“I have,” I said. “It’s passed a few times.”
“Down!” Mac roared. His voice was usually jagged, but it came out so clear. He pushed Mari to the ground, but all I could do was watch.
My entire body froze, and I had the weirdest fucking thought when it did. Cash Kelly. It wasn’t my mind. It was my heart. It cried out for my husband. Maybe because I knew I was about to swallow a few bullets.
Then I was on the ground. Mac’s body landed on top of mine as bullets sprayed the house, right where I’d been standing. They sounded like fireworks exploding around me in daytime. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
I wasn’t sure what happened as the sound of gunfire faded. It seemed like everything happened in a blur of time, and I was stuck on the ground, still frozen. But I could hear. I could hear so clearly the words moving around me. They were as loud as the gunfire.
“Call Kelly and fill him in,” Mac said. “He needs to know about this. There’s no telling who he fucked with and pissed off. This might be retribution in the form of a life he considers important to him.”
“How did you know about—”
“Get to work, Harry Boy. It’s not safe to chat in the street.”
Sirens grew closer.
“Mac?” my brother called. “You saved my sister.”
“Make sure you tell Kelly he has a tab.”
Hell’s Kitchen was officially boiling over, and I’d finally gotten burned.
24
Cash
I ended the call. I stared at the wall in my office for one, two, three seconds. On the fourth, the boom exploded inside of my skull and I stood, going for the door. Outside, I unlocked the armored matte black Hellcat that I’d bought from a guy Rocco knew. He actually knew a guy who knew a guy—he was the best in the business, and he only answered to men like Rocco. If he put in the order, you were in.
There was some traffic on the streets, but I made it to my destination without an issue. I parked, turned the car off, and then reached into the console for the knife I had stashed there. Since my suits were custom made, I slipped it inside of the pocket I always had the tailors add inside of the jacket.
I entered the building and went up two flights of stairs. Molly, my old man’s widow, answered the door on the second knock.
She said nothing and neither did I for a minute or two.
Molly and I were on all-right terms, but after my old man’s death, the thing we had in common ended. I’d see her around sometimes, but that was the extent of it.
My patience was legendary, so with a sigh, she stepped back and opened the door.
Nothing of my old man lingered inside of the apartment. Not even pictures. It didn’t take her long to move on. Over the years, I’d hear about the men she’d hook up with, but she had been with the man smoking on what used to be my old man’s fire escape the longest. The window was open, and he turned his head, meeting my eye.
“Cash Kelly.” Brian Grady took a puff of his cigarette and blew it out in a long stream. “Come to give me an ultimatum?”
Brian Grady was Cormick’s younger brother and Lee’s uncle. He was a decent fella who didn’t meddle in the family business unless they were in a pinch. Lee looked up to him, though, and I knew when he needed an ear, it was Brian who listened to and counseled him.
“You wouldn’t!” Big Mouth Molly yelled from behind me.
Killian used to call her that. He never warmed up to her. I kept lukewarm, not caring either way, as I usually did. But the reason she suddenly had such an interest in my coming here was because my old man left eighty percent of the building to me. The other twenty percent was hers.
Since I held the most stock, if I decided to sell, she would either have to buy me out or sell out. She had lived here most of her life, and she was comfortable not having to pay rent, living off of whatever my old man left her, so she didn’t want any trouble with me. But her default setting when she was pissed was to yell.
“Move along, Molly,” I said, not even turning to look at her. “That temper will get you nowhere with me.”
Things became quiet, but I could read her reaction by the look on Brian’s face. After a moment, he took another drag off his cigarette and then nodded. I felt the air move when she left. Five seconds later, right on time, the door to her bedroom slammed.
“If I wanted you out of this apartment,” I said, “I wouldn’t need to own most of the building to do it.”
“True,” he said, eyeing me. His head was turned toward me, but his body faced straight. “Business then.”
“Personal.” I reached inside of my jacket, pulling out the knife. “You or me, but either way, you’re delivering the message.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You doin’ this for your wife?”
“I’d do much worse for much less done to her.”
“I told Lee,” he said. “I told him not to fuck with your woman. I advised him not to get involved with the Scarpones either. The boy listens when he hears words. The rest of the time he only hears dollar signs.” He shrugged, turning forward, putting out his cigarette on the cast iron ladder.
He took another minute or two, and then he shook his head. “He’s going to die regardless,” he said. “But I get it. He’ll get pissed enough to find you—if the Scarpones don’t get to him first.” He sighed, stood, stretched his arms over his head, wiggling the nine fingers he had, and then used the window to step into the apartment.
The smell of smoke lingered on his clothes as he rummaged around a kitchen drawer for a minute. He pulled out a knife used for hacking between the bones of an animal about to be put on for dinner. Brian knew his way around a butcher shop, since his brother and grandfather had been butchers.
He lifted the knife up to me. “Mind if I use my own?”
“I’d rather keep mine clean.”
“As long as this’ll do.”
“That or your heart.”
“The finger is worth more than a heart. You can get more done with it.”
“I have no problem taking your heart, since it’s worthless.”
He met my eye for a long second before he took a firmer grip of the knife, proving his words bullshit. He didn’t want to die because his nephew was a fucking moron.
He set his hand on the chopping block on the counter. It still had carrot pieces on it. He narrowed his eyes for a second, and then, bringing the knife up, he came down with a hard thwack! His middle finger disconnected from his hand as soon as the knife connected with the block. It tilted a little before it righted itself. The nail still had a blood bruise where he must have hit it with a hammer.
He must’ve done it when he was hanging a picture of him and Molly taken at Sullivan’s bar. I’d noticed the hammer and nails on a table right under where the picture was hung when I was making my way through the apartment. It was the same place she had a picture of her and my old man back in the day.
I handed him a dishtowel that was hanging on the oven. He applied pressure for a minute before using it as a tourniquet. He lifted both of his hands, a grin on his face. “At least now they match.”
My old man had cut off his other middle finger years ago, when another war had been going on between Cormick and my old man.
“Consider your name Carver Turkey,” I said. “One more move against my wife, and I’m going to serve you to your nephew on a fucking platter.”
He waved the hand at me, the blood seeping through the dishtowel, like the crazy son of a bitch he was. “Gobble Gobble. I’ll be sure to tell him.”
Brian was like a father to Lee, and after losing his own, he wasn’t going to risk it. Whenever Lee was in trouble, Brian either hid him or got him out of it. This time, though, Brian knew the end game was coming—either from the Scarpones or me. Brian might not convince Lee to give up the entire game, but he would convince him to leave my wife fucking out of it, or he’d be the one paying the price for his nephew’s decisions.
As I shut the door to the apartment, I heard Mo
lly yelling from inside. The volume of it rattled inside of my skull until I was about ten minutes away and consumed by my own chaos. The madness went up a notch after I pulled up to Harry Boy’s house and found it surrounded by cops.
I nodded to Harry Boy, who was talking to a detective, as I made my way closer to his door. My wife sat on the porch, and when she saw me, she stood. Her face became a mask, but not before I noticed the relief that made it to her eyes before she hardened her resolve.
She could act on a Broadway stage for thousands of people, fooling each and every one, but there was no fucking fooling me. She wanted me here, no matter how much she despised that she did. My theory was further proved right when I took her by the arm, leading her toward the car, and she didn’t put up a fight.
After I opened the door for her, she stared at me, like she had something to say. Or maybe she expected me to say something.
Instead, I lifted my hand, and letting my fingers brush across her skin as I did, I tucked a wild curl behind her ear. Her eyes closed and her hand came over my wrist, her grip tight. We stood that way for a minute or two, until she opened her eyes, shook her head, and got inside of the car.
She slammed the door before I could close it.
25
Cash
Rocco Fausti came to see me the day after Harry Boy’s house was shot up and my wife almost got riddled with bullets.
Which was exactly what should have happened to me if it was Lee Grady or the Scarpones at the country club.
It was hard to pinpoint who ordered the hit, but it didn’t really matter in the end. They were in this war together—until they turned on each other. Someone was going to find someone else dead soon. My bets were on Grady floating up first.
The Scarpone family was known to chew off their own legs to save their hearts, and it would take more than Grady to destroy them.
Ah. Lee Grady. This was his big break, and I watched it go boom right in front of my eyes. He might not chew off his entire leg to save his heart, but he’d drag the leg, still trying to get a hit in on me before his last breath. Especially since Brian lost a digit.
Either way, between Macchiavello and me, we had almost crippled both operations.
Rocco watched me for a moment, taking a sip of his whiskey, grinning. “It wasn’t the night that I expected, but the end is the end, ah? Verdura trucks.” He shook his head.
I leaned forward in my seat some, watching his face. “What is Macchiavello going to want for this? That was a lot of money that went up in flames.”
It was nearly impossible to break the barrier the Scarpones and Grady had put up at the dock. There were too many men crawling around, looking for any excuse to put a bullet in someone, even when they assumed I was the one who’d been blown up in Hoboken as the deal had gone down.
The Scarpones and Lee Grady had made one massive mistake, though—they assumed.
Instead of guarding the trucks, they put all of their manpower at the dock, not on the trucks leaving with millions of dollars worth of drugs.
Even if they would’ve had more security on the trucks, I wasn’t letting them get past a certain point. So I cut them off and blew them up, but I didn’t know what it was going to cost me with Macchiavello.
Rocco took another drink of whiskey and then set it down. He fixed his tie and got more comfortable in his seat. “Nothing. The job is done. However.” He took out another card from his pocket and laid it on the table, pushing it closer to me.
Another favor.
I owed him my life for saving my wife, so I picked it up and said, “Consider it done.”
He nodded. “You have made your point here. You have done what’s needed to be done. Even though Grady is retaliating, he is not as powerful as he used to be. You run Hell’s Kitchen now, just as your father did.”
He watched me for a minute. “I will be in touch when it is time.” He nodded toward the card. “It will be soon. You will need a few of your best men. Men you trust as much as you can. Give very little detail except for this: Their life will be at stake if they do not arrive at the exact time and do exactly what you say. A man’s life will depend on the minute—a man I consider blood.”
“I’ll take care—”
He shook his head. “Take your wife and go somewhere. You run this now.” He looked around. “You should be as far as possible from the chaos that will ensue after this. If you prove to the world that you have competent and dangerous men who follow you—” he shrugged “—you will gain respect from my side of the world.”
“Stone,” I said. “He’ll be all over it.”
“Everyone who means something will be all over this—there will be a meeting with the families after this is done. Things will change. However, Stone is out of the picture.”
I narrowed my eyes. Even though I understood his subtle language, sometimes things got lost in translation.
“He has been suspended from duty.” Rocco took another drink and then stood. “No one fucks with my family and gets away with it.”
I nodded, standing, and offered him my hand. We shook, and he squeezed my shoulder.
“Tell me about the other threat,” he said.
“Same shit, different day.” I grinned. It was no surprise that he knew about the country club—whatever that was meant to be. He also knew that before I took care of the problem, I had to make sure my finger was pointed in the right direction.
Rocco seemed to think about it for a minute before he nodded. “Bene.” He shook my hand even harder and then went for the door. He stopped before he opened it and said one word. “Dolce.”
After he’d gone, I sat back in my seat, staring at the wall.
Dolce.
The restaurant the Scarpones used as a front. It was their personal pride and joy. A place they used for family functions, and on certain Sundays of the month, they got together for family dinners.
The head of the Scarpone family, Arturo, was paranoid about too many people memorizing his routine after a man named Corrado Palermo, one of his closest, had tried to slit his throat. Arturo switched it up every so often to keep enemies guessing. It also made it easier to pinpoint the rat in his family if another attempt was ever made on his life. He kept his circle as close as lifeblood after the first attempt had failed.
I whistled long and slow, then took a deep drink of my whiskey. It went down like honey and caused a nice fire in the pit of my stomach.
Maybe it wasn’t the whiskey doing the magic; maybe it was what was about to happen.
Dolce only meant one thing.
Macchiavello was going to end whatever fucking vendetta he had against them, and he was going to use some of my men in the game. After word got around that I was part of it, I’d be considered the real fucking deal to the families, and to my own people, stronger than my old man.
In this life, nothing was ever given. It was fucking hard-earned.
You wanted respect. You had to give up some blood. And I’d donated plenty.
26
Cash
About a month later, I got the call from Rocco. The plan was simple and clean and no problem, but he insisted that I needed to get out of town before the job went down.
I decided to take my wife to Ireland, along with Maureen and the two kids. Keely insisted, since Ryan was old enough to travel.
I hired a private plane, and we took a red-eye out of New York five minutes before my men stormed Dolce with weapons drawn. The instructions were clear—take out these people and these people only. The rest was not my concern.
Rocco phoned me while we were somewhere over the Atlantic to say, “I heard the weather was clear for a good flight.” Then he hung up.
That meant whatever debt I owed Macchiavello had been paid in full—we were square.
Before we returned to New York, I was determined to get square with the woman who shot daggers at me as I drove through the streets of Derry in Northern Ireland. I’d made arrangements for Maureen and the kids to spend tim
e with a cousin she had in Dublin. It was a three-hour drive from there, and the ride had mostly been silent.
My wife spent her time taking pictures, only asking me to slow at the Free Derry sign, and then looking it over on her camera after she’d taken a few. Even after we pulled up to the house I spent some years in as a kid, we barely spoke a word to each other.
She stopped in the hallway after I’d placed her bags down. “This place belongs to your family?”
“To me,” I said, watching her face. Her neck was tinged red. It seemed like she had a lot to say to me, but she refused. Her temper was creeping up her neck, no place to go, since she refused to say what was really on her mind. “It belonged to my grandparents before.”
“Where will I sleep?”
I nodded toward the main bedroom. “With me.”
“No,” she said, going to pick up her bag, but I put out a hand to stop her. She let it fall with a clang to the floor. “I’m only holding up my end of the deal. I eat dinner with you. That’s it, Kelly.”
“You don’t eat,” I said.
“I do.”
She looked as scrawny as hell. I looked as tired as the devil himself after he’d tried to convert a hardheaded woman. Our internal wars were finally coming through the physical.
What the fuck were we doing?
What the fuck was I doing?
How did I even get here? Caring whether or not this woman ate with me. Caring whether or not this woman fucked me.
I cared because all of a sudden, she felt vital to me. Like a saving grace with heavenly eyes and a wicked tongue that had a dangerous power over me. Her presence softened my guard, like a lullaby, but her backbone, her good bones, made me trust.
I trusted her.
Completely.
Even though she fucking hated the thought of me at present.
I trusted this woman.
Marauder (Gangsters of New York Book 2) Page 25