Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  I laid out everything I had for him across my desk. “A white Buick Century will be by in ten minutes to take you from here to the train station. But instead of taking a train, you’ll walk half a block east and find a guy who’ll ask you if you want a bite to eat. You’ll answer with, ‘A Philly-Cheesesteak sounds good,” and he’ll give you the rest of your instructions from there.”

  Dante ruffled through the envelope of cash I’d provided for him. Five thousand in unmarked twenties that would be impossible to track. “I’ve held up my end. What do you have for me?”

  “It’s all on here,” he said, pushing a nondescript black flash drive toward me with one finger. “The first thing on here’s a doozy. It’s of one of the judges still on the bench. That’s my dad handing him that brick of cocaine. Apparently, he and all his golfing buddies love to mix it up on the weekends. The murders start at minute twelve, and the prostitution shit at 22:22. Open the file that says ‘zebra’ for the embezzlement files. It’s all there.”

  “I know where to find you if it isn’t.”

  “But you’ll be the only one, right? I can’t be trackable, Marco. Not by anyone else.”

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, Dante, you can rest assured. Your SUV will be found with an unidentifiable body matching your basic weight, height, and description.”

  I’d burned the body myself as soon as I’d left the mansion, genuinely regretting eating that meal. Not one bit of it had stayed down. The odor of the dead man’s flesh sizzling and roasting had been too reminiscent of my own experiences, but I’d had to make sure the entire skull and both hands had been destroyed beyond any chance of recognition.

  I’d had to go back home to scrub the scent off me once I was done, sneaking into one of the mostly unused bathrooms on the first floor so I wouldn’t happen upon any members of my family. I didn’t feel up to another interrogation. It’d taken nearly an hour of repeated lathering and rinsing to get it all off.

  I’d been fortunate enough not to wig out like I had with Kelly during our first night together, though it felt bizarre to know that a fireplace could trigger me faster than a deceased human being set ablaze. At least I hadn’t had to kill the guy myself since an attendant at the morgue had owed me one.

  Small favors.

  “Connections are the real currency, am I right? Along with intel.”

  I didn’t bother to respond. Dante jumbled his words as he spoke, sweating so profusely that stains soaked through his three-piece suit. He was such a jittery mess that I hoped he wouldn’t give himself away. “I suggest you change. The less you look like your usual self, the better.”

  I pointed at a garment bag hanging from my door. In it, I had jogging clothes and other similar accessories including a baseball cap to cover his receding hairline, but nothing to draw the eye. The best solution in these situations was always to hide in plain sight.

  As he vanished into the bistro’s restroom, I glanced at my watch. The Buick would arrive momentarily, and it was closing in on one in the morning. I was eager to get out of here. It’d been hours since I’d seen Kelly, and I just wanted to lose myself in her floral aroma and forget about everything to do with this night.

  Every single thing.

  21

  Kelly

  By the time Marco slipped into bed with me it was nearly two in the morning. Ever since Friday I’d had this strange feeling, this sinking coldness in the pit of my stomach. I both wanted to know and didn’t want to know what he’d been doing. What his “errands” had entailed. I’d begun to feel this nervous trepidation any time he left me to go off on his own, as if he might not make it back to me. As if I might not ever see him again.

  Which frustrated me to no end. David’s insistence that I bug Marco’s office was doing terrible things to my head. I’d done as my brother had asked, planting the miniscule device in the headset of Marco’s landline phone. Then, after I’d gone back to the suite, I’d felt so guilty. What was I doing, allowing David to listen in on Marco’s personal conversations?

  I trusted Marco. If he needed to attend to business outside the bistro, then that shouldn’t be cause for concern or worry. He was a wealthy business owner with lots of things on his plate. I didn’t know what he did when I wasn’t with him, but I didn’t need to know. All I needed to know was that I loved this man and he loved me. That was enough.

  So the fact that the pit in my stomach refused to go away even once Marco pulled me against him wasn’t much of a comfort, especially when he buried his face in my hair as if to hide. He took one long breath after another, as if attempting to breathe me in, as if something had rattled him. Instead of blindly letting him, I turned on the lamp by my side of the bed.

  He blinked at me in surprise, his eyes squinted against the light. I took in the pallor of his complexion, the slight shakiness to his frame. “You feeling okay?” I asked him, putting a hand to his forehead.

  “Yeah, baby, I’m fine,” he answered, but it sounded as if he’d poured something corrosive down his throat.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “Just had a long night. All I want to do is wrap myself up in you and go to sleep.” He tightened his arms around me and closed his eyes as if to do exactly that.

  I realized he wasn’t going to volunteer the reason why his night had been long. I wanted to know, needed to, even. I thought about how my dad had concealed the fact that he’d been laid off from my mother and the issues that had caused them, continued to cause them.

  I couldn’t let it go.

  “Tell me why.” I made it sound like a request.

  “Why?”

  “Why it was a long night.”

  He paused a moment, then said, “I had a lot to do in a short time.”

  Well, that didn’t answer my question at all. “A lot of what?”

  He went from relaxing against me to becoming very still. It was a subtle change but also noticeable. I waited a beat, then another. At last, he said, “Mostly meetings.”

  Why was getting any answers out of him suddenly like pulling teeth? We’d always had this easy flow of communication between us, but there was nothing easy about our conversation tonight.

  “Meetings?” I prompted.

  “Yeah, meetings,” he said tersely, bolting up into a seated position. He hadn’t quite snapped at me, but there was definite frustration in his voice. Then, he released a gust of air as he rubbed at both eyes. His voice grew softer again. “I met with my brothers, and we don’t always get along. Alessandro specifically got under my skin earlier and pissed me off. But that’s no excuse for me to take it out on you. I’m sorry.”

  Maybe I shouldn’t have been relieved by his answer, but I was. As much as I loved my family, I knew how much they could either drain me or drive me crazy. I thought of what my own brother had talked me into doing and felt a surge of shame. As soon as I got a minute alone in Marco’s office, I’d remove that stupid listening device and take it back to David.

  My brother had stirred up all these fears and feelings of suspicion within me, and now I’d done something almost unforgivable. I hated that I’d ever agreed to it, hated that David’s insistence on my involvement in his ludicrous witch hunt could’ve destroyed what I had with Marco.

  “It’s okay,” I told him, silently correcting my words to “It’s going to be okay.” And it would be because I would fix this before it flew out of control.

  “You sure?”

  I crawled up into his lap, one thumb finding the cleft in his chin. “I’m sure.”

  At this, all the tenseness vanished from Marco’s form. He reclined backwards, his lips finding mine as he rolled me beneath him. Evidently, he wasn’t that tired after all.

  Due to our late night, we both overslept and Marco had to speed so we could make it to the bistro in time to prep for opening. Even still, he stole kisses every change he got, grinning and kissing our joined hands. It was so nice to be so in sync with him again.

  When ten o’clock rolled a
round, I was in the midst of putting together the deposits from the previous day. Carlos had arrived to prepare the bread for our sandwiches; the delectable aroma coming from the ovens made my mouth water. We hadn’t had the chance to eat breakfast before departing, so once the food was ready, I’d grab a bite.

  We had another hour before we opened to the public, so when someone knocked on my door, I assumed it must be Carlos. Marco had a key to this door and every other.

  “What do you need, Carlos?” I called out, hoping it was just a question I could answer.

  “Miss, this is Lieutenant Kate Stroud with the Philadelphia Police Department. I’m going to have to ask you to come out of that office.”

  I froze, every part of my body turning to a block of ice. Lieutenant Stroud was David’s boss. Why was she here?

  “J-just a minute…” Frenziedly, I started putting the cash away.

  When I pulled open the door, I found the entire hallway full of officers from the PPD. My brother emerged from the management office with Marco in a set of handcuffs, sending me further into shock. I only vaguely registered David’s reading of Marco’s Miranda Rights.

  “Marco Varasso, you’re under arrest in connection with the disappearance of Dante Bianchi, and the destruction of his property. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and to communicate with said attorney by telephone. Do you understand these rights as I have given them to you?”

  Marco had a grim set to his mouth, but the rest of his features had become an inscrutable mask, blank and stony. When he offered a quick nod, my brother raised his voice. “Speak, wise guy. We need verbal confirmation.”

  “I understand,” Marco bit out, his voice displaying the ire that his face didn’t. And I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Marco?” I reached for him. Our eyes met but he said nothing, so I directed my attention to my brother. “What in the world is going on, David?” I demanded, but he ignored me as he escorted the man I loved out of the bistro and into the squad car waiting outside.

  Red and blue lights flashing, they vanished down the road.

  Three hours later I sat in a conference room at the police station with my head in my hands.

  I’d spent the first hour at the bistro. The police had shut the restaurant down declaring that it must be secured as a crime scene. They’d told me to unlock all office drawers and to put in the combination to the safe. They’d taken numerous pictures of both the manager’s office and the cash office and had then shuffled through the files and paperwork, collecting most of it to take with them to the police station, including the accounting books I’d recorded all my work in.

  After that, I’d been taken to my brother’s precinct. I was so upset and confused that by the time I got there, I wanted to slap David right across the face. Everyone kept ordering me around but wouldn’t tell me anything. An officer I’d only seen one time in passing had questioned me about my job with Organic Eats, about what I’d seen and done. About what I’d seen Marco do.

  I’d been scared enough to answer all their questions, but I still knew next to nothing about why Marco had been arrested. Yes, I’d heard what my brother had accused him of, but I didn’t know who Dante Bianchi was or what his disappearance could possibly have to do with Marco.

  None of this made sense.

  Two hours from the time the lieutenant had knocked on my door, my brother finally came into the conference room. Two other officers had been with him, one had been watching the door and the other had been standing at his side. “Bleecker, give me the room, will you?” David said, and for the first time since we’d been in the kitchen at my parent’s apartment together, we were alone.

  “You’re going to listen to this,” he told me, in the bossiest cop tone I’d heard from him yet. “It proves what I’ve been saying all along.”

  And I lost it.

  Everything I’d been seeing and feeling came to a head for me. Marco’s arrest. Being questioned about what I did at my job without receiving any answers to the queries I made myself. My brother blatantly ignoring me when I deserved an explanation. When I needed an explanation. I looked straight into his face and literally saw everything in my vision turn red.

  “You know what, David? Fuck you!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. Though I had no memory of doing so, I’d gotten to my feet. My knuckles hurt, and when I looked down I saw why. I was clenching them so tightly that if they’d been made of glass, they would’ve shattered.

  I never shouted. I never cursed. I almost never got angry. But I was angry now. In fact, I’d worked myself right past the emotion of anger and into full-on rage.

  My brother gaped at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Did you just say—”

  “Fuck you,” I said again, just in case he didn’t hear me the first time, though how that could be possible was beyond me. “How could you do this to him? To me? You storm into the restaurant and start tearing everything apart. You accuse him of all this bogus crap. You allow me to be interrogated like some victim of the Spanish Inquisition. And all without bothering to explain to me what this is all about.”

  “I’m trying to tell you what this is all about if you’ll let me do it. Why don’t you sit down…” I glared at him. I’m surprised the heat of it didn’t set him aflame. “Fine,” he hesitated, purposely lowering his voice. “Will you sit down, please?”

  Still furious, I sat down, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “This is what we recorded of the conversation Marco had with Dante Bianchi last night. Technically, I shouldn’t be sharing this with you, but I know it’s the only way you’ll believe me.” He opened an app on his phone, and I heard two voices fill the room. The one I didn’t recognize must be this Dante guy, but the other one was undeniably Marco’s.

  I listened as they discussed things like embezzlement, cocaine distribution, prostitution, and murder. I listened as Marco gave Dante instructions on how to escape Philadelphia undetected. But the most damning had been when Marco had said this:

  “This isn’t my first rodeo, Dante, you can rest assured. Your SUV will be found with an unidentifiable body matching your basic weight, height, and description.”

  Did that mean that he’d killed another man to make sure no one would follow this Dante guy? And if it did, the rodeo remark insinuated something even worse, that this hadn’t been the first time Marco had committed such a series of crimes.

  “Do you see now, Kelly? What I’ve been telling you is true. The Varassos and the Bianchis are responsible for a huge percentage of the crime that happens here in the city. And this recording proves it. We’re still notating all the evidence from your restaurant, but it looks like he was laundering millions through your cash office. Millions. Thanks to you, we have what we need to prosecute. Thanks to you, one of the most prominent men in organized crime will have to face justice.”

  Thanks to me.

  Thanks to me Marco would go to prison.

  I’d fallen in love with—and given my body to—a criminal. A member of the Italian mafia. Someone who’d broken several laws. Someone who’d used me to help him break those laws.

  David had been right all along.

  I’d thought he’d been so kind and good. So trustworthy. The way he’d made love to me had felt so beautiful and pure. But what if I’d been mistaken about that just like I’d been mistaken about so much else. Had any of what had transpired between us been real or had it all been subterfuge? A way for him to get his jollies? Another way to use me for his nefarious purposes?

  I thought of all that money I’d counted on a daily basis. About how he’d told me his errand had entailed visiting with his brothers rather than this clandestine arrangement he’d made with Dante Bianchi.

  Without warning, the room began to spin. Down became up and up became down. I felt like I’d stepped into quicksand the moment I’d met Marco, and I’d been su
cked further and further into that watery abyss without my knowledge. There was a rushing sound in my hears, like static, like white noise.

  My head had started to ache, making it difficult to keep my eyes open. But my head had nothing on my heart, which broke right down the center as if cleaved in two.

  22

  Marco

  I waited in the interrogation room of the police precinct, sitting across from a woman in a white uniform shirt and a golden bar insignia, doing my best to project nothing but calm superiority.

  I didn’t recognize her rank, but I’d guess the woman to be in her forties, and she gave off a vibe that reminded me of Molly when we’d first kidnapped her. A don’t-fuck-with-me vibe. I knew I’d need to stay on my toes with her.

  I might despise my late father, but what he’d taught us had proven useful, especially in situations like these. The authorities might charge us with any number of crimes, but unless they had conclusive proof, those charges would be dismissed as soon as the judge heard them.

  I was counting on that.

  So for me, this was more like a starring in a stage play than anything else. I was portraying my part. The part of a man falsely accused.

  We’d put many loopholes into the system to assist us along the way. Many law enforcement officers, judges, and the like worked for us as much if not more than they did for the state. It was why no one in my generation had gone to prison. Of course, I was the first in two decades to be arrested.

  I tried not to think too hard about that particular fact.

  I’d just have to deal with the punches as they came.

  My first act had been to reach out to Ricky Moretti, my family’s defense attorney. Ricky, while young, was also brilliant. He’d grown up side by side with Alessandro and was as dedicated to our family as it was possible to be while not sharing Varasso DNA.