Fearless: Mob Boss Book Two (Volume 2) (13 page)

29

The lobby was just as boring as the exterior of the building. After a brief hesitation (should she wait in the lobby? go inside?), she bought a ticket from a bald man at the booth and stepped through a metal turnstile.

She entered a small room with linoleum flooring and low ceilings. It looked almost carnival-esque, with glass display cases lining the walls and colorful posters and signs pointing to the various exhibits. She stopped at each of them, lingering, trying to look like a tourist. She didn’t want to do anything that might spook Dante or piss him off.

A quote from Robert Ripley was painted on a wall in the middle of the room.

“I have traveled 201 countries and the strangest thing I’ve seen is man.”

It was oddly appropriate, and the words echoed in her mind as she stopped at a display showcasing a shrunken head. According to the description on the placard, a South American tribe was known for taking the heads of their fallen enemies, removing the skin, and shrinking the heads as a kind of trophy.

She shuddered, and Dante’s choice of meeting place took on an even more ominous air.

She continued to a case holding an authentic vampire killing kit. Using the glass as a mirror, she tried to case the room behind her without being obvious, looking for signs of Sara or Dante. She didn’t see either of them, and she wondered if Sara had been waylaid or if she was just really good at staying out of sight.

She reached the back of the room and followed a narrow ramp downward to a level below ground. It had the air of a fun house, and there was something surreal and a little twisted about the warren of rooms, garish displays, and too bright colors of the posters.

The room was empty, and she started with a seemingly innocuous motorcycle crafted entirely out of candy. She stood there for a moment, forcing herself to breathe calm and slow before moving on.

The room was gray and dimly lit, with shadows creeping outward from the wall. The whole thing felt a little fucked up, and she had to fight panic as she stopped at a large, oddly shaped skeleton. The description said it was a cave bear, an extinct species of animal said to roam the earth over a hundred thousand years ago. It looked sad and lonely, and she suddenly wanted to take it out of here, bury it in the ground, let the earth reclaim it. That’s where it should have been, not here on display like some kind of freak show.

She shook her head. She was getting morbid. The museum was strangely isolating, the basement level even more so than the first floor. She need to find the Human Salamander display and get the hell out of here.

She wound her way down another small ramp to yet another level, and came out into another shadowed room with more display cases. Across the room, she recognized the Human Salamander display from her research on the internet.

Finally.

The museum was quiet. She had yet to see another person, and she wondered if it was sheer coincidence, or if Dante had begun to yield the same kind of power in LA that Nico yielded in New York. Had he paid someone to keep the museum empty? And if so, was Sara really behind her somewhere? Or had she been prevented from coming in?

Fear thrummed through her body along with a healthy dose of adrenaline. She forced her feet to keep moving toward the display, her entire being rebelling against the site in front of her. It had looked fucked up on Locke’s computer. Up close it was truly disturbing.

The display featured a waxy skinned man surrounded by brick and bent over at the waist, resting on all fours with his hands tied. His eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets, and an apple was stuck in his mouth.

She didn’t see anything that might be from Dante—her brain rebelled against the idea that the display itself was some kind of message about David—so she turned her attention to the placard that explained the exhibit.

“Ian Chabert, a nineteenth century Parisian baker known as the “Human Salamander” could enter a blazing oven with two raw steaks and emerge unharmed even as the meat was well-cooked.”

Her stomach turned over, and she turned around, expecting to see Dante standing behind her. But the room was empty, the museum still as quiet as a tomb.

She looked at the display, combing over it for the gift shop bag Dante had mentioned. He definitely had issues, but what would be the point in bringing her here, in arranging this twisted little field trip, if not to give her some kind of message?

She looked around the sides of the glass case, even peered behind it. But other than the man gaping at her like a roast pig, there was nothing unusual about the display.

She stepped back, willing her eyes to see the whole thing, to stop looking for something specific and let her brain do the work of telling her what was out of place. A moment later she saw it; a small white bag on top of the display case near the wall behind it.

She wedged herself in between the glass and the wall and reached up, her fingers finding nothing but dust in the seconds before they finally brushed against the smooth paper bag. Standing on tip toe, she stretched until she could close her hand around it and pull it down.

Her heart thudded in her chest, and she almost thought she could hear the blood rushing in her veins as she peered inside the bag, her gaze coming to rest on a small black box. She lifted it out and set the bag on the floor, then held her breath as she braced herself to open the metal box.

Her mind was already shouting a warning. But Dante had David. She had to know what was inside. She opened it slowly, her mind at first refusing to acknowledge the two charred fingers resting on a bed of red velvet, the note nestled in the box’s lid that read BEHOLD THE EIGHT FINGERED MAN!!! HE CAN’T HOLD A PEN, BUT HE CAN STILL SUCK COCK!!!

And then she was screaming and screaming and screaming.

30

“She’s asleep,” Nico said, stepping out onto the patio.

“How is she?” Elia asked.

“Not fucking good,” Nico said.

He was vaguely aware that he was slipping; loosening the reigns on protocol he’d introduced as part of the family’s reboot. No swearing on the job, no losing your cool, personal business and family business kept separately at all times….all maxims Nico was breaking with increasing frequency.

“Did the Xanax help?” Sara asked softly.

She sat close to Luca, and Nico tried to step back from the situation long enough to see if it was inappropriately close or in-solidarity-close. The last thing they needed was for Luca to have feelings for a member of the family. Especially a member who was involved in what was already a monumental nightmare. Nico would have to caution him.

“It did,” Nico said. “Thanks for that.”

Sara nodded. “I get nervous on planes.”

Nico tried to smile. “Try a martini if you ever find yourself out of Xanax. Works just as good.”

She nodded.

“What do we do now?” Marco asked.

The big man had been unusually quiet. Nico had chosen Marco and Elia for their loyalty, discretion, and unwavering stoicism. But the mind fuck Dante had perpetrated against Angel had worked on all of them, and it had taken obvious effort for the men to remain impassive when Sara brought her sobbing out of the museum. Take three of the most dangerous men in the world and put a crying woman in front of them—especially someone inherently vulnerable like Angel—and they turned to mush.

Now they knew that Dante meant business, and even if Angel got her brother back alive, he would be changed forever. So would she.

“Motherfucker!” Nico shouted, putting his fist through one of Locke’s glass doors.

Everyone stood silent as they stared at the blood dripping from his hand onto the patio. “I’ll get a towel.” Sara hurried into the kitchen and returned with a dishtowel. She started to wrap it around Nico’s hand, but he pulled it away from her and did the job himself. He didn’t want anyone but Angel touching him, not even one as nice as Sara Falco.

“I think you may need stitches for that, boss,” Luca said, watching the blood seep through the towel.

“I’m fine,” Nico said through his teeth.

He thought of the empty churches he used to sit in, their strange quiet, the proximity he’d felt to his mother and father. It was tempting, but he doubted anything could calm the storm raging in his mind. He pushed aside the fury that threatened to consume him, the desire to tear the city apart looking for Dante, to go in to John Lando’s office shooting until the yellow-bellied coward told Nico what he knew. He needed to break the problem down in his head.

Emotion would get David killed. Reason might save him.

“Do whatever you have to do to get the security footage from the storefronts surrounding the museum,” he said. “Traffic cams, too, if this godforsaken city has them.”

“This isn’t our territory,” Luca said. “Should we go through John—”

“I don’t give a…” Nico stopped himself, trying to reclaim the professionalism he’d worked to instill in the family in the two years before he met Angel. “Do not ask John’s permission. Do not ask for Gino’s permission. Just get the tapes by any means necessary. And get them today.”

Luca nodded, then shuffled a little on his feet. It was uncharacteristic of him to show any kind of uncertainty. Something else was up.

“What is it, Luca?”

Luca exhaled. “It’s Vincent.”

“Vincent?”

Luca nodded. “He’s gone.”

“Can you be more specific?” Nico asked. But he already knew.

“He hasn’t reported for work in two days, and he’s not picking up his phone. Family claims not to know where he is.”

Nico turned away, stared out over the water. It was beautiful, but it wasn’t Maine, and he suddenly wished he and Angel were there, walking the craggy shoreline with nothing between them.

He could have gone through the motions of asking Luca questions, but it would be a waste of time. It was obvious what was happening; Vincent had defected to Dante’s camp, was helping the bastard orchestrate a takedown of the New York family like all the other men he’d lost.

He was surprised to find he didn’t care. The coup was an effort to stop the inevitable flow of change. Those who were attempting to do so would soon be obsolete—if not through Nico’s efforts, through some other. If they didn’t believe in his vision for the family, for the Syndicate, Dante could have them.

“Revoke his permissions and make sure everyone knows he’s no longer with the Vitale family.”

“Already done,” Luca said.

“Good.” Nico turned to face them. “There are over three hundred pages of search results from the piece of paper Angel found in her father’s office, plus the data from John’s computer. I suggest we get to work.”

31

It was light out when she finally woke up, and she guessed that it was early morning from the weakness of the sunlight filtering into the room. She had a few precious seconds of peace before she remembered.

David. Her beautiful, gentle David. Hurt and disfigured by the animal that was Dante.

She moaned out loud, turned over in the empty bed, buried her face in the pillow as the tears came. There was no room for thought. There was only grief and fear. Sobs wracked her body, and she used the pillow to muffle the sound, heaving it out until could hardly draw breath.

The fact that David was out of reach to her, that he was hurting and probably scared and there wasn’t a fucking thing she could do about it, emptied her out. Her chest constricted painfully. She wouldn’t have been surprised if she stopped breathing. If her body simply gave up the fight. It hurt too much to keep living. How did people stand it?

But then she thought of David. Already it had been somewhere around twelve hours since she’d found the horrific message from Dante. She didn’t know what Dante would do next, but David wasn’t dead yet. He was out there, and she was his only hope for survival.

How far would you go to protect the ones you love?

She sat up in bed, shame washing over her as Luca’s words rang through her mind. She had been so unforgiving of Nico, but she understood now why he’d pulled the trigger in London. If she were facing someone with a gun to David’s head—or to Nico’s—she wouldn’t gamble their lives by hoping for the best. She would do what was necessary to insure their survival. And she would do it at any cost.

The pressure on her heart gave a little with the realization— she could breathe now at least—and she walked to the bathroom and splashed cold water on her face, then stared into the mirror.

“Who are you?” she asked the reflection quietly.

The question was met with silence, and she toweled off her face and headed for the kitchen. They were there—Sara, Luca, Marco, Elia, and of course, Nico. They looked up as she entered the room, and she took in the exhaustion on their faces, the cups of coffee and half-eaten sandwiches, the open computers and pieces of paper spread out on the table. They’d obviously been up all night working, digging through the data, hoping to find something that might lead them to David.

Nico crossed the room, put an arm around her, kissed her forehead. “How are you feeling?”

She looked up at him, then turned to the others. “I’m ready to find my brother now.”

32

“This guy’s a piece of work,” Sara murmured, staring at her computer screen.

Angel looked up from the papers spread out in front of her. “Tell me you didn’t need a background check to tell you that.”

She and Sara had been working outside on the patio all day; Sara digging through Dante’s history, hoping for a connection to LA, and Angel going through the data from John’s computer piece by piece hoping for the same thing. Marco and Elia were inside, reviewing the security footage from storefronts near Ripley’s. Nico was hoping they would catch sight of someone they recognized from the LA family, someone they could shake down for information about Dante’s whereabouts.

Sara pulled her hair into a loose ponytail. “I mean, I knew something was… off about him.”

Angel choked out a laugh. “Off?”

Sara sighed. “Okay, he scared me a little. But look at Marco and Elia. Look at Luca and Nico.”

“What about them?” Angel leaned back in her chair and turned her eyes to Sara, grateful for a chance to look at something besides words on paper.

“Well… they can be scary. All the guys in the family can,” Sara said. “It’s hard to know who’s good-scary and who’s bad-scary, you know?”

She was right; to anyone outside of the family, Luca and Nico would be fearsome. They’d even been fearsome to her once. It was hard to believe now that she knew them. They were dangerous, yes. Even violent. But they had honor, and they only deployed violence when the situation called for it.

The train of thought took her by surprise. Was she rationalizing their criminal activity now? Making excuses for them? She didn’t know, but everything looked a little different with David in danger.

“I guess I see what you mean,” Angel said, taking a deep breath. “Dante… well, he tried to rape me once. Last year, before… everything.”

Sara’s eyes got wide. “Are you serious?”

Angel nodded, glad Luca had gone inside to call New York while Nico went to town for pizza. After her father’s death, she’d had to be careful about what she said to Lauren, to everyone. It had been awhile since she’d been able to talk openly with a girlfriend.

“He and Luca were keeping an eye on me while Nico tried to get my father to come out of hiding.”

“Luca didn’t sanction it?” Sara said, her face pale.

“God, no!” Angel said. “He was the only person who made me feel safe, and he kept Dante in line when he was around. But one night, he wasn’t, and Dante…” She shrugged, not wanting to remember what Dante was capable of while he had her brother.

“What happened?” Sara asked.

“I lied,” Angel said. “Told him Nico wouldn’t like it if he touched me.”

“That’s an understatement. I’m surprised he left Dante with any fingers.” She winced. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Angel said, the horror of situation threatening to creep back in, to overshadow the tiny piece of calm she’d managed to claim while she was working. “It is what it is. I’m just glad David’s alive.”

Sara nodded. “And if anyone can keep him that way, it’s Nico and Luca and the others.”

Angel offered Sara the first smile she’d been able to muster all day. “I think you might be right..”

A commotion broke out inside the house. They glanced at each other, then hurried inside to find Elia pacing the floor of Locke’s living room, a blurry image frozen on the giant TV.

“Motherfucking coward!” he shouted.

“What’s going on?” Luca asked, rushing into the room.

“Vincent Fucking Adamo, that’s what’s going on,” Marco said.

Luca walked to the TV screen, peered at the grainy image.

Elia kept ranting. “That cocksucking, dog-fucking—”

“Hey.” Luca stopped Elia in his tracks. “That’s enough. The boss doesn’t like that kind of talk in front of the ladies.”

Marco looked sufficiently chastised. “Sorry.”

Luca sighed. “This isn’t a surprise. We suspected he was working with Dante. Unfortunately, he’s not from the west coast, so it doesn’t help us in terms of finding them. Keep looking. See if anyone else was there around the time Angel was in the museum.”

She was on her way back to the patio when her cell phone rang from an unknown number. Luca signaled for everyone to be quiet, and she connected the call.

“Hello.”

“How did you like your present?” Dante said on the other end of the phone. He sounded pleased with himself, and Angel had to fight the urge to unleash a string of obscenities that would rival the ones spoken by Elia.

“Please don’t hurt David anymore,” she said. “I’m… I’m working on what you want. I just need a little more time.”

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. “But your brother…”

Tear stung her eyes. She blinked hard, forcing them away, and steadied her voice. “I’m going to get you what you want, Dante. I am. But I need a show of good faith, because right now, I’m not sure that you plan to hold up your end of the bargain.”

“Do you think I care what you want, cunt?” he shouted.

Sara flinched, and Angel knew everyone in the room had overheard Dante’s words.

“No, but you should,” Angel said. “Because I’m the only one who can get you what you want, and I’m not going to do that if you hurt my brother.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Dante said, his voice low and dangerous. “I have enough men who are sick of Vitale’s pansy-ass policies to take New York by force. I’m just doing it this way out of respect for Donati.”

“Raneiro?” Angel asked, dread knotting her stomach. “Does he know about this?”

“I think that’s above your pay grade,” Dante said. “Let’s just say that I’m trying to play by the rules—rules Vitale made when he kidnapped you last year to get what he wanted. I suggest you do the same.”

“That’s the plan,” Angel said. “But I need a show of good faith.”

Silence descended on the other end of the phone, and for a minute, Angel thought he might have hung up. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and hard.

“Seventy-two hours,” he said. “Then you get more pieces of your brother.”