Mob Wedding Mayhem (7 page)

The bars slid into position as the wheel turned in its bearing, plunging them into total darkness.

“
A
nything
?” Stacy whispered, keeping her voice down in case anyone was still standing watch outside the vault. Even in the near darkness she could tell Jeremiah was shaking his head.

“No, the walls are too thick. There’s no reception. But hey, at least there’s light, right?” he said, trying to keep her spirits up.

“Great. It’ll be nice and bright when we finally suffocate to death,” she answered. It had already been an hour according to Jeremiah’s phone, and given the close quarters she wasn’t sure how much air they had left. A single tear slipped down her cheek, glistening in the light of the phone.

“Hey now, none of that,” Jeremiah said in a soothing voice, but beneath his false bravado he, too, was terrified.

“Why not? A good sobbing cry will help speed things along.” She waited for a moment as she struggled to gain her composure, but finally gave in to her misery.

“You know the worst part about this? I mean, besides dying in a really large box? It’s having my wife spend the rest of her life wondering what I was doing here with you.” Stacy looked up suddenly in surprise and opened her mouth to protest, but Jeremiah cut her off. “That came out wrong. I only meant that I would wonder if I were her and the tables were turned. I won’t have the chance to tell her that it was all just part of my job, and that you and I didn’t disappear together.”

“You should text her,” Stacy suggested tearfully. “Even if it never goes through, it’ll still be in your phone if… if they ever find us.”

Jeremiah half-heartedly poked at the screen in his hand, and seeing him take her advice made it even more real. She began to cry again, realizing that she’d been waiting for him to say something about how silly her idea was.

“You know the worst part for me? It’s knowing how Nathan’s going to find out… that I’m pregnant.” It was Jeremiah’s turn to stare in open-mouthed surprise. “He’s going to read it in a coroner’s report or hear about it in courtroom testimony instead of hearing it come from me. I should have told him…”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew how he’d act. He’d want me to take it slow, to not work so much. I didn’t want to say anything until I was really, really sure, but then I finally got in to see my doctor after we took on this event. By then, I kept putting it off and we kept arguing about stupid stuff… and now he’s going to find out his wife and his child both died, only he’s going to read it in a legal document instead of hear the good news over a candle-lit dinner.”

Jeremiah leaned towards her and wrapped his arms around her in the dark, holding her tightly as she cried. She let her head fall to his shoulder and sobbed quietly until a new thought occurred to her.

“No,” she said, sitting up and wiping her eyes. “I’m not going to die like this. If they want us gone, they’re going to have to man up and do something about it. I won’t fade away into nothing while they stand around doing nothing. I didn’t work my whole life just to end up running out of air in a big metal box.”

She started punching her fists on the walls of the vault, screaming and banging out a rhythm in time to her cries. Jeremiah watched her sadly for a moment before humoring her by joining in. She passed him one of her shoes while she took the other one to beat the heels against the solid metal.

“You know we’re just going to run out of air even faster if we keep this up,” he finally admitted. Stacy growled—literally growled at him—and continued assaulting the walls. A sharp metal clang against the door froze them momentarily before they realized it was someone on the outside of vault trying to frighten them into silence. It only made Stacy fight harder.

After countless minutes had passed, a muffled thud made both of them look up in alarm. More thudding sounds followed, and Stacy clutched Jeremiah’s arm frantically.

“Do you know what that is?” she asked. He whispered that he did not. “I can’t tell, but it sounded like…”

One more thud was followed immediately by a deafening clanging sound and vibrations that shook the entire vault over their heads. More sounds rang out, one after another, until finally a barely audible voice called out.

“Stacy! Is that you?” Rod called out, his voice sounding hollow and far away. They banged her shoes against the walls in response. “Get down low on the floor and cover your heads with your hands!”

They did as they were told just in time for a volley of shots to hammer against the metal vault. The effect was mind numbing. Stacy and Jeremiah covered their ears as best they could while also protecting themselves from the shards of metal that dropped down from overhead. After a minute or two, Rod’s voice called out again, this time ordering the officers to cease firing.

“It’s not much, but it’s an air hole! Just sit tight, we’re going to get you out!”

Knowing that they probably weren’t going to die from lack of oxygen was a small comfort as they waited forever to be freed. Jeremiah even tried his phone again, holding it up to the small hole in the top corner of the vault.

Literally hours passed before the right technicians managed to take acetylene torches to the door and free Stacy and Jeremiah. They tumbled out of the small opening the welders had managed to form, easing up to their feet slowly after having sat curled up for so long. Rod greeted each of them with a sigh of relief, but it was only seconds before Nathan had Stacy in his arms.

“Oh god, Stacy, if anything had happened to you…” he managed to mutter as he kissed at the tears running down her cheeks. “When Rod called me and told me you were missing, that they’d found your car… I couldn’t even think straight.”

“My car? What do you mean, they found my car? Someone took my car?” she cried for only a minute before realizing it was a pretty dumb thing to get upset over, especially at a time like this. The sound of someone clearing his throat behind her made her stop and look around. Jeremiah stood behind her, his arms crossed in front of him as though waiting for something.

“Well? I believe you were planning to have an important conversation,” he said, watching her face as if willing her to spill it.

“Not now! Not right here in some smelly basement!” she protested, turning her back on him and returning to hugging Nathan.

“I seem to recall a lot of life moments flashing before both of our eyes. Nuh-uh… there’s no time like the present, before another second goes by wasted.”

She shot Jeremiah a look but the expression on his face was her undoing. She stopped for a moment and closed her eyes, reliving the feeling of knowing what it would do to Nathan to find out from the police instead of from her. It could happen again in an instant… a car accident on the way home, one of the mob boss’ men, anything could take them away from each other.

“Nathan, I’m pregnant!” Stacy said a little too loudly. The entire room fell into a trance-like state of silence, only to erupt into a chorus of applause and cheers from the full unit of uniformed officers working the scene. She blushed a deep pink, but one look at the pure joy on her husband’s face was all it took to make all of that disappear.

“
I
t was a beautiful ceremony
,” the woman said. “I just wish…”

“I know,” Stacy answered for her. “But Mrs. Cantrello, you never did get to finish telling me your own story. You started to, but we were cut off.”

“That’s true, dear, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to even tell. My brother, you see, he’s a good man to his family, he takes care of his own. But sometimes what he needs and what you want… well, they don’t always line up.

“He picked a nice enough guy for me, and promised it would be the end of a lot of fighting between our family and some other families. Like a Romeo and Juliet story, only ours would have a happy ending.” Stacy swore she heard the woman sigh under her breath. “Only it didn’t turn out like that. My husband—god rest his soul—was no good from the moment the last crumb of wedding cake got eaten. I never even knew what happened to him. I knew there was talk of him stealing, maybe even from my brother, and then next thing you know, one day he just didn’t come home. End of story.”

“That’s it? End of story? Are you kidding? Your husband didn’t come home, and you just figured he was gone?” Stacy blurted out.

“That’s how it is sometimes with people like us. And that’s why I couldn’t let Caterina go through the same kind of fear and heartache I went through for years. That’s why I let her go.”

Stacy had been momentarily taken off guard when she found out that Caterina had not only not been there when she’d called to speak with her, but that she’d been gone for weeks already, gone to wherever a beautiful, smart young girl who wants nothing to do with her family goes. She’d presumably gone to find her true love, not knowing that he’d come looking for her, too.

Stacy hugged the older woman briefly before returning to the reception. She froze in her tracks when a deep, ominous voice behind her called out her name. She turned around slowly and came face to face with what could only be Nick D’Argenzio’s twin, assuming the mob boss was still locked up safely in federal prison on charges ranging from extortion and racketeering to murder, and not just of a young man in a very unfortunate pair of pants.

“Mrs. Prudell, I’ve heard all about you, and about how you’re the reason Nicky got taken down,” the man said in an almost comical accent straight out of a gangster movie. He stepped towards her and waited.

“Well, yes. It does seem that I might have been present for the unfortunate situation,” she began, looking around carefully to see if the usual event security staffers were within earshot.

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for my family,” he said, coming towards her and kissing her on both cheeks while she froze in surprise. “You put a stop to his… shall we say, ambition? A lot of people have been hurt, both in my family and on the outside. And now, thanks to you, those days are behind us.”

“I see. Well, I’m certainly glad I could help!” she said too brightly, still trying to comprehend what he was insinuating. “I just don’t know about it being over. There’s still the matter of the charges, and the trial… I can tell you, I’m not looking forward to what’s coming in the months ahead, if you know what I mean.”

Stacy watched his face for any sign that he understood her fears. The history books were filled with more than one witness for the prosecution who suddenly took a shine to a cement factory in the industrial section of town.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing, let me tell you. You’ve done my family a great favor, and we won’t soon forget it.”

“A favor? I don’t understand.”

It was the dark-haired man’s turn to look confused. He spread his arms out wide. “The wedding. My niece’s wedding. It’s beautiful, and nobody would have blamed you for canceling on her and running away. Trust me, my family won’t forget it for a long time.”

Stacy swallowed loudly, her eyes wide in fear. “Oh, I thought maybe you were referring to having to testify…”

“Oh that. Yeah, you still gotta do that. But don’t worry, shoving you in a box and dumping it in the water hazard is small potatoes compared to the stuff they’ve got on Nicky. I’d be surprised if they ever bothered to try him on that one. Anyways, thanks again, I mean it. You just call on old Dominic if you ever need anything. And I mean, anything.”

He smiled at her and turned away, walking off with his hands stuffed casually into his tuxedo pants’ pockets. Stacy felt lightheaded, and knew it wasn’t just from the hormones. “I didn’t know about shoving it in the water hazard,” she said quietly to herself.

“Who’s a hazard? I mean, besides you, of course,” Nathan said, coming up to her and sliding his arm around her waist. He kissed her cheek and couldn’t help but give her stomach a comforting little pat.

“Oh, nothing. So, did you enjoy the wedding? Proud of all your hard work, Mr. Prudell?” she asked, happily changing the subject.

“Not as proud as I am of your hard work, Mrs. Prudell. So, have you given any more thought to my offer?” he asked, looking away from her and watching the crowds of people milling around at the reception.

“Not a bit! You want me to quit a company that I’ve run for so long, that I worked so hard to keep a secret? Never in a million years!”

“I didn’t say quit, I just meant you could take a back seat. Rest for a while. I don’t know, raise a baby or two. But basically, we could let the others do what they do best while we cheered from the sidelines for a change.”

“Spoken like a man who’s spent the last fifteen years on the sidelines,” she added jokingly. “No, I’ve worked too hard to step away from it. Of course I’ll take some time off to have the baby, and I’ll even work part time and from home after the arrival. But this is my passion, it’s what I do. No matter who stands in my way.”

“Then you have to do something for me,” Nathan said, turning serious and coming around to face her.

“What? I’ll do anything, you know that. Well, anything within reason that doesn’t involve quitting my job or getting in a cement vault.”

Nathan didn’t laugh, or even crack a smile. “I want the truth out there.”

“What? Are you kidding? We’ll lose our clients, our reputation, our good name! No one will hire us!” she cried, but Nathan shushed her with a kiss to her lips.

“They will. And if they don’t, they’ll be the ones to miss out. Events By Design will stand in name, but it will be listed under new ownership… A. Prudell.”

“You mean, Abigail?” Stacy asked, a perplexed look on her face.

“No. The rightful owner, both legally and responsibly,” he replied with a mischievous grin. “A. Prudell… Anastacia Prudell.”

Stacy’s face lit up as she realized where he was headed. “I knew I married you for your brains.”

“Oh stop, we both know it was for my killer dance moves. And these biceps,” he growled, flexing his thin arms through the fabric of his seersucker jacket. He turned serious once again. “I absolutely cannot wait to meet our baby, Stace. I’m just glad I’m going to get the chance after all.”

Stacy pulled Nathan closer and kissed him quickly, mindful of the possibility of being seen. She stepped back and smiled. “I can’t wait, either.”