Chapter Eleven
Romeo
“Why am I here?” I asked, leaving the word again hanging loudly unspoken between us. ‘Here’ was the east-side docks, and despite my question, I knew why. We’d had issues these past few months with our ports and shipping. Ever since my wedding, in fact.
I tried not to think about it too much, but Massimo had locked onto the idea like a dog with a bone, not letting go of the idea that somehow Vittoria was responsible.
“We got someone in the back who was sneaking around and thought you’d want to be here in case you had questions.”
Fair enough. “Fine, let’s go.”
Massimo filled me in on the guy they captured while I followed the sounds of a beat-down to the back office.
I glanced around at the men watching one of their own tenderize the bleeding man tied to a chair.
I recognized my brother, Fausto, and some of his men, and Dante, of course, methodically dismantling the bastard’s pain threshold with a precision my surgeon brother, Gaetano, would envy.
The rest were less familiar, but they were all Massimo’s personal men, those he’d hand-picked and trusted with his life.
That alone told me more about the severity of what was going on than the guy in the chair.
Lately, I’d been playing the defense game with all the attacks on our shipments, but I was tired of it and it didn’t suit me. I’d decided that morning, after leaving my wife flushed and thoroughly punished, that I needed to get ahead of the situation.
Ever since that night at the club, we’d been getting to know each other more.
I knew how Massimo felt about my wife’s distracting influence, and I had to admit, between satiating her and handling work issues, my attention had been split in too many directions for a heart-to-heart with Simo, but it looked like I needed to and today would be the day.
“Enough.” I motioned Dante back and stalked to the chair. Leaning down, I forced his swollen eyes open and made sure he saw my face clearly. “Do you know who I am?”
He licked his parched lips. “Yes. Mr. Vitale.”
“And you are?”
“Peter, Sir.”
“Well, Peter,” I said, “this is how this is going to go. Dante here is going to beat you until you die, and that’s just a fact, but he can do that a lot of different ways.
For example, he can go slowly, using techniques to keep you on the edge of death for days.
You’ll feel every slice, every ounce of pain from the nails pried from your fingers, the pinch of the bolt cutters when we start on the joints, the heat from the blowtorch…
well, you get the idea. The only one here who can save you from that is me.
I suggest you fall in line and tell me what I want to know. ”
Peter licked his chapped lips and tried to stare me down.
I stepped back. “Dante, if you please.”
Peter started fighting, trying to resist the inevitable, but Dante slammed his own huge hand over Peter’s, pinning it to the arm of the chair, and with one swift, efficient yank, the man’s right index fingernail was gone. Peter’s body bucked against the pain.
“I’m going to give you a moment,” I said, pulling over a chair to sit facing Peter, out of Dante’s way. “Because I want you to think about this, Peter, I really do. I want you to make the right decision—“
Another fingernail, and finally a scream.
”—while I’m still in a listening mood. Oof, that one must have hurt.
I do have other things to do tonight, Peter, and when I decide to go do those things and give up on you, I’m not going to kill you first. I’m going to tell Dante to take his time, make it last as long as possible. I think the record is eight days.”
“Ten,” Dante grunted and tore out another fingernail.
“I’m a spy!” the guy screamed.
Dante looked at me quizzically and stepped back at my nod.
Peter sagged against his bonds, gasping for breath, blood dripping onto the concrete floor from the tips of his mutilated fingers. “I was sent… to spy on your operation… and report back.”
That was almost too easy, considering how well the guy had held up under Dante’s fists. “To whom?”
“I only know his first name. Ardo. I’ve never met the guy. He leaves his instructions on a voicemail, but it’s not really his voice, it sounds like a machine. The money magically appears at my doorstep. The guy’s a ghost, I swear.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” I nodded to Dante and seconds later, two more bloody fingernails lay in a neat row on the table, but I stopped him before he moved onto the other hand.
I studied the man before me, sobbing and drooling, blood dripping, and still trying to convince me he didn’t know anything. Still coherent. Still thinking.
“I don’t think the fingernails are working,” I said and nodded at Dante’s toolbox. “Start on the knuckles.”
“Wait! I’m supposed to report to him. Maybe…” Peter licked his bloody lips. “Maybe you can track his location.”
Massimo went over to take the guy’s phone from one of his men, and even from this distance, I could see it wasn’t the usual cheap burner. “Is this your personal phone or did he give it to you?” Massimo asked.
Peter spat blood and sagged again, seemingly too dazed to answer.
I held out my hand, but Massimo didn’t give me the phone. “What’s the unlock code?” he asked.
Peter lifted his head and looked me in the eyes. “I’ll only tell him.”
Massimo and I exchanged a swift glance as every warning sign clicked into place, and then he threw the phone and we were all running out of the warehouse. Over the sound of my brother shouting for backup, I could hear tires screeching outside.
“We’ve got company. Try and leave one alive,” I yelled. Just then the warehouse shook from the force of a muffled explosion and the roof fell in. A bomb, probably in his damn cell phone, the one he was trying so hard to get me to hold. What a fucking clusterfuck!
Behind us, the warehouse was on fire. Massimo’s men were quickly lost in the smoke, some stumbling deeper into the smoke, screaming as the fire swallowed them. Outside, survivors were being gunned down as they staggered out of the building, choking and blinded by smoke.
I grabbed Massimo, Dante and a handful of others and headed back the way we’d fled, around the flames and out the back, where I found Fausto and a few men firing back on our ambushers.
“Do we know them?” I demanded, sliding into cover behind some shipping crates.
Fausto took aim and fired. He was not a good gunman in the way our world thought of them, but at times like this, there was no one I’d rather have with me in a gunfight.
He might be slow, but he was accurate, and every time he pulled the trigger, one of the enemies went down for good.
“No idea, but—“ Another shot; another dead man tumbling off the dock into the water. I leaned out to provide a covering spray of bullets while he calmly reloaded. ”—but they sure know us.”
“I want one alive to question, Fausto,” I ordered and moved beside Massimo.
“It was a set up,” he said darkly.
“You don’t say.”
“I’m sorry, Romeo, I let you down.”
“Keep your head in the battle, Simo, we can discuss your failures later, for now, wound one and kill the rest.”
Sirens could be heard in the distance getting closer by the second. Time to get the hell out of here.
Their ambush hadn’t finished us. Now, between the spreading fire, our counter-attack, and the approaching sirens, they broke and bolted.
Both my brothers seized the opportunity–Massimo peppering one guy’s legs with bullets and Fausto taking deliberate aim and blasting out another guy’s knees, first one and then the other.
While any of their men grabbed their wounded and made their escape, Massimo heaved his screaming victim into the trunk of his car and turned to me.
“Go,” I ordered. “I’ll finish up here.”
Massimo nodded and was gone. Dante seized Fausto’s wounded and ran for another car. The rest of our men grabbed their injured and made their getaway in the growing chaos as Fausto and I rallied our surviving troops.
The wind was strong, whipping the flames higher and sending sparks out to other warehouses.
I’d lose the whole block for certain, but I didn’t care.
It would take all night to put the fire out, and although I knew the bullets would be found in an investigation, we paid the authorities well to overlook them.
Fausto and I ran to the front of the building in time to see an unfamiliar car, but it had no plates and whoever was behind the tinted windows shot the men attempting to climb in and peeled away.
I emptied my gun into the vehicle. Fausto fired what should have been a clean head-shot into the driver’s window, but either they had bullet-proof windows or there was a ghost behind the wheel.
The guy’s a ghost, I swear.
Well, no time to think about it now. Time to get home, and ensure the safety of the family.
Hours later, and after two slow deaths, I was no closer to learning who was after me.
The men we took talked plenty, but knew nothing.
Hired guns, didn’t even know who they were shooting at.
But even that told me something: that whoever ordered the hit didn’t want me to know it was them, and that meant I knew them.
At the very least, we had a leak, and possibly more than one.
That revelation didn’t come as a surprise. The thefts and attacks were too perfectly timed. There was no other way for them to know unless they were getting their information from the source. And again, Massimo was quick to point out that those attacks only started after my marriage.
“Vittoria has no part of this,” I said in a tone that should have put an end to it, but my brother’s frustration was at its limit.
“Why is it so hard for you to accept the obvious fact that Vittoria is a plant, sent here by her father to bring down our organization?”