by Nicole Fox
The men stared at their hands or the tabletop, uncomfortable with seeing their leader in such a vulnerable position. But Big T couldn’t hide the truth. Everyone knew what had happened, and it wouldn’t go away simply by not talking about it.
“Now, there is another problem that we must address, and I’m going to ask for everyone’s opinion on it. I think that helps ensure that we make the right decision as a group—as a family. Joe Pitera is dead. Bruno Asaro is dead. That only leaves Michael Vincenzo as a threat to us. I believe we should eliminate him as soon as possible.” He stopped, meeting the eyes of each man in the room, waiting for one of them to speak up.
“It makes sense,” Bennie finally volunteered. “We know his family isn’t all that strong yet, but he’ll be working on that now that they know we’ve suffered. We should strike while we have the chance.”
“On the other hand, attacking another family is guaranteed to bring a backlash. If we kill Michael, then another Vincenzo will step up to take his place and go after us. We’d have to kill and kill again. How do we know where to stop?” It was Mack speaking this time, rolling his fingers around each other as he thought. He was never one to back down from a fight or a proposed contract, but he wanted to be sensible about this.
“That shouldn’t stop us,” countered Ray. Having been a witness to Joe’s confession, I wasn’t surprised that he was voting to kill Vincenzo. “It just means we have to be careful about things. If we send the right person out for the job, then nobody will be the wiser. It’ll never be pinned on us.” His eyes slid to me, but he said nothing.
Several more of the men commented with idea,s until Tonio called order once again. “While it’s not normally the kind of thing we do around here, this is a big issue. I want us to vote on it. Keep in mind that if, for any reason, this falls back on us, I will take the blame entirely.”
One by one, everyone voted yay or nay. In the end, the decision was made. “Now, then. Who wants the contract?”
“I do.” I had waited silently during the meeting, allowing the other men to have their say without my input. But now that I knew they wanted the same things that I did, I couldn’t just watch as another man went out to protect our family. “I want to do it.”
Big T looked at me, pride in his eyes, then turned his gaze back to the assemblage. “Does anyone have any objections?”
Some smiled and some shook their heads, but nobody argued.
“Very well. I’m happy to give you the contract.” He shook my hand, but as his grip enfolded mine, he pulled me close. “You do this for me, and I’ll happily step down and make way for you to become Don. You deserve it, Ciro, and you always have.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ciro
Sophia slipped into the study. She was trying to be quiet, but I heard her almost as soon as she was out of bed. I was working on a contract and my senses were attuned to anything that might sneak up behind me. She came up behind my chair, the remnants of her perfume wrapping around me as her arms did. “Are you ever coming to bed?”
I melted into her warmth, wishing I could follow her up the stairs and lie next to her in bed. I didn’t even need to make love with her, but just to lay down and finally relax. “It would be nice, but I’ve got work to do.” I looked at the notes I had meticulously accumulated, but I didn’t really see them.
“You’ve been working on this hit for two weeks.” Her voice was pleading and pitiful. “When am I going to get my husband back?”
“When he makes sure that we’re safe. Completely safe. I’ve been tracking and watching, measuring and scheduling. I have to make sure this goes off without a hitch. If I do it right, nobody will know it was me. Keeping the Santoras out of this is vital.”
“Why should anyone care?” she asked earnestly. “It sounds awful, but wouldn’t the law enforcement expect a mafia Don to be taken out by someone from a rival family? It’s like drug dealers killing each other on the streets. It matters to the people in the families, but nobody else will really care.”
“That’s not true.” I turned around to face her. “The police won’t care, no. But those of us who are part of the underbelly of the city will care. The last thing we need is the remaining Vincenzos to gang up on us or some other faction to believe they can use the opportunity to rise to power. It has to be quick, quiet, and discreet.”
She bent forward and kissed me. “If anyone can do it, it’s you.”
# # #
The sun was just rising over the city. I stood near the window of the rented apartment, caffeine and adrenaline flowing through my veins. This wasn’t the kind of hit I normally liked to do. It was much better to kill a man face-to-face—to let him know exactly who was taking him out and why. Even though what we were doing was illegal, it seemed like the honorable way to do things.
But killing Vincenzo was a different ballgame. His family wasn’t nearly as powerful as ours, but they could still do significant damage if they decided to seek revenge for Michael’s death. It would create an all-out war, which wasn’t something the city could handle. I didn’t want to see that happen.
Most of all, I’d had in the back of my mind the fact that Sophia and Christopher could be threatened if I left any loose ends. Pitera was dead, so I didn’t have to worry about him. Bruno’s death had reminded the remaining members of the family just how important it was to remain loyal. But if the hit was traced back to me, it wouldn’t take much research for someone to find out that I had a wife and child. They would be easy targets for a Vincenzo looking for vengeance.
With her face in my mind, I took up the gun I had stashed in the apartment. I’d spent a lot of money on a good suppressor and excellent optics, and the rifle was good itself. Those Hollywood silencers that reduced the sound of a gun so much that you couldn’t hear it in the next room were just props that helped the plot along. Nothing would make this shot completely silent, but it would keep it quiet enough that nobody would immediately notice where I was shooting from. It would also keep the flash to a minimum, so I wouldn’t be given away visually either.
I had learned over the last few weeks that Vincenzo was a casual man. He had his mansion in the suburbs on the opposite side of town from where the Santoras lived, but he liked to roam the streets that he imagined he ruled. Granted, our influence didn’t reach into this district. We preferred to be down by the docks and in the downtown area. But it was clear from my surveillance of him that Michael Vincenzo was not a man who feared that a contract might be put on his head.
Every morning at six sharp, he walked down the street with several of his capos at his side. When he reached the end of the block, he stopped in at a tiny coffee shop for about an hour before walking back home. It seemed that he sat at a different table each time, since he was sometimes in view from the window and sometimes not.
When his morning constitutional was complete, he ran his business from an office on the top floor of a large skyscraper. Capos went in and out both the front and the back doors all day long, but Vincenzo stayed inside, even for lunch. Michael rarely left until it was nearly dinner time. Then, a black car picked him up and took him back home. He didn’t even have a car following him. I wondered at his pride.
I knew that getting to him in the skyscraper would be too dangerous. It would be hard to fight all the way up to his office, and then there was the matter of getting away again. I didn’t want to target him in the coffee shop, since there were so many other customers. If this hit was to draw the least amount of attention, then I didn’t need any casualties besides Michael himself.
I had checked out the mansion, but I knew before I even looked at it that I didn’t want to do the hit there. It was harder to escape in the suburbs, where the lawns were wide and covered in landscape lighting. I had to think about not just getting the job done, but getting away quickly.
That only left his morning walk. As I prepared myself, I realized that this might be the best way to do it. Vincenzo would be like a deer, wild and free i
n the woods before the hunter felled him, unsuspecting and pure.
An iron ball settled in my stomach as I waited for him to come around the corner. It was almost time. He reached this particular intersection every weekday within a five minute window. My heart pounded. I took in a deep breath and pushed it out slowly to calm myself and steady my hands. I was five floors up and I wanted to get Vincenzo the moment he came around the corner. It would be harder for anyone to determine exactly where the shot had come from, and I would have more time to get away.
I watched through my scope, still breathing deeply. I longed to run down the stairs and out into the street to confront Vincenzo and take him down the way he should be. But I reminded myself just who I was doing this for. This hit was for Sophia, Christopher, my father, and Frankie. Everyone I cared about. It had to be right.
Exactly on time, one of the men I recognized as a Vincenzo capo came around the corner. Michael was just a yard or so behind him, strolling in the morning sunshine like he didn’t have a care in the world. He was a much slimmer man than my father, his pale-gray hair clubbed back into a low ponytail and his shaggy beard hanging down over the lapel of his suit jacket. The Don carried a cane with a gold ball at the head of it, the finely-lacquered wood shining. He squinted into the sun as he said something to the man next to him, probably discussing what coffee they would get that morning.
With one deep breath in, I steadied myself and squeezed the trigger. Michael paused on the sidewalk, looking down with surprise at the hole I’d put in his chest. His knees hit the concrete first. The man next to him took him in his arms and tried to drag him into the doorway of a nearby business, but the other capos—one ahead and one behind—had their weapons drawn and were looking for the enemy.
I retreated quickly into the apartment. I wanted to stay there and watch to ensure that he was dead, but there was no time for such luxuries. I had to get out of the apartment fast. Word confirming his death would come down the line within the next day, but I already knew I hadn’t failed. I had done my duty as an underboss, as a son, as a husband, and as a father. Frankie’s death had been avenged several times over, and my family was safe.
The apartment I had rented had been chosen carefully. Renovations were being done on the floor below me, but the crew never got in until at least eight in the morning. Breaking down my weapon and wrapping it up into an old, canvas drop cloth and grabbing a tool bag, I casually stepped out into the hall and took the stairs to the fourth level. Dressed in dirty jeans and a stained shirt, I looked like a worker who had arrived early as I strolled into the construction zone.
A large tube had been attached to one of the windows, and it ran straight down to the dumpster. The gun slid down with ease. A nearby trash bin, full of packaging material and bits of wood, was emptied into the tube next. Nobody would look into the dumpster below and imagine what the drop cloth actually held. If I had the chance to send somebody back to fetch it later, then so be it. Otherwise, it would be lost and never found again.
With the weapon taken care of, I had to get myself back to the right side of town. Calmly leaving the apartment, I forced myself to descend the rest of the stairs slowly and exit on the opposite side of the building from where the incident had happened. This put about a block and a half between myself and Vincenzo’s body. I pulled my ratty baseball cap a little more firmly down on my head when I heard the distant whine of sirens.
Making my way down the next street and taking a right, I stopped in at a busy fast-food joint and made my way directly to the restroom. My tool bag held a change of clothes instead of tools, and I was soon dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt. I was now just the average business man on his way to work. I left the tool bag in the supply closet and dumped my construction-worker clothes in the trash can, being sure to leave enough crumpled paper towels over the top of them that nobody would see them right away.
As I made my way to the subway station, I knew I was leaving a bit of a trail behind me. But I was no secret agent. I was a mobster, and I was used to a different way of doing things. Still, there wasn’t much choice, and it would keep me awake at night for the next week as I wondered if any of the cops were smart enough to figure it out. But I also knew that this was a big city. There were many people who would be glad to kill Vincenzo, and it would be difficult for the police to even know where to start. I held my breath as I stepped onto the train, but nobody even bothered looking at me. Just because I was a powerful man in the underworld of crime families and black markets didn’t make me a celebrity. I smiled. It was perfect.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sophia
The sink was full of dirty dishes, and the scent of hot, buttered bread curled its fingers throughout the house. My feet ached a little from the time I’d spent in the kitchen, but I hummed happily to myself. The salad had been tossed, and I was just finishing the homemade oil-and-vinegar recipe I had recently perfected when Ciro walked in the kitchen. “Get out,” I told him. “I’m not ready yet.”
“But I’m hungry,” he replied as he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist.
I took a moment to sink into the strong heat of his body. There was nothing better than being with a man I loved and knowing that he loved me back. I capped the salad dressing bottle and set it on the counter. “If you keep coming in here before dinner is ready, the rest of the family is going to begin thinking I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Trust me, if my mother thought you needed help she would be right here at your side.” He nuzzled his lips into my neck, nipping delicately at my skin. “I just want to know what’s for dessert.”
I turned in his arms, catching my breath as I looked up into those emerald eyes. Ciro always got me with those. “Maybe nothing if we never get around to dinner,” I teased.
“Okay, okay!” He took his hands off me and held them in the air. “I’ll just wait patiently like a good boy.”
Laughing, I turned to get the lasagna out of the oven. The scent of the bubbling cheese and homemade tomato sauce drifted through the kitchen. I knew it wouldn’t be as good as the food Carlita could make, but I had come a long way since the frozen meals and diner leftovers that Christopher and I had survived on before. Now that I didn’t need to worry about money or time, I could buy quality ingredients and actually learn how to do something with them. It didn’t hurt to have Carlita coming over a few times a week to teach me what she knew.
“I learned everything from my grandmother,” she would say as she showed me how to make homemade pasta. “For a long time, I thought she was crazy for always doing things the hard way. I realized, though, that she was just trying to do them the right way. It’s worth it, in the long run.”
Though I thanked her often, I didn’t think she knew just how much I appreciated what she was doing for me. I wanted to become a true matriarch. The family dinners, if I continued on this path, would include not just our immediate family, but the capos as well. The idea of feeding all those hungry men and hearing their thanks made me warm inside.
Now, my mentor slipped into the kitchen. “I managed to get past the boys. They’re in the study, smoking cigars and starting early on the wine. Is there anything I can help you with?” Carlita held the bottle of salad dressing up to the light and nodded her approval.
I smiled. I knew that she was only asking because she cared and she wanted to be helpful. She wasn’t like most mothers-in-law, who felt nobody could be good enough for their sons or live up to their own legacies. “I think I have everything. I just need to get it all to the table.”
Carlita took the large bowl of salad while I grabbed the lasagna. We made a second trip back for the breadsticks, the salad dressing, and another bottle of wine. I couldn’t wait to dig in. Ciro and Tonio were just coming in from the study.
“I think it’s going to work quite well, actually,” Ciro said as he took his rightful place at the head of the table. “Opening a new coffee house will take profits right out of the poc
kets of the remaining Vincenzos. They’re at their weakest right now.”
Big T shook his head, his jowls quivering. “But we don’t know what kind of business they’re running out of the back room. It might not affect them at all, and then we’ve sunk all that money into a new frontage.”
“Dad, it’s a coffee shop. Slap a little local art on the walls, bring in a young barista with a coffee machine, and it’s done. Besides, I happen to know they don’t have anything running out of the back. It’s a café and nothing more.” He looked confident and serene despite their banter. Ciro had been working diligently to improve every facet of the family business since he had taken over as Don. While I had to admit I sometimes begrudged him the extra time he spent in his study, I could see that it was good for him. I’d never seen him look so happy.