CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When Mick and Teddy entered the small guest house, the three capos that had been guarding Nails Trosetto were all down: victims of severe stab wounds. Blood was everywhere.

“What the fuck!” Teddy said in disbelief as he and Mick pulled out their weapons and then hurried to their downed men. But all three were gone. There was no doubt about it.

Then they stood up quickly, looking around. Teddy even looked under the bed, and in the closet, and even in the bathroom of the one-room space. But Nails was nowhere to be found. And they took off running for the exit.

“How did he get out of here with our guys all over this place?” asked Teddy as they ran for the door. “How could that happen?”

But when he said it, Mick stopped in his tracks, forcing Teddy to slam into his father. Then Mick turned around.

“Pop, what is it?” Teddy asked, although he knew he was not going to get an answer.

Mick knew what Teddy said was true. There was no way Nails would have walked out of this guest house and attract no attention. No way. Unless that explosion gave him a chance to go undetected as resources would have gone to help the street gate crew. But every man would not have gone. Not every one of them. Efficient Nikki would have never allowed that.

Mick started looking around. Then he realized their mistake. He and Teddy had been looking all around that room over and over again, from side to side to side, but not once did they look up.

And as soon as Mick looked up, he saw Nails in the corner of the high ceiling, holding onto a joist, having climbed up on the shelves and then hoisted himself on up. And when he and Mick locked eyes, Nails jumped down so quickly that Mick didn’t have time to do anything but push Teddy out of his path. But he couldn’t get himself out of the way fast enough. Nails fell on top of Mick.

Mick didn’t realize he had a knife in his hand until he was on top of him, and that knife was pointing directly at Mick’s face. Teddy scooted back on his butt and was about to take a shot at Nails, but Nails had a second knife and he threw it at Teddy It landed right into Teddy’s lower leg, causing Teddy to drop his gun and grit his teeth in pain.

And Mick and Nails fought for dominance of the knife that Nails still held in his hand. Teddy tried to grab his gun, but it was out of reach. As he slid his pained body toward his gun, Nails was getting the upper hand on his father. The knife was within an inch of Mick’s face.

But just as Mick was able to use all of the strength he had and push that knife away from his face, Nails, the unpredictable Nails, turned the knife on himself. Before Mick could hardly blink, Nails plunged the knife into his own body!

Then he looked at Mick, smiling. “This is what happens to bad men like us,” he said as he twisted the knife inside of him.

What a crazy fuck , Teddy thought as he stared at Nails.

But Mick needed answers. “Why?” he asked him.

Nails was still smiling, but he knew he was dying. “I got your ass good,” he said.

“You and who else?”

“Nobody else. I ran this operation from beginning to end. It was all me. And I almost got away with it.”

Mick always knew there was a possibility that somebody was pretending to be Zarbo, but he couldn’t let that possibility inform his behavior. Because if he was wrong, it would have been catastrophic. “What about Zarbo?” he asked Nails.

“His ass died in the war of 2012. You should know that. You’re the one buried him alive. That’s why I used him. Because you made a mistake that day: You never knew for certain what happened to Z. You nailed him in that box, alright, and you threw him in that raging river, but you never knew for certain if that bastard died. That was a mistake.”

Mick kept his focus. Nails didn’t have long on this earth. “How does using his m. o. help you?”

“I couldn’t get your full attention. When you heard about my sightings in Europe and all that other shit I was supposedly doing, which was all true by the way, I got some of your attention. You sent your A-team to Palermo and they checked it out. And it all checked out. But you still wasn’t that worried about me. I wasn’t considered top tier enough for you. But I knew Zarbo was top tier in your eyes. And that’s why I used his infamous z. I knew, by using my m.o. and Zarbo’s, I would have your undivided attention. And I did. So much so that you flew your whole family to these mountains. That’s when I knew I had you. Because, while I was in South Dakota for all those years, which was truly where I was, I plotted my revenge by watching your every move. And I learned something about you.”

Mick felt exposed, but he had to know. “What did you learn about me?”

Nails had to take a break. He was bleeding to death and the pain was excruciating. But he loved pain. That was why he smiled again. “I learned that every time your family was at risk, that’s when you made your biggest mistakes. That’s when I knew I had you right where I wanted you.”

“How did you get an army to do your dirty work?” Mick asked him. “For what reason?”

“I was a very rich man. I had more money in the Cayman Islands than you had. Which was saying a lot. I hired mercenaries who had to agree to be de-nailed so that anybody killing them would know they belonged to me. And if they were captured alive, they had to tell the story about me promising to kill their families or whatever bullshit they wanted to come up with. In exchange, I would pay them a million bucks a piece, or their loved ones if they died. It was easy to get an army. It was easy to de-nail them. It was easy to fool your ass into thinking I was back, but only in Europe for now. When I killed your capo and de-nailed him, that was my way of letting you know I was getting closer to you. I was ready to attack.”

Then his look turned bitter. “But you still underestimated me. You still didn’t seem to care. You’d deal with it later, was how you acted.” Then he smiled again. “Later’s here,” he said, and then he slumped over dead. Mick pushed him off and got up.

But when he saw that Teddy had been so engrossed with what Nails was saying that he was using only his hands to stanch the flow of blood, he quickly went to his son, removed his belt, and tied it tight around his son’s leg.

“Pop, it’s okay,” Teddy was saying when he saw how urgent his father was acting, as if he was panicking. “It’s not that bad. I’ll be okay. It’s nothing. Pop, this is nothing.”

It was only when Teddy insisted it was nothing did Mick stop tightening the belt. And then he looked at Teddy with a look that was as baffling as it was endearing. Because his father looked as if he was one exhale away from allowing those tears to finally come. It astounded Teddy. And then his father pulled him into his arms.

It was love. Teddy believed his father loved him. But mostly it was guilt.