8. Damiano
Paige left for work around 8:30 this morning. I waited an hour to see if she’d come back. When she didn’t, I hit the shower. The sponge bath she gave me was heaven, and I want her to do again. And again. But she actually did a pretty shitty job of getting me clean.
That may have been the best shower of my life, not including showers I’ve taken with any of the Cat girls. No question, those were better. But this one was great in its own way, washing off the caked-on blood, then jerking off to Paige in those tiny shorts with her big nipples peeking through her tank top, using her coconut-scented conditioner as lube.
I’d love to shave too, but she would definitely notice that. I keep a neat five o’clock shadow trim, which is a bitch to maintain, but the Cat girls love it. But now, after an extra thirty-six hours, it’s getting unruly.
There’s pounding on the apartment door. Who the hell is that?
I wrap a towel around my waist and grab my Glock from where I slid it under the couch. I’ve got ten rounds left.
I don’t want to shoot someone in Paige’s apartment. It’ll be loud. It’ll be messy. It’ll be really fucking hard to dispose of a body while I’m hiding out, and there’s a high likelihood a neighbor will call the cops.
More banging.
No way it’s any of Joey’s guys coming for me. If they knew I was hiding out in their territory, they wouldn’t knock.
Her door doesn’t have a peephole, so I can’t see who it is. “Yeah?” I use my nice voice, not looking to start any beef, though the banging didn’t exactly come across as a neighbor looking to borrow a cup of sugar.
“Let me the fuck in, asshole.”
Of fucking course.
I open the door.
Salvo strolls in, looks me up and down. “Maybe I should come back when you’re decent?”
“When am I ever decent?”
We one-arm hug. It’s good to see him.
“I was expecting you to look like shit, man. Not like a Calvin Klein ad.” Salvo motions to the towel around my waist as he steps around me and into the apartment.
“Told you my shoulder wasn’t that bad. I’d be back on the job already if I knew why that fucker shot me.”
Salvo sits at the little dining table, dropping a duffel bag with a thud. “Rob’s pissed as fuck that you think he had something to do with this.”
“I don’t think that.” I did. For a hot minute. But lying on the couch with nothing to think about all night except the million different scenarios of what the fuck is going on, not a single one involving him made any sense. He had all the opportunity in the world, but no motive.
No motive unless you count the fact that I text his nineteen-year-old sister sometimes, which in his mind would absolutely justify taking me out, but he would come straight at me over that. He wouldn’t send an unreliable shot like Paulie and if he wanted to get rid of me for any other reason, he’d just tell me to fuck off and put me on a plane back to Rome.
“It was weird fucking timing, so I had to ask. But I don’t think that at all.”
“You need to tell him that.”
I shrug. “Tell him that if I thought he was trying to kill me, I would have killed him first, and since I didn’t, he should know that I know he wasn’t involved.”
“I’m not telling him that.”
“Fine. Tell him I know that if he wanted me dead, he’d just punch straight through my skull.” We start most days off in the boxing ring Rob installed when he converted an entire floor of an old factory into his loft.
“You’re missing the whole fucking point. He treats you like a brother, and not in the Famiglia ‘we’re all brothers’ loyalty oath way. You’re in his inner fucking circle, man, and it’s a tiny fucking circle. You, me, his dad—that’s it. He’d do any fucking thing for you. So you even thinking he’d get Paulie to take you out—thinking that even for a second?” Salvo shakes his head at me. “You broke his fucking heart, man.”
“You said he was pissed, not hurt.”
The fuck? “He’s pissed that you hurt his feelings.”
I let out a long breath, rub the back of my neck. I’m completely in the wrong on this one. Rob has treated me like a brother from the moment we met. Him and Salvo are the reason I moved here from Rome. They even asked me to move into the loft with them, but I need far more alone time than that would’ve allowed.
So I fucked up on this one.
“I get it. I’ll talk to him. You got clothes in there?” I motion toward the bag Salvo brought in. “Let me get dressed so we can go to the Cat. I’ll go straight to him and deal with this.”
“Naah, bro. You’re stuck here for a while.”
“He’s that pissed that I can’t come home?”
“No, you asshole . He’s that worried someone inside might actually have been working with Paulie. He wants you to keep laying low, assuming you’re safe here. He wants to see if anyone starts pestering us to find out where you are or slips up and mentions that Paulie shot you. The story everyone’s heard is that Joey’s guy opened fire on both of you. None of our men should know any different. So he wants to see if anyone slips up.”
I nod. It’s solid thinking.
“Plus, that keeps you away from the Cat girls until he says you can come back, which I’m pretty sure is his way of saying ‘fuck you, Dom.’”
I smile. That probably is the best way to punish me.
“Here.” He kicks the duffel bag over to me. “Clothes, burner phone, your protein shake shit—the Damiano Zucco essentials kit.”
Salvo knows me well.
“And Bianca’s in there. I can’t believe you ditched her.”
“The only lady allowed in my bed overnight.” I rummage through the bag until I find her. She’s irreplaceable. “I had no idea where I was going to end up, or if Joey’s guy was coming back with reinforcements. I knew she’d be safe with you.”
Bianca is my Extrema Ratio S.E.R.E. 1 dagger. Specially-issued by the GOI. Only actual elite special forces can get the S.E.R.E. 1. There’s a modified civilian version, the S.E.R.E. 2, anyone can buy if they have an extra $700 laying around to spend on a knife with a shit ton of built-in safeties.
“I have no clue if you’re joking about bringing your knife into bed with you.”
I wink at him. Let him wonder.
But I’m not joking. Bianca sleeps under my pillow, my hand wrapped around her smooth grip.
I pull a canister of protein shake, a shaker thermos, and a box of almond milk out of the duffel. “You want one?”
Salvo shakes his head. He’s in great shape, but he’s not intense about maintaining a tight protein-to-carb ratio like Rob and I are.
“How’d my place look?”
“Fine. No one had been there. Alarm was still on. Nothing out of place. I watered all your plants while I was there.”
I stop making the shake for a minute, look him in the eye, and nod. My plants are everything to me. I even picked my apartment for its massive floor-to-ceiling windows with eastern exposure so they can thrive.
“So how’d you track me down? Renatta?”
He nods. “Simple number chase. She was annoyed as fuck that I bothered her for something so basic.” Renatta is Salvo’s sister and our tech guru. The girl is terrifyingly good at finding shit.
“She do a background check on Paige?”
“Yeah. Nothing crazy popped up. She’s from San Diego but moved around a ton as a kid.”
She looks like a California girl, or at least what I think a California girl looks like. Blonde, tan, bikini body, happy.
“Her dad was a Navy pilot. Now has some command post back in San Diego. Her brother’s Navy, too. Stationed here at Great Lakes.”
“Was the dad flying helicopters or jets?”
“No clue. Does it matter?”
I shrug my shoulders like it doesn’t, but it might. Most Navy helicopter pilots fly rescue missions or supply runs. But the jet pilots are fighters. Deter the enemy with brutal force if necessary. Entirely different mentality. My mentality.
“She moved here four years ago. Oh, and get this—she’s been trying to get a wildlife rescue permit but keeps failing the test.”
Huh. “You need a permit to rescue roadkill?”
“Apparently.” Salvo gets up and starts looking around Paige’s apartment, checking out her knick-knacks and photos.
“You come up with anything on Paulie?”
“Nothing helpful. Sounds like he started acting squirrely sometime last week, but not crazy enough to raise any eyebrows. His apartment looked normal, his bank account looked normal.”
And the question I don’t want to ask. “Any word from Joey Bags?”
Salvo nods. “He reached out last night, pissed as fuck that you opened fire. He’s claiming it was unprovoked, and he wants you to answer for it.”
“I barely clipped the guy.”
Salvo shrugs. “Not according to Joey. He’s claiming the one guy was DOA with a bullet in his leg and another in his back and that a second guy may never walk again. Says you hit his spine.”
“ What? No. That’s total bullshit.” I take a drink of my shake, wipe my lip. “There was only one Bagliateri soldier. There was Paulie—who I shot in the throat, not the back—and the guy I clipped in the leg. And my shot was clean to his outer thigh. No one’s dying from that. The guy shouldn’t even have a limp.”
I should know, I was shot in the exact same spot on a GOI mission.
“Joey’s telling a different story. And the guy he’s saying has a bullet in his spine? Davide Ferrante.”
Jesus.
I put down my shake. I stare at Salvo, waiting for him to tell me he’s joking.
Fuuuuck .
I take a few steps, then spin around and come back. I open my mouth to say something, but I’m at a loss. Fuck.
Shit got fucking real.
“Massimo’s brother?” I don’t know Davide. I could probably pick him out of a lineup, but that’s about it.
But I know Mas.
I’ve known Mas a long fucking time. And he happens to be the enforcer for the Bagliateri Famiglia. The same ‘hurt people real bad’ role that I have, but with our rival Famiglia.
“No fucking way that was my shot, Salvo. No fucking way.” I’m back to pacing. “Davide wasn’t even there. And I’d never shoot someone in the back. And I did not shoot Davide.”
Cazzo .
Salvo shrugs, as he picks up a framed picture of Paige and another girl and smiles.
“Fucking Joey. What does Rob think?”
“It’s above Rob. Joey’s calling for a sit-down with Roberto.”
That stops me in my tracks. I sit down at the table.
Rob runs almost all the Galliano Famiglia day-to-day operations, but his dad, Roberto, is the official head of our syndicate. “Joey and Roberto haven’t had a sit-down in almost a decade.” I was still in Rome back then, working for Rob’s uncle Giacomo. Right after that meeting was when things started going to hell in Chicago. That’s when Giacomo started having me bounce back and forth between the two cities.
“Might be another decade. Roberto told Joey ‘va fa Naboli.’” Go to hell. “Told him that he’s not sitting down with him over a couple of soldiers.”
“I want to kill Paulie all over again. Shoot him in the gut this time. Watch him suffer.” The kid got off too easy with a quick death.
“You and me both, especially now that Mas is fired the fuck up over his brother.”
“I got to get out of here.” I’ve got to go talk to Massimo, tell him what actually happened. I reach for the duffel for clothes, but Salvo kicks it away.
“Nope. You’re staying put. Rob’s orders. Rob’s direct, very clear, do-not-look-for-a-loophole orders.”
But I need to go deal with this. “Salv, I—”
He shakes his head. “Joey’s up to something, and if he had anything to do with Paulie, it means Joey wants you dead. Word is, Massimo wants a piece of you now too. And we still don’t know if anyone else on our side is involved. Rob says for you to keep laying low, so you’re gonna keep laying low.” He stares at me hard.
“But if Joey’s trying to start a war—”
“Nope. You’re staying put, man.”
“Salvo.”
“Doesn’t fucking matter what I say. Rob said to stay put, so you’re staying put.”
Cooped up here while all hell is about to break loose and I can’t do a fucking thing to stop it or to make sure Rob and Salvo are safe is going to be absolute torture. But Rob is my boss.
“How’d you get here?” No way Salvo drove into Bagliateri territory in his big-ass Mercedes Sprinter van.
“Uber. Figured no one would be looking into the backseat of a shitty old Civic.”