by Krista Holt
“I’ll have you know, Ma thinks I turned out just fine.”
“Of course she does, chosen one.”
My phone rings from the pocket of my coat across the room. Recognizing the tone, I sober immediately and get up to retrieve it.
“Yeah?”
“The senator. Thomas,” my father says. “He missed his first payment. Fix it.”
“I will.”
“Is Gabriella with you?”
I glance at my sister, noting her narrowed gaze. “She is.”
“She needs to be back into the city by tomorrow night.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“I need you, too.” He hangs up before I can respond.
“Gabriella,” I pull my jacket on, returning the phone to my pocket, “duty calls.”
“Dad?” When I confirm her suspicion with a grunt, she rises from the couch. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“Let me walk you to your car.” I shut the fireplace and the lights off, not knowing when I’ll be back. “You did drive, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
I help her into her coat. “He wants you home by tomorrow night.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” She stomps her foot like the little sister she is. “You would never guess that I was twenty-four years old the way that man keeps tabs on me. It’s ridiculous.”
I’m so not touching that. I usher her out the door and back to the garage. “Apparently I’m heading that way, too. Let’s do lunch while I’m there.”
“Domineco’s?” She clasps her hands together.
I shake my head. She loves that place. “Sure.”
“Are you leaving now?”
“No, I got something I have to do first. I’ll head that way in the morning.”
“I’ll see you at home then?” She unlocks her dark red Lexus.
“You will. Text me and let me know you got back to the hotel safe.”
She hugs me. “You and Dad are two peas in the same pod.”
I squeeze her back, and hold the door open for her. “Be safe.”
She drives away, waving goodbye.
I force down the fear that rose with her words, willing my stomach to settle. I am nothing like him. I refuse to be.
* * *
I turn onto a quaint little street off of Capitol Hill and shut the car off, killing the lights.
After tugging on a pair of black leather gloves, I reach over and unlock the glove box, grabbing the gun. The cold metal is heavy in my hands. Bringing me down, closing me off. I sit there, waiting until I’m empty, emotionless.
Through the windshield, a light flares to life in his upstairs bedroom. The same light he turns on every night at this time. They say predictability is dangerous for a reason.
With careful eyes, I scan the street. It’s dark, but not late. A woman is out for a late night run, headphones shoved in her ears, and there’s a staffer not sober enough to get his key into his car door. I’d prefer less people around, but they aren’t paying attention to me, and I can’t run the risk of him falling asleep.
I walk down a block and cross the street, keeping to the shadows. Quietly reaching his townhouse, I pick the lock on the front door with ease.
I carefully shut it behind me, ensuring it doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t have a dog, and his wife is out of town, but the element of surprise goes a long way.
It’s dark inside. The curtains are drawn. An alarm panel sits next to the door, but he didn’t arm it. He’s gonna regret that.
My steps are silent on the stairs; my gloved hand skims over the railing on my way up. I check the other rooms on the second floor as a precaution, confirming they’re empty. Then I turn toward his room. With a nudge of my shoe, the bedroom door swings wide open.
He jerks in surprise, eyes startled behind the thick frames. The horror quickly follows when he recognizes who is in his bedroom. “Nicola, listen . . .”
“No, you listen. You missed a payment.” I pull the gun from my lower back. “I’m not running a charity, and when someone is in as deep as you are, they do not miss payments.” I stand at the foot of his bed, slowly screwing the silencer into the barrel. “So we have a problem now, Thomas.”
“L-l-look,” he stammers. “I’m sorry, things were tight this week. I’ll get you the money.”
“Someone much smarter than me once told me that when a sentence begins with ‘look,’ what follows is probably a lie.” I stare at him. “So, Thomas, is that a lie?”
He swallows harshly. “Yes, it was. I’m sorry, so sorry. I’ll get you the money. I’ll get the money, I swear.”
“That doesn’t work for me anymore.”
“What?” he chokes.
“You’ve been a bit of an inconvenience.” I flick the barrel of the gun toward him, watching as his face pales. “And for my trouble, you’re going to pay double.”
“I-I can’t do double.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Please, we go way back. Your family and me—”
“No,” I cut him off. “Do not confuse a business relationship with friendship. We are not friends. You owe me money, and until I get it, your life is in a very precarious position.”
Suddenly, he switches tactics. Like every good user, he tries begging, and when that won’t work, he switches to anger.
“You know who I am.” He puffs himself up with the bravado all hypocritical assholes seem to have. “You can’t come in here and threaten me. I could have you arrested.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England. I’ll put a bullet in your head before you can dial 911. So you’re going to pay me double, if you value breathing, and that’s all there is to it.”
He withers. “I can’t, I can’t. My wife will find out. I can’t.”
“And again, whose fault is that?”
“What am I supposed to do? I can’t get that kind of money.”
“I don’t really care.” I shrug, my expression indifferent. “Sell your car; sell a lung. Just get me my money. Do you understand what I am saying, Senator Thomas?”
A stricken expression contorts his face, but he nods slowly.
“I’m going to need a verbal confirmation,” I say, wanting to debase him further.
“I understand. I will get you the money.”
“Tomorrow.” I lower the gun, letting it hang in my hand.
His head jerks up and down in agreement.
“Good.”
His body slumps against the headboard. I’m just about to step through the door when I stop and swing the gun back at him, aiming at his head. “You cross me again, and I will scatter your brains on the wall behind you like modern art.”
His Adam’s apple surges downward as he swallows.
“Have good night.”
CHAPTER 19
I walk into my childhood home, and a familiar smell greets me.
A mixture of old house, my mother’s perfume, and my father’s cigars lingers in the air, throwing me back to my youth. A time before the illusion of my parents was shattered.
I think every kid has that moment, the one that permanently separates what you thought your parents were and what they really are. The moment when you realize they’re not perfect but rather flawed human beings.
Okay, so maybe some kid out there had an idyllic set of parents, but it wasn’t me. My mother chose to stay with a domineering man who fed his children blood and violence. Well, his son anyway.
A memory pushes in. The smell of gunpowder burns in my nostrils; all these years later, it’s like I’ve never left that room. The back of some nameless bodega down by the river, watching the life drain out of a man I considered my uncle. A bitter taste rises up in my mouth. I force it back. Not wanting to linger on it. Not wanting to remember but unable to forget. I wipe my hands on my pants, despite them being clean. There’s no blood this time.
I shake myself back to the present, just in time for my mother to come around the corner.
“Nicola!”
“I’m so happy you’re here.”
She pulls me in for a hug, my arm resting easily on the top of her shoulders. She barely comes up to mine; I got my height from him. The years line her face and gray her hair, aging her, but her face is still soft. She’s not bitter, despite the reality she lives in.
I wish I could tell her I’m glad to be here, but I’m not. Everything about the place grates on my nerves. I’m always ready to leave the second I walk through the door. That doesn’t mean she isn’t special to me . . . she is. It’s him I’m not especially fond of.
“I’m glad to see you.” I bend down to kiss her forehead.
“You look tired.” Her hands tap my cheeks affectionately. “Are you sleeping?”
“Yes,” I reply dryly. “And eating.”
“Smartass.” She gently cuffs the side of my head. “Come in, I’ll get you an espresso.”
“That would be good, thanks.” I follow her to the kitchen, smelling the coffee grounds in the air.
Dirty pans, plates, and the remains of breakfast lie all around my mother’s normally pristine kitchen. “I can make you something if you want,” she offers, handing me a small white mug.
“No, I’m good.” I finally got around to eating the Chinese food this morning before I got on the road. “Is Gabriella on her way back?”
She did text me when she got back to her hotel last night, but I was in the middle of dealing with the senator. I haven’t heard from her since.
“That girl . . .” My mother shakes her head. “She’s nothing like you, always stuck in her own world.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“No. I guess it’s not.”
“He here?” I swallow the last of the espresso, not bothering to clarify whom I’m referring to. She knows.
“He’s in the study. The other two are in there with him.”
Enzo and Saul. “Gabriella talk to you about Daniel?”
“She did.”
“And?”
“You know my thoughts on that,” she replies softly, barely above a whisper. “Anything that gets her out from under him I approve of, but she’s young. I’d hate for her to marry the boy and then regret it. That’s a lonely thing.”
She tries to hide the regret in her voice. As her kid, I want to fix things for her, but I can’t. I don’t have that kind of power. It resides with my father.
I’ve often wondered why she married him, but I’ve never had the nerve to ask. I’m not sure I want to know the answer.
“Anyway,” she tries to shake off the melancholy that now weighs down the air around us, “enough about her. She’ll marry the boy, medigan or not.”
I laugh at her. “Ma, no one uses that term anymore.”
She tosses a dish towel at me, and I narrowly dodge it, still chuckling. “What about you, my only son.” She turns her eyes, full of intent, at me. “When are you going to bring some girl home to me?”
“Damn.” I shake my head. “Between you and Gabriella, you’d think I have to tie the knot sometime in the next year.”
“Do not cuss in my household, Nicola Davide,” she playfully admonishes at me. “And you’re not exactly a boy anymore.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“You even went as far as California and didn’t find a woman to put up with you.”
Little does she know.
When I don’t respond, she starts ranting in Italian, talking about how she raised me better and how she can’t possibly understand why I won’t get married and give her fat grandbabies. I reply in the same tongue, telling her that I wouldn’t bring a wife or a child, not even a girlfriend, into this mess.
She sobers instantly. “So, you intend to live alone?”
“For now, yes.”
The door to the study opens, and our conversation stops. Three sets of footsteps trample down the hall, but only one joins us in the kitchen.
“Nicola,” my father greets me. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long.”
“Elena, what are you asking him to do, stay in here and help you clean?” His words cut. The happy woman I was talking to a matter of moments ago disappears behind a shell of indifference.
“No, he was simply saying hello to his mother,” she replies. “The person responsible for giving him life.”
“And here I thought I was the one that gave him the life he has now.”
If this were friendly bickering, or teasing, I might be fighting a smile. But it’s not. He’s trying to remind her of her place. Beneath him.
“I was heading your way,” I step in, turning toward him. “I gave Gabriella your message last night. Is she on her way back?”
His attention shifts from my mother to me, which is exactly what I want. “Yes, she is. She should be here in a two hours.”
“Then let’s get what you want me for out of the way. I’m taking her and Ma to lunch.”
He looks back at my mother, who shows him a blank face, and then swivels his glare back to me. “You’re free when I’m finished with you.”
“I understand.” I glance over his shoulder. “Are Saul and Enzo ready?”
“No, they went out to get me something. They’ll be back in ten. You have until that long to cut your apron strings.”
I hold back a sigh, as he storms out the room and down the hallway.
“You just made things harder for yourself,” my mother says softly.
“I know.”
“I can fight my own battles, son.”
I rest my hands on her shoulders, leaning down to press another kiss on her weathered forehead. “Of course you can. But let me give you a break every now and then. All right?”
She pats me gently on the cheek. “You’re a good man.”
“I had an amazing mother.”
“I would like to be a grandmother.”
“And, we’re done here.” I tug her hand away from my face.
“Are you sure I can’t get you something to eat.”
“I’m fine, I swear.”
Hearing Enzo and Saul come in the back door, I head toward the hallway, but she stops me. “Thank you, Nicola.”
I wave off her words. “Be ready to head to lunch later. It’ll be good for you to get outta here for awhile.”
“Where are we going?”
“Domineco’s.”
She chuckles under her breath, turning her attention back to cleaning up the kitchen. “Gabriella.”
“Yeah,” I call over my shoulder as I leave the room, walking down the hallway. I pass the staircase that leads up to my childhood room and move toward the back of the house where my father’s massive study is. I knock twice, waiting to be admitted.
“Come in,” he booms from the other side.
I push the door open, looking around the room. For obvious reasons, the room lacks windows. The only lighting is artificial, casting harsh shadows. My father sits behind a large desk that’s completely bare, with the exception of one lamp and a stack of classic books that have seen better days.
He leans back in his chair and stares at me from underneath thick eyebrows. His fingers meet in a steeple over his chest. He doesn’t show his age, his skin is still smooth and his hair dark. Even with all the stress and demands, he’s slim.
Enzo is standing against the wall on my left. The dark gray suit he’s wearing is a little wrinkled, and his dark blond hair is a mess, but his eyes are sharp. He greets me with a tilt of his chin.
Saul stands next to the desk, close to my father’s ear. There’s no greeting from him, just a cold expression on his paunchy face. He stands awkwardly, his knee bent at a funny angle. It didn’t heal quite right after he got shot last year.
“Who died?” I deadpan, trying to break the tension.
Enzo chuckles, and I get a smirk from my father. Saul doesn’t even crack a smile.
“No one, yet,” my father says.
“Are we taking care of someone today?”<
br />
He shakes his head. “There’s a problem with our current production facility.”
My brows rise.
“He’s been . . . lax . . . about quality.”
“So he’s been cutting the product.” I take a seat in front of his desk. “With what?”
“I don’t know. What I do know is that we haven’t had repeat customers.” He pulls out a folder and tosses it to me.
I pick it up and flip it open. Crime scene photos stare back at me. I grimace at the pictures. The veins under the eyes of not one, but four victims, have burst. Blood covers open, sightless eyes, and dark blue blotches disfigure their faces.
“Did you get these from the cops?”
“Yeah, we still have a few that are friends of the family.”
I close the folder, wishing the images would fade from my eyes. “What are you suggesting we do?”
“Saul is going to deal with Leroy,” my fathers says, and Saul stares straight at me, unblinking. “And then I want you to reach out to Michael.”
“That’s a really bad idea.” I lean back in my chair. “You know he’s Goretti’s guy. If he catches Mickey’s double-dealing, we’ll have no supplier because Goretti will garrote him on the street as a warning.”
“I am not an idiot. I am well aware of how this world works,” my father barks. “I taught it to you.”
“Then,” I toss the folder back on his desk, “how do you plan to prevent it?”
“By being careful.”
“I still think this is a bad idea.”
“We did just fine in the years you were gone,” Saul interjects.
I ignore him. “Are you trying to start something with Goretti?”
“He has been encroaching,” my father admits.
“And that’s doing just fine to you?” I toss Saul’s words back at him.
He turns a deep shade of red but keeps his mouth shut.
“Nicola,” my father interrupts, “this was not an open session. I didn’t ask for your opinion.”
“Then why am I here? You could have told me this over the phone.”
“I wanted you here. That’s reason enough.”
“And I couldn’t think of a better use of my time. It’s not like I have a leak to find or anything.”
“How are things going down there?” Saul asks.
I stare at him before turning to my father, wondering if he’s going to let this slide. He gestures with his hand, telling me to indulge Saul.