Chapter 13 Gemma

The moment Casper and Bash show up to my apartment, the energy shifts. Casper looks around my place, runs his finger along the chair rail, and glances at Damian. Damian’s no longer scrubbing my countertop as he stands in front of the peninsula island with his arms folded over his chest.

Antonio’s standing beside the window, his eyes scanning the darkness of the street in front of the house. Natalie’s hands are like a steeple holding up her head as she glares at the package on the table. My heart races every time I stare at the rosary beads that are supposed to be clutched in a dead man’s hand at the bottom of the East River.

Casper’s voice is low when he speaks. “I need your phones off and put them upstairs.”

Dread washes over me as we all power our phones off and hand them over to Damian who heads upstairs to put them in Natalie’s apartment. When he gets back, Bash closes and locks the door behind him.

Bash is still in pain from the other night as he stands in front of the door, looking like a younger version of our dad. Dark hair and dark gray eyes stare at me with disappointment. He groans and Antonio moves away from the window to sit beside me.

“Tell me exactly what happened, Gemma,” Bash demands with restraint in his voice.

My eyes shift from him to Natalie. She has an expression mirroring the worry inching through my body. Antonio rubs my shoulder from beside me as I dredge up memories from nearly a year ago.

“Steve was going on and on about meeting you guys for the two years we were friends and then the entire year we dated,” I tell them.

“The grease monkey?” Casper asks, running his fingers through his light brown hair. His familial dark gray eyes narrow at me as his brow furrows, likely trying to remember what Steve looked like.

“He said he worked at a body shop, but I don’t know,” I shrug my shoulders. “We dated for practically a year. Way back, like last September, he started dropping hints that he wanted to come around and meet you guys. Ma and Pop had already left for Sicily.”

Bash nods slowly. “It’s starting to come back to me. They left and I was trying to sell the house. He met up with us at that restaurant, but he was like a fucking Energizer bunny.”

“I didn’t like him,” Damian growls from behind my kitchen counter. He’s now sitting on top of it to stop himself from cleaning it all over again.

“Yeah. After you guys brushed him off, he wanted me to do more to convince La Familia to bring him in. I tried to tell him it doesn’t work like that. I don’t have any say on who you guys work with or anything. When he finally got that through his thick skull, he broke up with me.”

Bash simply sighs, folding his arms across his chest. “Then what happened.”

“About eight months ago...” I hesitate to tell them the rest because I know I screwed up and I just wanted to fix the situation without getting them involved.

“Go on, Gem,” Antonio encourages me as he gently rubs my shoulder. Having him by my side gives me enough courage to continue.

I touch his hand but stop when I see the glint of discomfort in my brothers’ eyes. “I went to the house because I told Bash I would get it cleaned and staged so he could do an open house. I heard someone upstairs and thought it was one of you guys, but it was Steve. He was angry and had a bunch of shit in his hand.”

“What did he do?” Casper asks anger rippling through his voice.

“He threw the stuff at me and we started fighting. I was able to get to my purse and I used the gun Damian gave me.”

Casper and Bash shoot daggers at Damian, who shrugs and says, “She’s our fucking sister, running around New York without a piece is stupid. I taught her how to use it.”

I try to take the heat off of Damian. “He did, and I did end up needing it. I shot Steve in the face. I was in a panic, but thankfully where the house is on that quiet street, the neighbors didn’t care about the gunshots. The cops didn’t even show up. I called Natalie to help me.”

“Then what did you do, exactly?” Bash asks.

Natalie speaks up this time. “She told me she had garbage to take out. I packed the biggest trunk I own into my car and drove out to Staten Island. I helped her clean up the mess and we shoved Steve inside the trunk.”

“Whole?” Casper asks.

Natalie’s eyes widen with disgust. “Of course, whole. We waited until like midnight and took a drive up the FDR. We found a nice spot to pull over and dumped the trunk into the river.”

Damian huffs. “This is exactly why I called you guys over here. They didn’t weigh down the trunk.”

Bash nods. “Okay. I’m going to call in some favors to see if a body or trunk was found. Was Steve alone?”

I shrug. “I would think so because if he had someone helping him, they would have come inside after the gun went off, right? Someone else would have been in the house or acted as a lookout.”

My eyes look at everyone in the room, but no one has any definitive answers.

Casper pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’ll make some calls to see if we can get a list of known associates. Someone could be fucking with you, Gem. Worst case scenario, Steve floated to the surface, or someone he worked with fished him out. This is why you moved out here in a hurry, isn’t it?”

I nod slowly. “I didn’t want what I did to come back on you guys. I just wanted to forget about all of it. Natalie needed to get away from her parents and I needed to get out of New York. It was perfect timing.”

Bash scoffs. “We’re family for a reason, Gem. Your problems are our problems. This little package is probably step one before they ask for money.”

“Money?” I question, turning up to look at Antonio who nods in agreement with Bash.

Antonio says, “Yeah, a demand is definitely coming. If they didn’t want money, they would have called the police already. We just have to figure out how much this is going to cost to make it go away.”

“That guy who works for Verducci is going to be following us. Isn’t it going to be hard dealing with blackmail while his people are watching us?” I ask them.

“What guy who works for Verducci?” Casper asks, raising an eyebrow.

Antonio takes a step forward. “There’s a guy who was watching us through her bedroom window in the back of the house. He popped up at her job and then chased her through the parking garage last night. I got there in time to intervene, but I couldn’t get my hands on him. I finished cleaning up the mess with Frankie, too.”

“Thank you,” Bash says. “Damian, are you still heading to Vegas?”

I turn to him to see Damian nodding with his eyes drifting toward Natalie as he says, “Yeah, and she’s coming with me. There is some business I need to handle out there and she’ll be a good cover. She can also get away from this shit show, unless you guys need me to stay out here.”

Bash slowly shakes his head side to side. “No. Armande left me a list of soldiers we can rely on. The less people we have to worry about protecting, the better. You two head to Vegas but keep your eyes open. Gem, get whatever you need out of here and bunk with Antonio until we get word back from New York about this Steve situation.”

“We may have a situation brewing on the Frankie front.” Antonio says. “He showed up to Ronan’s house and even though we cleaned it up, Verducci might have someone looking for him. Ronan put Frankie’s car at an airport parking lot to make it look like he skipped town.”

Casper groans. “Fine, I’ll try to have one of my people back date a ticket to show he left the city. He’s not going to float up on us, is he?”

“He’s chum.” Antonio replies.

Bash closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh before turning to me, asking, “Is there anything else we need to know about Steve?”

I shrug. “Not that I can think of.”

“When whoever sent that package reaches out, let me know, Gem. Antonio,” Bash pauses, looking at his longtime friend, “I expect you to do more than just keep her safe. You two still need to behave like you’re engaged, like we’re family. I’m going to reach out to see if I can grab any security footage from around Ma and Pop’s house. I installed some cameras for the open house.”

Casper speaks softly, asking, “Where did you put the cameras and memory drive, Bash?”

Bash grunts and groans, blowing out a deep exhale. “I don’t remember taking them down since I didn’t have to host the open house. I’m sorry, but I didn’t know there was a murder committed, so I could not treat the situation with the consideration it deserved.”

I feel like shit because I didn’t know there were cameras in the house.

Damian heads upstairs to grab our phones while I move into my bedroom to finish grabbing some clothes. We all have something to do to stave off war while I look forward to the pending blackmail demand. I learned long ago not to question when Bash said something was going to happen.

I just hope we can make all of this go away. Once the mayhem dies down, me and Antonio can see what’s left of our relationship. Hell, with all of the bullshit, I’ll be surprised if he wants to keep someone like me in his life. All Marzano’s do is bring stress and chaos wherever we go. He deserves peace. I only hope he gets it with me still by his side.