by Chloe Liese
He slipped, avoiding my cross. I lunged at him, ducked another jab, then took a cross I hadn’t seen coming. Fucking one-twos. The familiar tang of blood flooded my mouth.
He smiled, the little shit. “Don’t make me knock it out of you, fratu.”
We swarmed each other, exchanging shots and a few counter-punches, the thud of hits and the guttural noise of contact ringing in the gym.
“Why. Wouldn’t. You. Tell. Her?”
I nailed Teo with a hook that glanced his ribs.
“Shit!” He doubled over, then snapped up.
“If I told her, that would give her the opportunity to reject me for it. I didn’t want to risk losing her love when I thought it wasn’t mine to have forever.”
Teo came at me and I ducked his cross. “If you really don’t think Nairne would understand, you’re short-changing her. You love her, and when you love someone, Zed, you trust them. You were being a pussy, letting your fear of her disapproval muzzle you. Guess what, fratu, it wasn’t wrong. What you did was merciful. Nairne would understand that, and now you’ve possibly lost the opportunity to explain it to her.”
“You think I don’t realize that?” I went at him hard. “I do love her, and look what trying to love her and do the right thing has cost us both.”
I pulled back, panting. “All I want to do is throw my clothes in a bag and chase her down this minute. But if I leave now, that’s wrong, isn’t it? Selfish. To want to disappear before the takedown happens. What if my early exit blows the operation or endangers Nairne?”
I shoved Teo, forcing him to defend himself and come back at me. “What does that make me, Teo? Some asshole who just follows his dick and says fuck the consequences.”
His face scrunched as he ducked my punches. “You just said yourself you love her, that you want to redirect your life toward sharing it with her. That’s not following your dick. That’s following your heart, you idiot, which believe it or not, you do have, and you’re well within your rights to pursue.
“Let’s think this through. How long until they say they might be able to complete the raid?”
“A month, but it’s incredibly temperamental. A hundred factors have to line up. Jesus, Teo, it could be years.”
He threw a few fast combinations I barely dodged. “Fuck it, Zed. You’ve done exponentially more than they could have ever asked. You’ve endangered yourself for years playing this game. You’ve made this takedown possible within their lifetime. It’s enough already.”
Could I do that? Say screw the possibly negative long-term consequences of backing out preemptively? “Teo, it’s irresponsible. I’d be leaving a mess when I’ve helped us get so close to cleaning it up.”
“So you do everything you can to speed up the process.” Teo paused, set a gloved hand on my shoulder. “You keep Nella in check, right?”
“Yes,” I answered slowly. He knew this.
“What if you stop? Let her set up a bad deal, a big one that ropes in a bunch of other assholes the feds have their sights set on.” Teo swung and I ducked. “Would that accelerate things?”
“Possibly.” There was only a chance it would give the feds what they needed, and it was risky. It was why we hadn’t done something like it already. Because when you gave greedy crooks free rein, shit got dirty and dangerous, quickly.
But the stakes had been raised for me, and the risk finally felt commensurate with the reward. And authorities might agree with me. If it was just briefly letting off the breaks to see how fast Nella could crash the train, it could be worth a try. It was definitely at least worth running by my contacts, to gauge if the time was right. “If I do this, you and Dad have to go before it happens—”
“Zed, don’t worry about us.”
“Like hell I won’t,” I snarled.
He sidestepped my lunge easily. “I’ve got it under control, fratu.”
“What does that mean?”
Sweat ran down my face and burned my split lip. Teo grinned and wiped his forehead with his arm. “It means we’re entertaining private offers on the house and we’re set for a nice long holiday in Genoa with the family—god help me—until we figure out getting in the same country as you. Just worry about yourself, because you’re going to be out of a job, Zed. Your agent put some discreet words out to UK clubs, right?”
“Yeah.” I wiped my face with the inside of my elbow. “But the job’s secondary. What matters is that you two are safe.”
“We will be. Worry about Nella, work on that scenario with the feds. Then get the fuck out of here, and fix it with Nairne.”
I sighed heavily. “God, how is this my life?”
“Really shitty circumstances and unbelievably bad luck. Now it’s time to get past this, Zed. Don’t wuss out on me.”
I glared at him. “You think staying here would be me wussing out? Like this is the easy road? That I’ve enjoyed wasting my fucking life on unapologetic criminals and two-timing schemes?”
He threw up his gloved hands. “What the fuck have you been doing this last decade then, Zed?”
“Fuck you,” I spat. “You have no goddamn clue what it’s been like for me—”
“That’s because you wouldn’t let me. You shut everyone out and turned into a miserable, angry asshole. ”
I snapped. Did a leg swipe that sent Teo clattering to the ground, but he sprang up quickly and came at me. We devolved into brawling, throwing wild punches at each other, until he got me in a headlock. Doubled down against his ribs, I swung ineffectively at him from my trapped position.
“I want my brother back,” he said.
I chopped down on his forearm, but he didn’t budge.
“I want the old Zed. The one who told good jokes. Who fucking smiled and laughed, and ran and painted, not to escape pain but to feel good.”
I kneed him hard in the thigh, enough to slacken his grip so I could stand up and shove him away. We were both panting, spent. Teo leaned over and rubbed the Charlie horse I’d given him.
“I’m sorry you lost the Zed you knew, Teo. I lost him, too.”
He sighed. “I want you back for your sake, not just mine. I want you to be safe and happy, Zed. I know you did the right thing in the moment, protecting Dad, stepping in his place. But Jesus, has it been costly. So cash in, fratu. And get the fuck out.”
I bit my cheek because my eyes stung, and my chest burned with inexpressible emotion. I felt scraped and hollowed out by exhaustion that was always tinged with anxiety. Sick of this life and completely overwhelmed with what I had to do now to be free of it.
Teo straightened and slapped a hand on my shoulder, then spoke as if he’d read my mind. “You are Zedekiah Lazaro Salvatore. When you set your mind on something, you make it happen. You’ll figure it out. And you’ve got me, right by your side.”
“Yeah.” I smiled half-heartedly.
Teo shoved me in the back, then dipped out of the ring. “Time to blow some shit up, Salvatore style. I’ve been waiting years for this.”
I groaned and he laughed as he shouldered open the locker room door.
“Come on, fratu. This is gonna be way more fun than you think.”
Eleven
Zed
We sat in the kitchen at Lupo’s, just like so many other nights. Nella smoking, twirling an aperitivo in its tiny glass. Me throwing back Chianti while I listened to her plot and scheme. Nice thing about narcissists—they’re open books. They’ll talk your ear off about themselves if you just shut up and listen.
Historically, Nella was somewhat careful about what she told me, because she liked dabbling in shit I didn’t approve of. However, her newfound unbridled power seemed to have obliterated what little compunction she had for being secretive. She sat there, laughing and speaking freely about what made her heart beat—cold hard cash, and the power to do whatever she wanted with it. Smiling easily, she touched me affectionately. Now that I’d stayed as promised and Nairne had been out of the picture for almost a month now, she felt confide
nt I was hers.
Not completely confident, though. I still found bugs like the pen I had months ago. A tie clip Nella gave me—how dumb did she think I was? In return, I paid a discreet government official to come in the guise of a cleaning lady. She’d “sweep” the place, and every time she found a few transmitters, always in new locations. I left them, because if I had nothing to hide from Nella, as Nella needed to think, I’d have no cause to be checking for surveillance or to remove them. If I did anything, it would be a red flag. So, I continued to use burner phones to text only, and met with government contacts at Logan airport under the ruse of an in-depth TSA check after I’d come back from my last few games. They’d use a bug fryer and we’d have a wholly inadequate amount of time to get me up to speed before it would end. Then I’d be back to the possibility of being surveilled by Nella.
My paranoia had ratcheted up to the level that I didn’t trust myself to be safe anywhere. I tried texting Nairne’s number a handful of times, but it never delivered, and when I contemplated calling her university, begging to speak with her, all I could think was what might happen if Nella found out about my ongoing relationship with Nairne—or what I hoped we’d have, once I found her.
Even with the safe word she’d left me, with my hopes that she was waiting for me from a safe distance, I couldn’t deny that Nairne’s silence didn’t hurt. Why wouldn’t she even try to communicate with me? She was an ocean away already. Would a text reassuring me be so impossible? Even if it came through my brother or Gianno? Even if she worried about Nella?
“You’re quiet tonight, gnocco.” Nella sipped her Amari and set it on the stainless steel counter with a quiet clink.
I finished off my wine and set it down next to hers. “Just listening.”
She smiled and smashed her cigarette in its ash tray. “You’ve always been a good listener.”
When her hands slid through my hair and tugged, I stilled myself and made a concerted effort not to recoil. I couldn’t afford for her to think anything other than what she had these past few weeks—that I’d accepted my fate, by her side.
After I’d run it by them, my contacts relayed what Teo had suggested, and whomever was masterminding this takedown was all over it. A plan was in place, and I’d been reassured it would unfold soon. So, I knew the general outline of what would go down, but neither where nor when exactly. That was my request, because I had too many logistical balls in the air to trust myself not to drop the most important one. This way, I had the least likelihood of slipping up or raising Nella’s suspicion.
My cell buzzed and I pulled it out. After I read Bruno’s text, I snapped my phone shut and pocketed it.
“They’re ready.”
Nella smiled slowly as she stood and swept up her purse. “Time to do business, Zeddo.”
I drove because Nella was horrible behind the wheel, and because it was my fucking car. Windows down and the June air tunneling through, warm and muggy. The first day of summer. Which was also Teo’s birthday. We’d observed it yesterday, before he and Dad flew out last night, a red-eye straight to Genoa.
I parked us near the docks and scanned the landscape. Memories hit me, one after the other. Teaching Teo to skip stones, climbing rocks with him along the harbor as Dad and Nicky fought in Italian while they thought we weren’t listening.
It was surreal to think so much of it would soon be a shadow of its former self—as this syndicate, its crooked influence on the city took over. With a decade’s worth of intel from me, as well as the government’s own heavy undercover work, the feds were finally poised for an East Coast takedown that would involve the arrest of over one hundred members of the New England and New York mafia.
When the takedown happened, I’d be brought in for appearance’s sake to be questioned, my formal statement made, then released. That’s what they’d promised, since, while my record certainly wasn’t spotless in the eyes of the law, I’d been an invaluable informant since day one.
I breathed in the air, saved the memory of the water. Once this was over, I could never come back. Neither could Teo or Dad. I’d broken omertà—silence and fidelity—to Cosa Nostra. The penalty for that was worse than death. It was the death of your loved ones, then your own demise after you’d seen everyone you loved eliminated. Stepping foot on this soil after I’d defected would be suicidal, because current players might be swept away soon thanks to me, but the game would never cease to exist. Some fresh blood would step in soon enough, start the madness all over again, and I’d still be persona non grata. Forever on the Boston mafia’s shit list.
I breathed deeply, comforted that Dad and Teo were far away, protected by family and an ocean’s distance. That Nairne was completely off this syndicate’s radar, tucked away in London.
Nella’s hand slipped in my arm. She steadied herself as she hiked up her dress and checked her thigh holster. The fabric fluttered past her gun as she smiled at me with a cig between her teeth. She lit it and her eyes blazed as the cigarette burned to life. “How many times have we done business like this. It never gets old, does it?”
I nodded distractedly, scanned the water and identified the ship. The ship was bigger than I’d imagined, and it was close. But my ears pricked to a new noise. The quiet creep of a vehicle rolling along asphalt. I glanced subtly toward the road leading to the docks and saw nothing. Bruno came around from the side of the building along with Frankie, mumbling as he flicked his cig to the ground and stomped it.
Bruno and Frankie had come from the opposite direction of the engine noise I’d heard, meaning someone else was here. Unfortunately for me, since I was flying only marginally less blind than all the other crooks around me, I couldn’t be sure just who our third party was. I just had to cross my fingers they were the good guys.
The boat docked and Nella released my arm as she strolled ahead. My eyes narrowed as I stared into the night. It was a new moon and the sky was cloudy. Harsh overhead lights near the water left everything outside their conical reach in pitch black. The darkness rendered nothing, no insight into the noise.
“Zeddo?” Nella gestured me toward her.
I joined her, shook hands with the captain, and told the crew where in the building to unload. Bruno and Frankie boarded and disappeared below deck, and like the crackle of ozone before thunder, I sensed something was off. Nella walked on the boat, poked around and admired a few crates as they surfaced. Bruno and Frankie hoisted more crates, then dipped below again.
“Why aren’t you coming?” Nella stepped back onto the dock and strolled my way.
“I get seasick. Hate the rocking motion.” I did, but I also had a bad feeling about that boat.
“Don’t you want to inspect the cargo?” she purred.
Her nail slid down my arm. She’d been coming on hard, and though I’d been trying to respond to her enough not to raise doubts, I couldn’t muster anything enthusiastic at the moment. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I peered toward the edge of the light’s reach, away from the boat.
A number of things happened in rapid succession. It started with a swarm of men appearing out of the darkness—firearms trained on us. I raised my hands slowly, palms wide open. Nella just stood there and sucked on her cigarette, but I knew where her free hand was—right over her gun.
“Do what they say, Nella.”
Her eyes darted to the half-dozen officers who had their automatic rifles pointed straight at us. “There’s no way they should have known. I changed locations at the last minute.”
I sighed and glanced over at her. “Well, apparently we didn’t fool them, so put your fucking hands up before they put those firearms to use.”
“I said hands up!” an officer shouted.
Nella let her cigarette fall to the ground, and with the kind of reflexes that didn’t seem humanly possible for a chain-smoker in four-inch heels, Nella ripped her gun out of her holster and had it pointed at my throat.
Six rifles clicked and trained on her, as the tip of he
r gun pressed against my jugular.
“Make one move and I’ll put a bullet right through his neck,” she growled.
Water slapping against the boat. The hum of crickets in the grass nearby. Sounds amplified in my head as the enfolding scene suspended in time. This would be a really shitty time to die. After all I’d gone through, to lose the new life I’d worked so hard for, right when I stood on its threshold. I breathed in slowly and told my pulse to slow the fuck down.
“Nella,” I whispered. My eyes slid to look down at her. “Don’t do this.”
She laughed bitterly and shook her head. “I should have told you the same thing, long ago. But here we are, because of you.” The gun pressed harder into my throat.
The far-off hum of a motorboat cut through the silence of our standoff, but Nella’s gaze didn’t stray from me or the officers.
“I want a plea bargain in writing,” she yelled. “In the next three minutes or he dies.”
The motorboat sound drew nearer, and I watched as the apparent leader of the officers whispered something. One of them backed away and slipped into the darkness.
“All right, we’re getting someone here,” he said. “But we need more time than that.”
I swallowed, feeling my pulse slam against the pressure of her gun.
“They value you,” she whispered. “If you were just another criminal to them, why would they care whether or not I blew your brains out?”
“My voice box, actually. You need to get about eight inches up to blast my grey matter.” I cleared my throat. “You know the feds. They like things tidy. A hostage situation doesn’t look so good.”
“You sold us out,” she hissed. She cocked the gun. I watched her eyes water and spill tears. “I loved you.”
“You never loved me, Nella.” I smiled wryly. “Clearly. This is how you treat someone you want to control. Not love.”
The motorboat sound kept growing and two officers shifted their location when Nella’s gaze was locked on me. “I taught you what love was. It is control. You’re just like me, but you’re too stubborn to admit that.” She pressed the gun harder into my throat. “Not that it matters anymore. You’re dead to me. You’re a dead man, Zed.”