Mac stood frozen in time as his wife was taken away from him yet again. It seemed like something in life was always scheming to take her away from him. When she was gone, his world was not right. Off-center, axis tilted, and on shaky ground.
He hated it.
All around him, noise continued to grow. The gathered reporters asking questions, and hoping for some scrap of information to be tossed their way. Like vultures. The judge, irritated that his courtroom had been turned into a three ring circus, banged on the large desk and again shouted for the next case.
Mac was just … frustrated.
Exhausted.
So alone.
“Did you catch those last words?” the lawyer asked.
Mac passed Johnathan a look. He was a good defense attorney—worth his weight in gold, according to anyone Mac asked. His win to loss ratio was twenty to twenty-five. There wasn’t another defense attorney in the state with that kind of margin.
He did not want Melina to fall on the losing side.
Mac could not afford for her to.
“Did you catch what she said?” Johnathan asked again.
Beware of those who have offered help and kind words. It was here that our ruin was already set in motion.
“I did,” Mac replied.
In fact, Melina’s words wouldn’t get out of his damn head. All that she said, from beginning to end, rattled around in his mind. He took it in like gifts and soaked it up. He had no other choice. The fucking police weren’t giving his wife her basic human rights in jail.
“What did she mean?” Johnathan asked.
Mac shook his head as he eyed the reporters. “I don’t know.”
He hadn’t had the time to figure it out. It was still new words to him—something important. For all that she could have said to him, she chose something like that. Something vague when put against their current circumstances with no name attached, yet very pointed in meaning.
Beware of those who have offered help and kind words.
Who, though?
Who betrayed them like this?
A reporter came a few steps closer to Mac, and suddenly his fingers itched at his sides. He greatly wanted to take that fucker’s camera and smash it into bits when he threw it on the goddamn floor. Mac had already been pre-warned about the profile of Melina’s case, given the state of the Pivetti Organization, and the amount of attention that had been on it as of late.
This was expected.
He still hated it.
“I have to get out of here,” Mac grunted under his breath.
Johnathan’s hand smacked him on the back before the lawyer led him out of the courtroom. “Yeah, it’s not like we can afford for you to have your own set of charges at the moment, now can we?”
“Ha, funny.”
“I really wasn’t joking.”
“Even better,” Mac deadpanned.
Outside the building, Mac found it less circus-like. He and Johnathan stood behind a pillar as some of the reporters flooded the outside. Already, they were setting up their cameras, ready to go on live for the five o-clock news with their up-to-date information on the case.
It was all bullshit.
“Even if it does go to trial,” Johnathan said, dragging Mac’s attention back to the man, “it’ll be a hard one for them to prove without a body. It’s damn near impossible to prove murder without a body, and no evidence of a killing.”
“The Dollhouse room,” Mac reminded him.
“Technically, circumstantial. Like most of their case.”
“It’s unlikely they’ve gotten this far with only circumstantial evidence,” Mac pointed out.
“True. In cases like these, they almost always have a witness or two.”
“A direct one?”
Johnathan pursed his lips. “A mole, yes.”
“We call them rats.”
“Yes, well, should you find said rat,” Johnathan murmured, “It would be very wise to be rid of it. However, I would not want to know that was the case.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Mac said, blowing out a hard breath.
“Hmm, about what?”
Mac nodded towards the circus of reporters. “In America, there have been far too many court cases tried on the steps of a courthouse instead of inside. Cases where a husband had a solid alibi, witness collaboration, no evidence of a crime, yet he was still the one put behind bars and crucified by public opinion when his wife’s body washed up on a shore. Or a child’s parents, indicted and almost charged because public opinion felt they were the guilty party simply because their red-rimmed, swollen-from-crying eyes could no longer produce tears for a camera five times a fucking day.”
Johnathan cleared his throat. “Those are not no-body cases, Mac.”
“Fair enough, but I don’t think they needed to be. I don’t think this one needs to be, either. Body or no body, it is the media and the amount of attention that can convict my wife on these steps before she ever gets her day inside that building. Make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Perhaps you should help me out, then,” the lawyer suggested.
“I will be doing just that.”
It was a fucking guarantee.
“Ma, you don’t have to—”
“It’s fine,” Cynthia interrupted with a wave of her hand.
She didn’t even look up from the counter she was wiping down. Every day for almost a week, his mother had shown up in the morning with food in hand, or bags of groceries to cook, and ready to clean.
Or do something—anything.
Sometimes, she came alone. Other times, she brought his sister.
Mac was grateful, of course, and he loved his mother to death. He knew exactly what Cynthia was trying to do. She barely mentioned Melina’s current predicament because she had not been raised to do that sort of thing, but she was helping and supporting Mac through a difficult time in her own way.
“I made two of those casseroles so you could have an extra,” Cynthia said as she wrung out the dishcloth. “It’s wrapped and in the freezer. Directions are written on the top.”
“Okay,” Mac said.
“It’s good up to six months in there, if you need it.”
“Ma, it’s going to be fine. You know that, right?”
Cynthia turned on her heel, and eyed the napping baby boy in Mac’s arms. “Will it?”
“We’re working very hard to make sure it is.”
“I’m sure you are, my boy.”
Mac looked over his son’s peaceful expression. It was the only time the boy was peaceful at the moment. Marquise absolutely knew something was wrong in his small world. He absolutely knew someone important to his entire life and being was missing. Each time someone walked into a room, Marquise would light up. Quickly, that joy would fade when his son looked behind the new person in the room only to find his mother wasn’t following behind.
And then the wailing would start.
It was taking longer and longer to soothe Marquise during those spells. Each time his mother did not come when he thought she would, his tiny heart broke a little more.
Mac was dying inside.
For himself.
For his son.
For his wife.
“It will get easier for him,” Cynthia said softly.
Mac looked up from his son. “Will it?”
“It did for you.”
“Is it the same thing?”
“Not at all,” Cynthia said in a long sigh, “but as a baby, at that age, your father was still very much around when he was not piddling our money away or sleeping off a hangover in someone else’s bed. You adored James. Lit up like a little angel whenever he came into the room.”
“You never told me that.”
“You would not have wanted to know.”
“Fair enough,” Mac admitted.
“And then he came less and less,” Cynthia said, “because we fought more and more, and his behavior became worse and worse. You would perk up at every person, and smile wide the way your father always liked, but it was very rarely him. You taught yourself not to get excited. You perked up less and less. There came a time when it was your father, but you were more interested in the noisy toy on the floor than your father asking for a smile.”
“That’s … awful, Ma.”
Cynthia smiled a sad sight. “Isn’t it? My heart hurt for you, and then again, for your sister.”
Mac used the pad of his thumb to stroke along Marquise’s chubby cheek. “My father chose to do those things, though. This isn’t the same.”
“Resentment can feel the same, especially when you are a young child who does not even understand what you feel is resentment.”
Well, then Mac would make sure his son didn’t feel that at all. Or rather, that he didn’t have time to feel it.
Knowing he wasn’t going to get his mother to leave anytime soon, Mac decided to go put Marquise in his crib and help Cynthia finish up cleaning. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do at the damn moment. A distraction was always good.
He turned to head out of the kitchen.
“Did she do it?” his mother asked very quietly.
Mac hesitated in his steps. “Ma—”
“I watch the news. I hear things from friends. I may not be a mob wife now, but I am still very much on the outskirts of that world, Mac. When I ask things, I would like an answer. When I ask, I intend to know.”
“Sure, but …”
“Did she do it?”
“Only because I couldn’t,” Mac finally said.
“I always thought there was supposed to be a reason why women did not involve themselves in their men’s affairs. Especially Mafiosi men.”
Mac laughed dryly. “Melina is not like most women.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Where’s the principe today?” Enric asked. “I have to give my godson extra attention with his mother gone, don’t I?”
Mac rolled his eyes upward, but smiled all the same. “Victoria took him out, actually.”
“She’s not bringing him back, or what?”
“I’m sure that’s crossed her mind.”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t know.”
Mac glanced at Enric as the man wheeled his chair next to the table. Leaning on the island, Mac had a good view of the obvious displeasure in Enric’s features. He was not good at hiding how he felt in regards to Victoria, it seemed.
“My sister blow you off, or what?”
Enric frowned. “Doesn’t matter.”
“If you say so …”
“I said so,” Enric replied.
So be it.
“How’s Melina?” Enric asked after a moment.
Mac sighed. “I haven’t seen her since the courthouse a few days ago. She was finally allowed to call Johnathan. She didn’t feel safe to talk as they had detectives on either side of her. She did tell him the same thing she told me, though.”
“What is that?”
“Beware of those who have offered help and kind words. It was here that our ruin was already set in motion,” Mac said, not able to forget the words. They slipped out far too easily. “I’m still trying to figure out what she’s attempting to tell me.”
“Someone you trusted betrayed you. Someone close to you, maybe.”
Mac frowned. “That leaves you or her, doesn’t it? Given what I know about you—that’s ridiculous. And I am pretty sure my wife did not set herself up to be charged with first degree murder. Not sure I could include my mother or sister in there, considering.”
Enric cleared his throat. “Okay, so it’s a little more confusing than it appears on the surface.”
“Very,” Mac said dryly.
“We’ll figure it out, boss.”
They didn’t have much choice.
Melina’s freedom was on the line.
“What’s the word on the street?” Mac asked. “Give me some news worth chewing on, Enric.”
“Scrambling men. Rumors flying. Confused Capos. I mean, nothing unusual considering the current state of the family.”
Yes, a famiglia without a boss. A famiglia without a fake king on the throne. A famiglia waiting.
Mac smiled. “That’s good, then.”
Enric cocked a brow. “Good?”
“A fragile organization with men who are unwilling to immediately jump at the chance to manipulate and organize is the easiest to make submit. That is why the strongest and most cunning men always sit at the top, and hold the power positions. Those positions are the ones that decide who moves, and who stays still. Think about it, Enric. Would you rather your equal be sitting lower on the totem pole, unhappy as a Caporegime without an opinion, or sitting slightly below you where you can give him a bit of control and voice to satisfy his … nature?”
“I see your point.” Enric turned a bit in his chair to face Mac. “Who will you choose to sit next to you?”
“I have a bit of time.”
“You haven’t decided?”
Mac shrugged. “There are very few people I trust in this famiglia, to be honest.”
“Sure, but a boss still needs his right and left hand.”
“Maybe I have chosen,” Mac said, “but things are complicated at the moment.”
“How so?”
“Well, for one, my wife is behind bars.”
Enric’s brow furrowed. “That has nothing to do with you choosing an underboss and consigliere.”
“It does when the only person I would consider having as my consigliera is currently in lockup, and awaiting trial.”
“Consigliera. Feminine form. As in a woman.” The younger man stiffened. “You can’t have a woman—”
“First, I can do whatever I want,” Mac interjected firmly. “I can—and I will, if I need to—go back into the history of every Cosa Nostra family in North America to show consiglieres are not always only made, Italian men. There is a long history of Dons choosing their closest, most trusted friends as their advisor. Men, sure, but unmade men. Men that were not of Italian descent. Men that were not even criminals.”
“Yeah, but that was the thirties, forties, and fifties. That was men, not women, boss.”
“And this is my century, and my family. I will choose the best person for the position, and that person is my wife. The men don’t have to particularly like it. They simply have to respect it. There has never been a better moll for a man than mine—every inch a queen, and I intend to put her higher than any man that would consider slighting her for who she is. It’s one thing to be a man’s gun or gangster moll, it’s another thing to be the Madame.
“I do not need Melina’s focus to be on the betterment of la famiglia, but rather, the betterment of me. That’s where her attention has always been.”
“It’s hard not to respect Melina,” Enric said. “Considering everything.”
“Exactly.” Mac pulled open a drawer on the island, and took out a few items he had stashed in there earlier when Enric messaged that he was dropping by. Enric, distracted by the window overlooking the yard, didn’t see what Mac had pulled out until he set the items on the table. “I also chose my underboss, Enric.”
Enric glanced down at the items.
A knife. A single bullet and a gun. A lighter. And the picture of a saint.
“Me?” Enric asked.
“You.”
“But I’m not … a made man.”
“Give me a few minutes,” Mac said with a smirk.
Mac pulled out a chair, and turned it so that he could sit and face Enric. “A while back, your father extended me a great courtesy.”
Enric was still looking at the items on the table. “Did he?”
“He chose to give me the button in private. A moment that was shared between only him and I alone. He made it clear that he did not need the opinions or pageantry of other made men and traditions to make his choice where I was concerned. He knew where my loyalty was, and the kind of man I was.”
“You can’t … give me my button,” Enric said quietly.
“Why can’t I?”
“Well, what use am I like this?”
Mac didn’t even look at the wheelchair Enric waved at. “Far greater than you give yourself credit for.”
“Only bosses can make a man in the family.”
“And I am unrecognized,” Mac supplied.
Enric nodded. “I mean, I recognize you.”
“Then I’m not unrecognized, am I? Not to the person who matters at the moment. Luca was kind enough and smart enough, to see things in me that I didn’t even see, Enric. I see those same things in you. Your circumstance doesn’t make even the slightest difference. It never has to me.”
“I …”
Mac picked up the knife, and spun the tip against the pad of his thumb until a single red drop slid against the blade. “Is this what you want? That’s all you have to answer.”
“All I ever wanted was to be a made man.”
“Then the rest is details.” Mac held out his hand. “Palm up, Enric.”
It took another second, but Enric lifted his hand to set it palm up inside Mac’s. “I guess this will save you some effort in the family, huh?”
“For what?”
“People trying to gain false favor to get a position closer to the top,” Enric supplied. “Or rather, people trying to get closer to you only to stab you in the back.”
Mac hesitated as he pressed the blade into Enric’s palm. Something clicked in his mind all at once. Like a vault door closing shut with a bang as all the tumblers fell into place. “Her.”
Enric looked up. “What?”
“It’s not me someone betrayed. I kept thinking she meant me … or us, even. She meant her. Only her.”
“Melina?” Enric clenched his hand around the blade, saying, “But she trusts even fewer people than you do, boss.”
“Offered help and kind words,” Mac repeated. “Help and kind words. It started there, she said. That’s where it began.”
“You’re not making sense, and—”
“Melina made a friend in prison the first time. A friend that sought her out after release. She felt she could accept the woman as a friend because she was the only one who offered her kind words and some kind of help behind bars. She made it bearable for Melina. This is someone Melina has progressively brought closer and closer over time because she trusted her. That same woman … Anthony’s preferred piece of ass at The Dollhouse. Actually, the only piece of ass he gave any attention to at the joint. Next to trying to cozy up to my wife. Anthony believed he was going into The Dollhouse the night he was killed to see that woman. Melina was simply a nice surprise for him when he got there. He would have been in contact with the one he thought he was going for, though, surely.”
“Erika?” Enric asked.
“Erika.”
“You think she’s an agent or something?”
“I would be willing to bet my life on it,” Mac muttered, “and right now, it’s literally Melina’s life on the line for it.”
“What the hell are you going to do about it, then?” Enric had clenched the knife so tightly, that blood had already began to trickle down to Mac’s hand. “If she is an agent, they’ll likely have her locked down in a safe house, or even back to normal life far away from here until she’s needed at trial.”
Right now, Mac was going to make a man.
Later, he was going to start smoking out a rat.
Mac beat on the apartment door for the third time. This girl—Rena—was one of his last hopes to figuring out either where, or who, the mysterious Erika was. Quite a few of Melina’s Dollhouse girls had been locked up on prostitution charges the night of the raid, but a few had not been working, and escaped the cops’ clutches.
The few that Mac had already talked to didn’t have very much to tell him, and at times, seemed wary of his questions. For the most part, it seemed Erika was elusive to the women she worked around. Quiet, and didn’t often offer information about herself or her life. She hadn’t attempted to make friends with any of the girls, and never invited them back to her place for even something as innocent as a drink.
For the women who were wary of his questions, Mac understood that, too. They were likely concerned about the status of their own freedom. It was a real possibility that at any time, detectives might show up at their doors—if they hadn’t already—with questions to ask or warrants to serve.
They had every right to be concerned.
Mac still needed his answers.
Again, he beat on the apartment door. Behind it, he heard someone stumble and cuss before the door was yanked open. A wild-eyed, wet-haired blonde glared at him. Her fist clenched into the towel wrapped around her body.
“What?” she barked.
Then, she met his gaze.
“Mac.”
“Rena,” he said with a smile. “Sorry to interrupt.”
“Is something happening with Boss Lady?”
“No, but I have some questions. Do you have a few minutes?”
“I’m actually running late for a class at the college,” Rena admitted.
“It’ll be quick, I promise.”
“Shoot, then.”
“Erika, from The Dollhouse. New Yorker. Seemed close to my wife. Didn’t make a lot of friends with you girls. Anything you can tell me about her?”
“Not really. Like you said, she didn’t make friends with any of us. Sometimes when someone is close to the boss, you tend to stay a healthy distance from them anyway.”
“Even a boss like Melina?”
Rena shrugged. “I mean, not really, but Erika gave some of us strange vibes, too.”
“What do you mean, strange?”
“Judgey, maybe? Like okay, sweetheart, you’re hooking in the club, but turn your nose up at us when we smoke a little kush in the back? Kind of like that, I guess.”
“That all?”
“Well … once she sat her phone down and the screen hadn’t faded out. I saw a text that used the name Kiera. I thought the person must have had the wrong number, but Erika’s reply was something like, yep. So, maybe not?”
“As in, they called her Kiera?”
“Yeah,” Rena confirmed. “Also, you called the girl a New Yorker. Definitely not, Mac.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You have heard her talk, right?”
“Sure, but you have heard a dozen New Yorkers talk, right?” he shot back with a chuckle. “This place is a fucking melting pot of people. Accents and inflections come and go. Hell, my Brooklyn accent has basically become non-existent over the past three years.”
Rena rolled her eyes upward. “Okay, fair enough, but that’s not what I mean. Certain words and terms, you know, come from certain places. Erika had a few inflections like that—Chicago, for sure. I only know that because I dated a guy from Chicago. Major asshole, but cute as fuck any other time.”
“Chicago, you’re sure?”
Rena nodded. “But that’s all I know, Mac.”
It just might be enough for him to start looking somewhere, though.
Mac could do that.
“Thank you,” he told the girl.
Rena shifted in the doorway. “Is Melina going to be okay? I mean, she’ll get out, right?”
“Yeah,” Mac assured, even though sometimes he didn’t feel like it himself, “she’s going to be just fine.”
Kiera Tompson.
Single. No children. No husband. Member of the Chicago Police Department for five years. Undercover agent for … ha, a laughably short amount of time.
Finding information on the so-called Erika was not so hard to do when Mac started digging. The girl was not a trained undercover cop—in fact, she was a barely passable one.
What Kiera was … was sadly amusing. A young cop fresh out of her rookie blues, one that would be unrecognizable to a New York native like Mac, Melina, or someone else in the Pivetti Organization because she came from Chicago. A girl who, at the time, had no children or husband that she would feel separated from, or pining for while undercover.
Mac suspected that was why young Kiera “Erika” Tompson had been sent from Chicago. A young woman given a hard past for his wife to relate to, or even … sympathize with. Someone who could worm her way into Melina perhaps easier, or a bit faster, than someone else might have.
No matter what, Mac would not fault his wife for the friend she thought she had made in Kiera. Or … Erika, whatever. Mac, more than anyone else in his wife’s close circle, could certainly understand how suffocating their life could be. How lonely things sometimes seemed. How alone one could feel standing in a room full of people.
To want a friend—a single, trustworthy friend—in the midst of untrustworthy people was understandable.
Mac lifted his head at the sound of a key jiggling in a lock. At his sides, his gloved hands pulled the items from the inside of his suit jacket that he had kept hidden. Quickly, he spun the silencer into the barrel of the Beretta. At the end of the apartment’s hallway, he was hidden by the shadows leading into the main room and open kitchen.
Kiera entered her Melrose apartment, and locked the door behind her. It wasn’t until she had kicked off her shoes, tossed her bag aside, and was halfway down the hall before she noticed Mac standing in the shadows.
For a split second, her gaze dropped to his gun then back up to his face. He smiled at her, feeling a blinding coldness seep into his fingertips at the same time. The young woman glanced over her shoulder at the door, and then quickly back to Mac.
“You could try to make a run for it,” Mac said, “but I am a fairly good shot, and a very quick draw. Weigh the risk and rewards of a second shot should I miss a death-shot or a quick death should you stay still.”
Kiera’s gaze narrowed. “You fucking—”
“Bastard, asshole, cocksucker? I prefer Mac, thanks. Which do you prefer?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Erika or Kiera, which one?”
“I … what does it matter?”
“It’s a matter of my curiosity,” Mac said with a shrug. “You know, you’re not a very good undercover cop, sweetheart. You messed up a few times. Left enough breadcrumbs for me to put together and lead me to Chicago. To you. Shame, they might as well have tossed you under the bus, really, seeing as how you’re barely fresh enough to be out of the academy.”
Mac waved his hands wide. “And here I am, in Chicago to pay you a visit. Do you know, it’s taken me three weeks to put this together and find you? That doesn’t include the time my wife was already behind bars before I put together that it was you who got her there.”
“She got herself there,” the woman snapped. “She’s a criminal, like you are.”
“Ouch.” Mac put a hand over his chest. “Hit me where it hurts. Right in the damn heart.”
“You don’t have a heart.”
“Not for rats like you, anyway,” Mac said with a grin. “So, the guards they have posted at the front and back door will probably find you in the morning, if you are curious. I’ve watched you for a couple of days, and they only get twitchy if you’re not out of the apartment by seven. If you wondered, someone left a fire escape pulled down on the west side of the building, and I climbed up to the roof. Beat the lock off the door, slipped down here, and picked your shitty little lock.”
Kiera’s eyes blazed. “Rot in hell.”
“I’m too Catholic for Hell. Catholics don’t do Hell.” Mac cocked the hammer back on the gun, and tipped his head to the side. “What was the ultimate goal? Melina, or the Pivetti Organization?”
“Does it matter?”
“As I said before, it’s a matter of my curiosity.”
“Anthony was feeding information on the family. As far as I knew it, they were planning on giving him some kind of deal for his information. He would stay out of prison, the rest of you would go in. That was the goal.”
“Melina taking him out kind of fucked that up, huh?”
Kiera didn’t reply.
Well … no need.
Mac pushed off the wall, and raised his gun to aim. “You didn’t answer me. Which name do you prefer, Erika or Kiera? I want to get it right when I explain it all to my wife.”
“Fuck you, Mac.”
“Wrong answer.”
Other than a quiet pop, the gun barely made a sound when it fired. In fact, Kiera’s body hitting the floor made a louder thump. Dead eyes stared up from the woman’s body. Mac didn’t give it a second look as he stepped over her.
Without their direct witness, the state would have nothing on his wife. Nothing tangible, anyway. The prostitution charges on the girls and the ensuing solicitation charges against the men could be easily fought or cleaned away. The murder charges on his wife were nonsense with no body, and no person to say they knew she had done it.
Simple.
Now … to wait.