Lucca: Azzarra Crime Family Book Two

by Kiara Woodson

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I would imagine that he does have a problem with me. After all, I’m the head of the Azzarra, which is the biggest rival family to the Fattores.”

  “Lucca,” I said to him. “Stefano has no love for my father. That much I can tell you. My father abandoned him. He didn’t defend him when he went to prison for the drug dealing, and he didn’t even get a lawyer for him when he went to prison for that murder. That whole murder thing seems way suspicious to me, anyhow, because it was only a fist-fight, yet the guy died. A decent lawyer could have made the argument that an autopsy should have been performed on that guy, because I think that he died from natural causes. A fist-fight would have never killed somebody unless the guy had an underlying medical condition. But my father let Stefano rot with an overworked public defender who didn’t have the ability to ask for an autopsy. So Stefano hates my father for letting him hang like that.”

  Lucca just stared at me, and I could tell that his wheels were spinning. “Bianca…” He shook his head.

  “What?” I asked. Stefano’s words went through my head. Just ask him. See how he tries to dance. Right now, it looked like he was dancing the rhumba. “Lucca, what is going on?”

  Lucca pointed at me. “Excuse me.” He then went into his bedroom, and I tried to follow him in there. He had locked his door, however, so there wasn’t any way that I could get in there.

  So I just pounded on the door. “Lucca,” I shouted as my fists pounded on his door. “You open up. You open up right now.”

  I was infuriated, beyond infuriated. He was going to do this bullshit to me? I started to kick the door, and he finally opened up. He didn’t look angry or frustrated. He looked frightened.

  “What’s going on? You need to be straight with me, and I mean now.”

  “I’m going to make this right,” he said. “Bianca, I’m...”

  “You’re going to make what right? What?”

  He started to pace around the room. “Okay, I’m going to man up about this.” He shook his head. “And I should have told you before.”

  I shook my head. “You should have told me what before?” I put my hands on my hips. “What? Tell me.”

  Lucca pointed at a chair in the living room. “Sit down,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  This didn’t sound good.

  Twenty-One

  Well, she knows. Or she’s going to know. I was going to have to come clean with what I did to her brother, and then I was going to have to make it right. Bianca was going to hate me, I knew this, and I deserved it. I deserved all the shit that she wanted to shovel at me.

  I took a deep breath. “As you know, I’ve been trying to talk to your father for almost a year now. Ever since I’ve taken over, I’ve been trying to deal with him. And he never gave me the time of day.”

  Bianca was standing there, glaring at me, and she started to wave her hands in front of her, as if to say okay, okay, hurry up. “Yes, I know. That’s why you kidnapped me.”

  I took a deep breath. Best just to get it out there, have her hit me with her fists, yell at me, call me every name in the book, and then do what I needed to do to make everything right. Whatever that might be. “I decided to…give Benito a message. A message that I could get to him and the people he cares about.” I swallowed hard.

  Here goes….I didn’t meet her eyes. I couldn’t. If I did, I probably wouldn’t be able to go on.

  “Oh god,” she said in a soft voice. I knew that she realized what I was going to say, and I braced myself for her reaction. “Go on.”

  I took a deep breath. “Stefano made a mistake. He dealt drugs to an underage minor. I think that you know that. I’m not sure why he did that, because I know that your father is against that, but he did.”

  Bianca nodded her head. “Yes. He did do that. I think that the kid had a fake ID and he certainly looked of age. My brother got careless there. He made a mistake. It happens.” She was glaring at me. “What does that have to do with anything at all?”

  I felt my heart pounding as I knew that I was going to have to come clean. “Benito has practically every member of the judicial bench in his pocket. He also has enough cops in his pocket that there ordinarily wouldn’t be any chance at all that Stefano would have been prosecuted for that mistake.”

  Bianca’s look was blank. She spoke slowly, deliberately. “Yes. That’s true. I always was suspicious about why it was that my brother was prosecuted for what he did. Stefano always got away with everything else that he did for my father’s business, because you’re right – my father has enough judges on the bench who are in his pocket, and enough cops on the force that are also in his pocket, that there would be no way that Stefano would be found liable for anything at all. That’s the way that it’s always been.”

  Gut check time. “Yes. That’s ordinarily what would have happened – but I made sure that didn’t happen here. I bribed Benito’s judge, and I made that judge my judge instead of Benito’s. I also made sure that I had enough dirt on the arresting officer that I could have him in my pocket as well. I told the judge that he had to judge Stefano as he would any other defendant. The cop was told that he had to treat Stefano as if he was any other two-bit criminal. I let Benito know everything that I was doing. He could have stopped what was happening by simply playing ball. That’s all that I was angling for. To get his attention.”

  Bianca was hanging her head. She refused to look at me. “So you’re the reason why he’s there,” she said softly. “He was in that hole for six months. For six months, he was in total isolation, caged like an animal, never seeing anybody except the prison guards. I’ve lost my brother for life because of you.” She started to shake her head.

  I knew that wasn’t entirely true. I didn’t force Stefano to deal drugs to a minor. I certainly didn’t force him to get into a violent fight in the lunch room. Stefano really dug his own grave. All that I did was make sure that he didn’t skate. That was it.

  Yet, I also knew that, but-for my interference, Stefano would have done exactly that – skate. He would have gotten off, as he always did. But he didn’t get off, and that was because I put my thumb on the scale.

  “Bianca,” I said, taking her hands. “I’m going to make this right.”

  “You’re going to make this right. You’re going to make this right. I don’t even fucking believe what I’m hearing from you. Make this right? Make this right? He’s in prison for life, Lucca. For life. Because of you.”

  She got up and started to pace around the floor. “Lucca, there’s no way that you can ever make this right. Ever. I’ve lost him. I’ve lost him because of you.” Tears started to cascade down her cheeks.

  I went to her, intending to put my arms around her and tell her that everything was going to be okay. That I would do what I could to make sure that her brother was freed. I should have done it sooner, I knew. And I would have, except that I didn’t want to appear weak to Benito. But she pushed me aside.

  “Go,” she said softly. “Just get out. I know that this is your apartment, but I can’t look at you. You make me sick.”

  I knew that she was right. She could stay here. This was her home now. I would go to my home in Connecticut and try to regroup. “I’ll go, Bianca,” I said to her. “And I promise you…”

  “I know. That you’re going to make it right.” She shook her head. “Get the hell out, Lucca. I’m going to get my own apartment soon, so you’re going to be rid of me. I won’t tell Izzy what you did. You need to make it work with my sister. She needs you to keep our father off her back. But that’s the only reason why I’m not telling her the truth - I need to protect her. If you don’t make it work with her, then she’s going to have to give up her baby, and that will devastate her.” She hung her head and paused. “I want you to make it work with Izzy because I need to protect her. I could give shit less about you anymore. I would let you burn in hell.”

  Her words stung me, pierced me right in my gut.

  I got
my coat and left.

  There wasn’t anything more to say.

  Twenty-Two

  The next day, I went into action. I had stayed the night in my Connecticut house, staring at the fire, and trying to formulate a plan. I knew that Gianni was going to be a part of this plan. He was rapidly becoming one of the most prominent mob attorneys in the city, and I knew that if anybody could get Stefano sprung, it would be him.

  I had spent the entire night trying to game this entire thing out. I still wanted to use Stefano as a pawn – my ace in the hole. Even though Benito had, thus far, shown little interest in helping his son, I knew that there was still the possibility that I could hold Stefano’s freedom over his head, just in case things went south between Izzy and me. I knew that the old man, deep down, wanted his son released, even though he seemed to be extremely angry with Stefano. I had the power to do that.

  “Gianni,” I said when I called him. “I need your help.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Let me come into the city and talk to you.”

  “I have an opening at 1.”

  “See you then.”

  I met Gianni at his office right at one. He had moved into a midtown high-rise, all gleaming glass and steel. His office was on the 85th floor, and I felt queasy as the elevator climbed. I knew that Gianni would be able to take care of this the right way. At least, I knew that he would at least be able to get the murder charge set aside. That one seemed easy enough – simply show that the guy who died did so because he had an underlying medical condition. He could subpoena medical records and possibly even get the guy exhumed to prove his point. I couldn’t believe that Stefano’s Public Defender didn’t do all of that, but, then again, I knew that the poor guy was overworked and underpaid and that the office itself was underfunded.

  As far as the original charge, there was going to have to be some fancy footwork there. Gianni probably wouldn’t be able to do much about that one – Stefano did the crime. There wasn’t any doubt about that. The best that we could do would be to get Stefano out on parole, but I really wanted to go a step further. Bianca was right – if I didn’t interfere, Stefano would never have gone down for what he did. I needed to reverse my actions, somehow, someway.

  So I decided to start with the judge who had overseen the case. He was going to have to vacate the conviction, which was going to be difficult to do, as Stefano had plea-bargained. I was just going to have to find an angle to make sure that the judge did as I asked him to. Whether I was going to blackmail him or bribe him, I didn’t yet know. Whatever. I was going to have to get that judge to do what I wanted him to.

  I was doing this for Bianca. She needed her brother back. But I was also doing this for myself. For my own conscience. Stefano was really nothing but a pawn in my game with Benito, and I shouldn’t have done things in that way.

  I walked into Gianni’s office and saw him talking on the phone. “Yeah? Well, listen, you’re gonna give my client a plea bargain or you just see what happens to you…that’s what I thought.” He nodded his head. “I’ll see you at 1:30.”

  He looked up at me and came over and gave me a bear hug. “Good to see you Lucca,” he said. “Sit down, sit down.”

  I sat down and took a glass of water that Gianni offered me. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.” I sipped my water and sighed. “I have a problem on my hands.”

  Gianni leaned forward and got out a notebook and prepared to start scribbling. “Okay, Lucca, tell me what’s going on.”

  “I need a plea bargain vacated and a murder conviction set aside. No retrial, I just need both things vacated.”

  Gianni smiled and nodded his head. “Tall order there, brother. What happened?”

  “I did something shitty, and now I have to make it right.”

  I then explained everything about what had happened to Stefano, while Gianni furiously made notes on everything I said. He occasionally interjected questions here and there, but, for the most part, he was listening carefully and writing down everything I said.

  Finally, when I told him the whole story, he looked at me. “You do understand that there’s not much I can do, legally, for his drug conviction, right? As for the murder, I’ll get the case reopened and make sure I get those medical records for Antonio Vinelli, who was the victim. Assuming that the guy had some kind of underlying medical issue, so that I can show that he died from natural causes, not the punch Stefano gave him, I can probably get the murder conviction set aside.” He shook his head. “Goddammit, it’s too bad there wasn’t an autopsy ordered. Somebody had his head up his ass there.”

  “You got that right.” I sighed. “So, I need to do something extralegal to get that conviction set aside, don’t I?”

  “Yes. You got that judge to convict him in the first place, so maybe you can some blackmail or bribery to make him go the other way.”

  “I didn’t bribe and blackmailed the judge to convict him. I simply bribed and blackmailed him to make sure that he treated Stefano like any other defendant. I was surprised that Benito allowed that to happen. I thought for sure he would have gotten to the judge and bribed or blackmailed him to let Stefano go. At any rate, the whole thing was a waste of time, because it still didn’t get Benito’s attention. All it did was make sure Stefano went to prison and make sure that Bianca hates me. That’s all it did.”

  Gianni leaned forward. “Perhaps that’s the key. Start with Benito. That judge was on Benito’s payroll to begin with, right? Yet you only had to offer him a bribe of $20,000 to…”

  “Yes, that’s right, but don’t forget about the value-added terms I tacked onto it. Blackmail was a big part of it.”

  The main reason why I was able to convince that judge to do what I wanted was that I had my men follow him and hack onto his computers and they were able to stumble onto a goldmine. Specifically, the judge was into child porn. My men found thousands of images on his computer, and that was what I used to hold over his head.

  “Well, there you go. You go to the judge, tell him that you still have those images that you’re willing to give to prosecutors, and have him vacate the original judgment. Too bad he wasn’t also the judge for the murder case. Two birds, one stone right there.”

  “Yeah. I guess that’s right. But if we can show that the guy he killed died from natural causes, the whole thing suddenly becomes a simple assault. We plead him down to that, ask for time served as his sentence, and there you go. Stefano is out and everyone is happy.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Gianni shrugged. “You really stepped in it there, my brother. But you know this, so it’s no use busting you about it now.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  Gianni leaned back in his chair. “Something else on your mind?”

  “Yeah. I really don’t think that I can stay married to Izzy. My feelings for Bianca are just too strong. And she’s been living with us, which makes it that much harder. I never thought that I could feel like this about anyone, and to think that she’s the sister of the woman I have to be married to…” I shook my head. “Things simply aren’t going exactly according to plan.”

  “When have they ever? You just have to keep your head down and keep on going. You really don’t have any choice in the matter. And, until you can figure out a way that you can protect your interests and that of the company, then you need to make sure that you stay married to Izzy.”

  I sighed. Stay married to Izzy. Maybe forever. That really hurt. I was going to have to give up on Bianca, no matter what happened, because there wasn’t any way that I could stay married to Izzy for the rest of my life and carry on a long-term affair with her sister. “Thanks for setting me straight again. And thanks for seeing me.”

  Gianni nodded. “I’ll file a motion to reopen the case today and get Vinelli’s medical records. From there, we should be able to do some fancy footwork to make sure that Stefano is released from prison by Christmas.”

  Christmas. That was two months away. “
You think we can get all this done in a matter of months?”

  “Sure.” He smiled. “I got connections and I know how to work them. Don’t worry, Stefano will be out and Bianca will thaw about it. She might continue to be a bit angry, even after Stefano is out of prison, though, just because he had to go to prison in the first place. But let’s take one thing at a time. First, we get Stefano out, and then you can work on your relationship with his sister. Okay?”

  I nodded my head. “Thanks again.”

  “Not a problem.”

  As I drove home, I thought about Bianca. What if she never did forgive me? I certainly wouldn’t if I were in my position. I was responsible for her brother being imprisoned. And…

  I suddenly knew that I had to talk to Benito. His behavior with his son was so strange – abandoning him like that. Why would he do something like that to his own son? Just let him rot in prison, not even hiring a decent lawyer for him when he was accused of murder? That didn’t seem right or fair to me. I certainly wouldn’t do that with one of my children, no matter what they did.

  I was going to drive home, but I decided to make a pit stop to Benito’s home. I was going to get the real story on why he would let Stefano’s dick swing in the wind like that. Maybe that was the key to getting Stefano off altogether. At any rate, that would possibly be the key to getting the drug conviction vacated. That was the important thing, because I knew that Gianni would be able to get the murder charge reduced to simple assault, no problem. That is, assuming that Vinellli had an underlying medical condition that caused his death.

  I got to his home and just went up his apartment and rang the doorbell. Nona opened the door, looking surprised. “Well, hello,” she said, “Can I help you? You aren’t here because of Izzy, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I need to see Benito though. Right now.”