear in the average woman. I’d been raised to cherish them. My father might have taken me to a burdellu in Catania, much as he had with Luciu, for a sixteenth birthday present, but I knew he’d given me the same lecture as he had my older brother:
Women are sacrosanct.
They were life.
Even if they have to sell their bodies to survive, you treat them with respect.
Sometimes, that made what I’d created with Red harder to handle.
Yet, I found satisfaction in her petrified whimper.
It was so easy to remember the fate she’d intended to pass onto her daughter. Deep in debt, Diana would have sold Jen to the gangbangers she owed like she was a bag of oranges at a market.
If Luc hadn’t insisted on going with Jen to visit her mother that day, I didn’t even want to think about what’d have happened to her.
Fury stoked, I twisted the verbal knife.
“Do you think my brother enjoys wasting his breath, Dante?”
“No, boss. None of you Valentinis say shit without meaning it.”
“What do you think, Chad? If you were ordered by the Don to stay away from Manhattan for the rest of your life…”
“I’d stay away and be damn grateful he let me go. I sure as fuck wouldn’t come back and whore myself out on his turf.”
“Hear that, Diana? Where’s the gratitude for the Don letting you skip town and keep breathing for the past couple years?”
“This is my home,” she whined then hiccuped. “I-I-I mean, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m telling you my name is Mary Gillespie!”
“No. It was your home. Now, it’ll be your final resting place. Leave the stall before I drag you out.”
“Please! I’m not who you think I am!”
“And I’m not in the mood for your brand of bullshit. Any bitch who thinks they can sell their flesh and blood out is a bitch who needs burying in a grave.” I kicked my foot against the door. The shitty fiber board splintered under the force and she screamed. “Open the fucking door.”
Two kicks in, she was screeching, “All right, all right!”
As it opened, I ducked aside—just in time too. A gust of pepper spray wafted out, but I continued pushing the door inward and shoved her against the wall.
She tumbled into the toilet, but she was so thin half her ass fell through the seatless hole.
When water splashed, I snorted while I grabbed her arm with one hand, threw the pepper spray out with the other, then tossed her purse to Dante before I hauled her into the main restroom.
“What’s in there?”
At my command, Dante pilfered her purse. “ID under the name of Mary Gillespie. Couple packs of condoms, smokes, a baggy of blow, and a phone,” he recounted swiftly.
“Hand me the cell.”
That earned me a shriek, but I grabbed her ponytail and dragged her head back. “You will shut the fuck up, you sellout cunt. You think you can hurt my family and I’ll let you get away with it? Wrong.
“You should have listened to my brother. He was kinder than I am. I’d have sliced your fucking throat and not your cheek. But now, I’ll get what I wanted because today’s the day you die. It’s down to you how painful the main event is.”
As she burst into terrified tears, Dante handed me the cell when I stuck out my hand for it.
“Get Luigi ‘round front with the SUV, Dante.”
“Yes, Capo.”
Whimpering, Diana shot him a pleading look that he ignored.
“He’s not your salvation,” I mocked, tapping her phone. “We’re all sinners here.”
Her crocodile tears gave way to desperation. She tried to elbow me in the face so I used my hold on her hair to press hers into the sink.
Slipping her cell into my back pocket, I turned on the faucet then pushed her under the running water until she was gasping for air. Only then did I retrieve her cell, drag her out of the filthy sink, and unlock the interface with Face ID.
“You can behave or I can waterboard you. Your choice.”
I took her sobbing as agreement to behave.
Flicking a look at Chad, who shut off the faucet, I tapped into her settings and disconnected the Face ID feature once I’d changed the passcode.
That done, I scanned her messages.
One name had tension rippling through me.
Agon Prifti.
The Albanian with that underground whorehouse in Nolita.
The Albanian whose name I’d extracted from one of those morons who’d thought they could hijack Russu…
“Who’s Agon Prifti to you?”
Behind me, Chad grunted in surprise while Dante, partway through a call with Luigi, froze in recognition.
Weeping, Diana swiped a trembling hand over her face to wipe away her tears. “He’s no one.”
Speed-reading their exchanges, I shook my head. “He’s your pimp.” Only recently. The bulk of Prifti’s orders had been sent out today, but he’d kept in touch with her for a couple weeks.
Strange.
All told, their messages numbered fewer than a dozen.
That didn’t stop a full-body shiver from shuttling through her skeletal frame. Fear of me? Or Prifti? “No, he isn’t. I don’t do that anymore.”
“That’s a fucking lie. A dumb one too if you’re carrying around boxes of fucking condoms. Anyway, he tells you which corners to stand on.” My mind raced. “What do you know about a whorehouse in Nolita?”
“I-If you don’t kill me,” she pleaded, “then I’ll tell you everything I know about him.”
Amused, I grinned. She didn’t smile back. If anything, her throat bobbed in terror.
“No, Diana, you’re going to tell me everything you know so I don’t cut out your tongue before I slice your throat.
I already told you that it’s your choice how much pain you want to be in when you die, but the second you stepped foot in Manhattan, you signed your death warrant.
That’s on you, not me.” I stared her down.
“But hey, unlike Prifti, at least I’ll give you a say in how you meet your maker… ”