27. Rocco
27
ROCCO
I can see the blood leaking through the wrap on my hand. But I don’t care. The light leather of the punching bag is already stained.
Each blow only adds to a tapestry of a million other smears.
Heavy metal music thrums through the room as I hold the bag steady, preparing for my next set of at least ten more.
I’m exercising until my body is too exhausted even to think.
I’m about to throw another punch, when someone touches my shoulder.
If it were anyone else, the blow I redirect toward the person who approached would have knocked them out completely. But clearly, Teo was expecting my reaction and he ducks cleanly out of my way.
“The fuck, man,” I grumble as I pull my earphones out.
“I called your name like five times.”
At the entrance to the gym, Donatella leans against the doorframe. Her pitying expression is the same one that has haunted me these last two days.
Now Teo has one to match.
For fuck’s sake.
“What do you want?” I snap as I return my attention to the punching bag.
“The Guild thinks you killed Claudio Lazzaro.”
I expected as much. The incident at the Candelabra had been a public one. Those who hadn’t been in attendance had still found out all the gory details within hours.
“Then, remind them that Lazzaro conspired with the Cartel to kidnap Bellini.”
There had been numerous accounts of the Cartel’s presence as they wreaked havoc, so there was no debating that much. Not to mention, Alessandro had them squealing the truth in less than twenty-four hours.
Lazzaro had recently become very involved in the Cartel. Though he wasn’t high up enough in the Guild to account for all the information breaches, he certainly played a part in leaking some of the information.
Teo and Donatella shared a glance. “Some are…still sympathetic toward Lazzaro’s intentions.”
My next punch slams into the bag with enough force to unhook the thing entirely from the ceiling. We all watch as it slams into the far wall and slowly begins to roll back to us.
“What do you mean?” I say as pleasantly as I can.
Teo levels me with a firm look. “Some of the old guard are anxious that you killed someone from your father's list over a woman — a woman that you conspired to obtain and humiliate Lazzaro with.”
“Don’t fucking sugarcoat it,” I reply sarcastically.
“It might be best if you showed your face,” Teo continues, unperturbed. “To alleviate these concerns.”
I turn on him in irritation. “And say what? That was actually Bellini who shot him in the back of the head?”
“I meant maybe double down on the ‘he was working with the Cartel and also probably the rat’ thing, but sure, I guess.”
I don’t bother replying as I pick up the bag and hang it back up.
“We need to do damage control here. You know what they’re like. One sniff of blood and those sharks will descend on you.”
I keep throwing out my punches, keeping a steady rhythm.
“Marco is here. So is Martino and Dante. They want to discuss the attack in more detail.”
One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.
“They’re worried about you, Rocco. I’m worried about you.”
Two, two, three. Two, two, three. Two, two, three.
“Fuck it. I know where she is.”
My punch misses the bag entirely.
We stand in silence while I wait for Teo to continue. But when I turn to look at him, he’s staring at me with crossed arms. He’s going to wait for me to ask.
I take a long, steadying breath. “Where?”
“Come to the meeting, and I’ll tell you.”
“Don’t piss me off right now.”
“Or what?”
I crack my neck, ready to square up to him if I have to. Teo sniffs, sensing the incoming attack, and matches my stance.
But before either of us can land a blow, Donatella steps between us.
“Enough of this nonsense, you stupid boys!” She gives us both a stern look before turning on me specifically. “You. Let your friends help you, dammit. I cannot spend another day dealing with your sulking, and you will lose everything you’ve spent five years building if you don’t clean up your act. Do you hear me?”
God, if that woman doesn’t terrify me.
“And you!” She turns on Teo. “Tell the poor man where Cassandra is. He’s literally going out of his mind with worry. Look at the state of him. So don’t be such a dick.”
Teo murmurs something that sounds suspiciously like an apology as he looks down at his feet.
For a moment, we’re just two teenagers again, causing havoc and getting into fights for no reason. Teo must think it, too, because he shoots me a sheepish look.
“I’ll meet with them,” I declare, a peace offering if there ever was one.
Teo nods. “She’s with Mia, staying at her place by the looks of things. Chiavari…senior…has more details.”
The relief that floods through me is only a splash of respite in the face of the fire of despair that has consumed me these last forty-eight hours. But it’s enough to make the walk to my private study more bearable.
After so long of having her near-constant presence in my life, her absence feels like I’m missing a limb.
It’s more than just the overwhelming heartache and depression spiral of having hurt her irreparably. I miss her companionship, her sarcasm, her seemingly unending determination to mess with me. Her laughter haunts this house like a ghost.
But her lips haunt my memories like a parasite, sucking every ounce of feeling and joy from me to the point where I don’t know if I even remember what it’s like to be happy.
Nothing matters anymore. There’s no way to fix this. No way I can atone for what I’ve done.
And now I’m going to have to figure out how to live with it. Even if living without her means that I’ll slowly become a shell of the person I once was.
I shake these thoughts from my mind as I step into the office. These were my friends. Donatella was right. I should at least pretend to let them help me.
“So?” I ask the room, immediately getting to business. “What is it you have for me?”
Marco clears his throat and approaches my desk first, holding a thick file of documents. He dumps them in front of me with an unceremonious thud.
“What am I looking at here, Chiavari?” I ask the older man irritably.
“Loan agreement paperwork,” Marco replies as I take a look at the document at the top of the pile.
I tense at the sight of the name signed at the bottom. “Carmine Bellini’s loan agreement paperwork.”
“The man was many things, but sloppy was not one of them,” Marco continues. “Look at the handwriting. The loan he allegedly took out on Lazzaro’s behalf wasn’t written in cursive.”
I massage my temples. “This feels like grasping at straws.”
“I knew my friend.”
“Not well enough.”
Marco’s lips curl out slightly. “I knew him better than anyone. Better than the goddamn wife who abandoned him. Carmine was a good man. If you hadn’t caught him red handed with the Cartel, I would never have believed he’d do something like that.”
I stare at him. This is a rare rational display of passion for something other than accounting.
“So you’re saying he didn’t write the loan?”
Marco slams Lazzaro’s loan document on the table before me with the flat of his hand. “No. I’m saying he wrote it under duress.”
Beside me, Teo quirks his eyebrow. “An interesting theory.”
“Boss?”
I look up and motion for Martino to join us.
“That night at the Candelabra, I took a look in Lazzaro’s office before Cas was due on stage. I didn’t understand what it meant at the time, but…” he hands me his phone.
On it is a picture of an unkempt desk. Documents litter every corner. There are so many you can barely see the oak surface beneath. The trash can beneath is overflowing.
I swipe to the next photo. This one is more zoomed in on a crumbled piece of paper, half-burned on top of the trash. I swipe again, and the paper unravels.
“Cage the canary,” I read aloud.
“It was still smoking when I found it. Lazzaro did a piss poor job of trying to destroy it.”
I keep looking at the handwriting. There’s something so familiar about it. “So someone else gave Lazzaro the instruction to kidnap Bellini.”
“I have a good idea who it might be.”
We turn to look at Dante standing with his usual swagger in the corner. The South African must have been fully briefed on the situation, judging by the look of pity he throws my way before continuing.
“I was in South Africa when the tobacco shipment went out. I helped them load it into the damn shipping containers myself. There was no possibility they could have arrived here empty unless someone intercepted them en route.”
“We’ve been over this already, Dante,” I say, already tired.
But Dante shakes his head. “I looked into it. The Cartel don't have their own ships or dock.”
“So they hired a civil trawler,” Teo counters.
“If they did, the shipment didn’t arrive back in Brooklyn.”
I lean forward. “You mean the Cartel intercepted the package and took it elsewhere?”
“I’m saying no one arrived in Brooklyn within a seventy-two-hour window of the interception with a load that big. Not at the civilian docks.”
“But we know the Cartel has the tobacco right now. They’ve been underselling us for weeks,” Teo adds. “So how the hell did they get it?”
Dante procures his own document and slides it over to me. “There was only one other vessel capable of carrying the shipment, and docked privately within that window.”
There, in black and white, is the name of my private yacht.
I stare at it for a moment. Wondering why I ever allowed myself to think anyone else was responsible for this mess. Because, of course, it was. Of course, he would do something like this.
“I’m going to kill him.”
I look up at Teo. Never in my life have I ever seen him look so furious.
“We can’t,” I let authority lace my tone. “If we go after him, the negotiations were for nothing.”
“If you go after him.”
“Vitale,” Marco places a hand on his shoulder. “This isn’t your fight.”
Teo shakes it off. “The hell it isn’t. My family’s killers are on that damn list. My sister’s murderer.”
“Stand down, Teo,” I snap at him. “Chiavari, Dante. Gather this evidence up to present to the Guild. Take Vitale with you.”
“Like hell,” Teo all but growls at me. “I’m coming with you.”
“No, you’re not. You’re too emotional. I can’t trust you to have my back in there.”
Teo sneers. “ I’m too emotional? You’ve locked yourself up here for days, Rocco. You’ve barely eaten, barely slept since she left. Don’t you dare come for me, you fucking hypocrite.”
I offer him a long, cool look.
“Martino,” I bark without breaking his stare. “You’re with me.”
The drive into New York is as tense as it is frustrating. Martino keeps glancing in the rearview as if he might say something.
But it doesn’t matter whether he approves of this solo mission.
I need to speak with him alone. Need to hear the truth from his own mouth. Because if I have to kill him, there can’t be any question about who did it. I need to shoulder that burden alone.
When we finally arrive, Martino tries to get out of the car. But I shake my head. “Keep it running.”
Perhaps it’s the dressing down I gave Teo earlier or the sheer ferocity in my eyes, but he doesn’t object.
The familiar path to the elevator and the long wait up to the penthouse only serve as fuel for my already explosive fury.
I don’t bother declaring my presence. As soon as I reach the apartment, I kick down the doors and storm straight into the room.
“Well, isn’t this a surprise,” Giuliano Moretti all but purrs. “Two visitors in one day, lucky, lucky me.”
“What the hell are you…”
My words catch in my throat at the sight of another figure emerging from the balcony.
Amidst the dense vegetation of my father’s solarium, her cheeks now oddly hollow, and her face streaked with tears is…
“Cas?”