Chapter Thirteen
Hazel
You could say I was more than a little surprised to park in the shopping complex on the other side of the woods only to walk through and see all the destruction.
I’d needed to abandon my original plan to go searching through the woods while the center was closed but it was light enough out for me to be able to do a proper search.
Then I had to backtrack, drive down one highway, then back up the other so my story would look legitimate on the cameras.
Only to figure out that the cameras had been tampered with as well.
I didn’t even have a chance to feel disappointed that my search would likely have to be pushed back another week as I walked around and took it all in. All of my hard work in ruins. Everyone else’s too, of course, but I knew I was the only one who took it kind of personally to see it all ruined.
While I was sitting in my apartment later that night, cleaning off valuable pumpkin seeds, I couldn’t help but think that I really needed to check into the crime rate of the area.
I mean, really.
A (possible) murder and destruction of private property within one month at the same place?
And no one seemed overly horrified by it, either. I mean no one was happy about it or anything, but it seemed like no one was as shocked as I’d been.
That had to mean that things like that just… happened a lot around here, right? What other possible explanation could there be for their blasé reaction to it all?
“What’d I get myself into here, right?” I asked, looking over toward the little shrimp crawling around their tank.
Once I finished with the last of the pumpkin seeds, laying them out on paper towel-lined baking sheets to dry out, I dumped all the cuts, washed out the bucket, and then took myself into the bathroom for a shower.
There I spent the next twenty minutes trying not to imagine Dante’s hands running the loofah over my skin, sudsing me up, turning me on.
Only after that wholly unsatisfying shower did I brew myself a cup of coffee and sit down at my laptop.
I searched up the crime rate first. For Navesink Bank and the nearby towns. While some definitely had more crime than others, all of them were lower than the national average.
Feeling marginally better about that, I searched again for any missing persons reports in the area. Aside from a suspected teen runaway, there was nothing. No big guys with light brown eyes.
Closing that out, I tried again, this time looking up the name of the man who I couldn’t get out of my mind.
I found a few things about high school sports. Even a picture from some news article about the local gym. But nothing else of note. Not even a social media presence. Which was a little disappointing. Who didn’t enjoy engaging in some harmless light social stalking?
A search of the garden center yielded a lot of interesting results. Meaning a lot of amazing reviews, articles, and social media posts. But nothing about crime.
I was about to give up when one last search phrase came up.
Grassi family docks.
My stomach bottomed out.
Because that garnered some results for sure.
The only difference was the results included one or two extra words.
Grassi mob family docks.
Grassi organized crime family docks.
“What the hell…”
My finger frantically tapped the scroll down, watching pages and pages of information flash before my eyes.
None of it good.
The Grassis, that kind, welcoming, very normal-seeming family, was a Family family. They were a part of the mafia.
Dante Grassi was a mafia capo.
I went into my little search knowing next to nothing about organized crime, save for some movies and one documentary I’d seen about how Las Vegas was pretty much built by organized crime.
But by the time I surfaced at nearly four in the morning, I was damn near an expert. At least on the New Jersey mafia.
Some part of me didn’t want to believe it at first but as the pieces all started to fall into place, there was no denying it.
The way all the Grassi men were always dressed. The constant guards around the garden center. The vague way they spoke about work. Their lack of surprise at the damage to personal property. The expensive jewelry. Even the way they spoke.
My fingers flew over the keys, tying in the names of every Grassi I’d met, trying to find anything incriminating.
It wasn’t until I got to Domenico that any actual crimes came up. Before that, it was all conjecture and accusations.
But Domenico Grassi had gone to prison for assault. In fact, it was only recently that he seemed to get released.
Honestly, Domenico was the one guy I could easily believe was a criminal. It explained that dark air he had about him. And, well, his glee at creating fake bodies in the woods.
A shiver racked my system, wondering how safe I’d actually been around these men.
Especially when I’d found that body.
And now more than ever, I was convinced it was a body.
Though I wouldn’t let myself believe that Domenico or Dante had been responsible for it.
First of all, because Dante had seemed genuinely surprised by my terror and by my account of what I’d seen.
Second, because of that half-baked lie he’d fed me after he’d seen for himself.
What was it then?
A message?
Some sort of warning?
It also made a heck of a lot of sense why they hadn’t wanted to call the police, why Dante had been so quick to get me out of there when I’d suggested it.
The last thing a member of an organized crime family would want was the police sniffing around their business.
Their business that had to be, I was certain, some sort of front. A way to wash money earned through ill-gotten means. The sheer amount of cash that passed through hands and got dropped into the safe at the end of the night was astounding.
I wish I could say that upon learning that Dante was a lifelong criminal from a long line of other criminals, who had—through hiring me—made me some sort of accessory to his crimes, that all my desire for him disappeared.
The truth was, though, that no amount of cold, harsh reality seemed capable of dousing those flames of desire.
That said, I was not someone who would get herself involved with a criminal.
And I absolutely could not be implicated in covering up a murder.
The stakes were a lot higher now, it seemed, but it was even more necessary for me to figure out if that body was as real as it seemed to me.
I mean, I’d kind of kicked it.
Apparently, forensics were good enough now that they could figure out someone’s shoe size and approximate height and weight from something like a shoe impression.
If that body was ever found and the cops started trying to look around the garden center for suspects, I would be at the top of that list.
No amount of claiming ignorance was going to save me if they found evidence of my feet on that body.
If I found the body, however, and then went down to the police station and laid it all out there for them, I would probably walk free.
It would mean that Dante and Domenico would likely be hauled in, though. For destruction of evidence or abuse of a corpse or something.
Suddenly, it was Giulia’s face in my mind then, eyes round with shock, tears streaming down her cheeks at the idea of one of her sons going away to prison, of losing years of his life, of not getting married and having babies.
The image brought with it a physical ache that had my hand pressing to my heart.
But I couldn’t let that sway me.
If the stories I read online were true, this generation of Grassi bosses and capos were descendants of their fathers’ generation. Which meant that Giulia had been married to a mafia man, had given him babies, had allowed her children to grow up and become criminals themselves.
They knew the risk.
They took it willingly.
I wouldn’t let that stop me from doing what was necessary.
Finding the body.
Bringing in the law.
Exonerating myself.
Then, God, moving out of the area as quickly as possible. I wouldn’t pretend to understand the inner workings of the Grassi Family, but I had to imagine they didn’t look kindly upon anyone who got one of their own sent away.
They might come for me.
Hurt me.
Kill me.
I wouldn’t even be able to go back to Florida now. Thanks to my big mouth, half of the Grassis knew I was from there, that my family was still there.
I’d need to start over again.
With a hell of a lot less money saved this time.
My stomach clenched and twisted, making me need to slam my laptop lid shut and step away from it, too overwhelmed to learn even one more thing about these people that I’d already spent so much time around.
It was hard to reconcile what I knew now about them with what I’d seen with my own two eyes, heard with my own ears.
These were men I’d seen rocking babies, calming fears, even sneaking kisses with their wives when they thought no one was looking.
But even the worst monsters in the world had families, didn’t they? Parents, siblings, wives, and children. That didn’t mean they weren’t evil.
“Ugh,” I grumbled, swinging my arms as I paced my tiny apartment. My unsettled energy was something bigger than me. It felt too large for my home to contain.
I needed to sleep on things. To give my system a chance to absorb the shock and fear and uncertainty.
Instead, I walked down my hallway and grabbed an all-black outfit. I tied back my hair. I put on a baseball cap. Then I grabbed a flashlight and the little canister of pepper spray I’d bought myself before starting the long drive from Florida to New Jersey.
I lowered my phone light all the way down, turned off my ringer, then shoved it in my pocket, got in my car, and drove back down the highway.
The long day had my eyes paper-dry, but my mind was wired as I parked my Jeep in the shopping mall before climbing out and making my way into the woods.