by Bethany-Kris
The voice of Enzo only faintly registered to Mac’s ears. He was more concerned about getting home to his wife, and then dealing with his fuck up of a father as soon as possible. Now that he knew for sure that his father had at least one hand in the attacks, he had every single right to do what needed to be done to prevent James Sr. from causing Mac any more problems.
There were benefits to being a made man, after all.
This was one of those.
“Depends on what you’re going to tell me,” Mac finally said.
Enzo’s heavy sigh echoed throughout the speakers of the vehicle. “I’ve been working on a new project—tinkering, really.”
“Bomb timers, you mean?”
“Let’s keep the conversation clean, okay.”
Mac resisted the urge to hang up on Enzo. “What kind of tinkering?”
“MIT was a breeze for me—that engineering degree was nothing. So tinkering is nothing more than child’s play. My son, he’s always so interested in what I was doing, and I thought … where’s the harm, right?”
Now they were getting somewhere.
“Keep going,” Mac said.
Enzo coughed, a sign of his stress about what he was getting ready to say. “I started having issues with my son a few months ago. He’s young, seventeen. I thought it was a phase, that maybe I could smack or work it out of him. I had nobody to blame but myself, or that’s what my wife kept telling me. Look at everything I’d exposed him to, right? I let him learn the streets and play with guns, so who was really at fault?”
“Is there a point to this?” Mac asked. “Because I would really like to hear you get to it.”
Mac was toeing the line of what could be considered disrespectful to a man who held a great deal more power than he did, but he figured given the situation, his attitude was warranted.
“I let him fuck around in the Audino crew, thinking he’d settle down and learn something. Chill out with the drugs, maybe, and earn some money that didn’t come from him draining his fucking trust fund.”
Jesus Christ.
“That never really happened,” Enzo continued sadly. “The night of your wedding was the first time Luca really noticed something was wrong with my boy, that I was letting shit slide. We argued about it and Matthew jumped in.”
Mac remembered seeing the scene of that fight, and wondering what it was about.
Now he supposed he knew.
Or partly, anyway.
“So I kept him closer, still letting him do his thing and hoping he was getting his shit straight.”
“But he wasn’t,” Mac assumed.
“No,” Enzo admitted. “But he was hanging around me more often, picking up things that I was working on, seeming interested.”
“Your son planted that bomb on my wife’s car, didn’t he?”
“He did it for someone else, because he felt he owed him.”
“My father?” Mac guessed.
“How did you know?”
“James is in the Audino crew and he’s got a taste for drugs and liquor. I’m not fucking stupid, I can put two and two together.”
“My boy is mixed up in a lot of bad things, Mac. Heroin, messing around in the crews, stealing and lying. He’s facing charges I didn’t even know about with the police, so who knows what the fuck he’s been telling them.”
“And where is your son?” Mac asked, not giving a shit about the other details. He wasn’t about to feel the least bit sorry for Enzo’s son. He didn’t have the time or care for it.
“Safe,” Enzo replied. “That’s all you need to know. Don’t blame me for taking care of my boy, Mac.”
The phone call hung up just as Mac pulled into the complex of his apartment.
Immediately, he knew something was wrong.
Ambulances.
Flashing lights.
Crime scene tape.
He knew right then.
But it was only when an officer knocked on his window with a flashlight did the weight of it hit Mac.
And it hit like a fucking freight train.
Mac knocked on the glass of the ICU room’s door, not wanting to interrupt. Just because the boss had called him into the hospital didn’t mean Mac had any right to walk right into the room where Luca currently was.
“Come on in,” he heard called out, the voice muffled behind the glass.
The hiss of oxygen was the first thing Mac heard as he opened the glass doors to Enric’s ICU room. The second was the loud, beeping monitors—several were scattered about the room, from an IV, to one for his heart function, and another that seemed to be monitoring his brain.
All over again, guilt swamped Mac at the sight of the young man wrapped in bandages, a tube shoved down his throat to keep him breathing, and his body prone with little life.
Luca sat at his son’s bedside, a phone to his left, and a cup of to-go coffee in his hand. His gaze never left Enric as Mac entered. The lights were dimmed in the room, and other than the noise of the machines, there wasn’t much else to hear.
Mac let the door close quietly behind him, though he didn’t think Enric could hear it either way.
“They induced a coma during the surgery,” Luca said quietly as he studied his son’s lax features. “He was under too much stress—his body wasn’t handling it well.”
“I’m sorry, boss.”
Luca took a minute to reply, and when he did, it wasn’t in response to Mac’s apology. “The cops have been around asking questions. I know they had you down at the precinct as well.”
“The cops are a fucking mess.”
One they really didn’t need.
“Two FBI agents showed up about an hour ago,” Luca added.
Mac cringed. “So there is something going on there, too.”
“Seems so. Although, I have no idea who is feeding them information. I’m worried—I know something is going to happen, and I’m helpless to stop it because I don’t know who or why. I’m failing. I had one job in la famiglia, and I’m failing horribly.”
Mac was all too aware that a boss’s main job was to protect his men, and his family. It wasn’t Luca’s fault that things were falling apart at the seams. It wasn’t his choices or actions that put all of this into motion.
“We’ll figure it out,” Mac eventually said.
Luca nodded, finally giving Mac his attention. “Your wife, where is she?”
Mac’s throat closed, the reminder that Melina was still in the wind, stuck as a victim of his father’s crazy plan. “I don’t know, boss.”
“Enzo said—”
“Enzo answered a lot that I didn’t know,” Mac interjected quickly, “and I apologize for thinking he was involved in some way with the attacks.”
Luca smiled thinly. “Enzo is a good man. Well, as good as we made men can be, that is.”
“I am sorry about Enric. I didn’t mean for him to be caught up in all of this like he was. I thought whoever it was wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack me again in such a public way.”
“Desperate men …” Luca trailed off, his brow raising as if to allow Mac to finish the sentence.
“My father has been desperate for a long time.”
“Seems he found others who are just as desperate to work with him. The better question is why, Mac.”
Mac nodded, wondering that himself.
Although, if he were honest, he didn’t think he had to ponder on it all for very long. From the very moment Mac had gained any kind of traction in la famiglia, a feat his father had never managed to do because of his shitty lifestyle and terrible choices, James Sr. had been far too interested in his son’s business and where he was going in the mafia. He’d made that clear on more than one occasion.
“I think it was because of me,” Mac said.
Luca’s attention was back on his son, then. “Continue.”
“I think he wanted me to move up in Cosa Nostra, and his way of making me do that, was to force me into it by causing problems like he did. Prob
lems that have, essentially, made rifts and caused trust issues between me and other Capos, and even you, boss. It gives others every reason to come after me, which gives me a good cause to defend myself, opening up seats in the family, we’ll say. That’s my theory.”
Luca sighed. “That’s a good theory.”
“I should have seen it sooner.”
“No one will blame you for overlooking a man whose greatest priority is getting enough money to drink, Mac.”
That was true enough.
“I need to find my wife,” Mac said. “Right now, that’s my main goal. I think the bomb was meant to kill her, if nothing else, to push me into a situation where I attacked someone—probably Enzo—without really thinking about what I was doing. It’s likely that James Sr. might have thought Melina, or even my enforcer, saw him that night outside of the club, and so the desperation came into play, forcing his hand to take my wife.”
“You think he’ll kill her, rather than keep her for a while,” Luca said.
Mac swallowed the lump forming in his throat. “I know he’ll kill her.”
And his child.
Unknowingly, sure, but it would also kill his child.
“What are you asking then?” Luca asked.
Mac passed Enric a look, knowing this would be the hardest request he ever made of his boss. Here he was, watching a man grieve and pray over his injured son, and he was about to ask that same man to give him permission to force information from another man’s son by any means necessary.
“Spit it out,” Luca said after a long moment of silence.
“Enzo has his son on lockdown—uh, detox, I suspect, because he thinks he can save the kid. I’m sure you’ve talked to him, you probably already know where he is. He won’t let me near him, I know it.”
Luca’s head dropped down, his shoulders lowering as well, as though the weight of the world had just come upon him. “You know, when Enric’s mother told me she was pregnant, I thought … no, the child can’t possibly be mine. She was a server in one of my restaurants, and we certainly weren’t a couple, so to speak. She assured me the baby was mine, and if I was so inclined, I could simply wait until after the birth, and make my choices then.
“And so that was just what I did,” Luca continued, smiling softly as he looked over his son. “I waited her pregnancy out—I ended up marrying Neeya during that time, though that came about rather fast, and she had no idea about the baby or the pregnancy. It came before she did, after all, and I was still quite adamant in my own belief that the baby wasn’t mine.”
“But he was,” Mac assumed.
Luca chuckled. “God forgive me … look at his face, how am I supposed deny him?”
Even Mac had to smile at that.
Enric was the spitting image of his father.
“Neeya was so angry—I loved her, and no matter how many times I tried to tell her that he’d come about before her, she wouldn’t believe me. It took a while, a lot of begging on my part, a lot of hurt pride and anger, but she heard me eventually. I felt so guilty, too. I’d spent months believing Enric was not my son, and I lost all that time, even if he wasn’t in the world yet. I still lost it.”
Luca rubbed a hand over his jaw, shaking his head as he continued with, “And so I gave him as much time as I could while he grew up, but he always felt out of place with me and in my family. I could tell. I tried bringing him in more and more, tried giving him more, but he only pushed away.”
“Maybe it’s that he does better standing on his own,” Mac suggested.
“He does, I know.” Luca cleared his throat, glancing back at Mac with a blank expression. “Don’t feel guilty for what happened to my boy—he’ll be fine, Mac. He’s a Pivetti, and we always make it out alive. Leave the guilt to me, it’s what I do best where he’s concerned.”
Mac wasn’t sure he could do that, but he would try.
“And Enzo’s son?” Mac dared to ask.
Luca let out a slow breath. “Find your wife. If it were mine, I would do the same. By whatever means necessary, find her. I’ll even call Enzo and get him away from his son, if you think that’ll help to grab the fool without unnecessary blood spilling. Enzo let it slip the kid has also been talking to police in an effort to save his ass from charges. That may very well be where part of our rat problem is.”
“It could be. Thank you for the call.”
“Done.”
Mac had his answer.
He left the room before Luca could even dismiss him.
He didn’t think his boss would mind.
After all, they were men cut from the same cloth.
Mac fitted the riding gloves on as he strolled across the street to where Enzo’s safe-house was located. He was grateful that at least the man was out, thanks to Luca’s call, and that the man’s wife would not be there to witness Mac taking her son by force.
It was not something a woman should see.
Mac would never want his own wife to witness something of the sort happening to him, or his future children.
Although he knew his wife could and would handle it, being as strong and stubborn as she was. He’d called Melina his Gun Moll once—the girl of a gangster that no one ever expected with a gun hidden under her coat, distracting everyone with the bat of her pretty lashes.
He was sure he’d undervalued her in that respect.
A Gangster Moll would have been more apt to describe her.
She was just as tough him.
Just as fucking capable.
Just as dangerous.
Better yet, Mac hadn’t needed to teach his wife how to be or do any of those things. She’d come to him like that—wonderful, difficult, and proficient.
Mac kept repeating that sentiment to himself as he picked the lock on the front door of the safe-house, needing the comfort it provided. As long as he kept telling himself that Melina was tough enough to handle whatever his father threw at her until Mac found her, then the fear of the unknown and the what ifs wouldn’t be able to reach him.
His doll would be fine.
This was just a bump in the road.
A shitty bump, but a bump.
The house was dark and quiet when Mac opened the door. He listened for any sounds, but other than the muffled drone of a television down the hall, he didn’t hear anything else. No doubt, given Enzo had said his son was detoxing, the kid was probably stuck in a bathroom somewhere. Enzo had likely put the kid upstairs, locked in somewhere that he couldn’t get out.
Mac understood Enzo’s desire to protect his only son.
If it were Mac’s son, he would probably do the same.
Maybe someday, Enzo would forgive Mac for what he was about to do, though in that moment, he simply didn’t care either way. This was a job—the kid was a means to an end.
Mac needed to find Melina.
Enzo’s son would get him there.
Mac took the stairs two at a time, and as he came to the very last step, he heard the tell-tale sound that led him down the hall toward the closed door at the very end. A retching, as if someone were violently throwing up.
Quite common with a heroin detox.
He tried the doorknob first, but unsurprisingly, found it locked. Addicts would do whatever they had to for a fix, even if that meant hurting themselves or someone else to get whatever they needed to get their drugs. Mac had suspected that Enzo would lock his son away, if only to assure the kid would stay in place long enough for his father to get a detox and rehab center on the phone that would take him in last minute.
Pulling his foot back, Mac let his boot slam into the door right under the knob. Wood cracked and splintered as the door gave way under the force of the kick, opening wide and slamming hard into the wall.
Mac wasted no time, rushing the room with his gun already out and pointed. He found Tyler, Enzo’s son, hunched over the toilet, drool and vomit smeared across his cheeks. The seventeen-year-old barely blinked at Mac when he pulled him away from the toilet, letting th
e kid fall on his back against the tiled floor.
Tyler stared up at Mac.
Defeat and acceptance stared him straight in the face.
“My dad’ll kill you,” Tyler mumbled.
It was a half-hearted effort.
Even Mac could tell the kid didn’t believe his own words.
“Get up and walk,” Mac told Tyler, “we’ve got business to do tonight, kid.”
Tyler blinked rapidly, mumbling something Mac couldn’t understand.
What he did hear, however, he didn’t like.
“Fuck you, Maccari,” the kid said.
“Well, we were going to do this the easy way,” Mac replied, shifting his aim ever so slightly before letting a round off. The bullet ripped into Tyler’s thigh, and the teenager howled as he grabbed for the new wound. “But the hard way is fine by me.”
Whatever it took to get his wife back.
Mac would do it.
A dull throbbing ache radiated from Melina’s broken wrist. But it paled in comparison to the sharp stabbing pain in her side. Every breath she took, no matter how small, was a struggle and a reminder of just how dire her situation really was. Melina had no idea where she was, not that it mattered. She had no phone and no way of reaching her husband.
Mac.
By now she was sure he’d returned home and discovered that all hell had broken loose.
What would he think when he found her gone?
Would he even begin to know where to look?
Yes.
He had to.
That’s what she just kept telling herself, because the alternative wasn’t worth fathoming.
She stretched as much as she could stand in an effort to keep the stiffness at bay that was threatening to take over her body. Her movement was limited though, because besides the injured ribs, her hands and feet were tied together.
She was shackled like a damn animal.
A lamb ready to be slaughtered, unable to fight back.
Melina blinked back tears. Things weren’t supposed to be like this. She shouldn’t be tied up in a cold, unfinished room waiting to be executed. She should be home enjoying a meal with her husband as they discussed the plans for the new house and their shared fears about becoming parents.
