by Gina LaManna
Finally the elderly couple departed on the third floor, and then the tan man on the next, leaving me alone with the small child.
“What?” I hissed. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The child looked me up and down, shook his head sadly like a wizened old man and stepped from the elevator at the next floor. I took the elevator up to my room, opening the door to find Joey dressed in only a shiny blue speedo, doing push-ups on the floor.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Looking. Good. For. The. Weekend.” His words were punctuated with disturbing grunts.
“Don’t you think it’s too late for that?” I asked.
He stood up and approached me, sticking a finger into my chest. “What are you saying?”
I looked into his eyes and raised my hands in submission. “I just meant isn’t it too late to make any difference? I mean that’s my theory. For example, I’m already looking the way I am, so a few pushups ain’t making any difference.” I patted my stomach and gave a fake, yet extremely hearty guffaw.
“Well, that’s the difference between you and me, isn’t it?” Joey tapped that finger against my chest a couple times for emphasis and then started on a particularly graphic set of lunges.
“Among other differences, I hope.” I closed myself in the bathroom with my bag, thinking I might need to shower again to scrub the disturbing Speedo images from my mind.
After a few squats, I shimmied into my sensible black dress. It was nice and stretchy, allowing for plenty of space for stomach expansion in case I overate, and it wasn’t indecent enough to invite unwanted attention from leering male eyes. As I swiped on some lipstick, I realized I hadn’t heard from Meg or Clay since I arrived. Hopefully they were doing all right. Then again, they weren’t the ones who had cars blow up at regular intervals and murderers with their numbers on speed dial. They’d be fine.
I slipped on a pair of heels—my dancing heels that had straps and a cushioned sole—and headed out.
“Where you going?” Joey asked in the middle of the splits.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” I shielded my eyes in case things started busting at the seams or popping out in unfortunate places.
“Nope, anyone can work up to it. Even you, with a little bit a discipline. Want me to teach you?”
“No, thanks. I’m going to the rehearsal dinner.”
“Me too.” Joey popped up, exceptionally nimble for a man who looked like he just destroyed any possible chance of having children.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’re not invited.”
“I’m your plus one.”
“Kind of,” I admitted. “But even some people invited to the wedding aren’t invited to the rehearsal dinner. In fact, I’m not even invited.” I got a sudden idea, and I was gonna go with it. I gave a very serious looking nod. “I’m working security detail. I won’t even be eating or sitting within sight of Vivian, so honestly I think your best bet is to keep working out. It’ll be those last few pushups that get her attention, I guarantee it.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Joey agreed. He nodded affirmatively. “Is that why you’re wearing that nun’s dress? So you can concentrate on your job?”
“ARGH!” I grabbed my clutch and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind me. “I am not wearing a nun’s dress!”
I stormed into the hall and saw the little boy from the elevator. He ran a Spiderman action figure up and down every fake plant in the hallway, pausing only to peer up at me with curiosity in his gaze.
“What?” I asked. “Do you think this is a nun’s dress?”
“Well, you won’t be getting any boys looking like that,” he said wisely. “But I think you look beautiful.”
“Thank you very much,” I said. “I appreciate that.”
** **
I reached the lobby once more, this time fully clothed in respectable attire. A glittery silver sign with a light up arrow directed me towards a private room. Gaudy balloons created a path of gold and black bobbing heads shouting HAPPY, WEDDING and CONGRATS.
A few rose petals were splotched across the floor, gracing only certain areas of the bright carpeting, and there were a million mirrors on the tables as gifts to the guests. I was afraid to read the inscription on them, for fear they’d have Joey’s name crossed out, only to be replaced with boring banker’s initials.
A few guests and Family members milled around the edges of the room, and I scurried towards the tables pretending to look intently for my name. I wasn’t ready to be a social, happy guest yet. My brain still fumed over Joey’s comments, and I was confused about the whole Anthony-in-the-elevator thing. On top of it all, I couldn’t help feeling frustrated with Freckle Face. If I’d just managed to keep him safely locked up, I wouldn’t be looking over my shoulder for a killer—
“GAH!” I jumped backwards and toppled a chair over. “Auntie Nora,” I said, quickly righting the scene. “Wow, sorry. Didn’t see ya coming, there.”
“Sorry to sneak up on you, dear.” She peered up at me through thick-framed glasses. Her cheeks were as pink as the rose petals on the floor and her lips matched them perfectly. Her mascara was so thickly applied it sat in chunks at the end, but the overall appearance was rather charming. She was my long lost grandmother who preferred to be called Auntie for the sake of that silly thing we call ‘age.’ Simply put, she didn’t like it.
“It’s okay.” I bent over and gave her plump body a squeeze. She believed in three glasses of wine while cooking dinner, multiple courses at every meal and no supper considered complete without a cookie heavy enough to sink a small ship. I only liked two of those options, and it wasn’t the latter.
“I found your name,” she blurted, her eyes sparkling. Though her age in numbers was higher than she liked, Nora’s spirit was that of an excitable young girl.
Inwardly, I groaned. I’d seen my name across the room the second I’d walked in, but had been avoiding it for the past five minutes as an excuse to wander around alone. “Oh, really, how about that.”
“Yes, let me show you.” She beckoned me to follow her right up to a seat way too close to Vivian for my comfort. In fact, my name tag sat firmly at Table 1.
“Why am I up here?” I asked. “What about her brothers? Shouldn’t they be closest to Vivian on her big day?”
“Well, you know how that goes.” Nora plunked her glasses higher up on her nose and scrunched up her cheeks. “Mikey is, uh, at a last minute engagement. Nicky, we haven’t heard from today. I assume he’s dealing with Marissa and Clarissa’s mother issues,” Nora whispered the last part, as if it wasn’t common knowledge that Nicky had two children the exact same age with two different women, neither of them wearing a wedding ring. Or that a previous engagement meant that there was a high percentage Mikey was actually staying at le hotel jail cell.
“Ah.”
“Yes, yes,” she said, fiddling with her glasses once more.
“Are those new?” I asked finally, knowing the answer.
“Why, yes, thank you for noticing!” Nora beamed. Then she leaned in for another conspiratorial whisper. “But there’s no glass in the lenses, they’re just for style.”
I laughed as she struck a pose, complimented them once more, and then moved on. I saw Carlos enter the room from the opposite side and watched everyone line up to kiss him on both cheeks—greeting the Godfather.
I scanned the room for a back entrance or exit, a shoe closet, a mop room—anything. I was panicking. I couldn’t face him yet. Except, of course, I found nothing except more balloons and rose petals scattered into a chaotic pattern.
“Lacey.”
I turned on a heel, a smile plastered widely across my face.
“Carlos.” I leaned over to kiss my grandfather on both cheeks and he reciprocated, seeming bored with the transaction.
Then, to my dismay, he reached for a hug. That in itself was a rare event, and I couldn’t help but squirm a bit.
He gripped me
tighter and whispered into my ear. “You have news?”
I nodded, then realized from his standpoint in the hug, he couldn’t see me. “We’ve discovered the culprit. We’re working on locating the suspect in order to bring him in and make sure. Right now, it’s looking to be un-Russian related.”
Carlos stepped back and took my hand in his, his grip crushing my knuckles one by one. “I don’t want to hear you thinking it’s not the Russians.”
I winced and tried to nod.
“I want to know,” Carlos growled. “Capisci?”
“Got it,” I squealed, my voice high.
He let out a wide, happy grin. “Wonderful. Now, we shall enjoy the day, yes?”
“Absolutely.”
I sidestepped any further conversations, using Anthony’s entrance to the room as a diversion. Heads turned as he strode across the floor, annihilating any rose petals that dared block his path. Though every female eye in the room scanned him up and down, he was off limits to all. There was no way Carlos would put up with a female distracting any part of his Administration, particularly his beloved head of security.
Anthony’s stride was confident and sure, his face professionally impassive. It was as if we hadn’t met in the elevator thirty minutes before, me naked and him too hot to handle.
Without a glance in my direction, he put a hand lightly on Carlos’s back and whispered in his ear. Carlos gave two sharp nods and his face relaxed, an easy smile playing across his features. It was a scary transformation: this was a man who could charm the hardest of criminals and command an army that could successfully invade France.
I wished more often than not that I’d inherited even a teensy bit of my grandfather’s talent. It’d be nice to be able to charm a man into falling in love with me or intimidate one of the criminals I tracked down. I’d even settle for not looking like a fool for five minutes here and there. My lack of experience in this whole ‘tough guy’ industry was depressing at times.
My mind wandered to dangerous places as Anthony backed away from my grandfather. He was so tall and thick, and all man. I glanced down at my own biceps. I worked out with the man, shouldn’t I get a little of that toned deliciousness? Carlos reached out and patted Anthony’s expansive, sturdy chest. The red rose in his suit pocket swayed ever so slightly, but Anthony himself didn’t flinch. He was solid.
“This here, this is a good man, hmm?” Carlos raised an eyebrow in my direction.
“Uh, sure?” I smiled, hoping I’d given the right answer.
“You find yourself one of them, yes?” Carlos winked. “Your grandmother, she says she doesn’t want to be old, but there’s nothing Nora wants more in the world than a few grandkids.”
My smile that’d started as confused now faltered and turned fake. Mental note to self: add acting to my list of failed talents. “She has grandkids—Marissa and Clarissa.”
Carlos’s smile also took on a falser tone. “Yes, she loves them. But she wants a wedding, a husband and kids. With Nicky, we have a father and two girls. One blond. One brown. No mothers around. Do you see the problem?”
I raised my hands in submission, not wanting to get into this conversation. Was it the wedding ambiance that had prompted Carlos’s conversational foray into the world of romance? Or was it a cover for the serious secret Anthony had just whispered into Carlos’s ear?
“I will hop to that.” I nodded.
Carlos gave a final shoulder squeeze to Anthony, fingers not so much as denting the suit on his shoulder, and then headed off into the rest of the party, accepting cheek kisses like they were bribes.
I leaned forward and whispered into Anthony’s ear. “Will you tell me a secret?”
“Depends.”
“What’d you do to get on Carlos’s good side?”
Anthony didn’t respond, but a glimmer remained in his eye from Carlos’s praise.
“Are you married?” I asked. “I don’t really know much about you.”
“That’s how I like it.” Anthony stepped towards me and planted a quick kiss on my forehead.
I opened my mouth in shock at his brazen display of affection. But when I looked around, nothing seemed awry. Carlos hadn’t ordered anyone over to murder Anthony, no women were swooning or weeping or gathering their pitchforks to hurt me, and even Clay and Meg, who’d just entered the room, were deep in conversation.
“Ah, you’re tricky,” I said. “Observant.”
“Part of my job,” he said, shoulders rigid once more. A sign that somebody was watching. “Walk with me.”
“Where? Don’t we have to eat?”
Anthony looked at me as if he couldn’t imagine how I was thinking of food at a time like this. “I’ll keep things brief.”
I inhaled a breath to respond, but Anthony glanced over his shoulder as he led me from the room. “Keep in mind, that’s not always the case.”
I exhaled the breath in one slow motion, feeling like I needed to fan myself to cool down the lady bits.
I followed him from the room, matching his brisk pace as he wove through the crowds of loudly jabbering Italians.
Once we’d reached the outer doors, I stuck a finger to my ear to try and clear the ringing. “They’re rowdy in there, aren’t they?”
The quiet stretched between us like a fat, dead weight.
“And you’ve just realized this.” Anthony stated the fact as if he wasn’t sure if I was stupid, or just astoundingly unobservant.
“What did you need? Did you want to ask me to dance tomorrow?” I sidled up to him, elbowing him playfully in the gut. “I’d check the maybe box, in case you’re wondering.”
“About the note. The killer.” Anthony didn’t crack a smile. My shoulders drooped a little bit at his lack of humor, then I reminded myself to grow up. He was only doing his job—a job he was chosen for because of his stoic nature, big arms and willingness to do some kind of bad things in the name of the Family. Flirting on the job probably was highly frowned upon.
“What about it?” I asked. I felt the urge to start taking notes, just to keep my hands busy. My elbow still felt full of static from the electric shock it’d gotten from touching Anthony’s gorgeous abdomen.
“I have my men on it in the cities. They are very, very good.” He ran a thumb over his clean-shaven jaw, which I suddenly wanted to cozy up against and nip before moving onto better places.
I cleared my throat. “I’m sure they’re excellent. Just like you.”
Anthony cocked his head in an emotion I couldn’t decipher. It could’ve ranged anywhere from amusement to disdain. “Doll.”
I winced. “You know what I mean.”
A smile flicked across his lips, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “They’re having trouble locating the boy, and it’s not for lack of trying.”
I shook my head no. “Of course not.”
“So, I need to know three things.” Anthony grasped both of my shoulders, and his cologne swept over me, making it very hard to think of one thing, let alone three things.
“One,” Anthony’s voice brought me back. “Are you sure he’s related to Leo?”
“I—” Before I could finish my sentence, one of Anthony’s hands left my shoulder and a finger pressed against my lips. It was more tantalizing than I would’ve ever imagined.
“Two,” he began. “Is the kid based in the cities, or did he sound foreign? Maybe from Chicago?”
“Uh—” Again, the finger silenced my answers. I was slightly afraid I wouldn’t remember all of the questions, and for some unknown reason, I didn’t want to let Anthony down.
“And three, yes. I’d like a dance with you.”
“That’s not a question,” I managed to mumble around his finger.
“It would’ve been, except you beat me to it.” Anthony took a step backwards and left me to stand on my own two feet, a harder task than I would’ve imagined.
“Now, for answers one and two.” He gestured for me to spill my information.
“I, u
h, I don’t really know,” I admitted.
“Which one?”
“Kind of both.”
Anthony ran a hand through his hair, and I suddenly wondered whether it was gelled in place, or whether it naturally sat just so… perfectly wavy and thick, like a luxurious ocean of hair.
“Listen, the kid literally found us in a cemetery. It wasn’t like I was out searching for him. I honestly believed his little story: that he really wanted to get into the Mafia. That’s a crazy story to cook up without some part of it being true.” I tapped my front tooth in thought with my pointer finger. In retrospect, it was probably not one of my more attractive decisions. “Actually, no. I know that he’s related to Leo. Joey confirmed it for me. At least, he confirmed Alfonso’s name.”
“Joey?” Anthony’s eyebrows were the picture of quizzical.
“I didn’t have a ton of time to check everything out. I had a wedding to get to, if you hadn’t noticed. He was a kid! I thought he’d go away and not be my problem anymore.”
“Well, he didn’t.” Anthony spoke with the firmest tone I’d heard from him to date. It had a hard, scary edge to it, and I was reminded that this was a man with incredible power—a man I’d never like to meet on a dark street corner. Well, unless we had other intentions…
I sighed. “I’m sorry, Anthony. But I don’t know what to do. If I had more time—”
“We don’t. And now everyone at this wedding, their lives are in danger here. And it’s my job to protect them. So, I need your help: do you think the kid got up here on his own? Or is he working with someone?”
“I don’t know,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry. I really don’t think it was the kid that chased us up here. I don’t know why I feel that way, but I really think he’s bumming around, laying low in a friend’s basement in St. Paul. Your men will find him, I’m sure. I know they’ve found more dangerous men in shorter amounts of time, but give them a break. The kid is scared and smart and he won’t do anything now. The note? I don’t know. Maybe he convinced one of his cousins or uncles to do it as a joke. Or maybe it’s somebody else.”