13. Alessandro

The whimpers and blubbering of an errant shooter echo around Oz"s pool house. Blood has this funny way of showing up in various shades of red depending on how deeply you cut into the body. I stare at a stream of it pooling under the dangling body of someone who"d dared trespass on this property and shoot at people I care about.

The idea of Evelyn being hurt does something visceral to me. Both my hands and the front of my shirt hold a few smears of blood that remind me to have this entire suit burned.

"I know it was not your intent to make a liar out of me, Billy," I say to the attacker. He"s hanging by his feet off the diving board in the deep end. It took a few knicks with my razor to get his name. Now, I"m working on who he"s working for and why. I grip the center of the rope that"s binding his arms together, stretching his limbs in front of him, holding the razor against his forearm.

"Puh- puh- please, Mr. De Luca," Billy the shooter whines. "I don"t know nothing. I"m only doing a job. I had to do this. I owe these people money. I already told you where I met the guys at. Please. Someone HELP ME!"

"It"s unfortunate for you that you"re bad at your job." Shaking my head, I ignore his pleas for mercy. "Now, I promised my wife that I"d keep her safe. Her Family is under my protection. So, you and your pals, pals that you"re going to tell me how to find, decide to fire semi-automatic rounds at women and children looking to enjoy a lovely dinner my wife has painstakingly prepared."

I can feel the rage simmering as I slip the blade of the razor under the top layer of skin, fileting a sliver of it and letting the searing pain set him into a fit of screams. His body trembles and releases more bodily fluids that continue to drip and pool under his dangling body.

"I"m going to peel you like a fuckin' apple," I snarl. "I want to see how many layers it takes to get down to the bone. Just to make sure you stay awake for the entire process, I have some liquid adrenaline coming."

Billy whimpers, cries, and slobbers before passing out. I wipe my razor on his pants and walk away from him. There"s a wet towel on the edge of the pool near the shallow end. I step out to get most of the blood off my hands and razor. Lorenzo and Oz look on while I fold the razor back into its sheath to slide into my pocket.

"You gonna tag Lorenzo in?" Oz asks with a gleam in his beady eyes. "Or can I take a stab at it?"

"Very funny. Go for it, I guess. I"m afraid my patience is going to wear out before he tells me anything else useful. Ren and I should head to that strip joint he mentioned."

"Isn"t that one of Montegna"s places?" Lorenzo asks, rolling up his sleeves. He looks like he wants a round with our prisoner, too.

I reach out to stop him, saying, "I think so, but let Zio work on him. I doubt whoever he was working with is going to head back to their meetup spot, but it"s worth poking around."

Oz wags his finger at me. "I told you. Montegna"s not wasting any time, Alessandro. This is why we should have way more guns on the street. We were unprepared for today."

"No," I counter. "You were unprepared. Lorenzo and I never travel light coming out here. I"m going to get some answers and make sure something like this doesn"t happen again."

"Ah, fine. If this shit stain has anything else to say, I"ll get word to you," Oz says, stepping into the empty pool, cracking his knuckles, and pulling something out of his pocket.

The closer Oz gets to the shooter, the less I want to hang around, but Billy regains consciousness.

"Wait a minute. You said—" Billy"s words are muffled by whatever Oz shoves in his mouth.

Oz turns over his shoulder with a smile. "I"ll work, then listen. Feel free to change and take one of my cars, Alessandro."

"Thanks, Zio."

Lorenzo and I leave the pool house through a flap because despite the place being in perfectly usable condition, Oz leaves the place tented like it"s being fumigated. The reason is for scenarios like this.

"I don"t think any of your uncle"s stuff is going to fit ya." Lorenzo laughs as we walk around the house toward the garage.

"I"m just going to put my jacket on. I"ll change when I"m sure we"re done with our interrogations. There"s no use getting blood all over new clothes."

There"s a work truck in the garage for the landscapers to use, and at some point, we"ll get a soldier to bring it back once we"re done with it. The last thing I need is to be seen busting heads with Lorenzo behind the wheel and me soaked in Billy the shooter"s blood. After draping large trash bags over the seats, we head off the property and toward the bridge. Yet something"s bugging me about this entire morning.

"Ren, you think that guy is going to tell Oz anything?"

Lorenzo huffs out a breath. "I doubt it. He"ll be lucky if your uncle puts him out of his misery. The quicker, the better. Why? What"s up?"

I shrug. "Something about what he was saying when we were leaving. I"m probably being paranoid, but forget it. What are the odds that Montegna"s number is still the same?"

"If he"s the one behind this or the torched businesses, I don"t think so. Why would he want anyone in La Familia keeping in touch? Why?"

"I"m thinking we should set up a meeting."

Lorenzo scoffs. "You think he"s going to do that?"

"He will if he doesn"t want me running loose all over the city."

To both of our surprise, Don Montegna is willing to take a meeting with me and decides that Kings is the best place for it. In his words, if I"m trying to pull anything, I"ll be less likely to kill him at one of my client"s most profitable establishments.

Don Montegna is short, sharply dressed in a pinstriped suit, and bald with a face that looks incapable of smiling. Even when he tries to look happy, the spacing between his yellow teeth, the hook at the end of his slender nose, and the odor of his cigars make him irritable to be around. The size of his gut gives him trouble as he slides into a booth at the back of Kings"s dining room.

The server doesn"t waste time bringing over my favorite bottle of Scotch. Lorenzo sits down in the booth beside us with his back to mine to make sure he"s got my back.

I speak low before taking my seat, leaning down to talk in his ear. "Get ahold of Pop and make sure he"s okay. We"ll head out there next if we have to."

He nods, and I take a seat.

"So, Little Sandro De Luca is making quite the name for himself these days." Don Montegna"s raspy voice most likely comes from the copious amounts of cigars he smokes. Either that or he uses gravel for mouthwash. I pour him a glass, which he readily takes and raises to me. "Salut."

"Salut," I return the toast.

"Why all the huffing and puffing and I"ll blow your strip clubs down, Alessandro?" He asks, getting straight to the point.

"I can ask you the same thing. I"ve got a few birdies singing that you"re torching businesses that belong to me and my wife"s family."

He grins that toothy grin and leans back. "Yes, congratulations to you and your beautiful bride. It should have been a La Familia affair. But what"s done is done. As far as your little businesses are concerned, no one does cocktails anymore. If any businesses burned, maybe you should check to see if someone else had their eye on them? You have the resources for that, I"m sure."

"We"re having the FDNY open an investigation to look into that as possible arson," I tell him, watching for his reaction.

Don Montegna doesn"t flinch, doesn"t care, and his body language screams indifference. Even if he is behind the burned down shops, he"s certain it won"t trace back to him. It"s most likely he"s got nothing to do with it. My instincts are rarely wrong.

"What about this morning?"

"Alessandro," he sighs. "You of all people know that when I schedule appointments, I never miss. We wouldn"t be having this conversation if I had anything to do with that. I"m sorry that your family ended up in the line of fire, but your sudden merger kicked a hornet"s nest. Anybody outside of La Familia is likely to choose their own teams. You just ended up on someone"s opposing team."

"I have some other things to check on, but Montegna, if it comes back to me that you have anything to do with this?—"

"Don"t make threats, young man. I know who you are and what you"re capable of. You also have a wealth of resources at your disposal that I find useful. Why the fuck would I want the Howard Beach Butcher on my back? I"m dealing with my European friends and don"t need that kind of heat, capiche?"

I nod and chug down the rest of my drink. "I haven"t heard that name in a while."

"Real men never forget. I"d like to thank you for your restraint. Despite the slab of bacon you got hanging in a locker room." I hate how fast news travels, and I"m going to need the men working at Oz"s place to learn how to keep their mouths shut.

"I"m sure it"s being barbecued by now." I know Oz isn"t going to let that guy live. He has a habit of making sure the bodies disappear.

"When you get situated, come see me in Bayonne. I got a law firm that can use someone like you as a partner. Your marriage to the Rossis, a professional marriage with me, seems like a match made in La Familia heaven. I don"t want any problems. There"s a lot of money on the table, and we shouldn"t be fighting during these turbulent times. Your father getting sick and that macchia di merda running off on the Family looks bad for all of us. Let"s stick together, Alessandro. I gotta go. But call me. You still have my number."

Don Montegna slaps the table, throws down a few hundred bills to cover the bottle, and leaves. Lorenzo doesn"t waste any time sliding into the seat across from me.

He takes down a drink and rubs the back of his neck. "That didn"t sound like a man who"s been burning down our businesses. I got ahold of some soldiers on the ground, and we"ll have an update on the arson investigation by the end of the week. It"s only a few businesses on our end. I"m waiting for capos on Rossi"s side of things to get back to me."

"Okay, we"ll keep this quiet. I"ll send word to everybody that we don"t hit Montegna"s people or businesses until I put together a strategic attack. Have you made contact with my father?"

He nods with a slight shake of his head and light laughter. He swipes the screen on his phone for a second before flipping it around to show me what"s so funny.

"For fuck"s sake," I groan and cover my eyes. "Is that Pop? My father? Don Sandro De Luca, doing fucking yoga? He"s outside in the sunlight without a care in the fucking world while we"re getting shot at?"

Lorenzo shrugs. "He"s recovering, remember? Imagine if he"d been at your uncle"s place. If he didn"t get shot, the shooting itself would have given him another heart attack. Whoever that nurse is, she"s something special to get your father to do anything, let alone fucking yoga."

"Agreed. First thing I want to do about that is find the person who took that video, and?—"

Lorenzo holds his hand up to stop me. "No skinning required. I called Don Sandro to check on him, and when he didn"t answer, I called the guard on duty. They said he was doing yoga and I didn"t believe him, so he sent proof. It"s deleted, and now I"m deleting it off my phone too. It stays in the Family."

I sigh reluctantly. "Fine. Let"s go home. I want to make sure Evelyn"s alright."

The ride home is quick. The adrenaline coursing through my body is dissipating, and I"m anxious to see my wife. However, the sight when I walk inside is the last I expect to see.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Lorenzo questions from behind me.

Evelyn"s taping a wound under Jenkins"s eye. There"s a gun on the table, and her clothes are smudged with soot and dirt from earlier, meaning she hasn"t been home long.

Evelyn"s tone is matter of fact as she says, "What happened was some guy harassed us on the street and I had to step in so Jenkins wouldn"t kill the guy with his bare hands."

I pull the razor out of my pocket, checking to see how dull it is before closing it and slipping it back into my pocket.

"Mio dolce, Come with me. Lorenzo, get to work on that list. Jenkins, you and Evelyn are going to show me where this happened. I"m anxious to finish what I"ve started."