by Zoey Parker
But gossip traveled quickly through the underworld. A Mancini enforcer told the story of what happened that night to a bag man, who told his bookie, who told his told his brother, who happened to be a snitch for the FBI. Within a few weeks, Carla had a report on her desk with an account of what had happened to Fred, including a photo of the man responsible.
Giovanni Mancini.
Blam. One low in the belly, just a few inches to the right of the spinal column. He'd spend hours bleeding out, with his nerves intact enough to feel every moment of agony.
The worst part was, every lead Fred had passed along to them during his seven months with the Mancinis somehow went up in smoke the minute they tried to investigate.
The clear-cut case of insurance fraud connected to the fire at The Raven Club owned by the Mancinis was dismissed when a key piece of evidence disappeared.
A federal judge named Patrick Shebin who was known to accept bribes from the Mancinis was found dead in his car, the victim of an apparent suicide.
And the members of the Mancini family who were suspected in the killings of Waylon Boggs, Ted Klepper, and Joseph “The Snake” MacKenzie suddenly found iron-clad alibis to cling to, which prevented their respective grand juries from sending their cases to trial.
The Mancinis had known exactly what the Feds had on them and how to beat it.
Which meant Gio had tortured Fred for that information before killing him.
At Quantico, Carla—like every other agent in training—had been taught how to target the brachial nerve in a suspect's shoulder when discharging her weapon. This would disarm the suspect quickly and cleanly without the need for lethal force.
She aimed for the nerve location in the paper target's right shoulder, then shifted her sights down to the target's crotch instead.
Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.
Because when my chance comes and you're in my sights, Gio, you'd better believe you won't be going into custody, Carla though bitterly. I'm not giving you a chance to make bail and spend the months leading up to your trial eating at fancy restaurants and getting fitted for thousand-dollar suits, all while your daddy and his mob lawyers come up with ways to make sure you beat the charges. I'm sick of watching oily pimps like you strut around, taking whatever they want and killing whoever gets in their way without ever having to answer for it. No more. I'm taking you out of the fucking headlines permanently, even if it costs me my goddamn badge.
“Your aim looks to be a little low,” a voice behind her commented mildly.
Carla turned and saw the lanky form of Don Huss, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Chicago office, standing in the doorway. As always, he had a toothpick tucked into the corner of his mouth to compensate for having given up cigarettes two years before, and the leathery edges of his blue eyes were crinkled in amusement.
“Not to me,” Carla answered, sliding the empty magazine out of her pistol and replacing it with a fresh one.
Don chuckled. “Well, just the same, I reckon I'll pretend I didn't hear that in case the Bureau shrink asks me how you're holdin' up again,” he answered in his laconic Texas drawl. “I think you'd better go ahead an' hand that target over to me so I can make sure it goes in the circular file instead of some psych eval.”
Carla sighed and nodded, hitting the button that made the target advance on its track with a steady mechanical whine. When it was close enough, she pulled it down and handed it over to Don, who looked over it with raised eyebrows.
“You sure are hell an' Jesus with a pistol, darlin',” he observed with an appreciative whistle. He folded the target up and tucked it into his pocket, shaking his head. “Glad you kept that dead eye nice an' sharp, since you're goin' back out into the field.”
“Yeah, well, I doubt I'll be out there any time soon,” Carla replied sourly. “It took almost a year for Fred to establish his bona fides so he could get close enough to the Mancinis to be invited in. And now that they've figured out we're sending undercover agents into their family, they'll probably be even more paranoid about it.”
Don nodded mildly. “That's all true, as far as it goes,” he agreed, “but we figure we can get the ball rolling a little faster this time. See, last night, the Chicago PD broke up a ring of MDMA dealers in a gay club on North Halsted. One of the guys who was busted for possession was Louie Grammatica. That name ring a bell?”
Carla's eyes widened. “Mario's lawyer. You've got to be shitting me.”
“I shit you not,” Don chuckled. “As you can imagine, Louie's mighty troubled by the idea of the Mancinis learnin' about his proclivities. Takin' it up the tailpipe's still a hangin' offense to them Sicilian boys. But he's told us that Mario's lookin' for a separate lawyer for Gio, to keep his various operations insulated from each other and prevent conflicts of interest. If we promise Louie immunity an' witness protection, he'll agree to get one of our agents into the Mancinis' inner circle posing as an attorney they can trust. I seem to recall you havin' a law degree.”
“Me and half the agents in this office,” Carla pointed out.
Don shook his head. “Half the agents in this office didn't spent seven months listening in on these gangsters' conversations. You know the players, what they're into, what buttons to push. If anyone's gonna build an airtight case to put these goombahs behind bars, we both know it's gonna be you.”
“How do you know I'll let Gio go to trial?” Carla asked, thinking about the paper target again. “Even I don't know if I can do that.”
Don tilted his head at Carla and put his hands on her shoulders. She would never have allowed any of the other men in the field office to put their hands on her with such familiarity—or the women in the office, either, for that matter.
But Don was different. He'd been one of her teachers at the academy, and she'd always thought of him as a father figure, especially since she'd never known her own father. They'd never discussed it, but she'd always been fairly certain that he'd requested her specifically when he'd been assigned to the Mancini case, and that level of trust meant a lot coming from him.
“I know it,” Don said, “because I know you. You lost your partner, and it hurts. I've been there, believe me. More'n once, even. You blame yourself for what happened to him, even though there wasn't a damn thing you could have done to stop it. An' you're havin' dark thoughts about payback, just like any of us would. But I ain't never had any reason to think you're a psycho, or that when the moment of truth came, you'd choose to flush your career an' your life down the crapper. Not over a worm like Gio. Not when you know there's a hundred worse than him you could go after next, as long as you've got that badge.”
Carla nodded. She wanted to believe in herself as much as Don believed in her. But all she could think of was making sure that when Handsome Gio breathed his last, his nickname would be as ironic as possible.
“Thank you,” she said. “I'll try not to let you down.”
Don lowered his hands, smiling. “Aw, shucks, hon… You could never let me down, no matter what. Now come on, freshen up an' meet me in IR-3 in ten minutes so we can squeeze Louie for more info.” IR-3 was office shorthand for interrogation room #3.
“I'll be there,” Carla assured him, taking off her safety glasses.
Don started to leave, then turned back with a sly grin. “Oh, an' Carla? Just in case it turns out I'm wrong 'bout that whole you-not-bein'-a-psycho' thing, at least try an' make the first shot look random? It'll be mighty hard to say it wasn't premeditated if the only bullets they find are in his eyes an' balls an' whatnot.”
“It'd probably still cost me my badge,” Carla pointed out.
“True. Could keep you outta prison, though.” Don closed the door behind him, and Carla heard him whistling as he strolled down the hall.
Chapter 3
Gio
Gio's hands still throbbed as he mingled among the party guests, clinking glasses and accepting congratulations. At a ceremony just an hour before, he'd officially become a “made guy”—a
soldier in the Mancini crime organization.
He'd stood in the basement of a house he'd never been to before, the other made men standing around him in a solemn circle. Mario pricked Gio's trigger finger with the tip of an icepick, then let the blood drip onto a small picture of Saint Francis of Assisi. After that, Mario produced a Zippo, lit the picture on fire, and commanded Gio to hold out his hands.
Gio did as he was told and Mario placed the burning card in Gio's palms, staring into his eyes. “Remember always that as this card burns, so shall your immortal soul burn in the fires of Hell if you ever betray your family. You enter this life alive—from now on, the only way for you to leave it is death. Do you so swear?”
“I do,” Gio answered, desperately trying to ignore the heat blistering his palms.
Mario nodded and his large hands enveloped Gio's, snuffing the flames quickly. Then he embraced Gio as everyone in the room applauded.
“Before tonight, you were only my son,” Mario told Gio as he swabbed the burns with ointment and bandaged them. “But now, you are truly my heir. When my time has passed and it's your turn to lead this family, I know you will do great things.”
“Thank you, Papa,” Gio answered.
Mario smiled and kissed Gio on the cheek. “Now it's time to reward yourself. Go upstairs and have fun.”
Gio walked upstairs to the party that was waiting for him, remembering the first time his father had said those words to him: “Now it's time to reward yourself.”
He was seventeen years old then, and even though he'd never seen firsthand what his father did for a living, he'd heard enough whispers and euphemisms at family gatherings to get a vague idea.
But one day after school, while he was walking home, a van screeched to a halt next to him and two men wearing ski masks got out. One held him from behind while the other punched him repeatedly in the stomach until he puked, sagging to the sidewalk and crying.
“You tell your old man the truckers' unions don't belong to him, understand?” one of them hissed at him. “You tell him if he tries to muscle in on them again, we'll come back with baseball bats and make you one sorry motherfucker.” Then they hopped into the van and drove off.
Gio staggered the rest of the way home, clutching his stomach with tears in his eyes. While his mother comforted him, Mario went into the next room and made several phone calls.
Two days later, when Gio came home from school, his father took him firmly by the shoulder and led him out to the garage without a word. The men who'd attacked him were gagged and taped to chairs, their eyes bulging with fright. Bruno and Julius were standing behind them menacingly.
“These morons broke the rules,” Mario said. “They had a grievance with me, and rather than settle it between men, they chose to make their point by involving a child. We won't kill them, since they didn't take a life. We aren't animals, after all. But still, they must be punished. I want you to be the one who punishes them.” And with that, Mario put a baseball bat in Gio's hands and stepped back.
Gio looked at the men and thought about how it would feel to hurt them in return for what they'd done to him. He knew he should have been excited, but instead, all he felt was scared and sick.
“I don't want to,” Gio mumbled, staring at the floor.
Mario stepped forward again and took Gio by the shoulders. “That's your choice,” he said, “but before you make it, understand—if you decide to leave their punishment to others rather than dispensing it yourself as is your right, then you will forfeit your rightful place in this family. You will always be my child, but for the rest of your life, you will never know real power. You will be someone to be sheltered and protected, instead of someone to be respected and feared.”
Gio considered this for a long moment. He didn't fully comprehend what his father was telling him, but he knew that if he made the wrong decision, he would never find another way to earn Mario's pride or acceptance. No matter how old he got, he would always be an outsider in his own family, someone to be casually banished to another room while the real men made the real choices.
He would always be seen as weak.
So Gio took a step forward, raised the bat, and brought it down as hard as he could on his attackers' arms and shoulders and heads, again and again. He heard the sound of bones breaking, and the wet thwack of flesh pulverized to pulp, like a meat tenderizer coming down on a piece of steak. His eyes filled with tears and his breath came in ragged gasps until his father pulled the bat away and embraced him warmly.
“Good!” Mario laughed, the tang of his aftershave filling Gio's nostrils. “Well done, Gio! That's my boy. You've taken an important first step today. Now it's time to reward yourself.”
And as Bruno and Julius loaded the bleeding, moaning bodies into the trunk of a car to be delivered God-knew-where, Mario called for a limo and took Gio to a brothel on the South Side. As they stood in the parlor, Mario ordered the women to line up so Gio could choose one he liked.
“Remember, whoever you choose, she's yours for the rest of the night,” Mario told Gio. “You can do anything you want with her, anything at all, and she can't refuse. Understand?”
Gio understood. And as he chose a woman named Gilda and followed her into her room, he felt the quivering fear in his gut giving way to a hot miasma of hatred and disgust. He loathed himself for feeling so shaky and terrified by his own actions in the garage earlier and for his moment of helpless indecision. He was filled with a sudden urge to take it out on Gilda.
Someone he'd never met now offered to fulfill his every fantasy, and he wanted to hurt her. He wanted to make her feel as small and helpless as he had felt. If he couldn't take pleasure in terrorizing other men, at least he could take out his rage on her.
Gio had never considered harming a woman before in his life, but over the next three hours, he choked, whipped, brutalized, and humiliated Gilda in every way he could think of. Every new act of terror he carried out on her made him feel stronger.
More like a man.
And no matter what he did to her, no matter how much genuine pain and fright he saw in her eyes, she kept on taking it and letting him do more and more, until finally, the fury inside him was all used up and he felt something like peace.
He felt like a god—dangerous and unpredictable, unmoved by the pleas and suffering of those under his power, able to inflict pain or end it at a whim.
After that, there were many more times when Mario involved Gio in his criminal activities, and after each time, they went to the same brothel and Gio indulged his darkest desires again. When the visits with his father became more infrequent, Gio started going to the brothel on his own after every successful crime he committed.
Then he started to go in between crimes, during times when he was stressed or horny or even just bored. After a while, he found himself no longer satisfied by whores, and he began seeking out underground sex parties so he could explore his urges among people who were more experienced. He became a regular in the scene.
And no matter how far he went, no matter how hideous or shameful his lust became, it seemed like there was always some woman who was happily waiting to help him give in to it. With each new torture he devised and inflicted, he felt morbid blossoms of self-love bloom inside himself.
By this point, Gio's hobbies were becoming a well-known rumor within the Mancini family. Certain sexual preferences—like adultery, homosexuality, or pedophilia—were strictly looked down upon, since they could be used to blackmail members of the organization into betrayal. But even though Gio's obsessions were considered extreme, they were still technically within the rules, and he was left to his own devices. If Mario knew about them, he gave no sign.
When Gio turned twenty, he bought his own house and converted the attic into his Special Room.
Now Gio had finally become a made guy, and he was scanning the dimly-lit room restlessly, looking for someone to help him really celebrate.
He felt someone tap him on the shoulder and turne
d. A short woman with long brown hair and brown eyes smiled up at him, handing him a fresh tumbler of scotch. “Congratulations on your big night, Daddy” she said, slurring slightly.
“Thanks,” he replied, taking a sip. “Do I know you?”
“Not yet,” she grinned, “but a few of your friends invited me. My name's Katie. They said I'm the kind of girl you'd want to meet tonight.”
“Oh?” Gio asked, mildly annoyed. “Why is that?” He looked around and saw Bruno nudging Julius as they watched this interaction. The last thing he wanted was to be set up by the other guys based on what they thought his interests might be. The whole idea of them gossiping about the kind of sex he enjoyed bugged him, even though he supposed it was inevitable.
