Chapter 20
LUCA
Victor sends Valentina back to the mansion with an escort. She’ll be safe there with Michael while I handle what clearly needs to be handled. It was an egregious attempt to destroy me and my family. They almost succeeded tonight.
I let Solomon, one of my lieutenants, guide me through an abandoned warehouse in Bronzeville—one of the black sites we keep specifically for this type of situation.
In the middle of the main hall, bloodied and bound to a rickety old chair, sits the surviving gunman from tonight’s gala.
Checking my watch first, I see it’s close to midnight.
“Mr. Petrucci, you’ll be surprised to hear this,” Solomon says.
The guy in the chair looks up, genuinely terrified at the sight of me.
Good.
I want this bastard pissing his pants until he takes his last breath.
He’s surrounded by three of my men, their knuckles bloodied from the beating they gave him prior to my arrival. They know the protocol—prime him for my turn, and I can’t fucking wait to sink my teeth into this fucker.
“What’s that, Solomon?” I ask without taking my eyes off him.
Water drips into a puddle somewhere nearby, its echo wrapped in darkness and suffocating humidity. The smell of rusted iron, mixed with the stench of sweat and blood, fills my nostrils.
“This is Lanny,” Solomon replies.
I honestly think I couldn’t be surprised by anything anymore. Yet here I stand, genuinely surprised as I stare at the guy with wide, sparkling eyes.
“Lanny. One of the gentlemen who had the audacity to rob a Petrucci transport,” I say with a calm tone. “And kill my driver.”
“Yes, sir,” Solomon says, then shows me Lanny’s driver’s license. “I found this hidden in his boot.”
Indeed, the name on the license matches, and it brings everything into a startling yet troubling perspective. But it also feels like the goose that laid the golden egg has been accidentally dropped into my lap. Providence or accident?
“Lanny,” I say, looking at him. “You’re quite the jack-of-all-trades, aren’t you?”
“I’m not saying a word. I’ll only speak to the cops,” Lanny hisses.
I give Solomon an amused glance. “I thought you made the terms and conditions clear to the man.”
“I did. He’s just trying his luck.”
I step forward slowly. “Lanny, so here’s the thing,” I say. “You’ll never see the inside of a cell. The cops can’t save you. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody knows you’re even alive.”
Lanny seems confused, so I nod to Solomon and the guys. “They gave their statements to the police. The camera footage from the venue lacks the high-resolution quality the detectives need to accurately track your movements. Not to mention, I’m pretty sure there was some malfunction with the DVR.”
“No,” Lanny gasps.
“Yes. So, as far as the cops are concerned, you somehow managed to disappear shortly before they arrived. My men were too busy rendering first aid to the many who needed their assistance. You were supposedly down and unconscious, which reminds me,” I say and reach down, sticking my finger into his side where the bullet went through.
I feel the flesh and the blood squelching as Lanny cries out in sheer agony, his entire body stiffening from the sudden pain while a deluge of tears streams from his eyes. “Does this hurt?”
“Stop, please!”
“No one is coming to save you, Lanny. You only have two options,” I reply. “Would you like to hear them?”
For good measure, I curl my finger inside the wound. It’s a terrible thing to do, but once he stops screaming, it gets the job done.
“Yes!” Lanny manages. “Yes!”
“You’re going to die tonight,” I tell him. “It’s up to you whether it’ll be a quick kind of death or a slow kind of death. And considering you’re one of the men who shot at my wife, you know I’m eager to make it as slow as possible. So you see? I’m a fair man. I’m presenting you with a deal.”
Lanny shakes his head slowly, heaving and sobbing, as fresh blood drenches his jacket around the wound. The front of his pants darkens. The reek is disturbingly familiar. He’s reached his breaking point. He’s ready.
“What deal?” Lanny asks.
“Tell me everything you know, and I will end it quickly. Dick me around, and I will inflict so much pain, you’ll beg me to kill you, but I won’t. I won’t stop until I’ve had my pound of flesh, Lanny, and trust me, I’m a highly motivated man.”
Solomon raises his eyebrows at me. I reply with a nod, and he directs the men to take a few steps back.
They know to keep their distance when I get involved, just as Solomon knows to hand me a pair of latex gloves to prevent any forensic evidence from being left behind. I put them on right under Lanny’s nose.
“What will it be?” I ask.
“I’ll die either way.”
It’s all I need to reiterate the gravity of his situation. I stick my finger back inside the wound, and he screams and wails and begs for mercy while I squeeze out every drop of agonizing pain left in his body.
Finally, he caves in. “Okay! Oh, God, okay!”
“Who pays you?” I ask.
“I… I’m not sure…”
“We’re getting off on the wrong foot here, Lanny,” I reply and repeat my attack on his ever-widening bullet wound.
“I swear!” he cries out. “All I know is that they’re affiliated with the Mancusos. They reach out to us on a Reddit message board. It’s all done anonymously. The cash is always dropped off at a specific location… Oh, God, it hurts…”
“How do you know they’re affiliated with the Mancusos?”
“Everything they asked us to do served the Mancuso syndicate’s interests. Robbing your truck, the ballroom…. We were told specifically to make sure he and his closest people don’t get hurt.”
“His closest people, but not all of them,” Solomon replies. “They dropped some Mancuso associates, too.”
Lanny shakes his head. “Well, they got caught in the crossfire. I don’t think anybody warned them that we were gonna storm the place. I think they wanted everybody shocked and surprised.”
“You said they hired you anonymously,” I say. “But there has to be a Reddit username. Right?”
“Yeah. It’s… It’s Firefox something. Firefox2620.”
Solomon nods once and immediately opens his phone, digging into the specific username and searching for everything he can find about it.
There’s always a trail, even online. People think they can cover their tracks, but with the right tools and the right people handling them, there isn’t a single track I can’t uncover.
“Where did you get your information?” I ask Lanny. “About the truck, the delivery schedules, about my associates at the charity gala. This was exceptionally well targeted, Lanny, and you don’t strike me as an expert in research.”
He lifts his exhausted gaze to mine. “I’m not.”
“Then where did the intel come from?”
As soon as he sees me reaching down again, his whole body shakes from the raw terror that takes over, and he starts talking fast.
“I’m not sure. The employer got us all the information we needed,” he says.
“They’d drop off the intel package at one location and the cash at another.
We get the intel at the mailbox from the corner of 5th and Lex, then the cash from behind the third dryer at Louie’s laundromat down on 47th. It’s everything I know, I swear.”
“Did you keep any of the hard files they gave you?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Back at my place.”
Solomon shows him his drivers’ license. “At this address?”
“No,” Lanny replies. “My place is in Back of the Yards, behind El Guero. Apartment 30B, first floor. It’s got a blue door, and I keep a key under the door frame, you gotta stick your finger in there to get it.”
“You sure have a thing for fingers sticking into all the wrong places,” Solomon chuckles dryly, then turns to one of his men. “Take Ashton for a ride. Check out Lanny’s apartment.”
“I keep the stuff under the coffee table,” Lanny adds, just before the man reaches the warehouse door. “In some brown folders, just the way I got them.”
“Why’d you keep them?” I ask him.
“I don’t know, Mr. Petrucci. Probably because I figured this all might come back to bite me in the ass somehow,” he scoffs. “Here we are, huh?”
Solomon and I exchange heavy glances. Judging by his expression and the tremor in the pit of my stomach, we’re both thinking the same thing. Unsurprisingly, it’s Lanny who spells it out, riddled with despair and contempt in equal measure.
“You’ve got a mole, Mr. Petrucci,” he says.
“In your organization. Somebody gave us all that detailed information. Mr. Mancuso would never have that kind of access. We knew precisely what time the truck would come through at that stoplight. We knew everybody’s positions in the ballroom.
Someone texted us photos from a restricted number directly onto our cells. ”
The idea is appalling, and not that long ago, I would’ve considered it impossible.
“What were the orders, specifically, for tonight?” I reply. “Who were you supposed to kill, Lanny?”
“As many of those closest to you, including the heads of the other families, who voted in your favor before and were likely going to vote in your favor again,” he says. “I got a list with their names and photos. It’ll be in those files.”
“Good. At least you’re not as useless as I thought you might be,” I mutter.
He looks at me with horror and suffering imprinted across his pale face. His lips quiver, and I can almost see the hopeful thought gathering behind his eyes.
“Please,” he says. “I can disappear. No one will know.”
“You shot at my wife,” I say. “You tried to kill her.”
“It was just business, Mr. Petrucci. Nothing personal. I swear.”
It’s not enough to save his life. It never could be.
I glance down at the blood on my shirt and jacket, grim reminders of my violent and deadly nature.
For a moment, I hesitate, knowing Valentina wouldn’t want me to do this, to take things so far.
Yet the reason I’m able to protect her, even in our darkest hours, is precisely because I can do this. I can take things so far.
Without another thought, I take my gun out.
“Mr. Petrucci, please, don’t—”
POP
One bullet straight to the head. He falls back along with the chair and lands in a puddle, splashing and dying in a handful of ragged, disappointed breaths. The silence afterward resembles the quiet of a cemetery.
The absence of sound makes room for all my concerns and fears to bubble back to the surface as I look up at Solomon and the two remaining bodyguards. Their expressions are dark and heavy. I see the glimmer of concern in their eyes, too.
“Lanny may be right,” I say. “There’s a traitor in our midst.”
Solomon spits in disgust. “I’ll do a solid check of everybody’s finances, first and foremost. Even if they were paid in cash, there’s bound to be some paper trail, some deposit somewhere, anything irregular in their day-to-day activities.”
I nod slowly. “Do that,” I encourage him. “But I don’t think the leak is in our security detail. Otherwise, whoever is doing this would’ve gotten their hands on Valentina and Michael by now.”
“Who else do I look into then?”
“Everyone. My associates. What’s left of my family and their associates. Close friends, business partners, ex-husbands and wives. Everyone.”
“Including Victor?” Solomon replies.
I hear the doubt in his voice. It resonates with mine. But what can we do? No one is exempt in this scenario. Someone close enough to the fold provided Lanny and his dead partners with enough intel to throw some serious wrenches into my operations. Tonight, they almost did the unthinkable.
Whoever the traitor is, I have to find them before something worse happens.