by Zoey Parker
The mook shrieked, staring down at his mangled legs. In several places, broken bones protruded from the rags of his trousers.
Gio bent down and grabbed the mook's face, snarling into it. “Give me his name now, or I'll have Bruno put the car in reverse and we can do this again.”
The mook stopped screeching, inhaled sharply, and spat in Gio's face.
“You'll never know his name, motherfucker” the mook sneered, “and you'll never see him coming.”
Gio straightened up and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping his face. Christ, is this really how it's going to have to be? he asked himself, his stomach twisting around on itself. How many more goddamn times will we need to do this tonight?
He walked up to the driver's-side window and signaled for Bruno to back up the car.
But as the engine roared again, Gio saw the mook use his arms to lift his upper body and heave himself under the spinning wheels head-first, screaming defiantly.
Before Gio could do anything to stop it, the sedan jerked backward and ran over the mook's skull with a wet sound like a dropped cantaloupe squashing to the floor. The mook's arms flailed for a moment, then flopped to the ground.
“Fuck,” Gio hissed, tossing away his cigarette. Inwardly, though, he was relieved. He knew Mario would be disappointed that they hadn't gotten the name of the Fed's partner, but at least the act of killing the man had been taken out of Gio's hands.
Now he could go home, dry off, and have a drink or three. Maybe later he'd even go online to find a new playmate for his Special Room, and he could try to forget the sight of brains pancaked under tires.
Gio opened the car door. “Come on, let's grab the tarp from the trunk,” he said. “We can take him to the basement over on 57th, chop him up, and drop the pieces off in six different dumpsters. My dad wants this guy to vanish forever, so that's how it's going to be.”
Bruno and Julius nodded, getting out of the car to help with the body.
The life of Special Agent Fred Masters—alias “Francis Maserone,” alias “The Mook” (if only in Gio's mind)—was over.
But the problems his death would cause for Gio and the Mancinis were only just beginning.
Chapter 2
Carla
Now
Carla Esposito felt the recoil travel up through her arms with each pull of the trigger as she leveled her Glock at the hanging paper target. The vibration deep in her bones was satisfying and made her feel as though her feet took root more firmly with each new shot.
Through the blocky plastic safety glasses, she saw small, neat holes blossom on the target like paper flowers for every bullet she fired.
Blam. One in the forehead.
Blam. Blam. One where each eye would be.
The human-shaped targets were featureless, but Carla had no trouble picturing a face on hers. One with olive skin, large brown eyes, an aquiline nose, high cheekbones, and slicked-back black hair with a sharp widow's peak. Gio Mancini, nicknamed “Handsome Gio” by his fellow gangsters. Mario Mancini's sole heir, his pride and joy.
Blam. One in the throat, just below his square jaw and smirking lips.
Officially, Carla's partner Fred Masters had simply vanished without a trace. One minute she was wearing a headset and staring at a computer screen in a cramped back room at the Chicago FBI field office, listening to Fred trade anecdotes with the members of the Mancini family at the wedding. The next minute, the audio was eclipsed by the hiss of static and the GPS tracker in Fred's microphone went dead. The blip on the screen that indicated Fred's location blinked out of existence forever.
Blam. Blam. One through the heart to put him down. One through the right lung to give him a sucking chest wound while he dies.
When the local cops had questioned the Mancinis and their associates about the sudden disappearance of their accountant, they were mostly met with shrugs and blank stares. A couple of the capos mumbled half-assed theories about how he'd probably decided to take a last-minute vacation, while Mario himself refused to say a word without a formal criminal charge and an attorney present. For a while, Carla had to deal with the maddening possibility that she'd never be able to find out what really happened to her partner.
But gossip traveled quickly through the underworld. A Mancini enforcer told the story of what happened that night to a bag man, who told his bookie, who told his told his brother, who happened to be a snitch for the FBI. Within a few weeks, Carla had a report on her desk with an account of what had happened to Fred, including a photo of the man responsible.
Giovanni Mancini.
Blam. One low in the belly, just a few inches to the right of the spinal column. He'd spend hours bleeding out, with his nerves intact enough to feel every moment of agony.
The worst part was, every lead Fred had passed along to them during his seven months with the Mancinis somehow went up in smoke the minute they tried to investigate.
The clear-cut case of insurance fraud connected to the fire at The Raven Club owned by the Mancinis was dismissed when a key piece of evidence disappeared.
A federal judge named Patrick Shebin who was known to accept bribes from the Mancinis was found dead in his car, the victim of an apparent suicide.
And the members of the Mancini family who were suspected in the killings of Waylon Boggs, Ted Klepper, and Joseph “The Snake” MacKenzie suddenly found iron-clad alibis to cling to, which prevented their respective grand juries from sending their cases to trial.
The Mancinis had known exactly what the Feds had on them and how to beat it.
Which meant Gio had tortured Fred for that information before killing him.
At Quantico, Carla—like every other agent in training—had been taught how to target the brachial nerve in a suspect's shoulder when discharging her weapon. This would disarm the suspect quickly and cleanly without the need for lethal force.
She aimed for the nerve location in the paper target's right shoulder, then shifted her sights down to the target's crotch instead.
Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.
Because when my chance comes and you're in my sights, Gio, you'd better believe you won't be going into custody, Carla though bitterly. I'm not giving you a chance to make bail and spend the months leading up to your trial eating at fancy restaurants and getting fitted for thousand-dollar suits, all while your daddy and his mob lawyers come up with ways to make sure you beat the charges. I'm sick of watching oily pimps like you strut around, taking whatever they want and killing whoever gets in their way without ever having to answer for it. No more. I'm taking you out of the fucking headlines permanently, even if it costs me my goddamn badge.
“Your aim looks to be a little low,” a voice behind her commented mildly.
Carla turned and saw the lanky form of Don Huss, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Chicago office, standing in the doorway. As always, he had a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth to compensate for having given up cigarettes two years before, and the leathery edges of his blue eyes were crinkled in amusement.
“Not to me,” Carla answered, sliding the empty magazine out of her pistol and replacing it with a fresh one.
Don chuckled. “Well, just the same, I reckon I'll pretend I didn't hear that in case the Bureau shrink asks me how you're holdin' up again,” he answered in his laconic Texas drawl. “I think you'd better go ahead an' hand that target over to me so I can make sure it goes in the circular file instead of some psych eval.”
Carla sighed and nodded, hitting the button that made the target advance on its track with a steady mechanical whine. When it was close enough, she pulled it down and handed it over to Don, who looked over it with raised eyebrows.
“You sure are hell an' Jesus with a pistol, darlin',” he observed with an appreciative whistle. He folded the target up and tucked it into his pocket, shaking his head. “Glad you kept that dead eye nice an' sharp, since you're goin' back out into the field.”
“Yeah, well, I doubt I'll be ou
t there any time soon,” Carla replied sourly. “It took almost a year for Fred to establish his bona fides so he could get close enough to the Mancinis to be invited in. And now that they've figured out we're sending undercover agents into their family, they'll probably be even more paranoid about it.”
Don nodded mildly. “That's all true, as far as it goes,” he agreed, “but we figure we can get the ball rolling a little faster this time. See, last night, the Chicago PD broke up a ring of MDMA dealers in a gay club on North Halsted. One of the guys who was busted for possession was Louie Grammatica. That name ring a bell?”
Carla's eyes widened. “Mario's lawyer. You've got to be shitting me.”
“I shit you not,” Don chuckled. “As you can imagine, Louie's mighty troubled by the idea of the Mancinis learnin' about his proclivities. Takin' it up the tailpipe's still a hangin' offense to them Sicilian boys. But he's told us that Mario's lookin' for a separate lawyer for Gio, to keep his various operations insulated from each other and prevent conflicts of interest. If we promise Louie immunity an' witness protection, he'll agree to get one of our agents into the Mancinis' inner circle posing as an attorney they can trust. I seem to recall you havin' a law degree.”
“Me and half the agents in this office,” Carla pointed out.
Don shook his head. “Half the agents in this office didn't spent seven months listening in on these gangsters' conversations. You know the players, what they're into, what buttons to push. If anyone's gonna build an airtight case to put these goombahs behind bars, we both know it's gonna be you.”
“How do you know I'll let Gio go to trial?” Carla asked, thinking about the paper target again. “Even I don't know if I can do that.”
Don tilted his head at Carla and put his hands on her shoulders. She would never have allowed any of the other men in the field office to put their hands on her with such familiarity—or the women in the office, either, for that matter.
But Don was different. He'd been one of her teachers at the academy, and she'd always thought of him as a father figure, especially since she'd never known her own father. They'd never discussed it, but she'd always been fairly certain that he'd requested her specifically when he'd been assigned to the Mancini case, and that level of trust meant a lot coming from him.
“I know it,” Don said, “because I know you. You lost your partner, and it hurts. I've been there, believe me. More'n once, even. You blame yourself for what happened to him, even though there wasn't a damn thing you could have done to stop it. An' you're havin' dark thoughts about payback, just like any of us would. But I ain't never had any reason to think you're a psycho, or that when the moment of truth came, you'd choose to flush your career an' your life down the crapper. Not over a worm like Gio. Not when you know there's a hundred worse than him you could go after next, as long as you've got that badge.”
Carla nodded. She wanted to believe in herself as much as Don believed in her. But all she could think of was making sure that when Handsome Gio breathed his last, his nickname would be as ironic as possible.
“Thank you,” she said. “I'll try not to let you down.”
Don lowered his hands, smiling. “Aw, shucks, hon… You could never let me down, no matter what. Now come on, freshen up an' meet me in IR-3 in ten minutes so we can squeeze Louie for more info.” IR-3 was office shorthand for interrogation room #3.
“I'll be there,” Carla assured him, taking off her safety glasses.
Don started to leave, then turned back with a sly grin. “Oh, an' Carla? Just in case it turns out I'm wrong 'bout that whole you-not-bein'-a-psycho' thing, at least try an' make the first shot look random? It'll be mighty hard to say it wasn't premeditated if the only bullets they find are in his eyes an' balls an' whatnot.”
“It'd probably still cost me my badge,” Carla pointed out.
“True. Could keep you outta prison, though.” Don closed the door behind him, and Carla heard him whistling as he strolled down the hall.
Chapter 3
Gio
Gio's hands still throbbed as he mingled among the party guests, clinking glasses and accepting congratulations. At a ceremony just an hour before, he'd officially become a “made guy”—a soldier in the Mancini crime organization.
He'd stood in the basement of a house he'd never been to before, the other made men standing around him in a solemn circle. Mario pricked Gio's trigger finger with the tip of an icepick, then let the blood drip onto a small picture of Saint Francis of Assisi. After that, Mario produced a Zippo, lit the picture on fire, and commanded Gio to hold out his hands.
Gio did as he was told and Mario placed the burning card in Gio's palms, staring into his eyes. “Remember always that as this card burns, so shall your immortal soul burn in the fires of Hell if you ever betray your family. You enter this life alive—from now on, the only way for you to leave it is death. Do you so swear?”
“I do,” Gio answered, desperately trying to ignore the heat blistering his palms.
Mario nodded and his large hands enveloped Gio's, snuffing the flames quickly. Then he embraced Gio as everyone in the room applauded.
“Before tonight, you were only my son,” Mario told Gio as he swabbed the burns with ointment and bandaged them. “But now, you are truly my heir. When my time has passed and it's your turn to lead this family, I know you will do great things.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Gio answered.
Mario smiled and kissed Gio on the cheek. “Now it's time to reward yourself. Go upstairs and have fun.”
Gio walked upstairs to the party that was waiting for him, remembering the first time his father had said those words to him: “Now it's time to reward yourself.”
He was seventeen years old then, and even though he'd never seen firsthand what his father did for a living, he'd heard enough whispers and euphemisms at family gatherings to get a vague idea.
But one day after school, while he was walking home, a van screeched to a halt next to him and two men wearing ski masks got out. One held him from behind while the other punched him repeatedly in the stomach until he puked, sagging to the sidewalk and crying.
“You tell your old man the truckers' unions don't belong to him, understand?” one of them hissed at him. “You tell him if he tries to muscle in on them again, we'll come back with baseball bats and make you one sorry motherfucker.” Then they hopped into the van and drove off.
Gio staggered the rest of the way home, clutching his stomach with tears in his eyes. While his mother comforted him, Mario went into the next room and made several phone calls.
Two days later, when Gio came home from school, his father took him firmly by the shoulder and led him out to the garage without a word. The men who'd attacked him were gagged and taped to chairs, their eyes bulging with fright. Bruno and Julius were standing behind them menacingly.
“These morons broke the rules,” Mario said. “They had a grievance with me, and rather than settle it between men, they chose to make their point by involving a child. We won't kill them, since they didn't take a life. We aren't animals, after all. But still, they must be punished. I want you to be the one who punishes them.” And with that, Mario put a baseball bat in Gio's hands and stepped back.
Gio looked at the men and thought about how it would feel to hurt them in return for what they'd done to him. He knew he should have been excited, but instead, all he felt was scared and sick.
“I don't want to,” Gio mumbled, staring at the floor.
Mario stepped forward again and took Gio by the shoulders. “That's your choice,” he said, “but before you make it, understand—if you decide to leave their punishment to others rather than dispensing it yourself as is your right, then you will forfeit your rightful place in this family. You will always be my child, but for the rest of your life, you will never know real power. You will be someone to be sheltered and protected, instead of someone to be respected and feared.”
Gio considered this for a long moment. He didn't
fully comprehend what his father was telling him, but he knew that if he made the wrong decision, he would never find another way to earn Mario's pride or acceptance. No matter how old he got, he would always be an outsider in his own family, someone to be casually banished to another room while the real men made the real choices.
He would always be seen as weak.
So Gio took a step forward, raised the bat, and brought it down as hard as he could on his attackers' arms and shoulders and heads, again and again. He heard the sound of bones breaking, and the wet thwack of flesh pulverized to pulp, like a meat tenderizer coming down on a piece of steak. His eyes filled with tears and his breath came in ragged gasps until his father pulled the bat away and embraced him warmly.