by Harley Stone
John didn’t look nearly as certain about our sleuthing abilities as he handed over our first clue, wished us luck, and then let himself out. The door clicked locked behind him, and the second hand on the giant wall clock started ticking.
“Have you done this before?” I asked.
“No, but how hard can it be?” Dominico read the first clue aloud—a riddle blatantly pointing us to the fireplace. We searched the hearth until we found a loose stone, which pulled away to reveal another piece of paper. This one had the number six and a clue on it.
“See? Piece of cake,” Dominico said, suddenly in my space. “Nothing to worry about. In fact, I think we should talk about a reward.” His gaze was intense as he draped an arm around my waist and pulled me closer.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat, both afraid and excited. “Reward?”
“Yeah. If we win—when we win—you owe me a second date.”
And what if I was the one who figured out all the clues? But since I wanted a second date with him, I didn’t question his methods, instead nodding in acceptance. “Deal.”
He smirked and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before reading the clue aloud.
Each clue grew increasingly difficult to decipher. Not only that, some of them purposely misled us. I would have sworn the third clue pointed to the window, but when I pulled back the heavy drape, a giant fake spider jumped out at me. I screamed so loud I’m sure the entire building heard. Dominico rushed to help me, but when he saw what had happened, he laughed until I thought he was going to pee his pants. Once my heart stopped racing, I laughed as well. We worked together and eventually figured out the riddle, but I was much more cautious searching for the fourth clue.
By the time we had the fifth riddle in hand, we only had six minutes left. We read it over and over, looking for patterns and searching for deeper meaning, but it didn’t make sense. I was scanning the paper, hoping to shed some light on the problem, when I realized the first letter of each word spelled out “red lamp.”
“Red lamp! Red lamp!” I shouted. We had barely over a minute and still had to punch in the code.
Dominico rushed for the end table with the red lamp and searched for the clue. When he couldn’t find it, he ripped off the shade and tossed the lamp on the floor. Surprisingly, it didn’t break.
“What are you—you can’t—”
Before I could even form a coherent sentence, he jumped on the lamp, smashing it to pieces. I watched, too shocked to speak, as he bent and removed the final piece of paper from the debris and laid it on the coffee table.
“Read me the numbers,” he said, running toward the keypad.
That snapped me out of my stupor. I leaned over the table and recited the digits as he punched them in. The door clicked open only seconds before the clock ran out.
“Ohmigod, we did it!” I said, looking from Dominico to the smashed lamp. I still couldn’t believe he’d broken it, but the adrenaline had me all amped up.
“Let’s go get our prizes,” he said, draping an arm over my shoulders.
“We get prizes?” I asked.
“Of course we do. But my real reward is coming later. Thank you, Annetta.”
His tone was somber. Confused as to why he’d be thanking me, I stared up at him. “For what?” I asked.
He played with one of my curls. “For coming with me. For this. I needed it.”
His eyes were almost black. Mysterious and a little frightening, they made me feel like Alice, straddling a bottomless pit full of magical potential. This Wonderland might kill me, but it would be one hell of a fun ride.
“I did too,” I admitted.
Someone cleared their throat by the door. “I apologize for interrupting,” John said, opening the door the rest of the way. “But they are ready for you.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The photographer. We need pictures—lots of pictures—to immortalize the night we kicked Escape Room C’s ass!” Dominico said as he slid away from me, grabbing my hand.
We followed John down another hall, where we were shown into a small room with an early 1900s backdrop. Props were everywhere. We dressed in overcoats with attached capes and the silly little hats Sherlock Holmes wore, which the photographer informed us were called deerstalkers. We were each awarded a magnifying glass and a pipe for our win, and we spent the next ten minutes egged on by an overzealous cameraman to explore every ridiculous pose we could.
“Come on, give her a kiss,” he heckled.
Dominico pecked my cheek.
“You call that a kiss?” the cameraman hooted. “Who is she? Your sister?”
Dominico didn’t seem like the type to turn down a challenge, and he certainly rose to this one. Slipping his arm behind my back, he pulled me closer and set my world on fire again with his own unique blend of passion and power that made my knees buckle. I leaned into him and the contact threatened to burn up my entire body. The camera flash brought us both back to reality. We pulled apart and breathlessly stared at one another. He looked as affected as I felt.
Dominico pulled himself together first. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said, heading for the cameraman.
The two of them looked over the pictures while I removed my costume and tried to get my emotions under control. Dominico returned, minus his costume and with a fistful of pictures, and led me out of the room back to the bar where we were cheered, given gifts, and bought drinks.
“Turns out winning is pretty rare,” he explained. “We’re kinda a big deal right now.”
“There was no hidden compartment in the lamp, was there?”
“Nope. If I hadn’t broken it, we would have failed.”
“That’s pretty sneaky of them,” I said.
He shrugged. “This is Vegas. Everything’s fixed, and nothing’s ever what it seems.”
Which was exactly what I was afraid of.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dominico
I DIDN’T EVEN get to finish my first victory drink with Annetta before my pager interrupted our date. In hindsight, I was lucky it didn’t go off while we were trapped in the escape room since both Carlo and my father expected their pages to be returned immediately. Still, the damn thing’s intrusive beeping made me want to smash it against the wall. Who knew, maybe there’d be a clue inside it as to how to get my life back.
I excused myself from the table and called Carlo to see what he wanted. Carlo never gave away too much over the phone, but after years of working with him, his code was easier to crack than the Escape Room’s had been. A couple of his soldiers had gotten a bead on possible accomplices of Chains’s, and Carlo wanted me to come in so he could give me the details. I promised to meet him at his home office as soon as possible and hung up.
“Is everything okay?” Annetta asked when I returned to the table.
No, everything wasn’t okay. I’d been enjoying my time with her, and had been hoping her old man would still be gone when I dropped her off. Maybe she’d invite me in and I’d get to see what was under that sweater. But now I needed to pump the brakes on all that to hunt down the guys who’d killed my family’s soldiers.
“I got called into work, so I’m gonna have to take you home.”
“Okay,” she said before sucking down her drink.
Hollywood always made mobsters look like players who spent every night in the bed of a different broad. I don’t know which family they got their information from, but Marianis… we worked our asses off. Most nights, I’d settle for sleeping in any bed. Hell, even a sofa would do. But if you didn’t hustle, you didn’t eat. Not only that, your capo would see you as dead weight and eventually trim the fat.
Because of my erratic and heavy work schedule, I didn’t go out much. When I did, most of my dates ended with my pager going off, which girls never seemed to take too well. Yeah, Annetta sounded disappointed, but at least she didn’t whine or complain or accuse me of making shit up. She just grabbed her purse and stood, ready to go.
&nbs
p; “I really do have to work,” I said, wondering if she thought I was brushing her off.
She gave me an amused smile. “Do you expect me to beg you to blow off your job and stay?”
Yeah, I kinda had been. “I would if I could. I hope you know that. This has been nice.”
“I know. I get it. No biggie. I had fun too, but it’s time to get back to reality.”
With that, she headed toward the exit. We laughed about our escape room adventure on the drive, and then I dropped her off at her front door. Her old man’s truck was in the drive, so I wouldn’t have gotten lucky even if Carlo hadn’t called me in. Resigned to the shittiness of it all, I pulled Annetta in for one last kiss, beyond caring if her old man caught us. She tasted of the fruity drink she’d just downed, and I wanted nothing more than to find out what the rest of her tasted like. No time, and I didn’t know when I’d have another free afternoon.
“My work schedule is nuts, so I’m not sure when I’ll be able to do this again,” I said.
Hurt flashed in her eyes, but she nodded and gave me a smile. “Thank you.”
Maybe she did think I was ditching her after all. I tugged on her hand, drawing her attention back to me. “Don’t forget that you owe me another date. I do plan on cashing that in. I’ll call you to set it up.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “You don’t even have my number.”
I rattled off the digits I’d memorized from her résumé.
“Wow, that’s kinda stalkerish,” she said, but her smile only widened. “Do you have a number?”
“Yeah, but I’m never home.” I could give her my pager number, but Carlo monitored my pager log and I didn’t want him to know about Annetta. At least not yet. Probably not ever.
***
Carlo lived in a modest, Southwestern stucco split-level house in a gated community. He could afford better, and my father had asked him to build closer to our home, but Carlo made it clear he preferred the humble home. As a Mustache Pete—an old school wiseguy—my uncle played his role like he played poker, cards close to his chest. Nothing about his home or his car even hinted at the kind of money he had to be worth. In fact, his home blended in with the upper middle-class community so well no outsider would believe the Mariani family underboss resided within.
I got out of my car and the smell of cigarette smoke drew my attention to the garage where Michael and a few guys from Carlo’s crew were hidden from the view of the street. They greeted me, snuffed out their cigarettes, and we all headed in together. Carlo had a new live-in housekeeper, Constanza, who Michael knew from high school. She’d been a year ahead of him, but her small frame and sweet face made her look like she should be studying for a final rather than taking care of a capo.
“Hello Michael. Dominico. Gentlemen,” she said, welcoming us in. Since Michael and I were family, she always made sure to address us individually as a show of respect.
“Hello, Constanza. Is he ready for us?” Michael replied.
“Yes. Right this way, please.”
She led us to Carlo’s office as if we hadn’t been there a million times before. It wasn’t as big as his office at the casino, but the eight of us fit comfortably. He waited until everyone sat before starting in on business.
“Earlier today I got a call about three possible associates of Chains.” Carlo gestured at two of his men. “David and Gian here tracked the men down, only to find their bodies stinking up the Dumpster behind an apartment building. Like Chains, they’d been stripped down and left with the garbage.”
“Do they have any Durante ties?” Michael asked.
“That’s where you guys come in. We have addresses and names now, so I need to see what you can find out about them. I want family, friends, work, everything. We need evidence that these assholes are connected to the Durantes before the Commission sends a messaggero in to make us keep the peace.”
“A messaggero?” David asked.
David had blond hair and blue eyes. I’d met him in passing, but didn’t care enough about him to learn his story: whether he’d married into the family or had been recruited. He clearly hadn’t learned the language yet.
“A liaison who goes between the families to prevent war,” Carlo replied. “A peacekeeper of sorts. They’re supposed to open communication to help prevent… misunderstandings. Too many scrapes with the Durantes has gotten national attention, so the Commission recommended a messaggero to help us get it under control.”
Recommended. Yeah, right. The Commission was like the national association of wiseguys, made up of the country’s most powerful mobsters. They didn’t make recommendations, they told us all what to do. Their number one goal was to protect their bottom lines, which meant there must have been enough media coverage about the Vegas happenings to make the meat eaters (corrupt cops) nervous about getting greased.
“We need to solve this problem and convince the Commission we don’t need a messaggero,” Carlo said. “We need to take out the Durantes.”
“’Bout time,” Gian replied, sounding way too enthusiastic. “The crew’s been itchin’ for some action.”
“Those dumbasses are what’s gotten us into this mess. No one touches the Durantes,” Carlo growled. “At least not in a way that draws attention. Best relay that to the crew, because the next person who lands us on the news is gonna answer to me. We need to be more calculated about our attacks, so we’re going to shift our focus to gathering information and funds. Keep hustling like you’ve been, but in addition to collecting information on Chains’s crew, I want your ears to the ground about anything the Durantes are scheming. Any hits they’re planning, any jobs they’re working… Hell, if they start selling peanuts on the side of the road I want to hear about it before it happens. Capisce?”
“Yessir,” we all replied.
“Good. We cripple them financially while this whole messaggero threat cools, then we strike. Now go get to work.”
Carlo dismissed the others, directing me and Michael to stay. He splashed Cognac into three glasses, handing me and Michael each one before sitting behind his desk.
“Last thing we need right now is for this Commission rat to come ’round pokin’ his nose in our business,” he said. “We need to have this thing with the Durantes tied up with a mother-fuckin’ bow before they come a snoopin’.”
Problem was, we didn’t have a damn thing under control. In addition to the recent hit, six of our warehouses and drop points had been attacked over the past four months. We’d also had soldiers jumped in broad daylight and one delivery interrupted midroute. Sure, we’d retaliated and gotten in a few of our own punches, but the odds were stacked against us. Still, this was Vegas, where anything could happen. Especially if you knew how to manipulate the odds.
“Which is why Father is recruiting help from California,” I said.
“From anywhere he can get it,” Carlo amended.
My old man was kind of an asshole, and not exactly known for his ability to make friends. He didn’t play well with others, especially not other family bosses. “Do you think he’ll be able to get what we need in time?”
“I learned long ago not to underestimate my brother,” Carlo replied. “He always manages to surprise me. Sometimes that’s even good.”
Michael and I both nodded. The old man could be one volatile son-of-a-bitch, and the more power he gained the crazier and more violent it made him. Since he was unafraid to step on anyone to get to the top, weaker families aligned themselves with us so they wouldn’t get trampled. Despite all his faults, Father was better than the alternative, though. Carlo said Maurizio had a screw loose, but everyone else referred to the Durante don as batshit crazy. Never to his face, though. Father was the first with the balls to go after Maurizio. Now he just needed the support to make it happen.
Someone knocked on Carlo’s door.
Everyone in the room shifted, hands going to their pockets. We weren’t exactly the most trusting lot.
“You expectin’ someone?�
�� Michael asked.
Constanza should have announced the visitor, and her absence put us all on alert.
“That’s our secret weapon,” Carlo replied, hurrying to open the door.
In walked a man I recognized, but couldn’t place. My age, with dark hair and built like a professional lineman, his face split into a grin when his gaze met mine. “Dom. Good to see you again.”
Then he wrapped me a crushing hug, one I remembered instantly. “Gino?”
He laughed. “In the flesh.” He pulled away from me long enough to hug Michael. “Mike, how you two been?”
Gino Leone wasn’t technically family, but his father had married my mom’s cousin, so in a way, he sort of was. We used to be close, but I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid when Mamma had taken me, Michael, and Abriana to spend the summer with Gino’s family while Father broke ground in Vegas. Gino’s parents had never been involved in the family business. His father worked at the Ford assembly plant, and his mom was a housewife. They lived in the small town of Claycomo, Missouri, and it had been the biggest shock of my life to spend a summer with them.
A year older than me, Gino had an older brother and two younger sisters. His brother had hung out with Michael all summer while Gino and I split our time between torturing and hiding from his little sisters. Father straightened out his business, and before school restarted, he sent for us. Gino and I had tried to keep in touch, but neither us of were big on writing letters, and long-distance phone calls were expensive. I never thought I’d see him again, especially not in Carlo’s office.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
His gaze slid to Carlo.
“He’s working, Dom,” Carlo replied. “Gino came to your old man for a job shortly after high school. He wanted to contact you, but I couldn’t let him risk it.”
“What?” Since high school? Four years, and nobody had told me. “Risk what?” I glanced at Michael, but he looked as surprised as I felt.
“Nobody but your father and I know who Gino is and why he’s here.” Carlo patted Gino on the back. “With no traceable family ties and coming from goddamn Missouri, he was perfect for the job we had for him.”