Sloane Monroe 5.5-Flirting with Danger

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  The idea of becoming Rocco’s mistress for a large sum of money upfront appealed to Misty. The way she explained it to Daniela, her own marriage had grown stale, her husband preferring to sit in his favorite recliner, cracking open several cold ones while watching copious amounts of Seinfeld reruns on TV. In her hum-drum marriage, Misty had become an afterthought. And since they didn’t have any kids, it wasn’t long before she’d grown tired of the same mundane life, night after night.

  Misty wanted spice.

  Action.

  Attention.

  And for a while, that’s exactly what Rocco provided.

  Before Misty was given the go-ahead to mingle with Rocco’s dark side, Giovanni requested an interview, a sit down, one on one. He wanted to see Misty for himself, wanted to be sure they could trust her, wanted to make sure she knew what would happen should that trust be broken. The Luciana and Romano families weren’t the best of friends, but they’d always shared mutual respect, something Giovanni wanted to preserve. Misty’s undercover operation was to be kept quiet, under the radar of Giovanni’s father.

  After deeming her worthy to get the information they needed, Misty was given cash and a BMW to drive until the part-time gig was up. Further money was to be expended after successfully completing each of the following hurdles:

  Meet Rocco. Check.

  Become his mistress. Check.

  Gain his trust. Check, followed by uncheck.

  Find out who supplied the drugs, where they came from, and how they made it into the United States. Epic fail.

  It had me asking: now what?

  “How did Misty gain Rocco’s trust in the first place?” I asked.

  “I taught her how to be everything he liked,” Daniela replied.

  “So you know him well then?”

  Daniela snickered. “Rocco’s younger brother Benny, who calls himself “The Hammer,” has had a hard-on for me ever since we played in the sandbox as kids. He was my shadow. Through the years I got to know what he liked, what Rocco liked, what turned them on, what didn’t.”

  “Were you ever in a relationship with either of them?”

  The question begged to be asked.

  “Never. Benny’s not my type. Too weak, too much of a follower, and too little of a leader.”

  “And Rocco?”

  “We had a date once. He’s handsome, I’ll give him that, but he’d sell out his own kin to make a quick buck.”

  “If Benny likes you so much, why not try and get the information out of him yourself?” I asked.

  “Too risky. Our families are fairly close, but we don’t meddle in each other’s business.”

  Fairly close. Why did I get the feeling there was more to it?

  “Everything you’ve done, everything you hoped to achieve has been compromised.”

  “Maybe.”

  “She’s dead,” I said. “Even though we don’t know what he found out exactly, it was enough for him to get her out of the way.”

  “Rocco found out Misty wasn’t with him for the right reasons, yes. As to whether he knows who hired her and why, we can’t be sure. We took every precaution with Misty. We had to. There’s only a slim chance she could ever be traced back to us. I don’t think he knows. I think she slipped up somehow, sold herself out.”

  Either way, they’d lost their prize hen.

  “What will you do now?” I asked.

  “Feel him out. I said before it’s risky, and it is. So be it. I have to save my father.”

  Throughout the conversation, Giovanni had remained still, listening to the two of us go back and forth for as long as his patience would allow. That patience had come to an end. “You can’t question Rocco. If Dad goes down for this, he goes down. It was foolish of me to agree to work with the law in the first place.”

  “If Dad goes down for this?” Daniela challenged. “Don’t sit there and act like you’re the innocent one. You’re not. I’m not. They’ll put Dad away, and we’ll be next.”

  “They’ve never done it before.”

  “This is … I don’t know … different somehow. I can feel it. I still think we can get the information we need, Gio.”

  “How? Your first plan failed. It’s over. We have no other plays.”

  “I don’t know, I’d say we still have one.” Daniela looked at me. “You’re smart, Sloane. You’ve done this kind of thing before. I need you. We need you. Will you help us?”

  Giovanni’s fist hammered down on the desk for a second time. “Absolutely not!”

  It was his insistence that I not do it that prompted me to respond. “I’ll help you.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Daniela’s eyes doubled in size. “You…will? Are you serious?”

  “No offense, but Misty didn’t deserve to die for your father,” I said. “I’ll help, on her behalf, not his. Before I do, I need to know something. How did you know I was at the hotel?”

  “The butler for her room,” Daniela said. “He also works for us.”

  “Where was he when she was being murdered?”

  Daniela grimaced, her face flushed, embarrassed. “Smoke break.”

  “Great timing,” I said.

  “When you were being interviewed by the police, he managed to snap a couple photos on his cell phone. He forwarded them to us. We didn’t believe it at first, but there you were. Within five minutes, Giovanni sent Vincent and Cesare to pick you up. It all happened so fast, he never really communicated who you were before they—”

  I raised a hand in the air. “We’ve moved past all that now. What I don’t understand is—how could you send Misty to deal with Rocco alone? The room should have been bugged. You should have been listening.”

  “Misty’s not just some girl, she’s an ex-cop from Washington. She quit several years back after she witnessed a teenager die in an armed robbery. Guess the kid was someone she knew. She never got past it. Bottom line, she knew how to defend herself, knew how to use a gun.”

  Not well enough.

  “Who else besides you two knew I was in Misty’s room last night?”

  Daniela shrugged. “Nobody. Everybody. We don’t know. They could have had someone on the inside just like we did.”

  I thought about the surveillance cameras I’d passed on the way out of Misty’s room, and my stomach turned. The phone on Giovanni’s desk buzzed. He answered it, listened, set the phone back down again.

  “We weren’t taking chances then, and we’re not taking any now,” he said.

  The door opened. One of the muscle men glanced at Giovanni.

  “Show her in,” Giovanni said.

  “Show who in?” I asked.

  Maddie entered into the room, a wide grin on her face.

  “You were supposed to wait for me at the hotel,” I said.

  She gestured to the muscle man who walked in behind her. “Tough Guy here met me there, told me you were with Giovanni, and said it wasn’t necessary for me to check in.”

  “Why not?”

  “He said we’d been invited to stay with Giovanni.” She glanced at Giovaani. “Right?”

  Wrong.

  “I’m not staying here. We’re not staying here.”

  Giovanni interlaced his fingers, pleased he’d regained control, taken the upper hand. “I gave you a chance, several chances. I asked you to leave the city. You said no. Until you decide otherwise, you’ll remain here. You’ll both remain here, as my guests.”

  “Your guests or your captives?” I clasped Maddie’s arm. “I’ve changed my mind. We’re leaving. We’ll fly out tonight.”

  “You’re staying,” Giovanni said. “Do you really expect me to believe you’ll leave now after fighting so hard to stay?”

  “You can’t keep us here,” I spat.

  He crossed his arms in front of him, grinned. “I can, and I will.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I festered, fumed inside one of the many guest bedrooms in Giovanni’s house. “The nerve of him! He never stopped me in the pa
st.”

  Maddie crossed one leg over the other, reclined back on one of six gold and black designer pillows plumped across a California king-sized bed. She looked at me like I was overreacting. “This is different.”

  “I don’t see how. It’s not the first time I’ve been in danger, if I’m even in danger, and it won’t be the last.”

  “You two aren’t together anymore. It changes things.”

  Even if I tried to leave, the house was dripping with Giovanni’s men. Too many men. Even for me.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said.

  Maddie raised a brow. “Have you considered Giovanni’s position in all of this?”

  Of course not. It wasn’t worth my consideration.

  “He needs to find out why this Misty chick died, how Rocco found out what she was up to,” Maddie continued. “Besides, it’s not like he’s going to hurt either one of us.”

  “Why aren’t you concerned? You have a class to teach tomorrow. How are you supposed to do that when you’re stuck here?”

  She grinned. “Oh, I’m not stuck. We worked it out.”

  “Worked what out?” I asked.

  “The guy that picked me up today will be my escort tomorrow. I’ll teach my class, and then I’ll come back here.”

  “One guy makes you feel safe?”

  “From what he says, he was some kind of sharp-shooter in his past life. I’m not worried.”

  It was just like her. She never worried about anything. Balls of fire could be pelting the earth, and she’d still be sitting half-naked on the bed filing her nails. My life, on the other hand, was usually spent in a constant state of restless paranoia.

  “Sloane, maybe you should take something … you know … to calm you down. Get your OCD out of overdrive.”

  “How could you think—”

  Daniela entered the room. She looked at me. I looked at her. My mouth closed.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” she said. “It’s not my fault my brother’s bullheaded.”

  “If you two hadn’t sent Misty to do your dirty work, she’d still be alive,” I scolded.

  “Taking cheap shots at me won’t change the past. I blame myself for what happened. Misty was my friend.”

  “I wasn’t taking a cheap shot. I was being serious. Have you ever heard the saying about a chain only being as strong as its weakest link? You attacked Rocco, the strongest link, the one that doesn’t budge for anyone. What you should have done was start with someone who’s high enough in the family to know inside information, but weak enough to talk under the right circumstances.”

  I didn’t have to say her childhood wooer’s name for her to know who I was talking about.

  “The right circumstances being …?”

  “I don’t know … drugged?”

  I couldn’t believe I’d suggested it.

  “Drugged, as in, temporarily?”

  It was the kind of conversation Maddie couldn’t resist. She brought her knees in front of her, propped herself up on a pillow. “It’s easier than you think.”

  “You talk like you speak from experience,” Daniela said.

  I managed to crack a smile. “She does.”

  “I don’t know,” Daniela said. “We don’t have any of the information we were supposed to get. Earlier I said I wanted your help, and I do. I’m just not sure where to go from here.”

  “You have one main objective,” I said.

  “I know. Rocco.”

  “Not Rocco. The information he can give you.”

  “We still don’t know where the drugs are coming from, how they’re getting here, or who’s supplying them.”

  “Wrong.” I dug into my pocket, lifted out the copy of the plane ticket. “We have this.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Where did you get that?” Daniela asked.

  “Inside the glove box of the car Misty was driving,” I said. “Are you saying you didn’t know about it?”

  Daniela shook her head. “The last time I talked to Misty, she told me she had information that would lead us to the answers we needed. She didn’t want to discuss the details over the phone. She had something to show me. She planned to see Rocco one last time, and then we were supposed to meet up the next morning.”

  “That might explain why she was killed. This flight document is a copy. It had to be printed or scanned from somewhere. Maybe Rocco’s computer.” I pointed to the destination on the ticket. “He’s flying to Rome.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Midnight.”

  I pointed to the name penned at the top of the page. “Do you know anyone who goes by the name Dashner?”

  She shook her head. “Never heard it before.”

  “Before Johnny plunged to his death, he asked me if I was working with her, if I’d hired her. He seemed confused.”

  “If Rocco doesn’t know we’re involved, maybe we can still find out what he’s up to.”

  “Whether he knows or he doesn’t, you need to be sure,” I said. “If Rocco plans an attack, a retaliation, you need to be ready.”

  “Trust me, Giovanni didn’t want to alarm you, but … we’re ready.”

  As if the men weaving in and out of his mansion weren’t an indication.

  “Why didn’t you give us this information before?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Didn’t seem like the right time. Now it does.”

  It was a polite way of saying I didn’t feel Giovanni deserved the information, so I didn’t give it to him.

  “What else did you find in the car?” she asked. “Anything?”

  “A napkin from a nightclub.”

  “Essence?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Rocco owns the place. It’s one of five clubs he operates in the city, but it’s the only one he frequents.”

  “It’s not like it’s some kind of secret though, right?”

  “Anyone who’s anyone knows he’s there most nights. He’s highly guarded. No one can get to him unless he wants them to.”

  The napkin from the night club was important. But how? “Tell me more about the heroin.”

  “What more do you want to know?”

  “Heroin usually comes from Colombia, doesn’t it?” I asked.

  “Colombia is the primary supplier, but there are others.”

  “And yet, Rocco’s not flying to Colombia. He’s flying to Italy. Who’s in Italy?”

  “Family. Only about a third of the Romano family lives in the states. The rest live on a private island in Rome. The fact he’s flying there tomorrow means nothing to me. He flies there all the time. Misty must have assumed the plane ticket was a big deal, although I can’t see why.”

  “What about the family businesses?” I asked. “Do they operate together or separately?”

  “Together.”

  One family, two bases of operation. Did one distribute the heroin to the other?

  “We need to find out where this laced heroin comes from. Even if we don’t have a specific manufacturer, we should at least be able to find out what country we’re dealing with.”

  “What do you mean, laced?” Maddie asked.

  I filled her in on the heroin conversation the rest of us had before she arrived.

  “I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Maddie said when I finished. “They think some of it’s being made right here in the US.”

  Daniela shook her head. “It can’t be. Are you sure?”

  “There are two different versions,” Maddie continued. “Pharmaceutical grade and non-pharmaceutical grade. Most of the dealers in the states are pimping the non-pharmaceutical stuff, probably being made in a clandestine lab in Mexico. There’s a lot more of it, and it’s easier to get. The newer, updated strain sells for a lot more. It’s rumored to be made in the states, only no one knows where.”

  I had an additional theory.

  “What if it’s a trade-off? What if the Romano families here and in Italy are working together to distribute th
is strain of heroin?”

  “What are you saying?” Daniela asked.

  “One side provides the heroin, the other provides the fentanyl.”

  “It’s possible,” Maddie said.

  “If I’m right, Rocco’s not just smuggling it in,” I said. “He’s smuggling it out.”

  CHAPTER 15

  I removed the napkin from Essence nightclub from my other pocket. Looked at it. Front and then back. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I opened it. After fanning it out into a perfect square, I made an unusual discovery.

  “What is that?” Daniela asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Looks like a piece of tape.”

  She held out her hand. “Can I see it?”

  I handed it over.

  She lifted the taped section to her face, inspected it. “There’s something under here.”

  “Beneath the tape?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  She gently tugged on an edge of the tape, inserted her finger beneath it, pulled it back out, stuck the tiniest sliver of white powder into her mouth.

  “Yep, it has a kind of vinegar-like taste to it,” Daniela said.

  “Heroin?”

  Daniela nodded.

  I didn’t ask her if she was sure, or how she knew she was sure. Looking at her face it was obvious there had been a time when she, herself, chased the dragon. “Looks like we know where they’re storing it.”

  Between the printed flight document and the napkin laced with smack, somewhere along the way, Misty slipped up.

  “Now that we’re on to something, the question is—what are we going to do about it?” Daniela asked.

  I lifted a finger. “I have an idea, but I’ll need your help.”

  Daniela curved her lips into a smile. “All right. Let’s hear it.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Giovanni invited me to meet him in the dining room for dinner. Given the uncomfortable circumstances between us, I had every intention to decline were it not for wanting to see the look on his face when my plan was put into action.