Three months later
Caracas, Venezuela. The town of El Hatillo
Tony popped a quick jab into Rafael Macero’s cheek, secretly trying to angle his fist so that the flats of his fingers made the most contact rather than a foursome of hard knuckles. But Macero burst into tears anyway.
Tony straightened and grated out a breath. Oh, the joys of being an enforcer again. He stared down at the pudgy Venezuelan, who now was cradling a palm over his swelling cheek. A pair of sunglasses hid Tony’s eyes. Luckily. Otherwise, he would’ve given away how much he hated this shit.
From over by a bookshelf littered with cheap but homey knickknacks, Carmelo observed the scene blandly. A wiseguy who would’ve been a casting director’s wet dream for any B-level Mafia flick, Carmelo Bellomo had dark, slicked-back hair, conniving eyes, and wore a choke-hold of gold necklaces. “Money, Rafael,” Carmelo said to Macero in Italian-accented Spanish.
“I gave you everything I have,” Macero blubbered.
Carmelo’s eyelid twitched. He fingered a cigarette loose from a pack, sticking it directly into his mouth. “The nose, Antonio,” he directed Tony in Italian, the cig bobbing between his lips.
Tony nodded curtly, while behind his sunglasses he indulged in a fantasy of punching Carmelo in the nose instead—not that the thing wasn’t already as flat as Rocky Graziano’s.
Today’s job was fucked. Macero wasn’t one of the usual scuzzwads that crime boss Gaetano Cuntrera dealt with in his sideline loan-sharking business. Macero had borrowed money to care for a sick mother. He didn’t deserve this.
But “Antonio” wasn’t allowed to have such sympathetic thoughts. No, Antonio was a Sicilian wiseguy enforcer who did what he was told, especially when directed by Carmelo Bellomo, Cuntrera’s head soldier.
Tony himself was Sicilian, half from his mother’s side. It showed in the curl of his dark brown hair—the very reason he kept it cut short—and a prominent nose saved from taking over his face by his other strong features. The other half of him was the great unknown. He wouldn’t be surprised if dear ol’ mystery dad was Latino, though, since Tony could easily pass as either.
It was wholly due to Tony’s Sicilian roots that he managed to earn a spot in Cuntrera’s inner circle at a record speed of one month. The Sicilians were a tight-knit group; blood ran as thick as it got with them. There was no worse crime than disloyalty to the Family—and seeing as Tony actually planned to steal from the boss, he was all about finishing this op as quickly as he’d started it.
Tonight, maybe. Cuntrera was throwing a huge birthday party for his wife, Serafina, which meant Cuntrera’s other guards would be busy and distracted, perhaps providing Tony with a target of opportunity.
“Antonio,” Carmelo barked. “Move your ass, would you? You’re not getting paid to stand there dreaming of tuna pie.”
Biting back a curse, Tony bent over and grabbed Macero by the front of his shirt, a move which inspired the Venezuelan’s next shriek to soar into a high-pitched soprano.
Tony hit him on the nose, pulling the punch so he didn’t break anything, but making sure he landed the blow dead center, where the nose was spongiest and would bleed dramatically, making the injury appear worse than it was.
Still, it had to hurt plenty, and poor Macero, howling, clamped both hands over his spouting nostrils.
Carmelo flicked his lighter a couple of times. It finally caught, and he lit his cigarette. “Money?” he repeated.
Macero flapped a hand at the bookshelf. “In the vase.” His eyes watered with both pain and an additional onrush of tears. “Pl-please, sir, just leave my wife and me a little something to buy food with.”
Tony aimed a narrow stare out the window, watching a donkey-drawn cart roll by while over at the bookshelf Carmelo cleaned out poor Macero. He set his jaw. Funny that for a man who claimed to want to escape human filth, he’d sure as hell found his way back into it, neck deep. The only positive about this job was he didn’t have a partner. That had been his only stipulation to his new boss, Dan Romeo—head of the private security firm, Phoenix Agency—when the man had appeared on Tony’s doorstep four months ago, asking, “Buy you a beer and tell you about it?”
Tony needed a job, so, yeah. He’d let Romeo take him to Bayou Joe’s, a rickety-looking wooden shack of a joint situated on the Massalina Bayou. Over a couple of Budweisers, Romero demonstrated that he’d done his homework by reciting a good portion of Tony’s résumé.
“You’re exactly the type of man we’re looking for at Phoenix Agency,” Romeo said. “You went to two years of community college before joining the Army in EOD and gaining combat experience in Iraq. Combat will put hair on a man’s nuts, but doing Explosive Ordnance Disposal…” Romeo smirked. “That takes balls of steel. Then you spent four years in law enforcement with ATF before you transferred to the DEA. You’re fluent in Spanish, Italian, and English.” Romeo took a long drink of his beer. “That’s an impressive skill set, Santoro.”
“Thanks.” Nice to know he didn’t have to sell himself.
A waitress dropped off a plate of Sloppy Cheese Fries, and Tony dug in.
“Most of Phoenix Agency’s assignments are in-and-outs, but sometimes jobs come along requiring deep undercover work. I generally can’t spare my regular operators for those kinds of long-term missions. Besides, most of my main guys are ex-Special Forces, so they don’t exactly”—he grinned—“blend.”
Tony snorted softly. If Romeo was anything by which to judge, then Tony believed it. The man sitting across from him was at least six-five, massive across the shoulders, and exuded a gross-ton of badass and then some. Tony would guess him to be a former RECON Marine—Romeo kept his spine too straight to be an ex-Navy SEAL, and he wasn’t scruffy enough for Delta. And, yeah, the guy probably couldn’t go much of anywhere without being gawked at.
“You suit undercover work better.”
Tony being built more like a panther than a bull—not Romeo’s words, but it was the gist.
“And you’ve obviously done plenty of undercover work. You’d make a great specialty operator.” Romero took another sip of his beer. Then another.
Tony wiped his hands on a napkin. “I sense a but here.”
Romeo set down his drink and targeted brown eyes on Tony. “Most ops are all about Murphy’s Law, Santoro; if something can go wrong, it will, and usually at the worst possible time. And when a mission turns into a goat rope, a man doesn’t bag out.”
“He doesn’t?” Tony leaned back in his chair, his chest tightening with a familiar hard and twisty sensation. He didn’t like where this was going.
“In Iraq, a soldier in your unit stepped on a mine. You were supposed to defuse it under his boot, but it was wired backward and the thing blew. The guy died. You got a concussion and that scar.” Romeo nodded at Tony’s forearm. “You quit EOD and went into supply for the rest of your obligation. Then with ATF and DEA, same thing happened—ops went south, due to no fault of your own, but you pulled chocks anyway.”
Giving Romeo a bland look, Tony popped his jaw. Teeth clenching really lent itself to some problematic TMJ. “Your intel is impressive, Romeo.”
“It’s my job.”
“Yeah, well…” Tony glanced at the Sundancer cabin cruiser bobbing gently off Bayou Joe’s rear porch. “There might be more to the stories than you know.”
“Care to enlighten me?” Romeo asked.
“Not even a little bit.”
Romeo grabbed a couple of cheese fries, stuffed them in his mouth, chewed.
Tony regarded the man with a wiped-blank expression.
Romeo eye-locked him again. “When I get a good man on staff, I don’t want to lose him.”
“Don’t hire me then.” Tony shrugged, playing at more nonchalance than he felt. A man without a job was pretty damned rudderless, and he was sick of drifting.
“Oh, I’m hiring you, Santoro.” Authority edged the borders of Romeo’s mouth. “Just use those steel balls of yours and don’t fucking bail.”