The executive branch of the Hells Saints MC sat around the table ruminating about this unfortunate, but not totally unexpected turn of events.
“So, how you want to handle this, Boss?” Diego asked Prosper.
Prosper snarled out. “Slippery damn slope. I personally want to have at the cocksuckers who pulled this shit. Abruzzi’s daughter was under Hal’s protection—the Saints’ protection. First thing we gotta do is find out is who is stupid enough to dick around with that. Then there’s the issue that the bastards shot up my rental property. If Riker hadn’t been on his way home from one of his pussy calls, and reported in when he heard the shots, who the hell knows when we’d get to the bottom of this?”
“Anybody else report gunfire?” Diego looked at Reno.
“Yeah, blasts were pretty damn loud. Tadford took his time though, showed up while the cleaning crew was there.” Reno snorted. “Just in time to get his money.”
“I can just imagine what this is gonna cost us.” Prosper scowled.
“Nah, wasn’t bad. Officer Duddly-Do-Fucking-Right might be a crooked sonofabitch, but he’s smart enough not to be greedy,” Reno told them. “Gave him a few extra to look the other way while we loaded the assholes into the van, and that took care of it.”
“Where we keeping them?” Prosper scrubbed a hand over his face and looked at Jules.
“Warehouse off Junction Fifty-nine. Figured you’d want some place real remote,” Jules told him with a grim smile.
“Got that right, brother. Derringer’s on his way in, as luck would fucking have it, he’s up from Miami on family business and can be here in about an hour. That’ll make the interrogation of the assholes real special,” Prosper told them.
The boys all nodded and Hal shot out, “Good to hear, but we’re okay to start without him too, Boss. I’m not without skills in the interrogation department myself. Five minutes into it, they’ll be begging to tell us shit we don’t even want to know.”
Prosper looked hard at Hal. He had proven himself time and time again. The man was tough, honorable, smart, and skilled. He knew the boys were proud to call him brother. Hal deserved this kill and had a right to it. The enormity of a life or death decision was never lost on Prosper. Over the years, he had to hand down some pretty grim orders to keep the integrity and honor of the club at a bar he considered real fucking high. Prosper had no problem delivering a death sentence if need be. But this was not only his call to make.
“Your kill, brother—no question. God’s honest, I’d give you the go ahead to stick a red-hot poker up the motherfuckers’ asses right now if it were up to me. But we’re not the only ones with a dog in this hunt.” Prosper reminded him.
“You still haven’t reached Gianni?” Reno couldn’t keep the concern out of his voice. It wasn’t lost on any of them that Dolly, Reno’s mother, was in Italy with Gianni. It didn’t bode well that the mob boss’s daughter had just survived what looked like a contract hit, and now the father was incommunicado.
“Where’s the girl?” Prosper asked Hal.
“What girl?” Hal looked genuinely confused.
Prosper let out low growl. “You have got to be fuckin’ kidding me right now.”
“Abruzzi’s daughter,” Reno muttered as he kicked Hal under the table.
“She ain’t a girl, Boss. Not by a damn long shot.”
Then, despite the time and circumstance, Hal let out a big shit-eating grin.
“She’s all woman, and she held herself together like a champ.” Hal’s voice held a tone of pride and ownership that not one of them missed, and no one was surprised at.
Because Valentina Abruzzi was one fine-lookin’ female and way to go Hal.
While the other brothers grinned back at him, Prosper just shook his head. He could have sworn he had made it a damn order for Hal not to get involved with Abruzzi’s daughter. Or maybe, he had made a strong suggestion—which would have put the issue in that damn gray area that Pinky was always claiming.
Jesus. Definitely —definitely— gonna think about that retirement shit again.
Then in a rare mindset of who gives a fuck, Prosper decided to leave it alone. If G had a problem with Hal banging his daughter then he could deal with it. Prosper had enough on his damn plate, and the mob boss was nowhere to be found.
After what felt like forever, Valentina was finally called into the Saints’ meeting room. She had had three cups of coffee and needed to pee badly, but when Hal had plopped her in front of the coffee maker, he told her to stay put. And after what had happened last time, she didn’t think it was a good idea to go wandering willy-nilly around Saints’ property. So now, there she stood in front of the executive branch of the Hell Saints MC in a thin white tee shirt that stopped mid-thigh, gold, glittery mud-riddled sandals, those panties, and a very full bladder. Not to mention that her eyes were still all swollen from crying, and she had a monster of a headache.
When Prosper opened his mouth to speak, Valentina put her palm up in a stop gesture, “Before you start asking me questions, I need a bathroom, some pain reliever, and my phone. The pills and phone are in my purse. The bathroom I need, like, right now.”
Silence—then someone gave out a low cough. Valentina realized she had just given out a series of orders to the National President of the Hell Saints MC. But the way she looked at it, what she was about to go through was no different than sitting through an interrogation with her father, and that she had perfected down to a science.
“With all due respect, Prosper,” she added because she felt she should, “I can’t concentrate when I have to pee this bad.”
She looked at Hal for help and saw he was having trouble hiding a smirk.
“First door on the left. If you want one that’s clean—third door on the right.” Prosper scowled.
With a quick nod of thanks, Valentina hurried out of the room. Then she did her business, ran her hands quickly under the lukewarm water—no soap in third door option—and wiped them off on the rough brown paper towels. She was back in a flash.
The phone, two pain relievers, and a bottle of water were sitting on the table.
She downed the pills and reached for the phone.
“You calling Gianni?” Prosper asked her.
Valentina shook her head. “Father Michael.”
“Who the hell is Father Michael?” Prosper growled.
“Calling in absent to Bread Day isn’t high on the priority list, babe.” Hal looked at her like she had lost her mind. “We’ve got to move on the shit that just happened.”
“You talkin’ about that ancient priest who runs the soup kitchen in the drug district?” Jules asked.
“Yeah. That’s him. Do you know him?” Hal looked surprised.
“Brother, every addict in the tri-state area knows Father Mike. He’s a great guy, back in my junkie days I spent some time in one of his bread lines myself,” Jules said.
“Why the fuck are we wasting time talking about a goddamn priest when we got shit to take care of…” Prosper snarled out.
“Father Michael Padini’s last name used to be Papadinio,” Valentina interrupted him.
“Antonio Michael Papadinio?” Diego asked.
“One in the same.” Valentina confirmed.
“No shit?” Diego gave a low whistle.
“God’s honest,” Valentina put up two fingers in a Girl Scout pledge.
“Explain.” Prosper ordered Diego,
Papadinio was an underboss for the … Capedillio crime family?” Diego threw Valentina a questioning look.
“Cappelli family.” Valentina corrected him.
“Yeah. Cappelli, that’s it. They pretty much owned Sicily from about 1940 to the early 70’s. Papadinio came under fire when he turned rat and offered up information to Interpol and the FBI about the Cappelli Crime Syndicate. This was about 1965 in the J. Edgar Hoover days when there was a big push against syndicated crime. Anyway, Papadinio bargained to trade vital information about the mob in exchange for permission for his family to enter the U.S. so that his infant daughter could be treated at Johns Hopkins for a congenital heart problem. The kid got the surgery, but it turned out that it was a bullshit deal because the information that Papadinio delivered didn’t amount to jack. When he refused to give them anything else, the law hit back hard. He was extradited back to Italy to face charges, and spent about thirty years serving hard time for ordering the kidnapping and death of two rival mobsters. While Papadinio was incarcerated, he became kind of a folk hero to the locals. He arranged to have a shit load of money donated to build a pediatric cardiac center in southern Italy. He gave double that amount to the Arch Diocese in Rome, which is how his wife managed to get a papal annulment. Guess he must have had a come to Jesus moment while he was in the slammer, because when he got out he joined the church. Now he does all kinds of charitable work. Builds schools, orphanages, from what I hear he even spent some time in a leper colony in Romania.
“How the hell do you know all that?” Jules arched an eyebrow.
Diego shrugged. “I like reading about that kinda shit.”
“Always knew you were more than a pretty face, brother.” Reno clapped him hard on the back.
“So, Father Michael used to be a badass. What does that have to do with anything?” Hal asked Valentina
“The little girl who needed the surgery? She was his daughter, Helena, my mother’s cousin. Father Michael is my grandfather’s brother, my great uncle. And for the record, he’s still a badass.” Valentina smiled at them. “If you need to get any communication to my father, Father Mike is your guy.”