Ruthless Empire: A Dark Mafia Collection

by Seth Eden

  He also possessed an incredibly high IQ and aptitude for debate. A prodigy, he’d graduated at the top of his Harvard Law School class at the tender age of eighteen, and he’d been working in the field for five years now. I had faith that he’d know what to do.

  Ricky entered the conference room. Everything about him shouted, “How dare you bring a Varasso into your dingy police station.” I liked it.

  “I’m Rick Moretti, defense counsel for Mr. Varasso. What is my client being charged with?” he asked, haughty as hell.

  “I’m Lieutenant Kay Stroud, and your client,” the lieutenant threw in some haughtiness of her own, “is being charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive from justice, forgery of documents for the purposes of providing a fake identity, criminal conspiracy, destruction of private property, and money laundering.”

  “That’s quite a list,” Ricky said, raising an eyebrow.

  “It is.”

  “And your evidence includes?”

  “An audio recording of a conversation between your client and Dante Bianchi, among other things.”

  “I’ll require access to this recording and any other evidence you’ve accumulated,” Ricky told her, not looking impressed, but I couldn’t help noticing that his haughty demeanor had gone down a degree or two.

  The lieutenant smiled, not at Ricky but at me. It was the smile of a woman who knew she had my balls in a sling. The second she’d mentioned who was on the recording, my lungs had refused to work. I didn’t know how such a recording could exist, but if it did, I was in some major trouble.

  “Once I’ve reviewed the evidence, I’d like some privacy for attorney-client privilege.”

  “No sweat,” Lieutenant Stroud said. “Follow me.”

  They disappeared, and Ricky came back by himself a half hour later. I’d experienced longer half hours, but other than when I’d been burned, then treated for said burns, this one held top billing.

  Ricky didn’t beat around the bush, something I appreciated. “They’ve got you, Marco. On the money laundering charge for sure, and the conspiracy charge, too, if I can’t get it tossed out. The money laundering alone is twenty years if they go for the max, and trust me, they will.”

  Well, shit. “But you can get the conspiracy charge tossed out?”

  “Maybe. The evidence may have been obtained illegally, so there’s some wiggle room on that one. Of course, some of those judges are our friends, so it still may go our way.”

  “How’d they get that recording anyway? The only people in my office were Dante and me.” And since the conversation had taken place after midnight, there was no chance that I’d missed another employee hanging around within earshot.

  “You’re not going to like this,” he told me, and I braced myself. “One of your employees bugged your office.”

  “Who?” I demanded, taken aback.

  “A manager named Kelly Carr.”

  Kelly? I stared at him, my heart stopping in my chest. “That can’t be accurate.”

  Ricky opened a file, flipping through it to check the name. “Kelly Carr is the one who bugged the office. She said so in her statement. Wait, that name sounds familiar. Isn’t there an officer by that surname here, too?”

  “Her brother, David Carr,” I replied hollowly. Not only had my heart stopped, it’d turned into a hard lump of coal.

  “Bet he put her up to it.”

  Even if he had, why would she agree to spy on me?

  Things had been so good between us. I’d been telling myself that keeping her out of that part of my life was necessary, was the responsible thing for me to do. I didn’t want any of that touching her, soiling her in any way. But if she’d heard the truth about me, about what I’d done, about who my family really was, maybe that’d been enough to change her feelings toward me.

  But would she go as far as this? As far as a betrayal that would put me in prison?

  If that was true, that meant she saw me as what I’d always been most afraid I was deep down anyway.

  A monster.

  But I wasn’t willing to give up that easily. I couldn’t.

  “I want to see her.”

  “Marco, I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  “I don’t care. Whatever you have to do, I have to meet with her, talk to her.”

  Ricky shook his head, but then said, “Let me go rattle some cages.”

  The police moved me to a holding cell where I waited for two additional hours. When someone approached, I looked up, only to find David Carr standing outside the bars, looking as smug as I’d ever seen him.

  “You’re going down, bucko.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “That so?” I asked coolly.

  “You think you’re all that and a bag of chips, hitting on my little sister. Defiling her. She was innocent, you asshole, and you ruined her.”

  My temper, already near boiling just at the sight of him, boiled over. “I’m not the one setting her up as my own personal spy.”

  “It’s better than letting her launder money without her knowledge. She’s trusting to a fault, always has been.”

  “And you took advantage of that trust.” I grabbed a hold of the bars, shaking them until they jangled.

  “It’s for her own good. I had to do it. To show her who you truly were. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t believe me. She does now, though. She knows exactly what you are now.”

  He left and I considered punching my hand through the cement wall. I felt desperate to speak to Kelly, to make sure she was okay. I wanted to explain, to see if I could make this right. I didn’t know how, but I had to see her again.

  An officer approached, keeping his back to me as he quickly unlocked my door. At first, I watched him, wondering if I should anticipate a problem, but when he pivoted around I recognized him as one of ours. Thank Christ.

  “I’m here to escort you to a meeting with your attorney,” he said, at a normal speaking level, just in case anyone else were to listen in. The hour had grown late, so there were far fewer police officers milling around.

  He brought me to a conference room where someone stood staring out the window at the mostly empty parking lot. It wasn’t my attorney, though.

  It was Kelly.

  At nearly a foot shorter than me, I’d always thought of her as petite. Now, with her arms crossed and her back turned, she looked more than petite. She looked tiny and fragile. Like a china doll.

  “Kelly,” I said, to get her attention, the tone of my voice an entreaty.

  She twisted around, and the look in her vivid starburst eyes halted me in my tracks. She didn’t look fragile like I’d originally believed. No. The hard lines of her face spoke of nothing more than fury.

  “You lied to me,” she accused.

  “I didn’t.”

  “You did. You didn’t tell me the truth. My brother kept telling me you and your family were part of the mob, and I denied it. I told him he was wrong and that you couldn’t be a criminal. No, not my Marco. But he was right. He was right about you.”

  “I…” I wanted to tell her I was still her Marco, but I could see that would get me nowhere. “I never meant to lie to you. Even through omission. I just didn’t want you involved, didn’t want you sullied by all that.”

  “But you did involve me, Marco. You let me work for you, count all that money and do all your bookkeeping knowing that you were creating false trails for those funds to go through.” She rubbed her arms over her sweater as if cold.

  “You’re right. I was being selfish. I liked having you so close to me both at work and at home.”

  “That cottage suite isn’t really your home, though, is it?”

  “I couldn’t take you to my real home,” I said, my hands raising automatically to gesticulate but were hampered by my restraints.

  “Why not?”

  “Because the mansion is where we run our operations. Our headquarters are right there on the third floor. I didn’t want you to become entangled in that l
ife, to make you a mafia wife.”

  “A mafia wife?” she sputtered out, her eyes goggling. “You were going to propose?”

  I was, I realized. That had been the direction we were going. “I would love to marry you, baby, but only if we could keep that part of my life separate from yours.”

  “How would that work? You go off to launder money or help people disappear or something else I don’t even want to know about, and then come striding through the front door saying, ‘Honey, I’m home.’ Is that what you think would happen?”

  “I don’t know.” It sounded so ridiculous when she said it like that, but then I thought of some specific examples. “My parents made it work when they were alive. My dad ran the business while my mom focused on us and our home. She wasn’t directly involved.”

  “So except for your mom, your whole family is like this? Everyone’s a criminal?”

  Pretty much. “It’s… it’s how I was raised. I’m Angelo Varasso’s son. He was the patriarch of an Italian mafia family. Luca was always meant to take over from him, and I was always meant to be his second in command. My younger brothers have their places and duties, too. We were brought up into this life. It’s all we know.”

  “Nobody ever breaks away from it? Nobody ever quits or decides to go straight?”

  “There is no quitting. It’s our legacy. It’s what’s expected of us. But you and I could find our own way. We could make it work. Luca has. His wife runs the drug distribution part of our business.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “She willingly joined you even knowing she’d be breaking a bunch of laws?”

  “Her story’s kind of complicated, but yeah. She fell in love with Luca and got pregnant, but she was already leading up the line before that. Now they’re married with two kids. It’s working for them.”

  “But you… You never even tried to quit just for yourself? To have a chance at being something else? Something better?”

  “They’re my family. I can’t help that I was born a Varasso, Kelly.”

  She’d started out with a full head of steam, but she seemed to be shifting into something more like agitation now. Still, she threw her hands up as she spoke. “It’s like I don’t know who you actually are. There’s the Marco who’s been with me in our suite, and there’s the man I just found out about, this scary man who’s a mobster.”

  Her words sounded choked near the end, and I noticed tears glimmering in her eyes. Please, please, please don’t cry. “I mean, you’re standing there in handcuffs as we speak. Which one of those men is the real you?” she asked.

  “Both of them,” I admitted, and she released a loud sob. Christ. We’d been keeping the conference table between us or rather she’d been keeping the table between her and me. I dashed around it, needing to be in physical contact with her, to hold and soothe her, even if my ability to do so would be limited. “But I’d rather just belong to you, baby. I’d rather just be yours.”

  Tears still streaming, she put up her palm in a stop gesture, rejecting me. “It’s too late for that, though, isn’t it? You’re probably going to jail, Marco.”

  “What if… What if I can figure out how to give that way of life up? To walk away from it?” I suggested, feeling desperate. I didn’t even know how possible such a thing might be, but for her I’d do it. I had to. Or die trying. “I’ll do it. I’d do anything for you.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she said again, a hitch in her voice. “It’s too late for us.”

  But I couldn’t hear those words from her, couldn’t accept them and maintain my sanity. “Don’t say that. I’ll make it happen somehow.”

  “It’s not enough,” she said quietly, almost gently, as if speaking softly enough might make what she was saying less painful. It didn’t.

  In counterpoint, my voice rose in response. “How can I make it enough? What can I do to fix this? I’ll do anything you want, I swear. I love you too much not to,” I told her, my breath hitching as much as hers had.

  My throat constricted too much for me to be able to speak after that. If I’d thought I was desperate before, it was nothing to what I felt now. I knew if I didn’t turn this around, I’d lose her. And I couldn’t lose her. I’d survived shootings, physical beatings, and nearly being burned alive, but I couldn’t survive Kelly leaving me.

  Without looking in my direction, she moved past me to the door, knocking on it so the officer would let her out. “I love you, too,” she said.

  Then, she was gone.

  23

  Kelly

  I went home. Home to the crime-free confines of the apartment I shared with my mom and dad. Home to my tiny bedroom where I would sleep tonight for the first time in two weeks.

  Alone.

  I’d never felt worse in my life than I did right now. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I couldn’t make the tears quit falling, no matter what I did. I needed to check in on my mom, to see if my dad had taken care of their dinner or not, but I didn’t. I didn’t have the fortitude or energy to face my usual obligations.

  So when David came home and called my name through my bedroom door, I almost didn’t answer. I didn’t want to face him, either. I felt like he’d gone to all this trouble because he didn’t want me to be with Marco. I’d always believed that my brother had my best interests at heart, and maybe he still did, but his part in the destruction of my love life hurt.

  He kept insisting I get decent and come out to the kitchen to talk to him, and eventually I relented. I just wanted to get this conversation over with, so he’d leave me to wallow on my own.

  “How you doing?” he asked me.

  “The love of my life is likely going to prison because of me. How do you think I’m doing?” I spat back, wiping the wetness away as it fell endlessly down my cheeks. I’d made the mistake of glancing into our hallway mirror. I’d been crying so much that my face looked like raw hamburger.

  “He’s not going to the big house because of what you did. He’s going because of what he did. It’s his own fault, Kelly. Don’t take that on yourself.”

  “But I played my part, didn’t I? The part you asked me to play.”

  “You did the right thing is what you did. Getting away from that bastard was the right thing,” he said, but it didn’t feel like the right thing at all. It felt wrong. My whole life felt wrong. “I brought you a Toblerone.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head, waving it off. A Swiss candy bar wasn’t going to cut the mustard this time. I couldn’t think of anything that would.

  “I have some good news,” he said, his lips quirking upward. Since I was willing to listen to anything that might make me feel better, I offered him a “bring it on” gesture, even if it was pretty lackluster. His grin broadened. “I just received a commendation.”

  I stared at him. “You did?”

  “Yeah,” the pitch of his voice rising with his excitement. “My lieutenant said it’s for getting access to an inside man, one that may be the linchpin into bringing down the rest of them. That could help take a massive chunk of crime out of this city. Busting open this whole money laundering scheme was enough to put me over the top.”

  I blinked, trying to take what he’d just said in. “The case against Marco got you a commendation?” I repeated, just to make sure I’d heard him correctly.

  “Yeah. So I appreciate you getting onboard to help me.”

  Is that what I’d done? Helped my brother succeed in his professional life at the cost of my personal one? Suddenly, there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. I snatched my coat from its hook by the door, grabbed my purse, and leaving David grinning happily to himself at the kitchen table, closed the door behind me.

  As I stumbled a little unsteadily down the sidewalk, I knew only one thing. I needed to get away, to put some distance between myself and my brother. So I did. I walked. I walked out of the apartment complex, past the crappy neighborhood that surrounded it, and toward the heart of Philly.

  I continued
on and on, passing parks and bus stops, going along the pier until the Delaware filled the entire horizon. Then, I peered behind me, scrutinizing the city skyline. My tears dried. I’d finally managed to stop crying, but it wasn’t because I felt better.

  It was because I felt numb.

  There amongst those skyscrapers lay both Organic Eats and the cottage suite Marco had rented for the past couple of weeks, places where I’d experienced the brightest and most fulfilling moments of my life. But now that this peculiar numbness had overwhelmed me, I didn’t remember those times as if they belonged to me.

  Instead, it felt as if I was watching a movie of someone else’s life.

  As I stood at a corner, a bus pulled into the bus stop, and I hopped on, riding it to within a few blocks of the Dwight D, the hotel the suite was attached to. Once I arrived, I stood outside the door of the detached cottage, staring at it. Marco had made certain I had a keycard to it, but after everything that had transpired, I didn’t know if it would still work.

  When it did, I slipped inside.

  My feet took me straight to the bed I’d so recently shared with Marco, the bed where we’d made love, the bed where he’d told me he loved me. But again, those things felt like they’d happened to a different Kelly Carr, a Kelly who wasn’t me. They didn’t have the impact I might’ve expected.

  I got into the bed as if it were just another night. As if Marco might be home any minute, or as if he were in the next room, just out of sight. I laid back on the pillows then turned toward his side of the bed, realizing that his pillow still smelled like him, that fresh mix of sandalwood and him. Clutching it against my body as if it were him, I nuzzled my face deeply into it, breathing it in.

  Then, without any difficulty at all, I fell asleep.

  I woke the next morning, finding that the numbness remained. I went on living there, going through the motions. I showered, watched television, stared blankly at the wall, but I didn’t feel much.