Chapter 11 – POSY #4
The men have guns. They’re aiming them at Miles. At Dario. At me.
A whimper escapes my lips, and Dario’s jaw tenses, but otherwise, he’s unperturbed.
“Gentlemen,” he says. A smile plays at his lips. Is this exciting him?
My pulse races. Why doesn’t he reach for the gun under his desk? Why don’t I have the gun he gave me? It’s in the nightstand drawer because I didn’t know what to do with it, and when I said we’d better put it back in the safe, Dario said, “What good is it going to do you there?”
I had a gun, and I left it somewhere else because why? Because I felt safe? Why the fuck did I feel safe?
What’s happening here? Is this payback for what Dario did at the dinner? Is this about me?
Is he going to let them take me?
My brain sputters, and my hands ball into fists, fingernails cutting into the skin.
“Mr. Renelli wants to see you,” Vittorio Amato intones, the casual threat so obviously well-practiced.
Vittorio was only a made man, not sottocapo, when he beat the hell out of my father for the crime of being related to the rat Marco Santoro. Until the day he died, my father would spit whenever he heard his name.
Dario inclines his head.
“And her,” he adds when Dario has come around his desk, the pause between requests intentional, for effect or to flush Dario out into the middle of the room, I don’t know. My heart slams against my chest, and my blood pounds in my ears.
Renelli wants me. The loose end. He’s going to put a bullet in my brain.
Dario’s blank expression doesn’t change.
“Come,” he says to me.
He’s going to hand me over. I have to run. There are too many men. Too many guns. There’s no way out.
Dario steps over and seizes my clammy hand. “Come,” he repeats, stern, unruffled.
He pulls me in his wake, and I have no choice but to follow him through the silent hall, out into the blinding sunshine, surrounded by men in suits and the crunch of their hard-soled shoes in the gravel.
There are three cars out front. Vittorio Amato gestures Dario into one while another man, Tommy Vanzetti, a cousin of an ex, hustles me off to another. I squeeze Dario’s hand with all my strength, but he draws his away, and my palm is so sweaty, it slides free.
“Go with him,” Dario says. “And Posy—” He waits until I meet his eyes. “Don’t try to run.”
Oh god. Oh god. Another man, Joey Zito, helps Tommy wrangle me into the back of a town car. I’m not resisting, but my body won’t move willingly. They shove, and I move, and my brain spins.
Dario is handing me over to Renelli. I’m going to die.
But it doesn’t make sense.
Why would Dario make that point at the dinner with the Russians if he was just going to give me up to Renelli? And why would he come along? Does he want to see me die?
If he wanted me gone, why wouldn’t he do it himself?
And all the guns—Dario is in trouble, too. Are they going to kill him? Why not do it in Dario’s office then? Why the trouble of dragging us to a second location? Because they take you to a second location when they kill you. Everyone knows that.
My stomach sloshes from the fear and the jerky driving of the man behind the wheel. It’s Nicky Biancolli, one of Lucca Corso’s hang arounds. He’s blasting the radio so loud my head pounds, and Joey sits across from me leering at my tits while Tommy plays on his phone.
They’ve stuck me in between two guys, and they jostle me every time Nicky takes a corner too quick and tight.
Joey sits across from me and gawks as my tits bounce.
I’m not wearing a bra. I was too sensitive this morning from the abrasions left by Dario’s beard as he suckled me for hours, experimenting, as obsessed with mastering my body as he’s ever been with any game.
My heart lurches. Is Dario okay in the car up ahead?
Is he betraying me?
Should I try to escape? I could lunge for the door at a stop light.
I’m not buckled; Tommy’s beefy ass is sitting on the belt.
I’d never make it past the guys even if by some miracle the child lock isn’t engaged.
But I have to do something, right? I can’t go willingly to my death. I’ll wait for an opening.
Or I’ll tell myself that so I don’t lose my mind to the rising panic that’s clutching my chest tighter and tighter.
“I saw you get fucked in the ass,” Joey bellows over the music, leering, licking his thick lips.
He’s exactly the type I used to go for. Good looking, gelled hair, immaculate sneakers, and the swagger that comes with being an unrepentant asshole. Compared to Dario, he looks like a little boy.
I don’t dignify his shit with a response.
“Didn’t look like you were into it.” He smirks. What did I see in guys like this? Too much body spray, loud tracksuit, gawdy pinky ring—he looks like the dude pushing thirty who’d crash house parties back in high school.
I’m not listening to this guy.
My silence obviously pisses him off. His smile turns mean.
“If you say pretty please, I’ll get Nicky up there to take a detour.
You can give us a repeat performance. We’ll make it feel good.
” He cups his dick and sort of mashes it around in his sweatpants.
“Don’t you want to go one last time before you meet your maker?
A slut like you, you wanna go out with cum in all your holes, don’t you? ”
Sick bastard.
The other men keep their mouths shut and won’t meet my eyes.
A sudden weakness seeps down my limbs, like in a dream when you want to run but you can’t move your body.
They’re going to kill me. That’s the plan.
I’m a warning or a loose end or a message, I don’t know, but this ends with my body in the river.
My breath gets stuck in my lungs.
I don’t want to die.
I should have never stopped running. I should have never looked back.
“What I don’t get is why Volpe put a ring on it,” Joey yammers on. “You that good? You didn’t look that good in the video. Looked like fucking a corpse.” He laughs. “Bet Volpe would be into that, though.”
We drive for about ten more minutes, and he runs his filthy mouth the whole time. Are these the last things I’m going to hear? This terrible house music and Joey Zito’s big mouth? I don’t know which is worse.
My temples throb. I thought we were heading downtown, but at some point, we got on the beltway and took an exit I’d only ever driven past. We’re in a rundown industrial area now.
Low buildings with loading docks and lots surrounded by barbed wire.
We pass more recent construction until the streets become pocked with potholes and the buildings get older—dilapidated, windowless brick boxes from back when Pyle was synonymous with steel.
There’s no traffic back here. No parked cars.
Nicky the driver turns off, passing an abandoned guard shack. We follow the car carrying Dario to a parking lot behind a three-story warehouse, its few windows covered in plywood, graffiti covering the brick as far up as a person can reach.
I have to run.
As soon as they let me out.
It’s my only play.
Dario’s words echo in my ears. Don’t try to run .
Why would I listen to him? Why would I trust him?
I twist my ring around my finger, scanning the area I can see from the window.
Past the buildings is a rusted metal fence, collapsed flat in places.
Several acres away, beyond fields of knee-high weeds, the Luckahannock winds, sluggish and shallow.
In the far distance, an overpass arches high above the river on thick concrete pillars.
If I run, they’d catch me in seconds. There’s nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide.
The emergency brake zips and the car doors click as they unlock. The men spill out. Now. This is my moment.
“You first,” Joey says. He cops a feel as I exit ahead of him, digging his fingers into my pussy so hard it hurts.
I jerk away, lunge forward, but the other guys fall around me instantly, herding me to an open metal door. I don’t even have a second. No chance at all.
Fear crests through me again. Where’s Dario? I can’t see him.
I stumble, and Nicky grabs my elbow, forcing me forward through a narrow hall into a wide-open factory floor filled with men. The dim light filtering down from the high windows is yellow from the smoky discolored glass.
There’s no equipment, only holes from the bolts and oil stains. A catwalk rings the room, and high above, something’s dripping. I can hear water ping against metal. The space is cold, and despite the number of people, it’s silent.
Everyone is standing in a loose circle, facing one man who rests a veined hand on an ivory cane. Dominic Renelli.
His consigliere and his sottocapo have taken position at his left and right, feet hip-width apart, hands clasped at their backs.
Dario stands in the middle, unbowed, his gaze never wavering from Renelli’s. He could be standing in line at the movies for all he seems affected; he wears that same expression of patient boredom.
I recognize every man here from Saint Celestine’s and L’Alba and the clubs.
Some of the older guys I recognize from when I was little and my parents threw parties at Christmas and Mardi Gras and the Fourth of July.
They tousled my hair and said I was a pretty little girl and gave me peppermints from their pockets.
Some of them were in class with me. Some of them are distant cousins.
I know all their names. Lucca Corso. Tomas Sacco. Tony Graziano. Vittorio Amato.
I’ve been with more than a few of them. Frankie Bianco. Danny Ricci. Hunter Vanzetti. Dario Volpe.
I gave pieces of myself to all of them. Tried to make them happy. Tried to make them love me.
And they’re going to kill me, and I’m going to bleed out on this filthy concrete floor. And no one will care.
Will Dario?
Nicky never let my elbow go, and now with a glance from Renelli, he twists my arm behind my back. I cry out, and it echoes in the quiet. Dario doesn’t even turn to look at me.
Renelli gestures for Nicky to bring me forward. He forces me to walk until I’m even with Dario.