Skin

by Karin Tabke

  She hurried to pour him a glass of water, and he drank it down when she handed it to him. His reddened face slowly returned to deep olive. “Francesca, why would you ask such a question?”

  She shrugged and picked out the chocolate chips from the filling of her cannoli, pushing them aside. “I didn’t mean it like it sounded, I was just wondering if it’s as easy for you as it was for my father and is for my brother to tune people out?”

  He patted a napkin to the corner of his mouth. “I can tune people out.” He smiled. “It’s what the male of the species does.”

  “No, I mean, turn off your emotions. Like Father did when he took someone out.”

  Carmine’s eyes widened. “Took someone out?”

  She wasn’t going to play coy. “I’m not talking about a hit, although I wouldn’t put that past him, but taking out a friend for business, cutting them out of the deal, turning yourself off so you can make the deal, you know, just business.”

  He sipped his espresso and nodded slowly. “I can do it. To a point.”

  Maybe she needed to adopt that single-minded sociopath angle. If she played by the family’s rules, she just might come out on top. Her stomach churned at the thought. It wasn’t her nature to be cold and unyielding, to put business first. But she told herself that if she was to hang on to Skin, she would have to play like the pros. Her heart hardened a notch.

  “Then you aren’t like Father in that way.”

  Carmine cocked a dark graying brow. She continued. She needed to get her anger out on the table, to see if she was justified, to see if her uncle would turn on her in the end like her father and her brother. “I know Father had my mother’s cousin Johnny Trino removed to pave the way for Anthony. Do you know where Johnny is?”

  “What is really bothering you, cara?”

  Everything. “Nothing.”

  “Come now, cara — remember who you’re talking to.”

  He always could catch her in a lie.

  “Anthony.”

  “I told you not to worry about him.”

  “How can I not? He barges into my office and starts throwing his weight around. He has some vendetta against me.” Her hands shook, she was so angry. “He wants Skin, Unk.”

  Carmine’s eyes narrowed and he sat forward, the fine leather of the chair creaking under his substantial weight. “What exactly did he say?”

  “He claims Father left him Skin. Is it true?”

  Carmine’s features didn’t flinch. “So Anthony claims.”

  Cold infiltrated her body.

  Carmine brushed the powdered sugar from his hands and looked thoughtfully at his niece. “Your brother always cries for more than his share. I wouldn’t worry about him.”

  Frankie folded her hands on her lap and looked down at her fingers entwined so tightly her knuckles whitened. On her right ring finger was her maternal grandfather’s signet ring of bloodred rubies in the shape of a hawk’s head. The hawk’s diamond eye twinkled at her. Her grandfather gave it to her on her eighteenth birthday. “Never fear the hawk, cara, embrace him, use him, look to him for strength when you feel the world is against you, and always know the family will protect you.” She laughed, the sound brittle. Maybe her mother’s Calabrian family would protect her, but it was the other family, her half brother, Anthony, and his gang of Sicilian thugs she needed protection against.

  “Is there proof Papa wrote me out of Skin?”

  Carmine’s hands fisted and he pounded the table, the rare show of anger surprising her. “Your brother is a fool.”

  “Did Father write me out?”

  Carmine’s eyes flashed. “So Anthony insists, but I have yet to see written proof. Sonny would have not only informed me of a change but he would have made sure I had a notarized copy. I gave Anthony ten days to produce this supposed new will, a week ago tomorrow.”

  “So he hasn’t produced it?”

  Carmine shook his head. His dark eyes flashed dangerously. “No, and if that remains the case, the last document recorded will stand.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I retain control — then dole out my brother’s personal assets.”

  “Skin?”

  “He had the lion’s share, but the family has the other piece.”

  “Can Anthony gain control?”

  “With backing — yes.”

  “I don’t get Anthony’s hard-on for Skin. It’s totally legit.” Her eyes widened and she looked at her uncle. “He wants to put his people on the payroll and pay out benefits and probably run his dirty money through it.”

  Carmine shook his head. “He has other ventures for blowing up the payroll, even laundering —”

  “Does he hate me so much that he wants it out of sheer spite?”

  Unk’s dark eyes reflected his sympathy.

  “I don’t want your pity, Unk. I can handle how Anthony feels about me.”

  He reached across the table and patted her hand. “Your father was a bigger fool than your brother. You’re a good girl, Francesca.”

  Emotion welled in her chest, and she quickly tamped it. There was time for tears later, now she needed to focus on Skin. She smiled and nodded, contemplating her position. In the event the will didn’t surface, and if she had the time to prove to the family she had what it took to control Skin, then Anthony would lose support. “I need to position myself, Unk. To do that I need to get busy and I don’t need distractions. I have Skin’s anniversary edition to launch. If it fails, then I lose with the family and I lose with our advertisers. Can you find something other than Skin to occupy my brother?”

  Carmine shook his head and sat back into his chair. He pushed what was left of the second cannoli away from him. “I’m afraid, cara, Anthony is much like your father at that age. The difference being your father knew how to create allies. Anthony just plows through whoever stands in his way, and right now, the family dynamics are too volatile to issue edicts. I suggest we both lie low, and so long as Anthony is only making noises, we tune him out.”

  Carmine’s reserved approach to explosive situations was his trademark. He never reacted impulsively. The complete opposite of her brother.

  This was all the fault of Anthony’s mother, Constance Vezzio. Santini Donatello bucked the old guard on most levels, especially when it came to philandering and divorce. After Connie, a stripper at one of her father’s clubs, gave birth to a bouncing baby boy and blood tests proved the up-and-coming don the father, Sonny-boy pulled a Henry the Eighth and had his first marriage, the one to her mother, annulled. Everyone knew it was a polite way to say divorce. Her mother never forgave him. For that and a laundry list of other things. With a male Donatello and an annulment, Connie swooped in and made Francesca’s life miserable.

  Whatever Connie wanted Connie got. Including zero interference when her sweet little angel Anthony required discipline. Anthony learned at a very early age that all he had to do was run to Mama and his problems were solved.

  “I heard his uncle, Sal Vezzio, is yucking it up with the family.” She smashed a chocolate chip under her thumb. “They seem to be listening.”

  Carmine chuckled and eyed the half cannoli on his desk. He picked it up and plopped it in his mouth. He chewed slowly, a look of satisfaction caressing his full features. “Sal is an ass. His brains wouldn’t fill a thimble.”

  “All the more reason to be wary, Unk. He’s a hothead like his nephew. He scares me.”

  Carmine nodded and stood. “Good you think that way, cara. But don’t worry. Your health and interests are safe as long as I am alive.”

  Frankie swallowed hard. Her skin flashed cold and she had the uneasy sensation of creepy crawlies scurrying up and down her back. She shook off the feeling. No one would dare touch Carmine. She caught her breath. She had thought the same of her father. Her heartbeat slowed. Carmine didn’t have the enemies Santini did. Carmine always treated the family and foes with respect. In fact, over the past few years, Frankie knew many of the cousins bypassed
hotheaded Santini in favor of Carmine’s levelheaded advice.

  As Carmine looked out his window, he said, “Come here and look, Francesca.”

  She stood and walked toward him, stopping past his shoulder. The city lights twinkled under the autumn moon. “You own this town, cara. By your name alone there is no one who would do you harm for fear of your father’s wrath and now mine. Go out there and take your pictures. Anthony will come to heel. I have ways to make him see things from my perspective. Vezzio has another thing coming if he thinks I will allow him to have a say in what your father and I have worked so hard for.”

  He turned and took her face into his big, warm hands. She felt secure in the shadow of the dark, all-knowing eyes. “Thank you, Unk.” She reached up to hug him. The sharp ping of shattering glass and a hot sting across her arm startled her.

  “Down,” Carmine yelled before she realized what the sound was. Pfft-pfft. Two more followed in rapid succession; more glass shattered overhead. They’d been shot at! She touched the heat on her arm, feeling the warm wetness there. She’d been hit! Her uncle’s heavy body lay protectively across hers. “My God, Francesca, are you okay?”

  She nodded, too stunned to form words. Someone shot her! He rolled off her and, surprisingly for a man so large, he scurried across the room on all fours like a crab running from a gull. He reached up and hit the lights.

  Adrenaline pumped through her veins, and under the blanket of darkness her anger rose. Who the hell wanted her dead? She popped up and peered over the sill just enough to see the empty street below. Son of a bitch!

  Ducking, she hurried toward her uncle, whose large frame was illuminated in the soft glow of the streetlights. His cell phone was open. “Are you hit, Unk?” A quick shake of his head set her mind to rest, then he spoke into the phone.

  “Jimmy, get up here.”

  Chapter Six

  “I’m waiting outside of La Trattoria right now, she wants me to sign the contract tonight,” Reese said into his cell phone.

  “I don’t know how you got her to turn around so quick, buddy, but props to you,” Jase said.

  Reese smiled and looked up to a lighted third-floor window. He knew it was Carmine Donatello’s. He’d been quietly watching the comings and goings of the building for nearly an hour. If someone questioned him, he would simply tell the truth. He was waiting to meet Francesca for dinner.

  He sat up straighter in his truck when he saw two shadows in the window. As they came closer, he saw Frankie’s silhouette. His cock stirred.

  “Like most women, she came to her senses.”

  The sharp sound of glass shattering had him out of his truck and on the street in less than two seconds. “Shots fired at 700 Columbus Street,” Reese said into his phone. The screeching of tires followed by high beams flashing in his eyes had Reese jumping back and out of the way of the speeding car.

  He hopped back into his truck.

  “What the hell is going on, Reese?” Jase shouted.

  “In pursuit of a black sedan, looks like a late-model Caprice.”

  Reese gunned his truck and went after the car. When he turned onto Mason he cursed. The street was empty. The car didn’t have that much of a lead on him. He headed down the street, looking down each side street, and because of the traffic he couldn’t see the sedan.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  He picked up his phone. “I lost them. It’s like they evaporated.”

  “Any side-street garages?”

  “Maybe, get some units down here to start looking. I’m going back to the restaurant.”

  And with that thought, the realization his main suspect might be wounded or, worse, dead sent the hair on his arms shooting straight up. He did a fast U-turn in the street.

  “Unk, I’m fine, it’s just a scratch,” Francesca argued.

  “You need to see a doctor,” he argued right back.

  Her initial shock quickly wore off. If they were gunning for her uncle, they missed; if they were gunning for her, they came too damn close. Frankie shook her head. Instead of fear, anger blossomed in her chest. “Son of a bitch, Unk!” She dabbed at the wound on her arm with a sodden tissue. The damn thing wouldn’t stop bleeding. “Who wants me dead?”

  Her uncle’s dark brown eyes snapped in unleashed anger. “Not you, cara, me.”

  Her stomach rolled. Of course.

  He pulled a fresh tissue from the box her cousin Jimmy “Peanuts” Tambouri proffered. Pressing it to her arm, he walked her down the hall to La Trattoria. Jimmy, and Unk’s longtime bodyguard Leo Stazzi followed, watching every shadow, with guns drawn in the long hallway.

  As they turned to enter the restaurant from the inside of the building, Frankie stopped short. “Leo, can you run back upstairs and get my purse?”

  He looked at Unk, who nodded, and they entered the quiet restaurant. It closed at eight. All non-family diners had long since left.

  “Del,” Unk called, “get Sanzo on the phone.”

  Della came running into the dinning room, wiping her hands on her apron. Her gray brows crinkled in question. “Don’t look at me like that, woman!” Unk commanded. “Francesca has been shot!”

  Della gasped and made the sign of the cross, then hustled over to the maître d’ stand and picked up the phone. A commotion from the kitchen caught all of their attention. Della stood with the phone half raised to her ear; Jimmy cursed, drew his gun, and ran toward the kitchen as Unk pulled Frankie to the alcove behind the coat closet.

  A second after Jimmy ran through the bat-wing doors to the kitchen he burst out, back first, along with another cousin, Johnny, and his little brother Mikey. The three of them looked like bowling pins crashing in the alley under the wrath of —

  Frankie gasped. “Reese!”

  He exploded into the room like a bull on a rampage. Every set of eyes in the place looked expectantly from Reese’s furious stance to her surprised face.

  “You know this chump?” Johnny asked, rolling his meatball of a brother off him. Jimmy hurried to his feet, his semi trained on Reese.

  “He’s my model.”

  The old man scowled, giving Reese the hostile look he reserved for those on their way out. She swallowed hard. “What’s going on here?” Unk demanded.

  Frankie looked at Reese’s angry face. “I — ah, Reese was supposed to meet me here at nine.”

  “I found him snooping around out back,” Johnny said.

  Mikey added the obvious. “Yeah, he coulda been the shooter.”

  The news didn’t seem to affect Reese.

  “The front doors to the restaurant were locked. I heard shots so I came around back,” Reese said.

  Unk looked at Frankie again for confirmation. “We have contracts to sign,” she said.

  Leo entered the room, gun drawn, Frankie’s purse hanging off his arm. Frankie couldn’t resist a smile at the absurdity of the situation.

  “Let’s just all calm down,” she started. But the sirens echoing in the distance wrenched the tension right back up.

  She grabbed her purse from Leo. “Unk, I’m not dicking around with the cops.” She looked at Reese. “You drive, let’s get out of here.”

  “One minute before you go, cara,” Carmine softly insisted.

  She didn’t dare argue. Reese stood rigid and silent beside her. Her heart thumped hard against her chest and her skin flushed warm. She felt on the verge of an anxiety attack.

  “Si, Zio?”

  His dark eyes trained on Reese. “What did you see outside before you came in here?”

  Most men would have shown signs of discomfort, but not her dumb model. Nope, he stared back at her uncle, refusing to back down.

  “Nothing, just heard three shots.”

  Carmine nodded. “If you happen to remember anything you haven’t told me here, be sure to come to me with that information before you share it anywhere else.”

  Please, please don’t let him argue.

  Reese nodded. “Of course.”

 
; Oh, good model.

  As she moved past her uncle, he called to her, “Go to Sanzo’s, he’ll be expecting you.”

  Not waiting for any more conversation or, worse, arguments from her uncle or cousins, Frankie grabbed Reese’s hand and pulled him behind her toward the kitchen and out the back door of the restaurant.

  “Don’t ask,” she said as they came around to the front of the building. Sirens wailed closer. She sprinted to her car, quickly unlocked the trunk, and pulled out her camera bag.

  “Where are you parked?” she asked breathlessly, looking up and down the street.

  This time Reese grabbed her by the hand and pulled her back across the street. “Black Tahoe directly ahead.”

  Just as the cops arrived, Reese pulled away from the curb, going the opposite direction.

  Looking over her shoulder, Frankie said, “Faster.”

  Reese hit the pedal. “What’s the rush?”

  “I don’t do cops.”

  Reese nodded and focused on the road ahead of him.

  After several minutes he turned to look at Frankie, who looked at him through narrowed eyes.

  “What?”

  “How did you manage to manhandle all three of my cousins?”

  “Didn’t you read my bio?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Did you miss the marine part?”

  “Oh, I guess I didn’t get that far. How long?”

  “Four years.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  He shrugged and glanced in the rearview mirror, and she turned to look out the back window. No flashing lights. Her shoulders relaxed a notch.

  “I don’t do authority. If I had reenlisted, I’d be in a brig somewhere.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me. You’re the most insolent employee I’ve ever hired.”

  Reese flashed her a grin. “You ain’t seen nothing yet, baby.”

  Frankie rolled her eyes. That’s exactly what she was afraid of.

  Without looking at her, Reese said, “You’re bleeding.”

  Her adrenaline rush continued to infuse her with energy. Glancing over her shoulder again, Frankie let out a long breath. “It’s no big deal.”