The Guzzi Legacy: Vol 1

by Bethany-Kris

  The shadowy figures approaching the frosted glass of the front door drew Corrado’s attention there instead of his phone call. As the door opened, and he said goodbye to his brother to give his time to the people who needed it, the only thing to drift through his mind was, I don’t need time to figure this out, I know what I want.

  Alessio and Ginevra.

  Until the day he died.

  • • •

  Alessio

  “Why is this stoop twice the size of a normal brownstone?” Ginevra asked.

  Alessio opened the door without knocking—as per Corrado’s earlier instructions. Although, he hadn’t known until they pulled up to the place that it would be a brownstone, so he still wasn’t sure why they were here. “I’m not sure, you’ll need to ask Corrado that.”

  “Ask me what?”

  Corrado stood just beyond the doorway, leaning against the wall like he had watched the two of them walk up the stoop together. He probably had. Smiling at the two, he winked.

  “The stoop,” Ginevra said, leaving Alessio’s side to greet Corrado with a quick kiss, and a soft pat to his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “It’s double the size.”

  “Because this brownstone is also double the size.”

  Ginevra looked around the empty hallway, the hardwood floors gleaming under their feet. Then, she peeked back at Alessio with an arched brow. “And very ... lonely without furniture, or anything on the walls.”

  Corrado chuckled. “Well, that’s because you’ll have to decorate it, or hire someone to do that for you.”

  Ginevra stilled.

  Alessio looked to Corrado. “What?”

  “It’s double the size because double the people need space here what with the girls, and all of us. It’s empty because I closed on it yesterday, and the only thing we can keep is the big oak desk in the office upstairs because the movers weren’t able to take it apart to get it out of the door without compromising the structural integrity.”

  “You bought this?” Ginevra asked.

  Corrado lifted a shoulder. “Well, I had to use private accounts separate from Les’s, so he wouldn’t have a clue what I did either—it’s not often I get to surprise him, too.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  Ginevra’s apartment happened to be a good size for a New York place, but it still wasn’t that big. And when you had two teenage girls, two grown men, and Ginevra trying to share the same spaces, it became ... crowded.

  “Three bathrooms,” Corrado murmured, “five bedrooms, a little backyard, and an underground garage that can fit three vehicles.”

  “How much?” Ginevra asked.

  “A lot,” he returned, “but worth every single penny.”

  “Corrado.”

  Having money that was disposable still seemed like a foreign concept to Ginevra. She couldn’t throw away money like them, but she was getting better at accepting they would spend money.

  A lot.

  “You need a bigger space,” Corrado said, “you can’t keep studying in bed, or trying to find space at a tiny table when the girls have their books all over it. I don’t like you’re in an apartment building with hundreds of other people. And Les and I ... we’re moving everything around to be here with you until we figure out something different, Ginevra. Because this is where we want to be—starting a life. That starts with somewhere to live.”

  She made a soft noise under her breath.

  Alessio smiled. “This is a good surprise.”

  Corrado laughed. “You think?”

  “Not what I expected.”

  “But it’s perfect,” Ginevra whispered, letting Alessio pull her in close to press a kiss to the middle of her forehead.

  “A big enough grand gesture for both of you, then?”

  Right.

  Corrado had always been the one willing to take a step back from telling them what he wanted for the sake of his pride. Heaven forbid they understand he needed them as much as they needed him.

  Not now, though.

  He made it perfectly clear.

  Ginevra left Alessio’s embrace to lean in and press another quick kiss to Corrado’s grinning lips. Alessio stepped forward, too, finding Corrado’s hand with his own to squeeze tight before he wrapped his other arm around Ginevra’s back.

  They were better together.

  “Yeah, more than big enough,” Alessio told him.

  Ginevra smiled at both. “I want a tour.”

  She said the magic word.

  Want.

  They were always quick to give.

  CHRIS

  The Guzzi Legacy, 3

  1.

  Beautiful distractions hid the worst of crimes.

  The table, draped in silk, and filled with food cooked by a renown chef, welcomed their guests, in a dining room with walls covered in expensive art. It proved to Valeria that the other people sitting down at the table for dinner would forget the young lady—who was barely a woman—across from them had been in the papers just a few months ago.

  They wouldn’t remember her face had been on the news after her mother’s murder—the wife of a prominent Mexican politician. They didn’t seem to remember how just months later she walked down the aisle, not yet sixteen at that point, forced to marry the son of the man who had invited them to this dinner.

  None of it mattered to them.

  Money talked.

  And it apparently said very nice things.

  Like the silk linen, the coveted art, delicious food, and beautiful people dressed in their best with glittering diamonds showcased on their bodies to prove their status and wealth. All of it became a promise to them. Should these people keep quiet about the other issues at the table, like Valeria, then the Lòpezs would make a deal.

  They liked that.

  Deals.

  Better known as bribes, or blackmail. It depended on her husband, and his father’s, preference or their need. When it had been her father on the other side of this table, they had wanted a promise he would help them smuggle their illegal drugs into the United States where he had connections to border control.

  Her father said no.

  They killed his wife.

  Her father then agreed.

  And so, they took her, too, and forced her to marry the oldest son of the Lòpez cartel’s leader. A way to drive the point home, she figured. Because that’s all she had been.

  And now, she was a trophy.

  A beautiful thing.

  Something to own.

  “Sonreírse,” Jorge said to her left, his Spanish order for her to smile coming out dark, and harsh, even under his breath. He watched her constantly, and when she didn’t behave as he wanted her to, he made her aware. His fingers curved around her thigh under the table, flexing enough to make her draw in a quick breath. “Now, Valeria.”

  Her gaze swept the people at the table, a business meeting, they told her. Right, more like a way to manipulate and gain what the Lòpez family needed to do their work without trouble. Tonight, it was cops in high positions of power. Officers that controlled the subordinates under them, which corrupted the system further, but allowed the cartel to breathe a little easier.

  This was how it worked.

  She smiled when the wife of one officer turned her attention away from Valeria’s sister-in-law, Abril, to the ones at the other side of the table. The whole damn family sat there—from her father-in-law, Martín, to Jorge’s younger brother, Samuel. They pulled out all the stops to draw these people into their traps without using violent means first—the cartel’s usual way.

  When someone denied them things turned bad. Valeria’s family was a good example of that.

  “Martín,” the woman said to Valeria’s father-in-law, smiling a little too widely, “you must be pleased, sí?”

  What was her name again?

  Missy?

  More American than Mexican. A dual citizen of both countries, if she trusted what her husband told her about their guests earlier, which kep
t the conversation drifting back and forth between English and Spanish for most of the dinner.

  Not that Valeria cared to engage.

  “Pleased about what?” Martín asked, tipping his wine glass up for a drink.

  Out of all the people at this table, Valeria hated Martín the most. A difficult task for him to accomplish, considering she married his son, a man who beat her to keep her in line. He had suggested the marriage after killing her mother, like they should have expected it.

  Still, she blamed him.

  For all of this.

  Across the table, Missy nodded at Valeria with a subtle tilt of her chin. Her grin reached to her eyes, as though she held a secret, but for now, she was only hinting at it.

  Martín seemed to understand.

  “Ah, el bebé,” Martín said, chuckling. Setting his glass to the table harder than necessary, proving just how much he had imbibed over the course of the dinner, he smiled and nodded. “Very pleased. We hoped it would be a niño for us. A boy. And yet, it seems it will be a girl, but that’s okay, too.”

  Valeria had done her best throughout the dinner to not draw attention to herself. For the last several months, they had not allowed her out of the Lòpez’s compound after her marriage. This was one of the first dinners she attended, and her greatest fears would be that someone would ask about her father, apologize for her mother’s death, or even, like now, want to discuss her current life.

  Valeria’s hand lifted from the table to rest upon the swell of her stomach. Under her palm, she felt the baby girl shift from her mother’s touch, but like the good baby she already seemed to be, the child settled, allowing Valeria little discomfort from the movement.

  “Congratulations,” the woman said to Valeria. “Babies are gifts.”

  “Blessings,” the man next to her added.

  Right.

  Her husband created this baby through violent means and pain, but she wouldn’t say so. Was raping her a blessing? And besides, she loved her daughter. She loved her enough that she sat at this table, kept her smile on, and shut her fucking mouth so that Jorge wouldn’t beat her later in the evening when everyone left. Then, the baby wouldn’t get hurt, too.

  “Thank you,” Valeria whispered.

  Her first words at the dinner.

  No one seemed to notice.

  Next to her, Jorge gave Valeria a tight smile. Another warning, she figured, but without him speaking it out loud. She didn’t need him to do that at all—she was aware what he expected of her, and what the punishment would be if she failed.

  It used to scare her.

  He terrified her.

  Now, she just ... worried.

  For this child she carried, mostly. Because what would happen to her once she made her presence known in the world. Valeria, all of sixteen years old, but she would be seventeen before this baby was born. Not that it mattered because what control did a girl of her age have against a man like her husband. Six years her senior, a criminal who had only taken her because of the status it would provide him, and far too power hungry for his own good.

  What could she do?

  How might she protect this baby from him?

  From the rest of them?

  “Val, would you like another drink of water?”

  At the soft question from a familiar, kind voice, Valeria came out of her thoughts to see her sister-in-law standing from the seat on the other side of hers. Abril gave Valeria a small smile, but in her eyes she found the truth.

  Concern warred in Abril’s gaze.

  Older than her by a few months, Abril was the only person in the Lòpez family that Valeria had made friends with, and sometimes, she even questioned it because she no longer trusted anyone. Abril had done nothing to prove she deserved that hesitation though. She helped.

  And she had promised to help more.

  “Water?” Abril asked again.

  Valeria nodded. “Yes, thank you, that would be nice.”

  Abril passed Valeria’s chair, her hand coming to rest on her shoulder as she bent down to whisper, “The plan happens tonight—I received the message.”

  As quickly as Abril had told her the words, ones that might promise her freedom, she was leaving the dining room and the rest behind. Valeria looked to the man at her side, finding her husband distracted, and grinning at the young wife of an official across the table from him.

  That grin meant he wanted to fuck the woman.

  Valeria didn’t care.

  The promise of freedom would make a person smile, no matter how dangerous, crazy, and even if there was no guarantee her plan to run away would work.

  Still, she had to try.

  For this child, she had to.

  “Valeria.”

  She hoped the guilt didn’t show on her face when she met Jorge’s gaze. He never missed her distractions. Now didn’t seem like a good time to play with fire. The blank expression he wore said she was the last thing on his mind.

  Good.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sure you won’t mind going home to the compound alone tonight, will you?” he asked.

  He posed it like a question.

  It wasn’t.

  “Of course, not,” she said.

  “I’ll be home for breakfast. Take care of my baby. You got me?”

  Better than he understood.

  • • •

  Valeria did her best to soothe the nerves running wild as she brushed down the colt, Butter, in the stables. Butter, only two months old, had given Valeria a reason to visit the stables on the compound more often over the last couple of months.

  The compound itself, set on a good twenty acres of secluded, desolate land protected by armed guards, allowed the Lòpez family privacy. To the east, one would find cliffs leading out to choppy, dangerous ocean water. The guards and an electric fence secured the only road leading out of the compound. Two larger barns, used like warehouses and full of drugs to smuggle, sat further west of the compound, while their homes and stables made up a small village right in the center.

  There was no way out.

  Or so they thought ...

  One simply needed enough time, and the means to make it happen. Not that they ever gave her the opportunity to run before. She could rarely do anything without a guard or her husband nearby to watch her do ... whatever.

  The stables, however, were her free time. Or, that’s how Jorge liked to put it. He didn’t have much interest in the horses, it was more of a pet project for his siblings, and some guards that stayed on the property.

  Valeria took a liking to the horses because her husband didn’t care. He wouldn’t follow her into the stables to look after the horses, and he didn’t mind her taking one out for a ride—like she did after arriving back to the compound that night—as long as someone was with her to keep an eye on her.

  But when she looked after the horses in the stables?

  No one cared.

  No one watched her, then.

  The sound of boots crunching against dried grass, and the hay that fell around the outside of the stables during the last delivery, made Valeria slow the strokes of her brush against the colt’s hind end. She peered up over the back of the colt in just enough time to see Abril slip into the stables.

  Dressed in riding boots, a helmet in hand, jeans molded to her legs, and a shawl that would keep her warm on a ride, Abril looked ready to take a horse out.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Valeria swallowed hard. “Did they see you?”

  “One or two.”

  God.

  That just made Valeria nervous. Her heart threatened to jump into her throat. Was this possible? Would this even work?

  She didn’t know.

  But she had to try.

  “Stop worrying,” Abril whispered, coming closer to the colt, and Valeria. “We have it all worked out, right? You went out on a horse and came back with a guard. They saw you do it. And like usual, you’re in here taking care of the horses—nothi
ng strange.”

  Right, right.

  “But—”

  “But nothing. They’ll see me go out on a horse,” Abril said, shrugging, “and they won’t think anything strange when they see you go into the house.”

  Valeria nodded.

  Except it wouldn’t be Abril taking a horse out, and it wouldn’t be Valeria heading back to the house. The girls were close enough in age, and in some ways, appearance given their olive-toned skin was the same, their stark, straight black hair both reached mid-back, and as long as someone was looking at them from behind while they sat on a horse, no one would tell the difference.

  Abril had an inch of height on Valeria. Her eyes were a shade deeper brown than Valeria’s russet gaze. Her sister-in-law took after her family in appearance. Sharp, angular jaws, elongated features. Whereas Valeria had a softer, rounder face, and lower cheekbones that always showed the apples of her cheeks when she smiled.

  Looking at them face to face, it was clear the two looked nothing alike. But from behind, and on a horse, at a distance?

  No one would be able to tell.

  “Someone has to see you come back, though,” Valeria pointed out. “Or they’ll believe you helped me get away.”

  Abril shrugged as she dropped the riding helmet to the floor of the stables and kicked off her riding boots. “And they will.”

  “How?”

  “You know Juan?”

  “Samuel’s guard?”

  Her brother-in-law had a friend—friend being a loose term because Valeria wasn’t sure any of the people in this family had someone they cared about, except for Abril. Point was, Samuel preferred one guard amongst the many that looked after them at the compound.

  “What about him?” Valeria asked.

  Abril smirked up at Valeria. “He’ll do me a favor, okay? Tit for tat, I gave him something he wanted, and he’ll make sure someone saw me come back tonight on foot after the horse threw me off. Now, are you going to get dressed and switch clothes with me, or keep wasting time?”

  Valeria had so many more questions.

  What kind of favor?

  What had Abril done?

  “All right,” Valeria muttered.

  The two of them stepped into a stable corner and made quick work of shedding their clothes. Abril dressed in the clothing from Valeria, and she took her sister-in-law’s stuff to slip on. Before long, they came out of the corner, and Valeria turned to head for the horse she preferred to ride on toward the end of the stables.