Game of Love : A Mafia Romance

by Khardine Gray

  I couldn’t believe it. Jesus.

  “Capisce,” I answered.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Xander

  The two carried me out back. When the night air hit me, it hurt all over.

  It was night again so a whole day had gone by. I forgot to look at the clock.

  Was it the same day?

  They put me in the back of Frankie’s truck but Vinny didn’t get in.

  Frankie got into the driver’s seat and Vinny came up to the window.

  “You asshole,” he said to Frankie. “You better know what you’re doing. He’ll kill you when he finds out.”

  “I’d like to see him try,” Frankie answered with a daring smirk, cocking his head to the side so the light from the lamp post beamed down on his black spiky hair.

  Vinny sighed with an uneasy expression, tensing his square jaw. His hawk-like eyes switched from Frankie to me, then back to Frankie. “I’ll hold the fort here.”

  “Hey,” Frankie shook his head and held up his finger. “You know nothing, and you never helped me. I’m serious. This is on me. My sister won’t be without a husband.”

  Vinny dipped his head understanding and backed away into the shadows of the night.

  I barely managed to keep my eyes opened as I looked at him. Frankie drove off, leaving him standing there.

  I bid him a silent thanks.

  I struggled to keep myself up. It was so hard. All I could manage to do was slump against the seat.

  “There’s a sweatshirt in the back next to you. Put it on,” Frankie instructed. “There’s also a bottle of water. Drink some.”

  I swallowed hard against my dry throat. The lump there was so big it actually felt like I’d shoved a ball inside and was trying to move past it. Very similar to having a sore throat, or when I’d had tonsillitis. It was so bad, I’d needed my tonsils removed. Thank God I’d had Jack in my life then, because it crippled me for weeks.

  I was thanking God and his heavenly host now that I had Frankie. And Vinny? Fuck…

  What the hell?

  Frankie had watched my back over the last few weeks, giving me a pass to see Jia. If not for him I would never have had the chance. I never expected this though. Not from him and definitely not from Vinny.

  Pulling in a deep breath I gathered strength to straighten up. The hooded sweatshirt was folded next to me, the bottle of water under it.

  My arms were like lead pillars as I lifted them up to shrug into the shirt. Then I downed the water, my throat thanking me in abundance.

  Jesus, it actually made me feel a little better. I must have been severely dehydrated.

  Frankie’s eyes alternated between watching me and the road ahead.

  I stared at the back of his head and he glanced around at me.

  He was definitely help that had come in the most unexpected form.

  “Thank you,” I told him. “Thank you and Vinny. But Jesus, why? Why did you do it? Giovanni will know someone had to have helped me.”

  Giovanni would have known that straight off the bat when he discovered I was missing. He knew I had skill but there was no way I was that good.

  Frankie was silent for a few seconds.

  “I helped because we’re in over our heads in something that I never signed up for. Vinny helped because we’ve always watched each other’s backs and he gets married to my little sister next spring. He’s family. It’s what we do.” He gave me a little smile.

  “I get it, but there’s more, right? What do you think you’re in over your heads with?” He’d helped me but I needed to be careful with what I said and what I revealed.

  I was slowly getting my mental strength back. Protocol would suggest that as soon as I could move, I should get in touch with Wes and Ethan.

  Protocol at the moment was bull shit to me, with all the variables I had to wrap my head around. I was more inclined to take a different approach and gather more intel. Not just act like I was used to acting.

  Also…

  Here I was acting like an agent but I wasn’t that. I might have been hired by Ethan and the Special Missions Forces, but I wasn’t an agent.

  I didn’t have to think about protocol.

  “For some time I’ve sensed something more than the usual going on in the background with Giovanni. More than what we do as gangsters. I’m all up for money but there comes a point when that line of reason has been crossed. He always does those high stakes games. Months ago I saw a guy linked with the Cuban Cartel and I heard whispers of selling something to the biggest buyer Giovanni had ever had. I didn’t get a name but… I knew the level of shit was serious. Political. Government related and not ours.”

  A shiver ran down my spine.

  When this thing all started, it was clear as the days unfolded that there were several players involved.

  Giovanni was in league with The Chameleon, an illegal black market trader. And, Diego Sanchez, a notorious member of the Cuban Cartel. I’d bet Diego was who Frankie saw Giovanni with.

  Giovanni had stolen blue prints from a military envoy. The blueprints were a design to build a nuclear weapon unlike any known to man. Those people: Giovanni, The Chameleon and Diego were all facilitators, working for someone else. My team and I were not sure who. But we assumed they were working for someone terrorist related. We never factored in that it could be government related. We never factored it in and we were too busy dealing with the other side of the madness which was that Balthazar and the Ra, were after the blueprints. Better to say Balthazar and the Ra because as I’d seen for myself just last week he didn’t just have his Spades with him. There were ordinary Ra guys helping out like worker ants, furthering the cause.

  There was so much at work here. Too much.

  Trying to process too much at once was hurting my brain.

  One thing at a time… Frankie said government.

  “Which one Frankie? Which government?”

  “I think Russian. I don’t know for certain. The thing that got to me the most was the secrets. Giovanni sent in the four knights who were killed to steal something. The rest of us were not privy to knowing what the something was.” He glanced back at me again.

  I’d come to that conclusion on my first day at work. It was when I knew I’d have to go looking for the blueprints old school. I’d assumed my job would have been to watch over the blueprints but then quickly realized the remaining knights didn’t have a clue about them at all.

  “Why didn’t he share the details with you?”

  “Giovanni is a very particular man. He has his host of men protecting him and his assets like an army. The knights however get chosen for different things. Vinny and I are muscle. Armand the closest to him is an advisor and consigliere. Freddo is business minded. You would have been chosen for your keen attention to detail and ability to outsmart him. You were what was needed I guess in an emergency. The other four were what I call ruthless bastards. They used to run a ring where they stole all types of shit. Giovanni classed them as his generals. They were the guys who went above and beyond. If he wanted something done, they’d do it and leave no trace. We were all shocked to shit when we heard they’d all been killed.”

  It was their deaths that opened the position for me. Except Giovanni didn’t have four replacements, he just had me. It was my skill. From the beginning he was always impressed with it and my attitude. I sufficed for what he needed, which was mainly to watch the casino and keep my eyes open for trouble. He had the others watch Jia, especially when he found out we were involved.

  “So, back on track, why did I help you? Several reasons. The first was I think you came to steal the thing we don’t know about, also kid, you stuck out like a fucking sore thumb. I thought straight off the bat that you’d been sent. You aren’t a cop, and you aren’t military either. You’re not clean enough to pass for that shit. Those guys move differently.” He cleared his throat. “I’m not about supporting terrorism or pitting government against government. That’s above me. Wh
at’s more above me is groups like the Ra. I don’t know a lot about them but when I realized they were involved, I was out from then. Out in every essence of the word.”

  “When did you know they were involved?”

  “The night of the shootout, kid. We got rid of the bodies of the guys who came for us. Giovanni ordered us to take them to his crematorium. When I was prepping the men I saw the tats that linked them.”

  I nodded. “The Ankh.”

  “Yes, the fucking Ankh.”

  The general members of The Ra had a tattoo of an Ankh on their wrists. The Spades also had that in addition to a tattoo on their cheeks of a spade. Balthazar was their leader, however, to my knowledge he did bear any of the marks that distinguished his faction or The Ra as a whole. He was his own monstrosity of a person.

  “Not everybody knows what it means,” Frankie pointed out. That was pure truth. The Ra were a secret group and you had to travel in some special government or underground circles to even know of their existence. “Vinny sure as hell didn’t and neither did Armand. I don’t think Giovanni thought we’d have any idea. He never thought I’d know. That bastard didn’t even have the decency to tell us what we were dealing with. He just assumed we were dumb as fuck. And, he still hasn’t said. Any extra is what I gathered from what he said to you as he tortured you.”

  “How do you know about the Ra?

  “Let’s just say I hear a lot of things I shouldn’t in the underworld. I see even more things. I knew what the tattoo meant. It could only have been them that killed the other four knights. Right from then though, I suspected a rat. A fucking rat. Seeing the tat told me hands down that there was definitely a fucking rat amongst us and I think it’s that prick Armand.”

  Armand…

  Jia had mentioned something about him. She said she saw him meeting with someone and it looked off to her. Hearing Frankie say this now was even more reason for suspicion.

  “Armand, why do you think it’s him?”

  “He’s shady as shit, Xander. I don’t know how you can ask me that. He’s the only one of us with that lackadaisical attitude. He has a get out of jail card on account of his ties back to Italy and connections to the Marchesi family. It means it gives him more freedom than the rest of us to move around and do stuff.”

  The night of the shootout Armand was screwing around with one of the maids. But, he didn’t have to exactly be around at the same time the Ra guys came in. They could have already been there waiting.

  “He has access Xander, and that means a lot in our world. I can’t figure it all yet, but I suspect that son of a bitch. He’s the only guy who knew who would be at the poker games. All the players taking part and guests. Granted anybody who has deep pockets can attend and play, but the point is he would have had some idea who was coming. I think he’s working with someone else. The fucking web goes deep. Tangled up in knots so tight I can’t figure it. Giovanni is right though.”

  “About what part?”

  The man had said so much.

  “He said The Ra would only get involved the way they are if they were tipped off. I didn’t know the specs of whatever the four knights were stealing but it was secret enough to keep it right under wraps. No one should know about Giovanni’s involvement at all.”

  Ethan had said one of the guys was caught on camera. That was how the SMF knew. If Armand was working with the Ra, he could have tipped them off. It didn’t fit though. Something didn’t fit.

  There was someone else.

  Again, like Giovanni said, the someone was the joker. A person who’d managed to fool everybody and get all involved on this wild ride.

  I thought he was right about that.

  “So you think Armand squealed?”

  “I think he squealed for the right price. I think he’s in balls deep for the right price. It actually grieves me that Jia has to have anything to do with him. The other reason I helped you was her.”

  Just the mention of her name gripped my heart.

  “I hated that she saw me being tortured.”

  “Me too. Giovanni is one ruthless son of a bitch, but fuck, he definitely used to take the premise of keeping women out of business to another level. If this was another time he would never have allowed her to see something like that. It’s no excuse. The bastard is in over his head and acting out because of that. He won’t take me down with him when the shit hits the fan.” He gave me a more quizzical look, one more of scrutiny. “So, I won’t ask who you work for. Take you from the frying pan to the fire. All that shit. I reckon if you held your silence for so long and endured the torture Giovanni put on you, it must be important. What I will ask you is this. You one of the good guys?” He held my gaze through his reflection.

  I nodded. “I am. I came with good intentions to stop bad from happening. Only bad can happen when certain things fall into the wrong people’s hands.”

  “That’s good enough for me. Can I ask what the thing is? This thing it’s all about, that you came to steal. Is it okay to ask that?” He gave me a tentative expression. “I wasn’t able to really hear what it was while Giovanni was torturing you. I heard the word ‘prints’ drop, but couldn’t really tell with all that was going on.”

  I didn’t see any harm in telling him that part given the circumstances. Or, rather clarifying. The issue of what it was I was here to steal wasn’t the worry anymore. It was what would happen next. Frankie seemed to know enough and some of what he’d shared with me was more than I knew before my sketchy plan to steal the prints went to hell.

  “Blueprints for a nuke,” I replied, pulling in a deep breath. “A super nuke with a combo mix of uranium and plutonium. They were designed by a scientist at NASA.”

  His face hardened and he looked back to me. “Fuck, you’re serious?

  I nodded.

  “Fucking hell, I was right. I was fucking right. I knew it was serious but I didn’t know it was that.”

  “It’s serious.” And I didn’t have the damn prints. The mission was blown, The Chameleon saw me too, when he and Giovanni caught me with the prints in my hands in the chamber.

  They could have moved the prints by now.

  Now… when was it?

  I got that disoriented feel again of not knowing what day it was. That made me think of Jia.

  I gazed out the window, at the shadows of night.

  I was too afraid to ask what day it was. It was something I needed to ask though.

  “Frankie, what day is it? Is it still Monday?”

  He smirked. “Kid they must have really did a fucking number on you.”

  Fuck. I prayed weeks hadn’t gone by or something like that. I really was out of it and displaced.

  “Frankie I’m serious. I just want to know for her. For Jia. She gets on that plane with that bastard.”

  Understanding filled his eyes in the reflection. “I get it. It’s still Monday. Her plane leaves in two hours.”

  Two hours.

  Oh my God. She hadn’t left yet. She hadn’t left with Armand yet. I straightened up even more and for the first time since getting this mission to get the prints, I wholeheartedly thought of what I wanted most.

  I had a second chance to try.

  “Frankie, I appreciate the rescue. I do, but I have to get her. I can’t let her go off with Armand.”

  He chuckled again.

  “Yeah, I figured as much. I also thought you’d need a ride to make that happen. Gotta say though kid, that you don’t look like you can move all that fast so you probably need all the help you can get.”

  All I could do was stare at him.

  “What are you saying to me? You gonna help me?”

  “Where do you think we’re going?”

  I swallowed and the lump loosened in my throat. I glanced out the window again and saw signs for McCarran International.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Jia

  Armand was sitting across from me in the limo.

  He gave me the occasional glare
of annoyance. It was the type of look to kill.

  It was the type of look that told me to be careful, be wary, be aware.

  I just didn’t care anymore. He could kill me for all I cared.

  He could just kill me, and if he didn’t I just might do it myself.

  I was sure death was better than this.

  This… me heading to Italy with a man I’d hated almost as much as I hated my father.

  How did I get to this point?

  How did I get here at this point in my life where I practically had nothing? Not even my God given right of choice. How could I be a grown woman of twenty six years old and be going through this shit?

  The car careened down the road. We weren’t far from the airport now.

  Another twenty minutes tops and we’d be there.

  We’d fly by private jet at ten. I hated flying that way, usually for the company. Today would be the worst time.

  It would be so much worse because it was just going to be Armand, me, the flight attendant and two pilots in the plane.

  Just days ago Armand tried to rape me and here I sat with him enroute to Italy to be married in two weeks.

  Yup.

  That was my life. that was what I had to look forward to and worse, I had to do it knowing my father had killed the man I love.

  I didn’t know if Xander was already dead, or if he was still alive. I didn’t know. I was assuming death. If he was still alive I figured it would only be a matter of time. He looked…. bad earlier.

  That was a little over eight hours ago. He’d looked bad then and I didn’t think with all that I’d seen being done to him that Xander would last past the next hour.

  It was so awful.

  “Your thoughts are deafening bellezza.” Armand suddenly snapped, cutting into the silence. His voice took on an edge that pierced through me.

  It made me tremble. I guess it didn’t help that I was crying too, he would have hated that.

  “What do you expect? Do you expect me to be as heartless as you?” I countered.