Moolie. It’s been so long since I heard that derogatory Italian word for black people, it takes me a few beats to understand what Peter is telling me. But when I do, my head fills with static, drowning out the rest of Peter’s complaint.
Because Danny Jr.’s not only an enforcer for the Romano family, but he also has a black girlfriend. One he’s keeping here in this killing house, just like our father did with my mother before I was born?
My stomach curdles, and I choke on pure air because this situation is the very opposite of what I wanted for my son. In fact, this is every single nightmare I’ve ever had over Luca Jr.’s well-being come to sudden life. And for a moment my mind threatens to cave in at the thought of my baby being raised here by a mob enforcer and his black mistress.
Exactly like I was.
But no…no…I try to assure myself, grabbing hold of my mind before it descends into a complete panic. I might be locked in this cage, but Luca will come to save me. Of course, he will—
“And you should know,” Peter adds as if reading my thoughts. “Thanks to my guy on the inside, I was able to set it up, so that Luca will think you went through with your original plan. He won’t be coming here to save you. In fact, right now he probably hates you.”
19
After You’ve Gone
Luca
This morning, I loved Amber more than my own life. But right now, looking out at the New York side view of the Hudson from my home office, I hate her with the force of a thousand bullets.
This morning’s profession of love…the wedding…the sudden and unexpected request for peace—it had all been lies. Carefully constructed to get me to trust her enough to tell her all my secrets, which she was now prepared to use against me in court.
“No! No! That’s a lie! It’s not true!”
I look away from the view to see Naima shaking her head over the phone I’d handed her as soon as Stone escorted her into my office. The one Joey found on the roof, hidden inside a potted plant. I’d wanted Naima to be on the same page as me, Stone, and Joey, before any further conversation.
However, even after reading over the text thread that laid Amber’s betrayal out plain and clear, Naima insists, “Amber would never do this. She’d never just leave you without telling me. I was, like, her first call after you left her behind in that hospital.”
I shake my head, because, “You said it yourself. She and you haven’t been in a good place since whatever went down between you two before Amber went into early labor.”
“Maybe,” Naima hedges. “But Amber wouldn’t leave me out to dry like this. She’d at least tell me.”
“Not if she knew she was going into WITSEC and never had to see your face again,” Stone answers.
Stone’s right, I think. Naima’s fear about Amber keeping her at a distance since Lucky’s birth had probably been based in something. Just not what she thought.
“You’ve seen that phone before?” Stone asks Naima, nodding toward the incriminating evidence still clutched inside her hand.
Naima’s shoulder’s hunch as if Stone’s question punched her in the solar plexus. “Yes, but…”
“Did you know she was in communication with her brother?” Stone asks, cutting off whatever excuse she was about to make on Amber’s behalf.
Now Naima really slumps. “Okay, yes,” she admits. “Technically, I was hiding the burner in my room for her. But she told me she was planning on staying with you when I caught her with the phone on the roof the day she went into early labor. Or else I never would have left her here.”
I hone in on only one part of that confession. “What do you mean you caught her with the phone that day.”
Naima visibly swallows. “Okay, I’d been bringing the phone to her every other Wednesday, so that she could call Peter. I was also responsible for keeping it charged for her. But the Thursday Rock told me I had to move out of here, I came back early and found Amber on the roof. It, um, looked like she was sending a speech-to-text to her brother. But that doesn’t mean…”
The rest of Naima’s words disappear as my mind goes white static with unadulterated rage.
Naima’s confession makes the evidence Joey found on the roof irrefutable. The phone, Naima claimed not to have touched for three months is still fully charged. And the text messages back and forth between Amber and her brother are the only thing on it.
The image of Amber’s messages to her brother burns in my brain as if I’m reading them all over again….
“He’s an animal. A killer.”
“He’s already made me marry him. I’m scared of what he’ll do if I try to leave him.”
“I can’t keep pretending. He’s going to start getting suspicious if you don’t get me out of here soon.”
And Peter Peretti’s messages back:
“Just hold tight, sis. I’m doing everything I can. Richard’s working on it too, from the inside.”
“I don’t want him to hurt you or the baby. But he has some deep connections, and I’m not getting a lot of traction with my boss. I’ve told him all about your situation, and he refuses to do anything about it. Think he or somebody else in our office might be in Luca’s pocket.”
There was only one message after that one, but it was time-stamped yesterday.
“Okay, Richard and I have come up with an extraction plan. Be ready to go tomorrow and whatever you do, don’t let Ferraro find this phone.”
It’s all written out, clear as day.
But Naima refuses to believe any of it. Even after hearing from Joey how he dropped Rock and Amber off at the doctor’s office, only to have them never come back out. And reading all of the messages on Amber’s secret burner phone herself.
“She wouldn’t do this without telling me. I know she wouldn’t,” Naima insists, handing me back the phone. “And who is this Richard person anyway?”
I exchange a look with Stone, because yeah, doesn’t that question just prove how little Naima really “knows” about this situation? “That’s Rock’s real name,” Stone answers, his voice hard and flat.
But that just gets Naima’s head shaking even more. “No…Rock wouldn’t do that,” she breathes out., her face stubborn with shock. “He wouldn’t betray you. Half our arguments were about him never refusing to follow your orders, no matter how bad things got between you and Amber. And I think that’s why he—”
She cuts off, folding her arms across her chest. “No, I don’t believe Amber would collude with Rock to do this. I mean, she never even approved of our relationship. She kept telling me we weren’t a real match.”
I shake my head at her, wondering how she’s not hearing the same things I am in the words coming out her mouth. Every excuse she makes provides further proof of Amber’s duplicity. Amber pushed her away because she was going into WITSEC with my baby and knew Naima wouldn’t be joining them. She told Naima to stay away from Rock because she knew he was a double-crosser.
Yet here’s Naima insisting. “She absolutely wouldn’t leave you. If she were capable of that, we’d be at my house right now, raising Lucky together.”
I regard her for an annoyed beat, then turn to Stone to say, “So this is a dead end. She doesn’t know anything.”
“Nope.” Stone turns his back on Naima, now that she’s ceased to be of any kind of use. Then he lowers his voice to say, “I’ll take the fall for whatever that Peretti fuck tries to throw at you for the Deltano murders. But let me handle my brother.”
I think about it. Because Stone’s basically offering to catch all my charges if I spare Rock’s life. But….
Amber’s betrayed me. She’s taken my baby. And Rock, the cousin who felt more like a brother to me helped her do it.
I glance at Naima. The woman he betrayed his crime family for and shake my head. “I’m not making any deals. Not until I find her and get Lucky back.”
“How the hell are we going to do that?” Stone asks. “Rock’s our tech guy, and he’s out of pocket.”
; I curse because he’s right. Rock’s the one who either handles all of our technical shit or calls in “hack-up” to do the job for him.
I don’t have so much as a telephone number for any of the techs on our secret payroll. And I wouldn’t even know how to get on the dark web, much less hire a freelancer to hunt down Amber and my child. But wait, that’s not exactly true. I do have the contact info for at least one of those “dark web fuckers.”
My heart a dead thing inside my chest, I pull out my phone and text the one computer genius I know outside of Rock.
“No.”
That’s the only reply I receive to my message about Amber colluding with her brother to leave me and take the baby with her. Even after I offered Amber a custody agreement out before asking her to remarry me a few months ago, just like the hidden assistant and I had talked about.
“Yes,” I type back.
“WTF you do to her?”
I answer with the truth: “Nothing but love, honor, and cherish the fuck out of her, just like I vowed. Twice.”
A slight pause, then a new message appears.
“She wouldn’t do that. Not without taking Naima, too.”
This shit again. I start typing to argue the point with the assistant, too, but before I can finish, a new message appears. “Still got the burner you found?”
“Yes.”
“See you in five,” s/he types.
I lower the phone, not sure what else to do. Or how to even begin to look for Amber without Rock’s help.
With a bitter pang, I remember how impressed Amber had seemed by the way I’d organized the shadier side of the Ferraro Family’s operations, with only Rock and Stone able to talk with me directly. But that had apparently been one of many acts because she had to know what I didn’t. That Rock had already turned state’s evidence on me.
My heart seizes up anew with the betrayal. Especially from Rock. I mean sure, shit like this happens every day. Some of the biggest mafiosos in history have sold out everybody and their mother to reduce their sentences. That’s why I made up the policy of using my cousins, and only my cousins, as my mouthpiece. But now that strategy has come back to bite me in the ass.
I never would have guessed Rock capable of this. Not in a million years. And yeah, Peretti’s gotta have something good on him, but I should have been Rock’s very next step after Peretti got to him. He knows I’d do anything to prevent him from going west like his dad and our grandfather.
Or maybe he didn’t.
Who the hell knows. The world has turned upside down, and now my wife and baby are gone, along with my right hand.
And the only resource I have for finding them quickly may or may not help me, depending on what he or she finds on the burner phone Amber left behind.
I return to the window and stare depressed as fuck at the New York skyline. Funny, just this morning after sex with Amber, I’d looked at this same view and felt like a king. Like everything I ever wanted was mine.
But now….
It turns out that happiness was a lie. Everything I ever wanted is gone. Leaving nothing but rage and despair behind.
20
The Saddest Thing Of All
Amber
“Ambs…Ambs, baby…c’mon, time to get up.”
No ten more minutes this time. I come awake with a start. “Luca?” I say, head turning every which way as I search for his voice.
“Yeah, baby, it’s me. I’m here to rescue you.”
“Oh, thank God!” Pushing myself off the concrete floor, I run to him and he catches me in his arms.
“I love you so much! I know Peter and Rock tried to make it seem like I didn’t, but I do. So, so much. And yes, it’s true that I was trying to leave you at first, but not now. I want to be with you, raise Luca Jr. with you. I want us to love each other and be a better family than mine. Please believe me! Please!”
“Don’t worry, I believe you, Ambs,” he croons in my ear, holding me tight. “Of course, I believe you.”
I’m so relieved, tears spring to my eyes. “Thank you,” I whisper into his shoulder, padded as always, because, of course, he came to rescue me in a suit. “Thank you.”
But then, a piercing cry splits the air, hardening my breasts into painful boulders on my chest. Instead of Luca’s arms, all I can feel is liquid dribbling down the front of my dress. And instead of cologne, all I can smell is blood and sweat and dank, dank basement.
I wake up. For real this time, on my cell’s hard, concrete floor, the beautiful dream morphing back into the ugly nightmare of my current reality.
Luca Jr….my baby is crying in the distance. Needing milk, needing his mama. But he’s too far away for me to get to. I can’t go to him, can’t feed him and tell him everything will be all right. Maybe not ever again.
And then there’s the blood and sweat. Not mine, I realize with another sniff of the air. I can hear wheezing. The kind of shallow in an out that brings me back to my first office space in Queens in an instant. Lying on the floor with a broken rib, stabbing me like a knife, every time I dare to breathe.
“Rock…” I guess, crawling toward the painful-sounding wheeze. “Is that you?”
“Yeah… yeah… probably should have… told those… maniac brothers of yours…what they… wanted to hear. Don’t… think… they… liked… my… answers… too… much.
So my imprisonment—this wasn’t Rock, I figure out at that moment. He’d been interrogated in the mob enforcer way, and that wouldn’t have been necessary if he’d been the one to coordinate my kidnapping in the first place. But then, who…?
Rock’s pained, wet cough breaks me away from my thoughts about whoever conspired with Peter to betray Luca this way.
My heart freezes at the sound of Rock’s cough, wet and more pained than a broken rib. Plus, the metallic stench in the air is near to overpowering. Too much blood, I think to myself as my hands reach out with a mind of their own and find a slimy mess where Rock’s stomach should be.
He’s been stabbed! More than once possibly and left to bleed out here in the basement with me. A scream lodges in my throat, my mind threatening to blank in horror.
But I swallow the scream before it can get out, forcing my mind into sharp focus. First aid…this calls for first aid. Instead of losing my entire shit in this basement cell, I rip off my sweater cardigan.
“Lil…late…for…that…” Rock says when I cover the wound with my sweater. “Don’t…don’t bother…won’t be…long…now….”
“No, Rock, stay with me,” I beg, applying pressure over my makeshift sweater bandage.
“Tell… Naima… sorry… tell… Luca… Stone… Ma… love… love…”
“You tell them yourself,” I insist, my voice low and fierce. “Whatever it is, you tell them yourself!”
But Rock doesn’t answer, and the sweater… it’s wet now, fully soaked with his blood. Oh God!
“Help! Somebody, please help!” I scream in the direction of the bars. But of course, no one answers. Desperately I scramble for an argument that will convince Danny Jr. “He’s bleeding out, and that's going to make him hard to carry to his grave. You don’t want to do that, right? Make it easier on yourself!”
I turn back to Rock to reassure him, give him a reason to hang on, but…
The body underneath my sweater has gone entirely still. And my own body goes cold as I say, “Rock?” my voice trembling and small.
No answer.
“Rock?”
Still no answer.
And maybe he’s passed out. I can deal with passed out. But I have to check.
My fingers find his neck, hoping for the best, but no, no, not this time. No matter how long I keep my hand there, reposition it, and keep it there some more, a pulse never comes. And as I check and check, his body becomes colder and stiller until I finally sink back on my knees.
Everything is quiet. The baby is no longer crying upstairs.
But as for me, I cover my face with my hands and begin
to weep.
21
Out Beyond The Window
Naima
I watch, incredulous, as Luca sends a few texts, then goes to stand at the longest of the three floor-to-ceiling windows that make up his outer office walls.
Why is he just standing there, staring off into space? I wonder, impatiently glancing at Rock. But he’s just standing there, too. With his hands crossed in front of his waist, like he’s awaiting orders from the big boss.
However, I’m not one of Luca Ferraro’s lackeys, so I look over my shoulder at Joey, near the open door to ask, “Why are we all just standing around, instead of trying to find Amber?”
“And Rock,” Stone adds, turning around to fully face me like he was just waiting for me to say something else. “Think you’d be more loyal to the guy who quit our family to be with you.”
My head jerks back at that accusation. “He did what?”
“You heard me. Rock quit. He gave Luca his two weeks’ notice. Because of you!”
I shake my head. “No…I…no, that can’t be. If he quit your criminal organization, it wasn’t because of me.”
“Da fuck you mean it wasn’t because of you?” Stone demands, his normally expressionless face contorting ugly with anger. “For a social worker, you got a real fucked sense of personal responsibility. Here’s Rock ready to give up everything for your ungrateful ass, and you can’t even acknowledge the shit he did for you? Cuz if his betrayal is anybody’s fault, it’s yours.”
Okay, I’ve barely managed to do much more than reflexively flinch whenever Stone—or as I like to call him, the scary AF twin walks into the room, much less talks to me direct. But today is different. Today I step to him, toe to toe, my heart filled with indignant fury.
“Look, I get that you were raised some kind of terrible by your father, and according to Rock, this is the only way you know how to be. But you are a goddamn bully. You bullied Rock into joining this crime family with you. You bullied Amber and me into coming here. But I’ll be damned if I let you bully me one second longer. I’m not afraid of you. And I’m not backing down. Not until Luca gets it through his thick head that Amber’s in trouble and he has to find her.”
AMBER - His to Reclaim (Ruthlessly Obsessed Duet, Book 2): 50 Loving States, New York Pt. 2 (Ruthless Tycoons 4) Page 14