Chapter 16

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

Saverio

F inally, she wears my ring. It’s not one she chose herself, but she wears it all the same. Anyway, I’ve always believed the ring is a symbol of a man’s vow and commitment that he presents to his future wife and should therefore be selected by him. I only gave her the choice because she has so little freedom in everything else.

The ring is from Hart Diamonds, the trendiest store on Fifth Avenue. The four-carat diamond has a pure color and a flawless cut. It’s a token of my wealth and my power, of my ability to care for her and to protect her. It was the biggest and most expensive diamond ring of all the stores in the whole of New York City. I checked to be sure. I even contacted the jewelry chain head office in South Africa to see if they could source a bigger diamond, but the sales manager assured me the quality and size of the stone I bought were extremely rare.

It sparkles on her finger where she sits next to me in the back of the car on our way home from the party, providing me with no small measure of satisfaction that I could give her a worthy ring. Rachele got engaged to me with her mother’s ring. It’s one that will stay in the family, one she’ll pass on to her daughter, should she have one. But this ring has never belonged to anyone. It’s nobody’s but Anya’s. It hasn’t been spoiled with another woman’s love, tears, or heartache, and I much prefer it like this.

My treasure leans her head against the backrest and closes her eyes. It’s been a long and stressful evening. I take her hand, frowning at how cold it feels, and cover it with mine to warm her skin.

When we arrive home, I lift her into my arms and carry her upstairs. In our bedroom, I help her to undress. She pulls on a pair of fluffy pajamas and crawls into bed without washing off her make-up or brushing her teeth. I fed her enough canapés and finger food at the club, so I pull the duvet up to her chin and leave her to sleep.

I change quickly, pulling on a tracksuit and a hoodie, and get my gun from the safe. When I walk from the dressing room, she’s breathing evenly.

I go over and stop at the side of the bed. Staring down at the gorgeous woman sleeping between my sheets, I brush a fiery red curl from her cheek. “Sleep well, tesoro .”

I make sure the alarm is set when I leave and tell the men to be extra vigilant while I’m gone. Then I take the nondescript car with the fake license plate that one of my men parked in the street and drive to Giorgio’s place.

He waits on the steps in front of his house, smoking a cigarette. He changed into a pair of dark jeans and a leather jacket that he wears over a sweater. He flicks the cigarette into the rose bush when I pull up and jogs down the stairs. A whiff of brandy reaches me when he shifts into the passenger seat. Not even the smell of the smoke that clings to his clothes is enough to mask the alcohol.

Fuck.

I steer the car into the road. “You’ve been drinking.”

He watches me, grinning as he bounces his leg. “We were at your party, remember?”

“I told you to stay the fuck sober.”

He grins wider and raises his hands. “I am sober.”

Fucking idiot.

“I thought you’d be banging Anya’s brains out tonight.”

“Keep your filthy mouth off her. Talk about her in such a disrespectful manner again, and I’ll cut out your tongue.”

He whistles. “Someone is edgy. Are you sure you’re not taking this whole wedding thing too seriously?”

“Weddings are serious.”

“To love and to hold in sickness and in health until death do you part and all that shit?”

“Exactly.”

“So she loves you now.”

I grit my teeth. “Madly.”

He only continues to look at me with that ugly grin on his face.

“What’s your problem?” I snap.

“You’ve always been like a brother to me.”

I take the interstate east, crossing over to Queens. “What is this? Some kind of nostalgic memory-lane bullshit?”

That grin never leaves his lips. I swear I’m going to slap it off his face.

“Just saying, bro.” He laughs and looks through his window. “Since Anya came into your life, we never hang out. ”

“I have responsibilities.”

“Such as being a father.”

“Yeah,” I bite out, shooting him a look, but he misses the warning because he’s still staring at the view over the bay.

“Okay,” he says with a smirk I can fucking hear in his voice before bouncing his leg again.

“When are you getting married? You could’ve had the pick of the crop by now.”

“Thanks to you, I’m meeting a cousin on my mother’s side next month.” He faces me. “You know, the one you refused? At least I have eight more years of freedom while she grows into a woman.” He chuckles. “I guess it’ll be fun breaking her in.”

I want to reach across, open his door, and kick him out of the car. Then reverse over him.

He leans forward and checks the side mirror. “Is the car on our tail one of ours?”

“Of course.”

“So, what’s the deal?”

“The deal is you let me run the show.”

He shoots me another toothy smile.

“It’s my mess, Giorgio. I’ll handle it my way.”

“All righty,” he sing-songs.

We cross Long Island to North Shore Beach and drive a distance along the coast. My men are already outside, about a mile from the house. I park the car on a small dirt road off the side and fit my gloves before taking my gun from under my seat.

“Where’s your piece?” I ask Giorgio.

He takes a knife from his pocket and shows it to me.

“Let’s go.”

I motion for the men to follow. We spread out over the area, creeping along the bushes. When we reach the big property, I wait for the geek on my team to give the sign. As soon as he’s cut the power and the alarm remotely, he gives me a thumbs-up.

“How long do we have?” I ask.

“As long as you need. I switched off the alarm and looped it through the neighbor’s current, so it won’t send a power down signal to the security company. As far as anyone is concerned, the alarm is working normally.”

“Cameras?”

“All down,” he confirms.

I turn to the footmen I sent to do reconnaissance. “Dogs?”

The team leader shakes his head.

“Neighbors?”

“They don’t have visibility on the house.” The leader’s mouth pulls up in the corner. “These rich people think it’s nice to have big private windows with million-fucking-dollar-views, but those are security nightmares.”

“Street cameras?”

“Nada,” the geek says.

“Is he alone?”

“All by his lonesome self. No wife and no kids. No staff or bodyguards.”

He must have a lot of faith in his alarm system. Or maybe he thinks his position will spare him.

At my signal, my men follow me to the beach-facing side of the property where there’s no wall. The wind rustles the grass polls on the dune, which covers us from the seaside in the unlikely event that a boat cruises past at this hour. We keep on the gravel path that runs around the house, leaving as little tracks as possible.

It doesn’t take us long to get into the house. It’s a modern design with a lot of glass and sliding doors. The geek feeds the infrared to my smartwatch. Kearney is in the master suite, presumably sleeping like a baby.

I climb the steps that are suspended on cables, my sneakers quiet on the tiles, and push open the bedroom door. Justice Kearney lies in a huge bed under a black silk sheet, snoring softly. I walk inside and close the curtains, blacking out the advantage we had of the moonlight.

Kearney doesn’t stir as I go over to the bed. It’s only when I switch on the lamp on the nightstand that he snorts like a pig, his mouth going slack, and frowns. By the time he’s blinked himself awake, the blade of my knife is indenting the pasty skin of his neck.

His eyes grow large and then panicked as he takes in the men surrounding his bed.

I smile. “Did you really think you could fuck with me and get away with it?” I click my tongue. “Your bad, Kearney.”

He wheezes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Shaking my head, I say, “Try again.”

“W–what do you want?”

“I’m going to make you pay for what you did to her.” I bring my face close to his and tell him in a soft, low voice, “Nod if you know who I’m talking about, but don’t you dare say her name unless you’re happy to part with your tongue.”

He nods frantically, his eyes bulging as the blade nicks his skin.

“Good,” I drawl. “I’m a fair man, so I’m going to give you two choices.”

I flick my fingers at which the man on my right takes the M-80 firecracker from his pocket and shows it to Kearney.

“One, I light this baby and shove it nice and deep up your ass. It should make some fireworks when it goes off. You may require reconstructive prostate surgery if you don’t bleed out. Whatever the case, you’ll never know the pleasure of climaxing again.”

He starts to shake under the covers, his legs trembling under the sheet and his chest heaving in his black silk pajama shirt.

“Two.” I lean closer still, looking him straight in the eyes. Whatever he sees in mine makes him piss himself. I hear the trickle before I smell it.

“Goddamn,” I say, turning my face away in disgust as the pungent smell of ammonia mixed with the asparagus he had for dinner climbs up my nose.

“I–I don’t?—”

“Two,” I repeat, shutting him up by pressing the blade harder and drawing a thicker line of blood. “I amputate your dick. Balls too. That way, you can’t make any more illegitimate children.”

He stutters and slobbers, a bubble of snot blowing from his left nostril.

“Choices, choices,” I say. “They’re not always easy to make, are they? Whatever you decide, when you call an ambulance, you better say you fell on a meat axe and chopped off your junk, or I will amputate every part of you one by one until someone has to push your trunk around in a cart on wheels. If you choose the first option, you can always say you wanted to use your asshole as a candlestick, but all that pressure felt so good in your ass that your butthole sucked that firecracker real deep when you came.” I trace the vein that pulses in his neck with the tip of the blade. “What’s it going to be, Kearney?”

He opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His lips flap like a fish on dry ground.

I nod at my men. Four each grab an arm and a leg, spread-eagling him .

“Front or back, Kearney?” I ask, straightening. “On which side are we holding you down?”

Before he can utter a word, Giorgio lifts his knife and stabs it right into the center of Kearney’s chest.

My men jump back.

“What the fuck, Giorgio?” one of them says.

A series of maniacal blows follows as Giorgio loses his shit and stabs the man on the bed until his upper body is a punctured mess covered by strips of blood-drenched silk.

We all stand there, shellshocked and splattered with blood.

His chest heaving from the exertion, Giorgio stumbles when he stands upright. He wipes a forearm over his brow, smearing blood over his face.

“Fuck,” someone says.

Giorgio spits on the corpse. “Nobody fucking messes with us.” He turns to the men. “Wreck the house. Take everything that’s valuable. We have to make it look like a robbery.”

With that, he walks from the room, almost tripping over his own feet.

The men look at me, waiting.

“Do it,” I say, gnashing my teeth.

We don’t have a choice now.

They jump into action. One starts in the bedroom, going through the closets, while the others spread out through the house.

I hold back the last one before he walks through the door. “Get some gasoline from the garage. Empty the gas tank of the car if you must.”

He nods, knowing what he must do.

We can’t risk leaving any evidence.

When that’s out of the way, I go after Giorgio and find him on the front lawn smoking a cigarette .

I slap the cigarette out of his mouth, sending him back two steps. “What the fuck happened in there?”

He smiles. “You’re getting soft, De Luca.”

I shove my finger in his face. “You’re getting fucking reckless.”

He mocks me with that smile. “I did what my father wanted us to do.”

“Your father didn’t want to shine a big fucking spotlight on us, and that’s exactly what you just did.”

He shrugs. “We had to make an example of Kearney. That’s how it works.”

Then he shoves his hands in his pockets and saunters away.

Bristling, I pick up his cigarette and dial the team leader, who’s waiting by the cars, with instructions.

Glass explodes somewhere.

I lift my head. Orange flames lick through the bedroom window. The smoke detectors won’t go off seeing that my guy is still overriding the system that’s connected to the alarm, but the neighbors may notice the blaze once it reaches the roof.

I count the men as they leave the house. When the last one is out, we jog along the path with the stolen goods and cut across the beach. The tide is coming in. In the next few minutes, it’ll wash away any prints we leave in the sand. From there, we swim through the sea until we’re close to the cars.

We strip in the shallow water. One of my men already waits with a plastic bag to collect our clothes and shoes. Another hands out towels, sweatpants, hoodies, and one-size-fits-all plastic swimming shoes. While we dress, the team leader sorts through the loot from Kearney’s house. He puts all the jewelry and waterproof electronics in a bag and throws the rest in the sea. We split up, me heading to an abandoned site to burn the clothes and the others back to the city. The leader will drop the stolen goods under some bridge in a shady part where they will quickly disappear. I take Giorgio with me, not trusting the fucker to go straight home.

He sits next to the fire in a dripping puddle with water running from his hair and down his back, staring into the flames while I do the work. I wait until everything is more or less ashes, which is difficult since it’s wet, and pull on a pair of protective gloves and rubber boots before I pour acid over the lot. Giorgio buries his face in his forearm, choking on the fumes.

When it’s done, I haul him up by his arm and manhandle him to the car. We drive in silence to Luigi’s place. I had to inform him about what had gone down before destroying the burner phones.

Luigi paces in the library when we arrive. He hobbles over to us, leaning heavily on his cane, and backhands Giorgio hard enough to make his head fly to the side.

“Fucking idiot,” Luigi sneers. He stabs a finger on his temple. “Do you have any braincells in there?”

“I got rid of the evidence,” I say.

Giorgio did what he did. It’s too late to change it. I don’t believe in wasting energy. The only course of action is damage control.

Giorgio glares at his father. “I did it for you. It should make you proud.”

Luigi points at the door. “Get out of my fucking sight.”

Giorgio balls his fists, but he turns for the door.

“You better stay here tonight,” Luigi calls after him. “And tomorrow. I don’t want another fucking impulsive murder on my hands.”

Giorgio shoots a look over his shoulder, not making a secret of the hatred that burns in his eyes .

“Christ,” Luigi says when Giorgio is gone, pinching the bridge of his nose. “We don’t fucking need this, not with the stock Raphael is moving right now.”

“Tell him to put a hold on things. We shouldn’t take any risks.”

Luigi rubs a hand over his brow. “The Mexican cartels aren’t going to like it. The negotiations are too far underway. They’ll see it as a breach of the agreement we made.”

“The agreement Raphael made, you mean.”

“Yes, Raphael. What difference does it make?”

“I told you it was a bad idea to bring Raphael and the fucking cartels in. Do you think the feds aren’t waiting for a reason to get search warrants?”

“This is your mess, Sav.” He stamps his cane on the floor. “You fucking made it.”

“And I would’ve cleaned it up if Giorgio didn’t go off the rails and acted like Chucky with a knife.”

“It’s all that woman’s fault,” he says, going red in the face.

“That woman is going to be my wife, and she’s the only reason our books aren’t one big fucking train wreck waiting to happen. We can’t launder the money without her, Luigi. You know it.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” he yells. “You tell me.”

“The cartels are Raphael’s contacts. Tell him to handle them. If their relationship is as solid as he claims, he’ll be able to stall them until the dust settles.”

“If they find out the DEA is breathing down our necks, the deal will be off.”

“Then it’s off. Good riddance. Besides, they already know about the raid.”

“Raphael kept it quiet,” he grumbles .

“No one can keep it that quiet.”

“Fuck,” he shouts, turning his face to the ceiling.

“Do you need me for anything else?”

He looks back at me. “Keep Giorgio on a tight leash.”

I hold his gaze. “I guess that means the hit on Anya is off.”

His eyes flare ever so briefly before he fixes his mouth in a cold smile. “He told you.”

“You should’ve been the one who told me.”

“Is that why you’re marrying her? To make sure I can’t touch her?”

“I’m marrying her because I need her.” In more ways I can explain.

His lips thin as his smile stretches. “No hard feelings.”

Yeah. I don’t think so.

I return his smile, mine frosty. “Raphael is going to fuck you over at the first chance he gets. This deal is a mistake.”

“So you’ve said. Raphael is family now. He won’t jeopardize our relationship. Elena will soon give him children, and then the blood tie will be complete.”

“I hope for your sake you’re right.”

He waves me away. “Good night, Sav.”

Finally.

I’m glad this fucking night is over.

At last, I can do what I want to do most, which is to go home to my pregnant fiancée.

Fiancée.

I say the word out loud as I walk to my car, getting a feel for it on my tongue, and it’s just about the most satisfying sound I’ve uttered or heard.