Chapter 45
The steering wheel leather creaked under my grip as Tore clicked his lighter open and shut, over and over. The light ahead turned red, and I slammed on the brakes, throwing us both against the seatbelts. The screech of the tires was a welcome change from Tore’s constant muttering.
“Tore,” I warned as the car came to an abrupt stop. “Get it out before I throw you out.”
His head shook. “She’s like my kid sister, Ren. You get that, right?”
“Ainsley hasn’t been a kid in years.”
“And that gives you the right?”
“No, that means she’s old enough to make her own decisions, and you need to respect that!”
“How the hell did this happen? You guys hate each other.”
“We don’t. We haven’t for a long time.”
The light changed, and I shoved my foot down on the accelerator, vaulting us against the backrests of our seats.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“Haven’t you wanted to know who my informant was?” The question hung between us.
“She…no…Anzy wouldn’t.”
“We’ve been talking for years. Pen pals, if you can believe it.”
“How? Why?”
“I don’t know. She started it, and it never stopped. Didn’t matter how many times I told her not to, she’d send another letter. Treated me like her therapist.”
“You know that’s sick, man.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what in the fuck did I just see?”
“The feelings I have didn’t start until the last two years. And I fought it. I buried what I felt. I really thought I had.”
“Then keep doing it.”
I slapped the steering wheel. “I can’t!”
I abruptly pulled the car to the side of the road and parked. The two cars accompanying us did the same.
“I can’t. I tried. It hurts her. It hurts me.
She’s in my head, my bones, my blood. Do you get that, man?
I don’t know myself without her anymore.
Every bright moment I’ve had in years is because of her.
I begin where she does. I end when she does.
There’s no life for me without her. Do you understand?
I can’t do it. I’m mad for her. I’d rather take a bullet to the heart than leave her behind. ”
He raised his arms as if in surrender, then punched me hard in the shoulder. “You said you wanted to use her. You said you were only after her loyalty. Is that what this is?”
“That was before. Things change.”
He punched me again, this time in the chest, and I took the pain. I bottled it up and shoved it away because he had every right to want to hit me. It was the same I’d felt for my sister and her now-husband, after the way he’d once abandoned her to suffer.
“You’re my don. You’re my cousin. But I swear.” He took his gun out and rested it on the center console. “You’ll treat her with respect, or I’ll kill you.”
I smirked. “Understood.”
“Good. Now, let’s move.”
“Isn’t that supposed to be my line?”
“Not where my little sister is involved. Let’s get Lou back.”
I put the car into drive.
By the time we reached Brielle’s and Ainsley’s apartment, an ambulance was taking off, with a wailing tri-whine in its wake. Police cars blocked the street. Crime scene tape crisscrossed the building entrance, where bullet holes speckled the glass doors, and a small crowd had gathered.
“Boyan!” Tore jumped out of the car before I fully parked. “Boyan! Bee!”
He ran down the street as I signaled to our other two cars, each with five men, to stay behind. It was best if they went unnoticed by the cops.
“That’s my kid,” Tore shouted when two officers blocked his way through. “He’s my kid.”
Where I sauntered through the crowd, Tore bulldozed. By the time I passed the police crime scene perimeter, Tore was hugging Boyan tight with one arm and twisting Brielle’s face left and right with the other. Bruises marked her skin, and a large bandage covered her cheek.
“No more staying in this apartment,” he ordered. “You need someplace more secure.”
She looked on the verge of protesting, but as usual, she said nothing.
“I agree,” I said. My phone vibrated with a message from Vinny. He had lost their trail and was heading back our way. Fuck.
“Lou,” Brielle grated out.
“We’re going to get her back,” Tore promised.
“Ricco?” I asked.
“They took him in the ambulance,” Boyan said, pointing south, in the direction the ambulance had gone, where a crowd now blocked the street.
“Okay, we’ll worry about that later.”
Police officers came over with questions about the events.
Brielle signed her answers, and Boyan translated.
Vinny never came up, but Tore started fidgeting with his lighter when she listed Ricco as her boyfriend.
She made a point not to mention Lou, which meant Ricco had probably coached her on that before the paramedics arrived.
This situation needed to be dealt with internally, without police interference.
When the officers asked where her roommate was, Brielle told them Ainsley had gone out with her sister. With a spa day and a trip to the movies, both had turned off their phones.
Halfway through the interrogation, my phone rang with Natale calling in, and I excused myself, but with the crowd, I couldn’t hear anything.
“Say that again. I didn’t hear you.” I kept walking until the street cleared.
“Massimo’s the mole. He set us up,” my head of security rasped. “He’s got her.”
“What the hell do you mean he’s got her?”
“The Greeks. They hit us. Soon after you left. I had Ainsley head for the panic room, but Massimo intercepted her. He and Alfie took her.”
My heart skipped a beat. My ears rang. I shouldn’t have left her.
“Boss?”
“Find her. I want a track on their cells. Get everything you can, and get it now. If even one hair is missing from her head…”
“I know. And boss, Dimakos is dead.”
“What?” I covered my ear not pressed to the phone. I must have misheard.
“Ilias Dimakos is dead. He led the team down here. There’s no mistaking the body.”
I frowned. “Focus on Massimo. We’ll worry about that later.”
I hung up, my mind already processing the series of events.
Massimo must have given up the information about the bar ambush.
He must have also divulged the safe house location after arriving, since only Tore, Vinny, Natale, and I knew of it.
My gaze flitted over the street—the people, cars, houses.
I focused on everything and nothing at the same time.
With Ilias dead, why take Ainsley? Why attack Ainsley’s apartment?
Why Lou? Unless this was the plan of Dimakos’ backer.
Dimakos could have simply been a pawn or distraction.
If that was the case, the abductions were the focus.
On whose orders? Massimo’s? No, he stayed loyal to the Iannellis for two decades.
During the roughest patch for the outfit, he stepped up by Tore’s side.
So either he betrayed us because of a grudge against me, which had never come up before my arrest, or Dimakos’ backer offered him what I refused to give.
Only another outfit could offer him the position he wanted, and only one of Italian descent would accept him.
But Massimo was deluded if he believed any decent don would want a fence jumper as their underboss.
While Tore had a rocky relationship with the Costellos in Chicago in the early years of my incarceration, that dispute was put to bed years ago when Vinny married one of them. That left only the Giambrones. It made sense.
Francesco Giambrone wanted access to my ports through marriage.
I defied him and married another. At least, that was what the paperwork said.
There was also the fact that my men had killed his daughter.
It wasn’t far-fetched at all to conclude he’d want to work against me.
If he still wanted the ports, the easiest way to obtain access was to remove the obstacle in his path—Ainsley—and then force the contract.
Then why take Lou too? Unless the girl was collateral.
I dialed Francesco Giambrone. The phone only rang once.
“Renzo, my boy. I’d almost given up hope that you understood the severity of the situation, and that I was going to have to extend a helping hand.”
“Trust me. I don’t need anything from you, Giambrone.”
“Good. That means you know what’s at stake.”
“I’m listening.”
His chuckle oozed arrogance. “I’m feeling generous today. You don’t deserve it, but I’ll still give you three options.”
“Spit it out.”
“No patience?” He laughed again, and I wished I could reach through the phone and tear his face off. “The first one is simple: your lover and the girl die.”
“Pass.”
“I suspected as much. Second option, you both sign the divorce papers I’ll send over, and then you get on my jet to Vegas to marry my youngest. As a bonus to me, your lover loses a hand.
I’ll even let you choose which one.” The proposal didn’t even warrant an answer.
“You don’t like that one either? How about this then?
You give up your ports to me, tonight, and you get your lover and the girl back, mostly unharmed. What do you think?”
“How about four? I wipe you off the face of the earth.”
“You could try, but you’ll never make it in time to save them.
I’m being magnanimous, aren’t I? After all, you killed my daughter.
By all rights, I should kill one of the brats you brought into your home.
” I squeezed the phone. “You know, I thought you’d learn your lesson in prison.
I thought it’d give you humility, and you’d understand.
You’re not untouchable, Iannelli. Not when it comes to me, and not when you have weaknesses like her. ”
“Is that why you had someone stab me in prison?”
“I had to get something out of this somehow. Your blood for the price your stubbornness cost me. I had to promise my daughter to the Greeks so they’d grow enough balls to punish you.”
My teeth ground together. I spent seven years in prison because this man didn’t understand the word ‘no’.
The day I got my hands on him, I was going to wring his neck.
I was going to bleed him dry so slowly he’d feel the hours bleeding into days, the days into weeks, the weeks into months, until he understood exactly what he put me through.
One day, I reassured myself, but not today. I sucked in a deep breath.
“What happens to Ainsley and Lou if I choose option three?”
“You sign a contract I have prepared, which can be delivered to you in twenty minutes. In exchange, my men will hand them over immediately.”
“How do I know she’s still alive?”
“Check your messages.”
My phone vibrated, and two photos loaded. The pictures showed little more than their heads and upper torsos against two different car upholsteries. Both had their mouths taped, but they were alive and alert.
“What’s it going to be, boy? And don’t think you can play me on this.”
“You can have my fucking ports.”
“Good. Simple. Straight. I like it.”
“Tell me where.”
“A courier will find you soon, so don’t leave. After that, I’ll send you coordinates. You’ll have an hour to reach it. A second more, they die. Don’t be late.”
“I’ve got a last question. Massimo LaPietra.”
“What about your little snitch?”
“How long?”
“He came to me weeks ago. Interesting, isn’t it? He couldn’t even wait for you to get out of prison.”
I’d heard enough. I cut the call. What had started as a fantastic morning had veered so far off course, there was nothing left to do but let it all crash and burn. My eyes drooped with exhaustion. My head ached no matter how much I massaged my temples.
I lingered behind the police perimeter, waiting for the Giambrone’s carrier, as I mobilized Vinny, Natale, and my other capos through coded messages.
In those twenty minutes, the news crews packed up and moved on.
Half the cops left, the others holed up in the building, gathering evidence.
As for the crowd, they gradually lost interest and dispersed. With fewer onlookers, Tore joined me.
“You look like a freight train’s hit you,” he said.
I leaned over one of the wooden perimeter barriers. “They’ve got Ainsley.”
“How—”
“Massimo. He’s our leak to Giambrone.”
“Shit. That motherfucking”—he slammed his foot against the barrier— “no good…crap-sucking—”
“We get the point.” I held him by the shoulder. “No matter what, we’re getting them back tonight.”
“Where are they? What’s the plan?”
I sighed. “You’re not going to like it.”
“Just give it to me straight.”
I stole his lighter off him, flipped it in the air, and caught it. “Giambrone’s no idiot. He won’t let his daughter’s death go unpunished, no matter how coldhearted the bastard is. He also knows anything I sign over is merely a courtesy since he has no foothold here. Not unless he eliminates me.”
“So?”
“We’ll play his game. He wants to light my world on fire and let me burn with it.
” I flicked his lighter on. “But for that, I need to be there to watch. Lou and Ainsley will be safe until I get there. Which means the instant we’ve got a location, I want every man we’ve got on it, and they shoot down anyone who’s not Lou or Ainsley. ”
“You’re betting everything on that?”
“With only a little over one hour ticking, we don’t have a choice. I told you you wouldn’t like it.”
“You’re right. I don’t.”