Entice

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Nixon

The restaurant back at The Golden Nugget wasn’t crowded in the least. We took a booth in the very back and sat. Nobody spoke for a while. I’d never seen Luca so quiet in my entire life. I mean, this was Luca we were talking about. He fed on small children and laughed when people bled out. I wasn’t looking at the same man. I was looking at a man afraid — and to see a man as terrifying as Luca afraid? It didn’t sit well with me. It made me think that maybe this was bigger than I’d originally thought.

I slid a small Glock .9 toward Trace; her eyes flickered shut before she gave a quick nod and put it in her purse. She knew what I was asking her — what I was communicating to her. I needed her to protect herself at all costs.

We’d gone over her escape plan more times than I’d like to count. She had seven passports that would gain her access into the countries I’d previously chosen. Countries where I knew she’d be given asylum. I’d also assigned two men who would leave with her and protect her until the day I could either find her again or until the day we were reunited, that is, if God even let people like me into Heaven. If not, at least Trace would be there. I could live with that. A private account had been set up so that she would never want for anything. She’d hated me for it. But it was necessary. If she wasn’t safe… Hell, I couldn’t even think about it. My mind couldn’t wrap around the idea of a world where she was no longer breathing, a world where her heartbeat wasn’t slow and steady next to mine.

“I think we need to talk.” Frank ordered a bottle of wine and placed his weathered hands on the table.

Luca shook his head. “Talking like a bunch of women will accomplish nothing.”

“Try,” I urged through clenched teeth.

Tex plopped down on the other side of Trace and crooked his finger at Mo. Wordless, she took a seat and waited in silence like the rest of us.

“We wait.” Luca nodded. “For Mil and Chase.” He nodded again as if he was convincing himself that it was the best plan imaginable. Then he pulled out a cigar and began puffing on it like it was his only lifeline.

“Here they are,” Trace whispered.

I turned around. Mil’s face was white as a sheet, and Chase looked like he needed something a hell of a lot stronger than wine. His gaze flickered to mine and then back to Mil as he put his arm around her and pulled out a chair.

Now that was interesting. Usually he looked at me, then at Trace, and then back to me again. What had changed?

“Loose ends?” Luca said without looking up.

“None.” Chase swallowed. “One dead.”

“Anyone important?” Sergio spoke up for the first time. We were huddled in a dark booth where we were all facing out so that we could see anyone or anything that dared approach us. They’d be dead before they could open their mouth in greeting.

“No.” Mil’s voice shook. “Just Tanya’s bodyguard.”

“And Mrs. Campisi? How does she fair?” Luca blotted out his cigar and poured himself a healthy glass of wine.

“We left her.” Chase cleared his throat and popped his knuckles. “She’s dead anyway.” His knuckles were caked with blood, but other than that he seemed clean, so he must have been telling the truth. Then again, Chase’s style of killing was cleaner than mine. While I’d rather beat the shit out of someone and torture them until either my name or God’s was the last on their lips, Chase used guns.

He liked guns.

Guns liked him.

They had a good relationship. Chase hated loose ends, and he hated getting his hands dirty when the gun could do the job for him. To each his own, I guess.

Trace placed her hand on my thigh. I reached down and gripped it, each of us waiting for someone to say something that would be helpful.

After taking another sip of wine, Luca spoke. “You were young when you were both chosen. Rare for a boss to fall into power at eighteen, Nixon, even rarer to earn the respect of your elders at fourteen when your own father nearly killed you.” Luca shook his head. “You and your friends were all sons of bosses, important men, too important for us not to initiate you into the family once we deemed you old enough to know what was going on. I thought of it as a brainwashing. What fourteen-year-old doesn’t want to bring pride to his family? Luca swallowed. “And you, Nixon? You did not scream.”

“What?” Trace whispered.

“He didn’t scream.” Luca gave a sad smile. “When his father crushed his skull. Not one single tear either.” He bit down on his bottom lip. “My own men were terrified. They asked, ‘Who is this boy? Where does he find his strength?’ I envied you.”

I winced. “I set off airport security with my metal plate, not much to envy.”

Frank pinched the bridge of his nose as if the violent talk about the Abandonato family was too much for him to take.

“We initiated the four of you that next week.” Luca nodded. “Phoenix followed, as well as Chase and Tex.”

I remembered it all too clearly. The dark room, the metallic smell of blood, and the knives. Never in the family’s history had they initiated mere teenagers. We’d been forced to grow up before our time. Forced to become men, when we should have been playing baseball and going to the movies…

A knife sat to my right, a gun to my left.

“Prick your trigger finger with the knife,” Luca instructed. His voice sounded confident and smooth to my fourteen-year-old ears.

I did as he said, hands shaking the entire time. When the blood pooled around my fingertip, he squeezed until a drop of it fell onto a card he held in his hand. He repeated the process for each of my friends.

“You are now family,” he said in a low voice. “By this blood you are united, by this blood you will die. You live by this very knife.” Luca picked up the knife. “You die by this knife. Do you accept?”

“Yes,” we said in unison, our voices cracking because they’d barely begun to change. I knew the seriousness of what was happening. My father watched from the corner of the room, his smile predatory. It took everything in me not to grab the knife and throw it at his head. I was going to be boss someday, and when I was, the first thing I was going to do was kill the very man who claimed to be my father. I would end his life, and I would smile when his warm blood ran cold through my fingers.

Luca handed me the card with my patron saint, Blessed Saint Antonio Lucci. I held it in my hand, my blood dripped on the card.

Luca lit a candle and then held it out to me. “Repeat after me.” He held the flame beneath the card and spoke in a low voice. “As burns this saint, so burns my soul. I enter alive, and I will have to get out dead.”

I repeated the words, knowing that getting out meant my death. But getting in? That meant my survival. It meant my revenge…

“Sorry.” Tex shook his head. “Not that I mind going down memory lane, but what the hell does this have to do with the fact that Luca looks ready to run for the hills?”

Tex had reasons for hating that memory. When he should have been initiated as a Campisi, he’d been initiated as a made man, initiated into a family who, even though we’d said was his blood, was nothing like it.

Luca looked at the wine in his glass. He swirled it around and sighed. Some liquid dripped off the edge of the glass; it reminded me of blood, of the blood that would continue to spill if we didn’t fix what was happening.

“Each man takes this very oath. Each man is given a saint during the initiation ceremony. Some men may tattoo the symbol somewhere private, or they may build a type of shrine in their home, lighting candles next to the picture of their saint, in thanks for making it through another day without being killed, or worse, becoming marked.

“One man, in particular, made his very own symbol of the saint. He used it as a way to mark people. As a way to remind that person and anyone else who comes into contact with them that they are a marked man, meant for dead, cursed.”

“What does the mark look like?” Mil asked in a small voice.

Luca reached across the table and grabbed her wrist then flipped it over. “This. It looks like this.”

Mil tried to jerk her arm away, but Luca held it captive as his trigger finger traced the outline of the scar. It almost looked like pentagram minus the circle; instead there was a small triangle toward the top and really long sides.

“The Albatross,” Frank whispered, gripping the same hand and flipping it to the side. The scar made an A-shape with an N where the triangle had been. “He’s branded you.”

“My father,” Mil whispered, her lips trembling. “He said I was meant for him.”

“You remember nothing of The Cave, Mil?” Luca asked, a touch of tenderness inflected, as if he actually did give a rat’s ass what she did or didn’t remember.

“It was dark.” Mil shifted in her seat and jerked her arm back. “And there were lots of men.”

“But only one that mattered.” Luca swore. “Did you ever see him?”

“Who is him?” Chase asked slowly.

“The Capo,” Luca said slowly. “Vito Campisi. He is the only one who makes the mark of the Albatross. If you were meant for him, it means only one thing.”

Mil began rocking back and forth in her seat.

“What the hell?” Chase pulled her to his chest as Mil started whimpering nonsense about it being cold.

“What are you doing to her?” Chase swore again and pulled out his gun, aiming it at Luca’s head.

“Chase,” I growled. “Put the gun away. I’ll shoot Luca myself if he doesn’t start talking.”

“Her virginity.” Luca laughed humorously. “That bastard must have bid on her.”

“Bid?” I swallowed the bile in my throat.

“The prostitution ring was very illegal, even by our standards.” Luca nodded. “I visited twice. Both times I was witness to things I can only assume are reserved for the darkest deepest circles of hell.”

“You were there?” I whispered.

Mil nodded. “Once that I remember. My dad, he forgot his phone and—”

“I was there that day.” Luca sighed, interrupting her. “The minute your father auctioned you off, I walked out the door, not caring that I could be shot where I stood. I was banished to Sicily anyway, thanks to the Abandonatos and Alferos thinking my family had overstayed their welcome.” He shot a glare to Frank. “At any rate, it was too dark to see faces. The De Langes were good about keeping identities a secret. One could be in The Cave with the President of the United States and still not know who was standing next to him.”

“Because of the lighting?” I asked.

“No,” Luca said slowly, his eyes flickering from mine to Mil’s. “Because of the masks.”

“No!” Mil screamed.

Chase stood, knocking over some of his water, and reached for his gun. I grabbed his hand, to keep him from doing something stupid, and swore.

“Luca — this isn’t helping.”

“She needs to remember.”

“And if she dies in the process? Loses her freaking mind because she wasn’t ever supposed to remember in the first place?” I shouted.

“Nixon.” Trace shook her head slowly. “I think it will help.”

“Mo?” I was grasping at straws, waiting for one of the girls to say something, waiting for one of them to say it would be too hard for a girl to talk about things that were better left buried in the ground.

“His voice sounded like gravel,” Mil whispered against Chase’s chest. “He was really big. And his mask…” She shuddered. “I saw his eyes.”

“What color?” Frank asked.

“Blue. Like ice.”

Sergio swore.

“Dead.” Luca lifted his glass into the air as if cheering our demise.

“Why does that make us dead?”

“Because it seems our Capo has decided that he doesn’t want the sins of his past to come out. Seems he’s hell-bent on destroying anyone close to the girl, including us. And believe me, he’s good at what he does.”

“He’s been in retirement,” Frank offered.

Luca snorted. “We retire when we’re dead and buried.”

“Something’s not adding up,” I said. “Why not kill her? Why keep her alive all this time?”

“Oh, Nixon.” Luca swore. “Sometimes I wonder about you, kid.”

“I’m not a kid.”

“You are a child.” He spat. “And the Capo knows you’d do anything to protect your love, as well as your family, including Chase and his new bride. By default, that means I must protect my family, which now includes all of you as well as Frank, the bastard, and Tex.” He swore again. “Perhaps he’ll bury us together.”

“That won’t happen,” Tex said in a quiet voice. “I won’t let him.”

“You won’t let him?” Mo all but shouted. “What are you going to do, Tex? Waltz into the airport, fly your way over to Sicily, and kill him?”

“I won’t have to.” Tex licked his lips. “My bet’s on him being here.”

“So you plan on doing what? Putting his number in your phone and tracking him with GPS?” Mo was all up in his face, her lips trembling as she waited for his response.

“I won’t have to.”

Luca raised his hands to his temples and massaged. “He has yet to find us. But he will. The best we can do is be ready.”

“Ready?” Trace repeated.

“For war.” Luca nodded. “Many lives will be lost. If we survive, and that’s a giant if, I plan on leaving you crazy Americans and going back to Sicily. I’ve had enough inter-family drama to last me a lifetime.”

I listened as everyone began talking at once. And then an idea hit me.

“How much money do we have altogether?”

Frank laughed. “You must be joking? We could buy the US outright, pay off the debts, and still be sitting nicely.”

Luca rolled his eyes. “While I wouldn’t go that far, we are quite nicely settled, why?”

“We order a hit.”

Luca began choking on his wine while Frank patted his back. “You’ve lost your damn mind!”

“No.” I grinned. “We offer twenty million.”

“Twenty million?” Trace sputtered. “Dollars?”

“No. Goats,” Tex interjected. “What else would we give them?”

I sucked on my lip ring and laughed. “Tell me his own right-hand man won’t be jumping at the chance to shoot that bastard in the face. Tell me his wife won’t try to kill him before the week’s up. Tell me we won’t have half the mafia after him.” I leaned in. “Hell. Tell me the half of Sicily won’t fly into New York by Friday and take care of it for us.”

“To order a hit of that magnitude is a death wish.” Luca swore.

“As you said.” I shrugged. “We’re already dead.”

“I can do it,” A small voice said. I looked over at Mil, just because I wasn’t sure it was her talking or if my imagination was running wild.

“Do what?” Chase pulled her away from his chest and tilted her chin toward him.

“I’ll spread the news.”

“And you think you can do a better job than us on ordering a hit?”

Mil grinned, probably for the first time in hours. “Oh, I know I can.”

“How’s that?”

She shrugged. “I am the De Lange boss.”

“And an hour ago we thought they wanted you dead. Your cousins had his branding.”

“They were probably given no choice. Either kill or be killed. The only reason he would brand them would be to mark them,” Mil said slowly. “My family is your only hope to get out of this alive. He won’t expect it to come from me.”

“The element of surprise,” I muttered with approval.

“That…” Her mouth tilted into a smile. “…and my family’s been dealing drugs to the Mexico cartel for the past ten years. This shit’s going to go worldwide. The connections go into the Irish and Russian mob — weapons dealers.” Mil swallowed. “I’m not telling you all of this so you hate my family even more, but to show you they’re desperate. I mean, last I heard they were going to sell all you guys out to the feds. What if I give them a truce?”

Luca’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of truce?”

“The other four families stop going after the De Langes, and the De Langes promise not to go to the feds. In the meantime, I order the first real respectable hit of my career — and I go balls to the wall.” Mil’s face hardened. “Cementing the De Langes as a power force once more.”

Luca’s eyes lit up. Frank started clapping his hands. And I couldn’t have been more proud had the woman just declared world peace. I imagined it would only take five seconds for Chase to throw his wife against the wall and maul her… his gratitude and all that. By the looks of it, he was ready to do it now.

“Well…” I sighed. “I think we have a plan. Mil—” I tapped my fingers against the countertop and nodded. “Make the call.”

Luca stood. “No sleep tonight, ladies and gentleman. One person awake at all times. Keep your phones close.”

“So what happens next?” Trace asked. “She makes the call and then what?”

Frank winked. “We wait.”