42. Let’s Go to War
"Let's Go to War"
Salvatore
The blow to Andrea’s face breaks skin. I throw him across my desk, knocking my monitor and table lamp over before he shatters the bookcase. Shards of glass rain over his blue and white gym suit, spotted with blood.
I should be out searching for my wife. Not putting my foot in his ass.
“Turi,” Andrea wheezes through a busted lip that’s about to match his eye. “Wait!” He crawls behind my chair like I won’t lift it to snatch him up.
“Thirty-one years. Now you tell me you’re Luca Romano’s son, when Bianca is missing? Stay fucking still!“ I double back around my desk when he rolls right. Nimble motherfucker.
“You were my family.” My voice scrapes at my childhood friend’s deception.
Andrea peeks over my desk before standing with his hands raised. “I still am,” he says. “Wait, wa—“
My uppercut to his ribs folds him in half.
Luiggi grabs me by the back of my shirt collar. “Don’t do this, Salvatore. He’s your brother.”
“A brother wouldn’t lie,” I sneer.
Andrea winces, his teeth stained with blood. “Elio didn’t tell me he’s my uncle until after our first meeting.”
The buttons on my shirt strain against Luiggi’s tightening grip when I step forward. “That was ten years ago, you shit.”
“Luca was killed a year after I was born. He never reached out or wanted a relationship with my mother. Back up!” Andrea raises my stapler from my desk.
“It’s nice to have what you and Ziu do with a blood relative.
Elio advised me to keep my identity a secret for my safety.
I didn’t want the attention or ties to his older brother. No one else knows.”
“Did you kill Agostino and kidnap Bianca to start a war?”
Andrea’s face falls. The side I didn’t fuck up, at least. “You know me, Turi. My loyalty to you and the Scilari hasn’t changed. Elio had no reason to kill the Preda don.”
“But he would take my wife?” Luiggi bear-hugs my chest.
Andrea licks the cut on his lip. “He didn’t take Bianca…but he wants her somewhere safe.”
I break out of Luiggi’s hold to crash my knuckles into Andrea’s windpipe. “Where is she?” My fist connects with his jaw.
“I swear I don’t know,” Andrea coughs. “Elio would never hurt her.”
“Why the fuck does he care about her?”
“She’s my granddaughter,” a familiar baritone answers.
Elio’s cane crunches into the debris from my office that I rearranged with Andrea’s body after he called me to my Catania property. Ziu and a man I’ve never seen before follow him.
“Granddaughter,” I repeat.
Dark circles shadow the bags under Elio’s eyes. “May I ask you to unhand my nephew?” He motions toward Andrea, who hits the ground with a thud when I drop him. “Thank you.”
The ache prowling behind my ribs blisters the breath caught in my chest. “Did you know?” I ask my uncle.
He shakes his head. “No, niputi.”
I raise my gun at Elio.
Luiggi stands by my side and lifts his.
The man to Elio’s right pulls his weapon from his jeans. “Drop it, kid,” he says in Italian.
Did he put a laser on my chest?
Ziu removes his gun from his shoulder holster. “You’ll be a shot motherfucker if you don’t get that fucking laser off my nephew.”
“Drop your weapon,” the man repeats.
I grab the second gun from my waistband to aim at my unknown houseguest. Fuck him and that laser.
Elio sighs. “I’m asking you to trust me, Salvatore.”
“Trust? Where was the trust to tell me that Andrea is on your family tree? You pop up at random to reveal Bianca is your granddaughter after she goes missing? You could be working with the people who took her,” I spit.
“Who’s fucking fault is it she got taken in the first place?” the man next to Elio’s voice booms, straining the veins in his neck.
Elio pats his chest to keep him from running into my bullets. I might need a rocket launcher to take him down.
“Vince.”
“You’re Vince?” I lower my weapon.
He was shorter in my mind. Older too. The gray tugging on his black hair signals his age but doesn’t match his broad chest and wide arms.
His brows dip. “Who are you to Bianca?”
“She’s my wife,” I say.
“Aww, shit,” Andrea grumbles from the floor.
One minute, the room is quiet. The next, I’m flipped over my desk. Damn, he hits hard.
“We omitted that part,” Andrea tells me over the shouting. “Your lip is about to look like mine.”
“Now’s not the—timeeee!”
I don’t remember standing to my feet, but the punch Vince throws is unforgettable. The second hit grazes my jaw.
“You fucking bastard. Get off me!” Vince screams at someone behind him before throwing me back to the ground.
Pow.
Andrea and I peek around my desk.
Ziu is on Vince’s back with his gun pressed to his temple.
Luiggi leans against the wall, a gun in one hand, a cigarette in the other.
Drywall coats Elio’s balding head and polo. He lowers his weapon. “Enough. Bianca is the last tie I have to my beloved. I cannot lose her.”
I stagger to my feet, my knees reminding me with every creak that I’m too old for this shit. “Talk.”
Andrea limps to join me at the foot of my desk. Ziu lights a cigarette that Luiggi offers while cutting glances at Vince, who sits on the couch with Elio.
“My father arranged my marriage to Flavia. I put it off. When the time came for me to take over the Fratellanza, I needed a wife from one of the families,” Elio explains.
“I fell in love with an actress who was part of a small theatre company traveling across Italy.” A smile spreads.
“Marie Baker is still the most beautiful woman to walk the earth.
“I took out-of-town jobs to follow her around the country. Marie knew I’d have to marry Flavia one day, but she had my heart.
Loving a Black woman out loud wasn’t as accepted in the sixties as it is now.
I couldn’t let her go. When she got pregnant a few months later, I sent her back to New York to keep her safe.
Visits were less frequent, but I flew to check in with US Fratellanza families to see her.
We were eighteen, but we wanted to make it work. ”
The wrinkles in Elio’s face screw into a grimace.
“Someone killed her,” I say without the need for confirmation.
He nods, his eyes glazing over. “I found Marie in our Brooklyn apartment. She had been dead for days. Vince’s father took Chiara, our daughter, to a trusted family in Jersey City. I had her sent to an associate in Baltimore who raised her and kept my distance.
“Chiara lived a good life. She went to college, traveled, and eventually resettled in Chicago. Someone found out about her after she gave birth to Bianca and killed her.”
“That’s why you brought The Butcher out of retirement,” I say.
Elio wipes his eyes. “I lost my only love and our daughter. Viola Harris blamed me for Chiara’s death after I approached her, but she couldn’t say no to raising her best friend’s daughter.”
Mama Vee.
“I took additional precautions with Bianca. No international travel like Chiara or Marie. Live in Jersey City, not New York. Keep Baltimore home. She never saw me, but she always felt my presence. Vince was the only enforcer from the Brooklyn family I trusted. He moved to look after Bianca and Viola.”
“Cazzo,“ Vince growls, his attention on the phone he pounds between his meaty fingers. “The tracker I put in her necklace is still pinging from Naples. I knew I should’ve flown out there, but she needed the break and was in our territory. You got another tracker on her, kid?”
“Just her phone,” I answer.
“No wonder she went fucking missing,” he spits. “You didn’t think to put one anywhere else? Her wedding ring? The phone is the first thing tossed out of a window.”
“It’s in the ring I had designed for her…at the jewelers.”
He huffs. “Some fucking use that is.”
I’m on my feet. “My fucking wife is missing! All I care about is finding her. Unless you plan to help, take you and your shit hip back to the States.”
Vince is strong as fuck for his age, but I’ll lay him out with my chair if necessary.
“She’s my kid.”
“Who is now my wife. My. Wife.“ The word is sharp on my tongue.
He lets out a breath. “She wasn’t supposed to get caught up in shit that ain’t got nothing to do with her. I’d give my life for Bianca. So help me God, if anything happens to her…”
“I’m killing everyone involved,” I promise.
Vince holds my gaze. “You and I will have words when this is over.”
“Name the time and place,” I say.
His frown eases. He looks at Elio, who eyes my uncle.
“Alright, kid. Let’s go to war.”