My primary concern was getting to Cierra. I needed to protect her in case more of Gino’s men were around. The thought that she could be hurt made my stomach turn. Nausea built up in my throat.
I took the dead assassin’s car and headed for the cemetery. He must have been watching us for a long time. There were empty bags of fast food on the floor board and half full cups of soda in the center console. If I had not killed him, his diet surely would have.
Chapter 5
I pulled up to the iron gates that protected the entrance, overhead the sign read Parking Cemetery. It was a gloomy place despite the sunny weather. I pushed the call button that triggered the gate to open and drove through to the parking lot. Once parked, I turned off the engine. I looked around for a second before getting out of the car and headed toward our secret meeting place. It wasn’t really a secret but for us it was special.
We came across this place on one of our earlier tours around the city. It is set on a small hill and from a distance seemed enchanting. It was beautiful enough that Cierra wanted to get a closer look. Once inside, it struck us how many couples were buried side-by-side. Many of the graves dated back to the early 1800s and it made me curious how people back then lived and died. It was a morbidly magical place, I must admit. Considering what I did for a living and to confront the place where all of us eventually end up.
A particular pairing of tombstones showed a husband and wife who had died on the same day together. Elsie and Harold Mayweather, it read. Just two ordinary people in this world who probably thought nothing more about life other than to live it had been the inspiration for our love story and possibly many others. We often discussed how ideal it would be to grow old with each other and die together in our sleep. A peaceful end to a great love. That’s what this spot meant to us.
Today however, it had become a place of refuge for us. I looked around the field hoping to see a glimpse of her long dark hair blowing in the breeze. Maybe she was waiting for me at another part of the cemetery. That wouldn’t make sense though, as this was the spot we had always agreed on if something ever happened to separate us. We had spent hours going over safe back-up plans in case something like this happened. I was here but Cierra wasn’t.
Fear seeped into my brain as I looked around harder. I tried to will her image in front of me. If she wasn’t here, then that meant that something was wrong. Something or someone was preventing her from being here. I knew her better than anyone and she always kept to the plan.
The only things I saw were a man placing flowers on a grave. Possibly his departed wife from the way he looked at the ground. He cleaned off the pedestal sitting in front of the tombstone and filled the vase with a new bouquet of daisies. The gesture was loving. I wondered if I would ever get the chance to give Cierra flowers.
Across the field, workers mowed the grass, imprinting stripes down the patch of green. They made sure to leave a dignified area for mourning. To many, it looked as if they were just doing their job, to me it looked like they were paying their respects within their capacity of work. It was nice to see, but my mind could not fully concentrate or appreciate their tasks. I had to find Cierra.
It was a gorgeous sunny day outside. Birds were singing and rays of sunshine were literally pouring down on the mausoleum as I scanned the area. Normally, I may have been able to appreciate its beauty but right now I was frantic with worry. Why wasn’t she here? I would accept any truth but the one I knew was real. Maybe traffic was the cause? Maybe she got lost? She forgot where the cemetery was? I knew I was trying to delude myself to avoid facing the truth.
I admit it, I don’t like being on this side of the scenario. To say it wasn’t fun would be the understatement of the century. I never had anyone this close to me come into harm’s way, so I didn’t know what it felt like until now. I think that’s why I never got involved with anyone in the first place. I needed to keep my heart cold as steel in order to do my job well. But thinking about all the families of the people I have killed and what they all must have been feeling was tough.
My phone rang, snapping me out of my thoughts. I took it out of my pocket and looked at the display. It read, private number, and I knew even before answering it who it was. I pushed the green button to answer and held it to my ear.
“Hey Giovanni! Looks like you left something behind.” A familiar voice echoed into my ear. “Good thing I found her though. Be a shame if she fell into the wrong hands.”
“You’d better keep your hands off of her,” I threatened.
“Well that’s gonna depend, my friend.” Gino answered.
“On what?”
“On how soon you can meet me for a trade.” Gino’s voice was playful. He was baiting me; I could feel it.
“What are we trading?” I knew how to talk to him. It was better to let him go about his cat and mouse game instead of threatening him too much. I didn’t want Cierra to pay the price for my anger.
“You know you and me got some business to finish. It would be a shame if your little knocked up girl here were to pay for your cowardice.”
Shit. He knew she was pregnant. Her frame was so small that she had barely started showing. I was hoping he wouldn’t find out so he couldn’t use it against me. He knew from my work about my sensitivity toward violence against children. Now he was going to use it against me.
“You’re right,” I agreed. “Just let her go and you and I can finish the deal.”
“It ain’t gonna be that easy, Giovanni. The man who murdered my father isn’t going to leave my sight alive, I’m sure you know that.”
“That’s fine. Just let her go.” I tried to keep my voice from cracking. It took everything I had.
“We do this my way,” Gino snarled.
“Okay, what do you want to do?”
“Meet me at the address I’m going to text you,” he said.
“Let me speak to her first,” I demanded.
“No. We do this my way,” he insisted.
“How do I know she is still alive?”
I heard a brief silence followed by a rustling on that end of the phone before hearing Cierra’s voice.
“Giovanni?” her voice was shaky.
“Cierra, are you okay?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I’m so sorry baby. I’m coming for you.”
“No—” Her voice was cut short followed by a squeal. It sounded like she had been slapped.
Gino came back on the line. “There’s your proof of life. Now you have an hour to get to the address or we skin her alive.”
“Don’t you dare—”
He hung up.
I put the phone in my pocket and screamed at the top of my lungs. Rage filled my entire body. I was overflowing with the pain and anguish of fear. She was the only thing that mattered to me now and that son of a bitch was threatening her life. I wasn’t just going to kill Gino like I did his father. I was going to enjoy it.
The old man and the workers stopped what they were doing and looked at me. I didn’t care. Nothing else mattered but my pain and the vengeance I sought for Gino’s threat.
He was avenging his father’s death and I was avenging the loss of my happiness. He had better hope for his sake that he didn’t harm any part of her. I would make it my life’s mission to obliterate any trace of the Geremia family name off this Earth if he messed with those I loved.
That was their problem. They always underestimated me as just another moronic hitman. Just another associate to do their bidding. They didn’t seem to notice or care that I was much smarter than that.
I still wanted to know how they found us. We had been living in Wilmington comfortably for over six months. Who would have thought to look for us here? Most people on the run try to leave the country, but my strategy was to stay closer to home. It’s usually best to hide in the place no one expects you to be. I had never made mention of North Carolina while working for them, so they must have figured it out some other way.
&nb
sp; My knees were weak at the shock of the circumstances. If I lost her and our unborn child I was going to come unglued. Like a demon unleashed on the Earth, my humanity would die with them.
Gino had better pray that I never catch him if it came to pass.
Chapter 6
I pulled up to Carson Kent’s house. The yellow beige siding of the home, gave it a slightly mustard appearance. Stone columns stood at the front porch and the white trim outlined the doors and windows. Carson had been a friend of mine for some time. He was an Internet hacker and a genius of sorts.
If anybody could help me figure out a way to get to Gino it would be him. As luck would have it. He also lived in Wilmington. Which made it easy for me to drop by his house.
I knew that if I showed up by myself. Gino would have both of us killed. He already wanted my head. My goal was to save Cierra. It wasn’t fair that she was caught up in all of this. If he wanted my life, he could take it, but I was determined to save hers.
I knocked on the door waiting for an answer. At first there was none, so I knocked harder. I heard some rumblings followed by clicking to unlock the door.
“Giovanni, what are you doing here?”
Carson stood in the doorway wearing surf shorts and a tank top staring back at me. He looked like he was stoned. That wouldn’t be out of character for him. Carson was millennium hippie who identified more with the Grateful Dead than with his own generation’s music.
“Hey Carson can I come in?” I asked.
“Sure, man. How the hell you been?” He opened the door wide enough for me to pass through it.
“You want a beer or something?” he asked.
“No thanks. It’s nine in the morning Carson,” I said.
“You know me, man. It’s never too late to start partying.”
I smiled and shook my head, “You never change, do you?”
“Hell no. What fun would that be?”
“You got a nice place here,” I said.
“Thanks. Selling the bud makes for a comfortable living.” He laughed at his own joke. “So what can I do you for?”
“I need your help bad.”
“You got it brother.”
“Gino Geremia has my girl and I have to get her back.”
“You mean like he’s sleeping with your girl?” he asked.
“No, I mean he kidnapped her and he’s trading her for me.”
“Oh shit. That’s rough.” He put his hand over his mouth and stepped back in reaction to the news.
“I know. I need your help to locate Gino’s place, where he’s staying right now.”
“You got it. Step into my office.”
Carson was the best hacker I’d ever met. He could hack into any database system and extract information that even the FBI wasn’t privy to. He might look like a stoner, but the guy was genius. He was also my only connection and possibility to be able to find her. If anybody could do it he could.
He sat down at his computer and began typing on the keyboard. I didn’t understand any of the graphics that were coming up, or what he was doing but I trusted that this was his field of expertise. I sat down next to him.
“Gino Geremia from the Geremia crime family?” he asked.
“The very same.”
“What are you doing running with them?”
“They hired me to do some work for them, but that contract has since been canceled.”
He looked at me for a second, “It would seem so.”
“What can you tell me?” I asked, getting impatient. I needed the information as fast as possible so I could have enough time to get there before they expected me.
“Well, not much. Except that there is an address here for a deposit. They recently put down on a home about a month ago.”
I stood up. “They knew about us a month ago?”
“Looks that way.,” he answered.
So they had been tracking us all this time. I underestimated him, which was deadly in my line of work. I should have known better. Still, they did a shady job of picking someone to kill me. I did expect more from him than a second rate hitman to take me out. Then again, I was the best guy he had for the job.
“What’s the address?” I asked.
“4250 Bronson Lane in Wilmington.”
I recognize the street name. It was across town from where we had our beach cottage. That neighborhood was littered with mansions and expensive cars. It didn’t surprise me that he would pick a place like that to rent. He liked to live expensively. At the cost of everyone around him.
“Thanks, man. I really owe you one.” I patted him on the back and turned to leave.
“Giovanni, wait.”
I stopped and turned around to see what he wanted.
“You can’t just go there. You know they’re gonna have guards and they’re just looking for you to try something like this,” he said.
“What do you suggest I do?” I asked him.
“Why don’t you wait a little bit. Let us put our heads together and see if we can come up with something better than your plan of storming the castle to save the damsel in distress.”
“He gave me a certain amount of time in order to get there. I don’t have time to sit and think,” I said.
“Do you have any plan at all?” he asked.
“I plan to kill Gino and wipe out the rest of his crime family.”
Carson’s face dropped as if he couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of my mouth. I knew it was hard for him to believe, just like it would be hard for anyone that knew of the Geremia crime family to believe. Carson used to work down in Miami and that’s how we met. But even this far north, there are people who still knew about them. They were featured on several different crime shows and documentaries featuring the way they work. They were so well organized that police could never get any evidence on Gino or his dad. And when his dad was killed, correction when I killed his dad, there were police literally in the streets dancing for joy. That’s how much of a fungus they were on society.
“So you’re just gonna go down there by yourself? Unarmed and nobody to back you up?” His eyes widened in disbelief.
“Yep.”
I turned back around and continued heading for the door. He raced by me and locked the front door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I can’t let you do this. I can’t let you basically kill yourself.” His eyes bulged out of his head.
“Carson, I love her and she’s carrying my baby. There is no way in hell that I’m going to let Gino or any of his other men hurt her.”
I was serious. I found something to live for in this life. Despite all the killing and the murder, and the endless jobs, I found life in her. That wasn’t something I was willing to negotiate or stop fighting for. She was innocent in all of this and so was our unborn child. I would do anything that I had to do to save her, even if that meant ending my own life.
“Then I’m coming with you,” he said.
“No, you know I can’t let you do that.”
“You don’t have a choice my friend.”
“The hell you say.” I looked at him and gave him a scowl. “You’re not even trained in combat. You’re a computer hacker.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he began, “with my knowledge of security systems, maybe I can offer some kind of help. At the very least a distraction for you to get past the guards. Besides, what else am I gonna do? Smoke pot for the rest of my life, sitting in my basement and hallucinating?”
I laughed. “All right, you can come. But you have to do exactly what I tell you to do when I tell you to do it. Understand?”
“Got it. Now let’s go kick some ass.”
I appreciated his overzealous nature, but I was afraid that I was going to get him killed. I couldn’t have his death on my hands too. My list of victims was long enough. I wasn’t going to go back to killing for a living, and I certainly wasn’t going to volunteer other people’s lives.
“The first
thing we need to do is figure out how many men he has and where they are. That requires surveillance,” I told him.
“I’m all over that.” Carson bent under his desk and pulled out several pieces of equipment. He packed them up into a black backpack and slid his laptop inside.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“It’s everything we need to complete the mission. Don’t worry about the details, I’ll take care of the technical stuff, you show me how to not get killed.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “Now let’s get going.”
He followed me outside and we headed toward the car. We got in and I turned on the ignition and sped away.
“There are several things you need to know. First and foremost, don’t get yourself killed by doing something stupid.”
“I think I’m in trouble already,” Carson said.
“I’m serious,” I said. “Your blood is not going to be on my hands. You’re coming along of your own free will.”
“I know that.”
“Keep your head down, and stay out of the way. Can you do your hacking from the car?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Fine. Stay in the car,” I ordered him.
“But I want to see some action,” he said.
“This isn’t the movies, Carson. This is real life. And real life uses real bullets. Sometimes you get shot and sometimes you die. There is no glamour to it. And there are no winners.”
“Geez, what a bummer,” he said. “You’re a real buzz kill.”
“Second rule. When I come out with Cierra, you need to have the engine running and be ready to go. Don’t get distracted and don’t get lazy.”
“Got it. What if one of these guys comes towards me?” he asked.
It was a fair question and I needed to make sure that he was prepared. I reached in the back seat and pulled a bag into my lap. I unzipped it and pulled out my Glock.
“Then you’re going to take this and keep it on you. See that?” I pointed to the safety mechanism. “You will leave that on safety until you’re ready to fire. Do not accidentally shoot yourself. It would be pretty damn embarrassing for both of us.”
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