Chapter 34 #2
I can hear the engine roar at the same time Constance groans. She racks her pistol and raises it, trying to line up a shot at the fleeing gangster. In seconds, though, Kirill is gone into the darkness, only his wake foaming in the moonlight. The son of a bitch slipped away from us again.
I taste blood in my mouth and realize I’m grinding my teeth hard enough to split enamel.
Lights begin to appear on some of the other boats, and I know we don’t have much time.
“Fuck!” I exclaim.
“We have to go after them!” Constance shouts.
“We’ll never catch up to them in the dark.”
Spicy holds up a set of keys as one of his men unwinds the mooring line and tosses it onboard. He raises a hand to wave at me and then sends his men back over to us, then the yacht begins backing away from the pier.
“The men will handle getting this mess out to sea,” I tell Constance. “I’m sorry, firefly.” The disappointment weighs down my shoulders because I know she needed to have this finished tonight.
Constance doesn’t say anything as I take her hand and guide her back down the pier. We quickly make our way back to the waiting trucks. One of Spicy’s men, Ricky Gallo, gets behind the wheel of ours.
“Where to, Mr. Luciani?” Ricky asks me as we settle into the backseat.
“To the tower, please,” I reply. “Luca should have it ready for our arrival by now. We’ll stay there tonight and see what Spicy is able to recover from the yacht before he sinks it.”
“How does that bastard keep getting away?” Constance finally breaks her silence and demands.
“Rats have always had a strong survival instinct. The filthy bastards are hard to get rid of...” I sigh and rub at my temples. My head is starting to pound.
“We can’t go on like this, just wildly swinging at each other,” Constance says.
I nod in resignation. “I know. I promised you revenge, and I intend to deliver it. I just have to come up with a new way to approach this…” My train of thought is interrupted when my phone dings with a new voicemail message.
“It’s Leonard,” I say to Constance as I begin to listen to his choked-up voice. It’s hard to hear but, he can’t have said…
“What is it?” Constance asks as I replay the message again just to be sure.
“Enzo…Enzo was pronounced dead at the hospital. Goddammit!” My voice cracks as hot tears spring into my eyes before I can even begin to process the news. My cousin, my best friend, and my right-hand man gunned down by these vicious bastards.
“Enzo…he was six when he swore he’d watch my back forever. And he did, right up until tonight.”
Constance puts an arm around my shoulders and pulls me to her as I struggle to control myself. I can barely breathe, and I spend the rest of the ride fucking seething.
When Ricky pulls into the reserved spot in the underground parking lot, he looks back at us in the rear-view mirror and clears his throat. “We’re here, Mr. Luciani. Ah…is there anything I can do, you know, to help?”
“Go call the elevator, please,” I order him as Constance hands me a tissue from her purse.
“We’ll pay them back. For Enzo, and for my father,” she says.
“You’re damned right we will,” I agree.
She hugs me close one more time before she slides across the seat and gets out. I follow her and then send a quick message to Spicy: Any updates?
I walk over to the elevator Ricky is holding open for us, and watch the bubbles appear as Spicy types his reply.
He has a lot to say, apparently, or his fat fingers are having trouble typing a message on a bouncing boat.
We arrive at the penthouse and go inside before my phone finally dings with his reply.
Got some emails off a phone. The shooter at the press conference had been looking for a way to get a shot at you. That went sideways, obviously. There was another email thread about a package being delivered for you, but no specifics. You at the tower?
“A package?” I repeat aloud.
I start to type a response, but stop in the foyer as Luca appears, greeting us with a smile. “There was an delivery for you after I got here. I left it over there on the table,” he says as he points across the kitchen towards the dining room.
Constance was looking at the message on my phone over my shoulder, and she puts it together a split second before I do. She grabs my arm and yanks me back towards the elevator. My stomach drops. A cold, instinctive click of realization, too late.
“Run!” I scream.
We’ve just made it out into the hallway by the elevator when the building explodes around us.
The heavy doors to the penthouse are blown off the hinges, one of them striking me in the back and driving me into Constance before we’re both slammed to the ground. I can’t fucking hear over the ringing in my ears.
With a monumental effort, I’m able to push myself up just enough to raise the door, and Constance crawls out from under me, coughing and choking. I follow her on my hands and knees, reaching up to slap the button on the wall that opens the elevator doors.
The last I see of my penthouse as the door slides shut are Luca and Ricky’s twisted bodies lying just inside the foyer.
Constance, ghostly with plaster dust that rained down on us, scoots over to me and gathers me close, clinging to me as I blindly slap the button to take us back down to the garage.
I can taste blood and smoke. And something worse, failure.
Stunned and concussed, I do the only other thing I can think of. I hold the now sobbing women whose become the central figure in this war and my life, and I call 9-1-1.
Revenge will have to wait.