Dino
“You’re certain?” My hands shook around the phone. He had found her. I knew that hiring the best private detective in the city would pay off eventually. The man was expensive, but it would be worth it. Alexis had been out of my grasp for far too long. She needed to be back where she belonged, and I had plenty of plans for her once she was with me again.
“Yes, Dino.” Marco Rossi’s voice was raspy. The rumor was that he’d been injured when he had gotten too close to the person he was tailing and his target just happened to know jiu-jitsu. He’d been choked within an inch of his life, but he had hung on long enough to continue his investigations. “She’s been hard to follow, since she stays holed up in Lorenzo’s apartment most of the time. But it’s definitely her. I got much closer yesterday and there’s no doubt in my mind. And you weren’t lying. She’s pretty hot.”
I nodded, trying to keep myself from getting too excited and willing to ignore Rossi’s remark in favor of the work he’d done. Part of me knew I should have just let the whole thing go. Yes, Alexis had been the best lay I’d ever had, but that had been way back at the beginning. Somehow, she’d forgotten everything I’d done for her. Things had continued to degrade between the two of us until she just decided she didn’t want to have anything to do with me anymore. But she was mine, and I was going to have her once again. I would make her understand what a big mistake she’d made and she would never get another chance to leave me. “And what about everything else? Were you able to confirm your other suspicions?”
Rossi sighed. I’d asked him this more than once. “As much as I can. There’s no way I can get in the Moretti mansion, so I don’t know what has been said in there. But she’s living in Lorenzo’s apartment, she’s been to dinner with him at Jianna’s, and I even saw her out shopping with the old lady. There’s definitely a connection, but I’m not sure what it is.”
“That’s all right. I have my own suspicions. I’ll get you the money the usual way.” I sat down in the ratty recliner and stared out the window over the city. I was going to be busy over the next few days. I had to be careful with a man like Lorenzo Rizzo. He was dangerous, but I had a feeling I wanted Alexis more than he did.
“Anything else you want? Or is the case shut?” Rossi was impatient on the other end of the phone.
I laughed a little. This wouldn’t be over—not really—until I had Alexis back in my grasp. “Keep on doing what you’re doing. Don’t lose track of her. Things will be critical over the next few days, or possibly a week. If you find out anything else, let me know.” I hung up and flung my head back. I had spent so long wondering and waiting and it was all finally over. I only had one more phone call to make and that would be it.
* * *
It was hard not to laugh to myself as I waited for Lorenzo to show up. I had the upper hand. Lorenzo was a powerful man and part of a powerful family. He had money and numerous allies, and the fact that he was a successful hitman was no small advantage. But I had information that meant more than everything he had.
I’d picked one of the darkest, most secluded bars in the city. We would be harder to track here, and there was a nice quiet booth all the way in the back. Numerous people went in and out of here. They came in sober and left drunk. They came in single and left with some random woman they’d just met. Some of them came and never left, listing further and further toward the edges of their barstools as they drank themselves into oblivion. There were several discreet exchanges of cash for small packages, made with furtive glances and muttered agreements. It was a seedy joint and that only made it more perfect for the kind of business we would be doing.
I knew him the second he walked in. There was no mistaking a man like Lorenzo, especially in here. He’d laid aside the fancy suit for jeans and a t-shirt, but he still didn’t belong amongst this crowd. He was too tall, too broad, and too aware. He watched everyone in this place as though they might be ready to jump up and attack him. The confident set of his chin said that he knew he could take any of them down, but that didn’t mean he was going to be caught unaware.
“Dino?” he asked when he approached my booth.
I grinned up at him. “Lorenzo? Glad you could join me.”
“It didn’t seem as though I had much choice, by the way you sounded on the phone.” I thought he might try to act like he had the upper hand by remaining on his feet, but he slid into the booth. A skinny waitress in a tiny skirt immediately flocked to our table and took his drink order. “You want to tell me what this is all about?”
Picking up my glass and taking a sip of whiskey, I kept my eyes on him. “I know who you are.”
“Oh?” Lorenzo raised one eyebrow as he accepted a drink from the waitress and waved her away when she tried to ask him if he wanted anything else. “And who is that? I’ve been different things to different people over the years.”
“But I know who you are to Matteo Moretti.”
Lorenzo paused, but only for a microsecond. “I don’t think that’s much of a secret. Everybody has to work for someone. If you think that’s worthy of blackmail, then you’ve done nothing but waste my time.” He stood up, prepared to leave his drink on the table and go.
“I also know who you are to Alexis.”
He stopped, turning to look at me once again. The lighting was dim, but I could see the way his eyes glimmered as they watched me. He was armed, and I knew that, but I wasn’t afraid. Not in here. Not once he heard what I had to say. “Excuse me?”
“Sit down, Lorenzo. We have a lot to talk about.” It felt incredible to order around a man like him. I’d spend most of my life scraping by, working the black market to make a few dollars but never hitting it rich. I would never be able to have a fancy apartment or an expensive sports car like he did, but I would have Alexis back. I wondered if she was as important to him as she was to me. Perhaps the exchange would go smoothly.
Lorenzo sat. He leaned forward, his elbows on the table and his beer ignored. “I think you should know that I don’t negotiate with lowlife scumbags. Whatever it is you have to say, no matter how important you think it is, I highly doubt that I’ll enter into any dealings with you.”
I allowed myself another grin. “You’ll change your mind soon enough.”
“All right. Get on with it. I have things to do.” He rolled his hand in the air, getting impatient.
I took another long, slow sip of whiskey, feeling the satisfying burn on the way down. It was fun to make him wait. “Listen carefully. It’s taken me a few weeks to put all this together and it’s only right if the story gets a little time to breathe. You see, I used to date this girl. She’s the kind who gets herself into trouble a lot. Blame it on a troubled childhood or daddy issues or what have you, but she’s never quite been able to hoist herself out of the rut she must have been born in. I was doing everything I could to help her out, but she got away from me about six months ago. Her name is Alexis Reid.”
Lorenzo’s big hand wrapped around his beer bottle, but he didn’t lift it off the table.
“I spent a little time trying to find her on my own. She isn’t smart enough to know how to hide very well. It was time I brought her back. Not surprisingly, I discovered she was dancing regularly at some strip joint called The Corral. She was the star act. For Alexis, that’s a pretty good gig. I figured I had her; I could just walk into the bar and take her home. After all, I couldn’t let my woman go on dancing for other men. Then, surprisingly, she disappeared.” My heart pounded at the memory. I’d gone into The Corral once I’d heard she was dancing there. She hadn’t even bothered to use a different stage name, and I had taken that as a sign that she didn’t really want to hide from me. Maybe she liked being pursued and captured; there was no telling with her. I had watched her dance, jealousy writhing in my heart as she twirled those sexy hips. It had been bad enough to see her onstage, but it had been so much worse when I’d seen her grinding against strange men for a lap dance. She was mine and she had no right to share that body with anyone else.
“I don’t see what this has to do with me.” Lorenzo finally took a slug of beer, keeping his eyes levelly on me. “I think you already know what I do for a living, and I’m no private eye. My advice would be to find yourself some other stripper to stalk. I think they’re pretty much all the same, anyway.” His manner was too casual. I knew from what Rossi had told me that Lorenzo was a very serious man.
“I would agree with you, if the circumstances were different.” I signaled to the waitress for another drink. She saw my fingers in the air several times before she bothered coming back to the table. Clearly, I didn’t mean as much to her as Lorenzo did. Maybe she could tell he had money. Maybe she just liked the way he looked. It didn’t matter; he wasn’t watching her.
“Anyway,” I continued. “I knew something had to be up. How could she just have disappeared like that? So I did hire myself a private eye, and that’s how I know she’s been living with you all along.” I smiled across the table, proud of that tiny peek I’d had into his life.
Lorenzo sighed. “Is that all this is? Some jealous boyfriend bullshit? Get over it, Dino. There’s nothing you can do about it now.” He pushed back from the table with a disgusted look on his face.
I put one finger in the air. “Hold on just a minute. Listen to the rest of the story. See, I didn’t just get a P.I., but a good one. He not only found Alexis and kept his eyes on her, but he kept his eyes on you. So I’ve got a stripper who’s suddenly living with a hitman, and a hitman who works for the Morettis. That might not add up to much in the dirty life of this city, except that I happen to know that said stripper and hitman just happened to get together after the majority of the upper men in the Calzoni crime family had been taken out.”
His jaw tightened, almost imperceptibly. I had him. “I think you’re reading too much into this. I heard about the hit on Calzoni. I can’t say that it disappointed me. It’s no secret that the Morettis and the Calzonis didn’t get along. But I don’t see what that has to do with Alexis.”
“Stop trying to be stubborn, Lorenzo.” I leaned forward, eager to make sure he could hear every word I had to say above the din. “It doesn’t take any special detective skills to figure out what happened. You were sent to kill Calzoni. Who else would they send? You’re the best hitman within a hundred-mile radius, or maybe even more. Anybody with half a brain knows how these things work: You can’t have any witnesses. My best guess is that Alexis was somehow tied up in all this. You thought she was hot, and now you’re trying to shield her.”
“Bullshit.” Lorenzo took a long drink this time. “You can’t take a coincidence and just make it work to suit your needs. Besides, if you really have been tailing us, then you know that Alexis has met most of the members of the Moretti family. If I’m hiding her, why would I show her off like that? I’m not an idiot.”
“You’re not,” I agreed with a bob of my head. “You wouldn’t still be alive if you were stupid. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Alexis got to you. She likes to play the victim and pretend that she’s totally innocent, but I know how she likes to manipulate men. That’s part of what she loved about being a stripper. She was in control, and now she’s controlling you.” It had made me angry beyond measure when I’d seen her in that club, but I wasn’t exaggerating. Alexis had power when she was on the stage, and she enjoyed it. She was a different person than the little mouse I’d pulled out of a homeless shelter.
Lorenzo rolled his eyes. “You might be some pussy-whipped pushover, Dino, but not me. I do what I want, when I want, and with who I want. Now, either get to the point or find someone else’s time to waste.” He was ready to leave, his eye on the door every few seconds. I’d put him in a vulnerable position by taking the seat in the corner; it left his back exposed.
“Fine. I’ll make it very simple. You give me Alexis back and we all go our separate ways. I take her and keep her in line, and you go back to being Moretti’s armed puppet.” My gut tightened at the thought of putting Alexis in the back of my car and taking her home. I would have to punish her for running away, of course, but I would enjoy it.
“Or?” he asked testily.
I lifted my shoulders and let them fall, as though whichever option he chose didn’t matter to me. “Or, I go to Moretti. I tell him just who Alexis is and who she was working for and that you’re protecting her. What he does with that information is completely up to him, but I find it hard to imagine that it would be seen as anything less than the utmost betrayal.”
“What proof do you have?” Lorenzo demanded. “How do I know this isn’t all just a game to manipulate me? For all I know, you work for the Calzoni family yourself.”
I laughed. He was getting so paranoid. I understood; it was the kind of thing that happened when you lived a life of crime. “I don’t have anything to do with Calzoni. I only work for myself, and I don’t have anyone I’m reporting to. But I’ve got all the proof I need. Pictures, videos, you name it. But don’t take my word for it. I’ll send you a copy of my files. You’ll have them in your email later today.”
His lips were tight as he mulled his options. “Why do you want her back so badly, anyway? It’s clear she doesn’t want to be with you, or she never would have left.”
Silly man. He was trying to turn this around and make it about me, but it really wasn’t anymore. Yes, I wanted Alexis back. Desperately. But this was about Lorenzo and what he would decide to do. “Does any of that matter? Do feelings ever come into the mix when you’re dealing with a hitman and the mafia? No, Lorenzo, I don’t think they do. All that matters is covering your ass and making your next dollar. I expect to hear from you soon.”
Lorenzo shot to his feet. I admit I flinched slightly; he looked ready to kill me on the spot. But there were too many witnesses, and I had too much information on him. “What you’re doing is dangerous, do you know that? You shouldn’t be messing around with a man like me or one like Moretti. He’s just as likely to kill you as he is to listen to you. You’ll be hearing from me soon, but keep that in mind.”
I was feeling suddenly generous. As much as I wanted to have Alexis back in my bed that very night, I knew it wouldn’t happen. Even so, I had shaken up Lorenzo’s entire world. No doubt he thought he was invincible, but even the tallest tower can be brought down when you pull out the right brick. “You have until the end of the week, Lorenzo. If I don’t have Alexis by then, well, you know what will happen.”
He stormed out of the bar without another word, making several other customers fly out of his way before he reached the door. I ordered another drink from the stubborn waitress. All I had to do was bide my time.