by J. S. Cooper
“I hear.”
“I couldn’t let Giuliani hear this, but I want my daughter back in my life.”
“Okay.”
“And you’re going to help get her back.”
“I don’t know how I can do that.”
“I think you do, Anabel. I think you do.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I need you to convince Luca to do something for me.”
“I can’t convince—”
“You can convince him of anything you want.”
“I can’t convince him of anything, he doesn’t care about me. Even when I was on the phone with him just now, he hung up.”
“He plays games, Anabel. You know that. He plays games.”
“He’s engaged to someone else. What does he care about me?”
“I already told you every mafia man’s married. That doesn’t mean that’s the love of his life.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Listen to me very carefully, Anabel. I’m going to tell you a couple of things. And when Luca gets here, you need to get me some information. You get me this information and I promise, you will never see me again. And...”
“And what?”
“I promise that your friend, Emily, and your friend, Charlotte, will also be protected.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m just saying that I got guys outside both of their residences, and I know they got Matteo, and I know that the other one’s got a rich guy, but they ain’t no match for me. If I want them, I can have them too. So you got to be real careful here, Anabel. You got to think real carefully about what you want to do next.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying. What do you want me to do? What do you want me to get from Luca?”
“I need you to get me five million. And...”
“And what?”
“I need you to find out exactly where that body is buried.”
Chapter 13
Luca
I couldn’t believe that Enzo Russo had Anabel. After all these years, after everything I’d been through, I still couldn’t get rid of that man. He was like a parasite in my life, constantly sucking and taking from me and giving back nothing. Enzo Russo was everything I despised about the mafia. He didn’t care about the rules. He didn’t care about treating women well. He didn’t care about kids. He would cut you before he could blink. He was also dumb. I couldn’t trust that he would make smart and rational decisions because his brain didn’t function like an intelligent adult. He was slow, gullible, and easy to anger. That also meant he was easy to intimidate, though. I’d have to remember that fact.
Enzo Russo was the scum of the earth, and I had to take care of him. I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t doing it for Anabel. I wasn’t doing it because I still cared about her well-being. No, I was doing it because I wanted to take care of Enzo once and for all. He had messed with me one too many times. I knew what he wanted and I also knew that if he were to have that information, I could be gone for a very long time because there were people more powerful than him or more powerful than me that wanted the information. There were people that could destroy both of us and I knew Enzo wouldn’t hesitate to throw me under the bus. I just didn’t know how I was going to get Anabel back and take care of Enzo at the same time. She already hated me for what had happened in the past and I didn’t want to see that cold judgment in her eyes again.
“Hey Giorgio, can you come here a second?” I walked down the corridor and called out to Giorgio. He hurried out of his room, yawning as he fiddled with his gun.
“What is it, boss?”
“Enzo’s got Anabel and he wants something from me.”
“I know.” He looked at me with a questioning expression. “And what are we meant to do about that?”
“He wants five million.”
“But boss, we don’t have that much liquid.”
“No, we don’t have that liquid, but we can get it.”
“Boss, we’re not going to pay five million dollars for that—” He stopped himself short, before he said something he knew would anger me. “We’re not going to pay that much for that girl. She’s no one to us, boss.”
“She’s no one to us now, that’s correct. But she was someone to me at one point.”
“Luca, you know I love you. You know I want the best for you. I also want the best for this family. We can’t get involved in this. You have to let her go. Whatever happens, happens.”
“I can’t let Enzo do anything to her, you know that Giorgio.”
“But Luca, she turned her back on you. She went to the feds. You would be in jail right now. She didn’t care about you.”
“That’s got nothing to do with it. We don’t mess with women and we don’t mess with kids. You know that.”
“But Luca, she’s not part of our family. She’s not in the mafia. Whatever Enzo wants to do, let him do it.”
“Giorgio, I’m not going to tell you one more time. When I give you an order, you obey, okay? I’m not asking you for your opinion. I’m not asking you to think about what we should do. I’m telling you what we’re going to do.”
His lips thinned and he looked at me with anger in his eyes. I could tell that he wanted to say something. I could tell that he wanted to fight. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the moment. Maybe everything was going to go down—right here and now.
“Whatever you say, boss,” he said finally, and I nodded.
“We have to go over to Russo’s place. We’re going to get her.”
“But how are we going to get her? We don’t have the money.”
“He doesn’t care about the money as much as he cares about something else.”
“What does he care about, Luca?”
“Giorgio, we both know what he cares about. We both know he wants to know where all the bodies are buried.” That wasn’t technically true, but I didn’t want to tell Giorgio everything, now that I was starting to trust him less.
“You can’t tell him, Luca. If you tell him anything about what we do, that’s it. It’s over.”
“We don’t have to tell him everything. In fact, we don’t have to tell him anything.”
“What do you mean we don’t have to tell him anything. He’s not just going to give us the girl. Not with no money and no information.”
“He’ll give us the girl. I’ll bet you my last dollar he’ll give us the girl.”
“I’m not betting you anything, Luca. And what about Valentina? What’s she going to say when we bring this girl back?”
“It’s none of Valentina’s bloody business what I do. I can have as many women in this house as I want. What has she got to do with anything? Are you really telling me that I need to watch my step because of Valentina Marchese?”
“But boss, you’re enga—”
“You know I’m not engaged to her.”
“But she thinks you’re engaged. ”
“She knows I’m not engaged. I have told her that we are not engaged.” My tone was even, but I was this close to socking him one.
“Her dad thinks you guys are engaged, Luca,” Giorgio finally said loudly and angrily. “Her dad let her come here because he thinks you are engaged. Her dad will kill us if he finds out the truth. He will take us all down if he thinks that you are in here with her, defiling her, and not going to marry her.”
“Who said anything about me defiling her? Have I laid a finger on her?”
“You might not have laid a finger on her, Luca, but no one knows that. Everyone is going to think that you’re in here fucking her.”
“Let everyone think what they want to think. I know the truth. Valentina knows the truth. You know the truth.”
“Luca, then why is she here?”
“She’s here for other purposes. Other purposes that I will not go into right now. Other purposes that cannot happen because you didn’t do what I told you to do successfully.”
“What does Valentina
have to do with me kidnapping Anabel for you?” Giorgio’s eyes narrowed and I could see that he was thinking hard.
“That’s none of your business, Giorgio, and I’m going to tell you one last time. You need to obey orders and do what I say. We’re not co-bosses here, okay? You are the underboss. Do you know what that means? Underboss, you’re under the boss. You’re under me. I make the decisions. You don’t question me. You understand me?” My hand clutched my holster and Giorgio looked down at my gun.
“Are you going to shoot me for her, Luca? You’re going to shoot me for that whore?”
“What did you just say?” My voice lowered and I could feel anger coursing through me as I stared at him. “What did you just say to me?”
“I called her a whore, Luca. That bitch is a whore. She slept with you, she said she loved you, and then she went to the feds and she snitched on you. She told them that you murdered a guy.” He was shouting now. “You think she cared about you then, when she told them that? You think she would have saved your ass? Do you think she would have cared if you went to jail and rotted there? She ratted on you and she left. I’m the one that’s been here. I’m the one that looks after you. I’m the one that’s done everything for you, Luca. Everything.” He was shouting now, seething. “I have known you your whole life. I’ve known you before you even met her, and you changed when you met her. You became weak, and now you’re weak again.”
“Are you calling me weak?” I grabbed him by the scruff of his shirt and held him up in the air. Fat, ginormous Giorgio was up in the air, and he glared at me. “I’m not weak, Giorgio. I’m not weak at all. And if you dare talk to me like that again, I will kill you with my bare hands, you hear me? Do you hear me?!” He looked at me with fear in his eyes and hatred.
“So you’d kill me because of this girl?” he said softly. “You’d kill me, your best friend, your family?”
“In a heartbeat.”
Chapter 14
Anabel
“Valentina Marchese, she is a true, beautiful Italian woman.” Enzo looked down at me with a smirk, his hands outlining an invisible hourglass figure. “You’ve got nothing on her.”
I didn’t answer him. I wouldn’t let him see that I cared though I could feel the pain coursing through my veins. I could just imagine what Valentina looked like, even though I’d never seen her before. Long dark hair, big, beautiful brown eyes, tan, most probably beautiful, just as Enzo said, maybe far more beautiful than me. No wonder Luca didn’t miss me. I was happy for him in a way. He needed to find someone that would love him and accept that he was part of the mafia and that was something I’d been unable to do. I had loved him, of course. I’d loved him with all my heart, but I just couldn’t accept being with a man that could murder someone in cold blood, just because he was jealous of them.
Luca had temper issues. And at first, I didn’t mind. I didn’t realize just how detrimental his temper could be to both of our lives. Temper issues and control issues were not something I’d ever been around before, and even though I’d never been in a relationship before him, I knew that it wasn’t healthy. As much as I loved Luca and wanted to be with him, I couldn’t accept that part of his personality and of his life. It had taken everything in me to walk away from him, but the final straw had come when I’d seen him cold-bloodedly murder someone.
How do you come back from that? How do you come back from seeing someone you love shoot someone dead? He hadn’t known at first that I was in the room. He hadn’t known that I’d seen until it was too late. And then he turned to me, his eyes cold, and all he’d said was, “You shouldn’t have been in here, Anabel. You shouldn’t have been watching.” And I’d run and I cried. I’d cried so much, I thought I couldn’t cry anymore. The tears had mixed with antagonizing guilt because I’d known who the man was. And worse than that, I was the one that was responsible for his death. That knowledge was something that I would never, ever forgive myself for. I’d been young and I’d been playing games. And because of me, because I’d flirted with him to make Luca jealous, he was dead.
I didn’t know how to reconcile that fact to myself. I’d always thought I was a good person, but a good person didn’t get men killed. I didn’t know how I could ever forgive myself or Luca and that’s why I’d left and that’s why I’d gone to the feds because it wasn’t right. And when something wasn’t right, you had to report it even if it was someone you loved. Even though initially I hadn’t gone to turn him in, but as soon as his name left my lips, I’d known that that would be it. It would be over. I know he’d never forgive me for turning my back on him. And why should he? I wouldn’t forgive him if he’d done something like that to me.
Luca and I had thought that our love was going to last forever. I’d thought he was the one, but he’d gone and broken my heart. And the worst part of all was that he’d taken every good thing I loved about the world and he’d destroyed it. Consequently, he destroyed me as well. There were days that I woke up and I looked in the mirror, and I didn’t even recognize myself. Evenings when I watched TV and my mind drifted to that night. If I closed my eyes, sometimes I could still picture the scene. You don’t forget death and you don’t forget your role in it. Not if you have a heart, not if you have a conscience. And I had both. Every single day, I lived with the pain. Every single day I wondered, what if? What if I hadn’t flirted with him? What if Luca hadn’t seen, would he still be alive?
“Girl, are you listening to me?” Enzo shouted and I blinked, gazing at him, a half-smile on his face, as he realized how out of it I was.
“Yes. What is it?”
“I said, Valentina Marchese is beautiful. You’ve got nothing on her.”
“I heard you. What do you want me to say to that?” I shook my head at him. “Do you want me to be upset? Do you want me to say that I can’t go on because Luca’s found someone else? I think you’ll find that I can go on. I think you’ll see that I’m a very successful attorney. I think you’ll see that—”
“Shut up, bitch.” He frowned and walked over to the door. “I don’t want to hear what you have to say anymore.”
“So then why did you ask me a question?”
“He’ll be here, you know, within half an hour, I bet.”
“Okay. And?”
“So you’re going to play ball or do I have to bring your friends in here as well?”
“You wouldn’t touch Charlotte and Emily.”
“You want to bet?”
“Do you know Matteo and Max? If you touch either one of their girlfriends, they will kill you.”
“Yeah, I know Matteo. I know Max. They’ve got nothing on me. You should know that, Anabel. We in the mafia, we’re cold-blooded killers. We don’t pause. We don't hesitate. We do what we have to do. And if I got to pop them off one by one, I will, and I will not care. So are you or are you not going to play ball?”
“Luca is not going to tell me what you want him to tell me, you have to know that, right? Why would he?”
“Because he still loves you.”
“He doesn’t still love me. He hates me. You know I turned him in to the feds.”
“Have you ever heard that saying there’s a thin line between love and hate?” Enzo walked toward me again, crouched down and grabbed my wrists, squeezing them tightly.
“That hurts.” I tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let go.
“You know, Anabel, let me tell you a story. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” I shot back at him, angry, wishing I was stronger. Wishing that I could take him and push him away and get away from him. But I was too weak. Physically, my body was no match to his. I knew that if I got out of here alive, I would have to take self-defense lessons. I would do what I could to help myself if I ever got into a situation like this again.
“Let me tell you about my wife.”
“Uh huh.”
“My wife, she thinks she’s a cool, cold bitch.” He laughed. “But you know what? She’s not, because as
much as she hates me for fucking around on her, she will never leave me. And you know why she won’t leave me?”
“No. Why?”
“Because we have four beautiful kids together. And you know what else?”
“What?”
“I give her a lifestyle that she loves. I was her first love and I’ll be her last love. And if she even thought about leaving me, I would kill her.”
“Well, maybe that’s why she doesn’t leave you. Maybe it’s not about her loving you. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t want a bullet through her head.”
“Shut up, bitch. I’m telling you right here and now, Luca is coming for you and maybe it’s not because he loves you. Maybe it’s because he hates you. Maybe it’s because he wants to be the one to make you pay.”
“Pay for what?”
“You know what. You hurt him.”
“And he hurt me.”
“You know that man?” He cocked his head to the side and I was having a hard time following what he was saying. He was skipping from subject to subject and I wasn’t sure what points he thought he was making.
“What man?”
“The man you saw Luca kill.”
“Who said I saw Luca kill anyone?” I closed my mouth quickly, sweat trickling down my body. What did Enzo know about this and why was he so concerned? I just didn’t understand and I wish that I did.
“I know you saw him kill that man.”
“Okay. And?”
“His name was Fabiano. You recognize that name?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember if you recognize the name Fabiano? How many Fabianos do you know?”
“I don’t know any Fabianos.”
“I got a picture of you, you know?”
“Excuse me?”
“I got a picture of you in a bar with Fabiano.”
“Okay. And?”
“It’s from years ago, right before he went missing.”
“Okay. And?”
“He’s got his hand up your skirt.”
