The screams were deafening, but it was nothing compared to the noise level of the blast. Tires squealed, and Mac saw a black car speed out of the parking lot, followed shortly after by several others—people wanting to get away. Most were scrambling like rats, crouched low against vehicles or scattering on all fours, rushing to their waiting vehicles.
Mac reached for his wife to keep her right where she was. He didn’t want her moving an inch, just in case the limo wasn’t the only car with a planted bomb waiting to blow. An enforcer was always placed at his vehicle to watch it, so he wasn’t worried about theirs blowing the hell up.
“Mac,” he heard Melina say.
So faint.
So unsure.
Mac couldn’t move, let alone respond to Melina. He was frozen in place, stuck watching the flames engulfing the now unmoving limo, and the black plume of smoke rising higher towards the sky. A part of his brain understood what he was seeing, but another part couldn’t process what it all meant.
Or maybe he didn’t want to process it.
Oh, he surely understood the bomb the very second it happened. The blast damn near pushed him to the ground, but now, it was almost like his mind was trying to backtrack and forget.
No, maybe not forget.
Refuse.
Refuse what he saw.
Refuse what just happened.
Refuse what it would mean.
A made man’s wife had been in that limo. The boss’s wife. Luca’s wife.
“Neeya,” Melina mumbled from inside the vehicle.
Mac wondered if his wife could read his thoughts, though he knew how stupid that was. Melina was simply voicing her own shock and pain to a frightening reality. Her friend—one of the few his wife actually had in this dangerous life of theirs—had been inside that limo. A bomb of that magnitude was not survivable.
His thoughts flew back to his boss instantly in that moment.
Luca.
How would he tell Luca?
“Ma!”
“Mother!”
“Ma!”
Mac was brought back to reality with a bang. And by the horrified, agonized shouts of three young women bursting through the dispersing crowd.
Beautiful girls who looked like both their mother and father. Respected daughters of a Cosa Nostra boss and his wife.
Rose.
Hope.
Lora.
Pivetti girls. Pivetti daughters.
Twenty-two.
Twenty.
Eighteen years young.
They had still lived at home with their parents. The oldest two attended college while the youngest had recently graduated from a private high school.
Frantic.
Terrified.
Lost.
Each one of the Pivetti girls took on those expressions. They were pulled back—fighting and screaming the whole way—by family before they could get any closer to the danger of the burning limo.
To their mother …
“My God,” Melina whispered.
“I didn’t see the girls earlier,” Mac managed to say.
Melina didn’t reply.
Mac searched through the faces in the crowd, although he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for. Or who he was looking for.
His vision blurred.
The people became fuzzy.
They needed to leave.
Now.
So much had happened because of one action. So much more would happen because of it, too. But all of that was just too much for Mac to consider and deal with in those moments.
Mac had other things to worry about.
Like his own damn wife, who was very much alive.
Mac intended to keep her that way, too.
“Time to go, doll.”
Melina didn’t fight him as he pulled her away.
Mac wasn’t even sure that he had properly parked his car before he had cut the engine. He couldn’t find it in himself to care, either, as he headed towards the cement and barbed wire protected building. He had far more important things on his mind.
He had only taken his wife home, waited long enough to make sure she was settled in with their son, and then he hit the road. He had to get to the boss. The boss had to know.
Mac had tried to call into the prison, stating it was an emergency. But he had refused to give any details of the emergency, so he wasn’t promised a call back from Luca. He’d even tried getting ahold of the boss’s new lawyer, but the offices were closed, and no one was replying to the afterhours messaging line.
So … Mac panicked.
Knowing the prison visiting hours, he jumped in his vehicle and decided to just go the fuck over there himself. If it were him—had it been his wife in that limo—Mac would want to be told by someone he knew, respected, and trusted.
Luca didn’t need to see it on a news program.
He shouldn’t be told by a passing guard.
That was just goddamn undignified.
Mac made it inside the prison in record time. He weaved through the people in the entrance, cutting through the line waiting to get through the first—and easiest—security check. He ignored the annoyed “hey’s” as he slipped into the front of the line and was waved through the metal detector by a guard.
Less than three minutes later, he was cutting through another line—this one to check in, sign in, and request a visit if possible.
He could tell just by the amount of visiting people that he would likely have to wait. It was clearly a busy day for the prison. That only made him more anxious as he stepped up to the window, and a clipboard was passed through.
Mac jotted down his name and details, as well as Luca’s, the reason for his visit, and so forth. Then, he pushed the clipboard back through to the gum-snapping, waiting woman.
“Please have a seat,” the woman said, waving towards a waiting area filled with people. There weren’t even any seats left to sit in. Fuck. “Someone will call your name to bring you through another round of security checks before your visitation.”
Mac sighed. “It’s kind of an emergency.”
Understatement.
The woman glanced down at the form Mac had filled out. “You only stated “Emergency” on the Reason for Visitation line of the form. According to the rest of your information, you are neither the inmate’s lawyer, nor doctor, so I can’t request a faster check-in. Sorry.”
Mac had every mind to stand there and argue with the woman, but he knew that wouldn’t help. This was her job—she was only doing it according to the prison policy. And if he did let his mouth fly, he might find himself escorted out without even having seen Luca at all.
He didn’t want that.
“Sure, no problem,” Mac told the woman, offering her a smile that was entirely false.
Mac rested against one of the walls in the waiting area, since there weren’t any chairs to take. He surveyed the faces of the waiting people, just to make sure there were none he recognized. In the far right corner of the room, a television played the expected weather forecast for next week.
He kept watching TV, hoping he wouldn’t see anything—or very little—about the car bombing. It would, of course, be front page news, but it was unlikely that the media would get details for another few days.
Kids ran around the waiting area. Some colored at a small plastic table in corner. The waiting people chatted, like a dull roar in the background of Mac’s mind. He wasn’t really hearing any of it at all. He was too focused on the news program.
The broadcast did show a brief flash of the event, anchor’s stating they would have more details soon. One suspected dead, they noted, but no names yet from police. Roads were closed due to officials’ presence, dangers, and cleanup.
The small snippet didn’t even name who the funeral had been for.
Mac let out a small sigh of relief.
He wasn’t sure how long he waited there, resting against the wall. An hour, but more like two. Long enough that when he finally heard his name being called, the guard had to call it louder the second time just to break Mac from his daze. With stiff limbs, Mac walked forward.
The guard looked down at the clipboard in his hands and said, “Sorry, but the inmate you requested to visit is no longer taking guests today, so you’ll have to come back on another day.”
Mac’s fists clenched into balls at his sides. “Sure, but this is kind of important.”
“Can’t help it, man. I’m just doing what I’m told.”
“Luca Pivetti’s wife was killed today, and I would really like to be the one to let him know, before he finds out from the fucking news or some stranger.”
Again, the guard looked down at his papers. “I take it, the inmate is already aware, given the guard noted he was unwilling to have a visitor due to receiving some bad news that was upsetting. Like I said, nothing I can do, man.”
Mac’s stomach fell. “Shit.”
He wanted to ask how Luca knew, but figured this guy likely wouldn’t know.
“Besides, we only allow inmates one visit per day unless there are special circumstances. The inmate has already had his one visit today.”
What?
“Who?” Mac asked.
The guard shrugged. “Not allowed to give those details out.”
This was getting Mac nowhere. He thanked the guard—for fucking nothing—and headed back out to his car. Mac had just dialed his wife’s number and put the phone to his ear when he looked out the window. A familiar face was walking across the parking lot.
What were the odds?
And why?
“Hello?” he heard Melina ask on the other end of the call.
“Anthony.”
“What?”
“Anthony is at the prison,” Mac told his wife. “He was here to tell Luca about Neeya.”
“Why would Anthony be there?” Mac paced the length of his living room, needing space and movement while he ranted away. “Why would the boss even allow that man to speak in his presence?”
“Mac,” Melina started to say.
“He’s a fucking snake! Anthony is a snake, and Luca knows it.”
“Mac.”
His wife’s tone came out firmer the second time, but Mac was too lost in his own head to heed the warning. He kept venting and pacing, still trying to figure out what in the hell he had missed in this whole thing.
All the while, his wife sat on the couch, feeding their son. She kept one eye on Mac the whole time.
For all its guts and glory, Cosa Nostra was, at its heart, nothing more than a game of sorts between unworthy men, and the honorable ones. Mac liked to think that men who played the game by the rules—men like himself—were given an advantage of sorts. That advantage usually came in the form of trust from other made men. A sort of respect that led credence and support to his position and even slightly lessened the target on his back.
And then there were the men like Anthony.
The unworthy ones.
Liars.
Cheats.
Sneaks.
Fucking snakes.
Men who played the game by their own rules, even to the detriment of everyone else around them. A man who would probably fuck over his own mother, if he thought it would somehow get him higher in the family.
Mac had learned over the years—the majority of those being spent on the sidelines as a solider of Cosa Nostra—that the unworthy men eventually ran their course. Karma, of sorts. What goes around, comes around. Those men always got what they deserved.
Except …
Mac blew out a hard breath, and scrubbed a hand down his smooth-shaven jaw.
Anthony had not met his karma, yet. His shitty moves and untrustworthy nature had yet to come back around and bite the man in the ass like it should have done ages ago. Maybe it was Mac that was being impatient, but at the moment, he couldn’t exactly afford to be much else.
Especially now.
The one thing Mac definitely wouldn’t do?
Not for Anthony, or any made man?
It was simple.
He would never sacrifice his own honor to expose their lack of it.
There had to be another way …
“Mac.”
Finally, Melina’s tone had turned annoyed enough for Mac to really take notice. He turned to face his wife, only to find her standing a couple of feet away, with her hands planted firmly on her hips. A frown marred her pretty lips.
Where was their son?
Hadn’t she just been feeding him?
“What did you do with the baby?” he asked.
“I put him in his crib for his nap,” Melina said slowly, as though she were talking to a small child and not a grown man. “He had his bottle and fell asleep in my arms. I thought your going-ons might wake him up if I kept him out here.”
Fuck.
Had he been going on for that long, lost to his own thoughts?
Mac felt like he was losing his damn mind.
“Sorry, doll,” he muttered.
“You’re overthinking your problem—you do that too much, Mac.”
“Anthony is not a simple problem. The boss had a conversation with him, and after everything that’s happened, it’s not simple.”
“So get rid of him,” Melina said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That is an easy enough solution.”
“On the surface, sure. To say it, absolutely. To actually do it, though? No, it’s not that simple. Maybe for someone else, but not for me. Cosa Nostra has rules for a reason. Made men follow the code for the oath they spoke for a reason.”
“What about someone who isn’t made? What about a woman?”
“Doll.”
“What about me?” she asked.
Mac held back his immediate rising urge to shut down that idea. And he only did that for Melina’s benefit—no need to go pissing off the Queen of his household. He had enough problems without adding that one to it, as well.
“There are some aspects of my affairs that I would rather you … not touch,” Mac said, choosing each word carefully.
“I have a woman at The Dollhouse whom Anthony calls on several times a week. He wouldn’t even know what hit him. And neither would anyone else, for that matter. We could just get rid of him after it was done like nothing even happened. Simple, clean, and there goes all your problems.”
Mac had to admit, Melina’s suggestion was appealing to the side of him that just wanted Anthony gone. The other part of him—the honorable part—knew he couldn’t agree because it was, at its core, wrong.
He glanced up at the ceiling, again being careful with his words. “People would still look to me, doll. I’m the only one with any kind of serious, public beef with that idiot right now.”
“Assumption and proof are two very different things,” Melina pointed out.
“Then why does assumption—not proof—kill men like me more often than not?”
Melina didn’t respond.
Mac figured his point was made.
Melina frowned. “What if this was Anthony’s point?”
“Pardon?”
“Making people look to you,” she clarified.
Mac still didn’t understand.
Melina rolled her eyes, saying, “Yesterday, the funeral and the bomb—Neeya. Being the first to see Luca. Making it appear like now you have to say to others that the boss wouldn’t accept a visitation from you. Giving people a reason to think that maybe Luca has cause not to trust you—like people should look to you, Mac. What if all of that was Anthony’s point?”
Mac fell silent.
Melina nodded at his reaction. “Yeah, sometimes, I think you just need someone else to say things for you to actually hear them.”
“You make a good point.”
“So, what are we going to do about it, Mac?”
Mac didn’t even bother to question the “we” part of his wife’s statement. He had come to find that sometimes, Melina was the only person on his side. More than sometimes. Or so it seemed. It wasn’t a bad thing, really.
Far from it.
A man only needed one person on his side to get anything done. The right person.
His moll.
“We wait and see,” Mac said as Melina continued to stare at him expectantly. “We wait and see what Anthony does now, and we go from there.”
“You have heard the old saying about striking while the iron is hot, right?”
“Patience, doll.”
“It’s not virtuous when your life is on the line,” she said with a huff.
Mac could only chuckle at that. “Maybe, but I don’t think I’m the only man with his life on the line right now.”
Mac slipped into the warehouse for his usual weekly meet with his crew. He had a dozen and one other things to worry about, and his guys could handle themselves if needed. He called the meeting anyway.
If there was one thing Mac had learned about being a good Capo, it was that his crew came first. They had to come first. Their problems with other people, issues on the streets, or even complaints about him—he needed to hear them. They wanted a Capo that gave enough of a shit to actually listen when they had something to say. That was the kind of behavior that led to a damn good Capo and crew combo.
And because of that, his guys trusted him.
Plus, routine was not always a bad thing where foot soldiers were concerned. Those men rarely spent their time in meetings with people above them in ranking. They didn’t have to be at certain places at specific times all throughout the week like Mac did, and they had no real structure to their days. They could do whatever they wanted, and be wherever they wanted, so long as they were making money while they did so.
But once a week, he demanded they be at his warehouse.
They always came.
On time.
He was damn proud of his crew.
The loud laughter and chatter of twenty young men quieted as Mac walked across the warehouse floor. He surveyed the faces of his guys—a habit he had developed—to get a sense of what their meeting would entail. No one in particular stood out, and given the week they already had, that wasn’t a bad thing.
Well, all except Enric.
The young man sat off in the corner alone, looking entirely lost to his own thoughts in his wheelchair. Mac specifically wanted to have a chat with Enric about Neeya, the upcoming funeral, his sisters, the boss … and more.
There was a lot to discuss.
Enric had been staying quiet, so Mac hadn’t been able to get a decent conversation in with the guy. Now was the time, apparently.
Mac didn’t plan on having the conversation in front of the other guys, though.
“Hey, Skip.”
“We were starting to wonder if you were gonna show.”
Mac waved off the greetings of his guys. “We’re going to make this fast today. Unless anyone has any issues they need me to hear immediately, then I would like to make a few things clear for the upcoming days and send you on your way.”
A few guys shook their heads. Some verbalized their agreements. None seemed to need or want to talk about anything that was an issue for them.
Mac was grateful.
“Perfetto. Then let’s get this over with, so we can all be doing what we would rather be doing.”
Mac took a seat on the waiting stool in front of his half-circle of guys. It was something the men had always sat out for him in preparation of their meetings. Mac gave Enric another look from the side, noted the guy was still lost to his head, and sighed.
“Clearly, we’ve had a rough week, especially with the one funeral, and the boss’s wife in the limo. Now, more than ever, I need you all to be careful. In all things, with all people. Keep your noses clean, your heads down, and be respectful, even when you think no one is listening. Stick to your own business, but be mindful of the business around you at the same time. Until we know more about the bombing, the boss, and all of that shit, keep a low profile, but keep your eyes wide open. Got it?”
More nods.
More confirmations.
That grateful feeling swelled in Mac again. He knew that most Capos did not have crews like his, with guys that behaved appropriately and respected their Caporegime’s position. Other Capos constantly struggled with insubordinate men and rebellious nonsense, often leading them to use violent means to keep their crew in line.
Not him.
Not his crew.
Mac spoke. They obeyed.
Mac clapped his hands and stepped off the stool. “Head out, and remember what I said.”
The guys didn’t need to be told twice. All of them headed for the warehouse entrance, except for Enric. It was only after the final guy had left that Enric finally turned his gaze on Mac.
A tired sadness waited there in Enric’s eyes. A heavy weight rested on his shoulders. All the questions Mac had wanted to ask bled away, and so did his ability to find the right words to comfort the young man.
“How’s your sisters?” Mac asked after a few seconds of stretched silence.
Enric shrugged. “Lost?”
That was probably as good a word as any, Mac supposed.
“Your father?”
“You tell me,” Enric mumbled, looking down at his hands in his lap.
“I would, but—”
“He’s not seeing you, either.”
Mac shook his head. “No, but I did hear that his lawyer got a viewing with a judge about allowing him out for the day of Neeya’s funeral. Shackled and with escorts, apparently. But it’s something.”
“So I was told.”
“You want to grab some grub?” Mac asked. “You’ve got a physical therapy appointment today, too, right?”
Enric didn’t answer, instead saying, “She never made me feel out of place—Neeya, I mean. I came from another woman, before her, but she had no reason to accept me if she didn’t want to being his wife and all. I was the bastard son, nothing more. But she still tried. And even when I wouldn’t get close to Dad or her, she still kept trying for the girls’ sakes. I just never felt …”
“Comfortable,” Mac said, filling in the obvious blank.
“I’m wondering if that was a mistake, I guess.”
“It’s better not to dwell on things you can’t change, Enric, and work on what you have right now, and where you want to go.”
The young man nodded. “Sure.”
“Easier said than done, I know.”
Regret weighed heavily on everyone. It didn’t matter how broad the shoulders, that weight was an impossible one to carry without some sort of injury.
“Food sounds good,” Enric said after a quiet moment. “I’ll probably have to miss the appointment, though. Lora has some sort of thing today, and she asked me to be there.”
Mac waved his cellphone high. “Good thing is, we happen to have one of your therapists on speed dial—I’m sure Victoria won’t mind coming over to your place later to get something done.”
“I would mind,” Enric muttered. “It’s bad enough having her at the clinic. She tries to kill me, I swear.”
“She does not. She wants you to walk, like the rest of us do, so she pushes you because you can take it, and she knows it. Lock the pride down for a bit. There are more important things to worry about, Enric.”
“Whatever you say.”
Mac was going to respond, but his buzzing phone stopped him. He checked the screen only to see a messaging scrolling across from his wife. Direct, concerned words.
Anthony is at The Dollhouse with lots of men. Not for my kind of business. It looks like a meeting. Get here now.
Mac swore severely.
What was that fucker up to now?
He gave Enric an apologetic look and a shrug. “Food is going to have to wait. We have a situation to deal with.”
Enric didn’t even ask what was going on. He simply followed behind Mac like the good solider he was, even in his state.