Dagger in the Sea Read online

  “We’ve worked with a few off and on, but never long term,” said Mauro. “What if they all start pointing fingers to make deals to stay alive? This sucks dick. And why leave the body out like that? Why not get rid of it? Was this some sort of vendetta? Jesus, I don’t like it at all.”

  “Fascinating, huh, Turo?” Val asked me, a cold smile brightening his sour but handsome face.

  Mauro’s hard gaze shot to me and back to Val. “What’s going on?”

  I’d been looking forward to finally telling him about my crippling a vital artery of the Tantucci drug apparatus and now finally cutting it off at the head by killing Med. But instead, I had Val threatening me and the Boss in a snit over Med’s death.

  And I needed to discuss what the hell he was doing to my mother.

  I’d been lucky. Through my girlfriend I’d met Serena, a new friend of hers who came to me for a favor one day. I did a little more digging than I had to into this girl because she intrigued me, and I discovered that Serena was Med’s ex “old lady” whom he’d kidnapped as a teenager and held prisoner until she’d escaped. She owed me and we struck a bargain. Information on Med as payment for her debt to me. She agreed.

  Med and his crew were vagabonds, and Serena fed me information about his hiding places, his manic thought process, his maneuvers. His insanity. I hit him over and over again as no one else ever had. One by one I’d set off explosions in Med’s path. I was Lawrence of Arabia watching and waiting for my carefully laid dynamite to ignite along the Tantucci-Smoking Gun train tracks, then I’d charged into the sand dunes on a triumphant roar, looting the spoils, humiliating them, defeating them.

  Med was a drug-addicted sick fuck. Under my constant attacks, paranoia reigned supreme in his camp, affecting his trade and rattling the Tantuccis. Their dependable routines had been broken, business was down, reputations suffered, finger pointing abounded. Killings. I’d jammed their symphony with a sudden, long, driving violin solo. I was the masked conductor of this brutal orchestra.

  Je ne regrette rien. Fucking truth, Edith Piaf.

  My stomach hardened under Val’s gaze. A wolf waiting for a sign of his prey’s weakness. Motherfucker. I’d planned on this getting me more in to the Guardino Outfit than ever before. It was a smart plan. But I hadn’t planned on Val stalking me.

  Val slid the photo on his father’s desk. “You need to see this, Pop.”

  Mauro stared at it. “What the hell is this?” He lifted his fierce gaze to mine. “Did you do this?”

  “Holy shit, you didn’t know?” said Val. “I thought you’d ordered the hit yourself.”

  “What have you done?” Mauro bellowed at me.

  “I ruined this biker’s business and his life, and made the Tantuccis miserable, and then I took him out,” I replied.

  The Boss’s eyes flickered, his one cheek twitched. “You took him out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without my permission? Without consulting me?”

  Val crossed his arms over his chest his eyes darting between us.

  I said, “I had an opportunity, and I—”

  “And you took it.”

  “I took it.”

  Mauro chewed on his thin lips. His glare heavy.

  “I told him, Dad.” Val couldn’t help but jump in and splash in our muddied waters. “I told him it was wrong. I figured it out. I had him watched. I knew it’d come to this. He just does whatever the hell he wants. It’s gotta stop, right? I mean, there’s no telling what else he’ll get up to if you give him the legroom.”

  Mauro’s hand shot out and clasped the edge of the desk. “There’s something to be said for initiative and enterprise, but I’m the fucking boss, here.”

  “Do something about him already!” Val raised his voice in the eerie silence, his face streaked with red. “He goes overboard. He needs to be punished.”

  “Don’t you ever question me!” Mauro thundered. “At the end of the day, Turo delivers.”

  And Val didn’t deliver. That I knew, we all knew. But Val was the crown prince. That I also knew.

  “He delivers?” Val’s face dropped along with his tone.

  “Yes, he delivers. And you’re whining, I’m sick of it!” Mauro turned to me. “You—if I had known you were taking out Med, that you had an opportunity, I would’ve told you not to. The FBI had a lead on him recently, a huge sting operation in the works. They were getting ready to arrest him and his band of nut jobs. And I was gonna sit back and watch the circus. But no, you had to go in and be the goddamn dragon slayer. What the fuck! What the fuck, Turo?”

  I ground my jaw.

  He sucked in a breath. “Who knows, they probably saw you take him out. Maybe they have you on video, and now they’re gonna turn this into some kind of all out war. They’re gonna sniff out every connection to these freaks. I do not need this shit right now!”

  My insides twined like a tight rubber ball. The blood rushed to my head.

  The Boss’s hand slammed on his desk. “Judge Connelly won’t be able to do a damn thing for me if they got one of my men on fucking video.”

  “I—”

  “Shut up!” The veins in Mauro’s thick neck bulged.

  My feet cemented to the floor, but I didn’t avert my gaze. His fierce glare held mine.

  “Jesus, dad, why don’t you just cut him off already?” Val’s voice seethed from behind his father. “Because I swear I will!”

  “No, you won’t!” Mauro snapped.

  Val stiffened, saying nothing, his eyes bursting from their sockets.

  “Arturo.”

  An icy jag razored through me at the hiss in his voice.

  “Get out.”

  4

  Turo

  “Turo, are you okay?”

  I blinked. Francesca, Val’s sister, stood in the foyer of the house. Val’s luscious little sister who had a crush on me. The boss’s daughter.

  My half sister.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Her lips parted and she blushed. A blush that extended from her cheeks over her chest and down beneath her bikini top. A pair of small, too small, triangles of a fine burgundy colored crochet material.

  Francesca’s crush on me had been cute once upon a time. Now it was a burden. A grave burden. We’d seen each other at a dinner party at a supper club a few weeks ago. She was with a cousin, looking bored two tables over. I was with my girlfriend, Ciara, fingering her under our table as Francesca stared at me thinking the look on my face was about her. Then she blushed violently and looked away when she realized the truth.

  “I’m just heading off to the pool,” she said, voice breathy.

  “Enjoy. It’s unusually hot for May.”

  “Very hot.” Her glance shifted to my mouth.

  Voices rose from down the hall, behind the closed door of Mauro’s office. “Daddy not happy with Val again?” she asked.

  “You could say that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I wish he and Stella would move into their new house already. It was supposed to be finished last month, but Stella keeps changing her mind about the countertops and the bathroom tile and the carpeting.” A soft giggle escaped her lips. “God help us all when she gears up to do the baby’s room.”

  “She’s pregnant?”

  “Hmm.”

  “That’s nice. I didn’t know.”

  Stella. That bitch. I’d thought she was so into me, into us, but it had all been a sham.

  My first summer working for Mauro, Stella and I would meet secretly in cars, in hotels, in clubs, to consummate and be consumed by our roaring lust. She certainly had an appetite for me which, along the way, I’d stupidly mistaken for real feeling. All my little heated declarations to her were always met with an equally heated series of “yes, yes, yes!”

  When I told her I was falling in love with her, her response had been, “What are you talking about? We’re just having fun. Geez, that’s all this is, I thought you understood that?” An amused look was on her face li
ke she was genuinely stunned and rather mortified. She never again answered my calls.

  Shock seized me at my failure of judgement. Anger at my pathetic desperation to believe what wasn’t actually there. At being stomped on and ridiculed. Again.

  Never again.

  Stella had been Val’s girlfriend, but I hadn’t known that. I’d only been her play toy that summer while Val was on a post college graduation trip through Europe with his buddies, probably fucking his way from Amsterdam to Paris to Rome. The night he’d returned home, she was on his arm, eyes sparkling. He eventually put a ring on her finger and they’d gotten married five years ago.

  “Only family knows she’s pregnant,” said Francesca bringing me back to the here and now. “But soon my mother will be having a party to celebrate. She loves to throw a party.”

  “Yes, yes, she does.”

  “I hope you’ll be there,” said Francesca, inching closer to me, her shoulder leaning against the wall, her throat at an angle.

  I moved back from her. “If I’m invited, I’ll be there.”

  “Of course you’ll be invited.”

  She inched closer toward me again. I could smell her light perfume, flowers, honey. Oh, she was honey all right. “Don’t you dare bring a plus one, though,” she whispered.

  “Francesca…”

  “I like your tie.” She pressed her fingers down my navy Armani tie. All the way down my chest, my abs. “You’re always dressed so nicely.” Her hand slid down over my belt buckle, and I cuffed her wrist, stopping it from going any farther south. She smiled up at me, a lazy smile, a smile sodden with lustful promise and capitulation.

  Jesus.

  “Francesca?” Val’s voice sliced between me and his sister.

  Francesca’s body stiffened, and she immediately stood at attention, tugging at her cover-up. “Turo and I were just talking.”

  Val glared at me then his sister, at me again. “I thought you’d left, DeMarco.”

  “Francesca and I were…catching up.” I wiped a thumb down the corner of my mouth. Sometimes you had to make your point viciously clear, damn the cost.

  Mauro came up behind his son, his dark eyes glimmering at all three of us. His children. He said nothing but the roar screaming in his mind was obvious.

  “Get lost, Fran,” Val said to his sister.

  She rolled her eyes, planting a hand at her waist and remained put. She was a sweet kid, but not a kid anymore, that was for sure. Francesca was twenty now. A woman.

  I shot her a final grin. ”Enjoy your swim.”

  She grinned back, her face rosy. “See you.” She bit her lip and turned down the hallway, opening the French doors to the backyard and sashaying outside on her wedge heeled sandals, the robe flaring around her bare legs. An exit worthy of a music video diva.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Val bit out.

  I let him think the worst. That was how these things worked. By indirection. Underhanded, slithering indirection. Letting his imagination do all my work for me.

  “Saying hello,” I replied.

  “You leave my sister alone, motherfucker!” Val seethed. “I don’t want you anywhere near her.”

  “Get out of my way. I’m leaving.”

  “Leave and don’t come back, you prick.”

  We’re all bastards of some kind, me more than others. Val was certainly in a class all by himself though.

  Oh, wait, “bastard”—that’s me.

  Mauro stood motionless in the distance, a stone mountain in the hallway, his eyes burning into mine. Shit, I still had to talk to him about my mother.

  “Leave,” Mauro’s voice seethed.

  And now was not the time. Fuck.

  I got out of their house, their pompous fucking six bedroom house with the gaudy Italian lacquer furniture Mauro’s wife loved, my stride long and quick. Getting in my car, I gripped the thick leather steering wheel as I got the hell of out their neighborhood.

  5

  Turo

  I let out a heavy breath, my head knocking back against the headrest as I got on the expressway and headed back into the city. I brushed a hand down my face.

  This started with a girl.

  I’d cheated on Ciara with her friend Serena, the former biker girl. Serena was beautiful in an odd way. She was funky vintage clothes, too much crazy colored hair, too many tattoos, and for all that exhibitionism, she was anything but an exhibitionist. Introverted, not very smiley, body language tight and in control. She was a woman of few words, yet the ones she used were careful and straight to the point like a sleek blade. But those clear blue-green eyes…oh, those gorgeous orbs told a thousand tales. I wanted to be fucked by those eyes alone.

  An unusual desire for her had taken hold of me over the time that she’d been feeding me information about Med. I’d initially chalked it up to lust, but no, it had been more. Her last night in Chicago before she’d taken off for parts unknown with a new name and identity which I’d provided, I seized what I wanted—sex. She’d given into me, but she hadn’t surrendered. I tried to fuck her into submission, or at least earn some sign of appreciation, but nothing worked. Not the orgasms, not the intensity, not the pushing of every boundary. She remained remote, detached. Later, I realized that by screwing me she was setting fire to herself and her life up until that moment. A phoenix.

  Thoughts of her had stayed with me long after that night, which was unusual for me. It was more than just a satisfying fuck with a sexy woman or the appeal of her imperiousness. I wasn’t sure, but it lingered for a long while like an exotic fragrance I couldn’t place and couldn’t forget. That fragrance festered inside me, but I ignored it.

  A few months ago, three years after I last saw Serena, I met Finger, the man who had helped her escape from Med’s madhouse, and it all came together. Finger was a biker from another club, a club just as outlaw as Med’s—his rivals, in fact. Med had taken him prisoner and tortured him years ago like he had Serena, leaving him scarred and maimed.

  Nonetheless, Finger had gone back in to Med’s lair and freed Serena and then brought her to Chicago where she lived in hiding. They kept their relationship secret. Unfortunately, Finger had gotten arrested and sent to jail for a few years, and Serena got spooked and took off having changed her identity again thanks to my help. After he got released, Finger came to me looking for her.

  I’d listened to his deep, husky voice demanding answers from me about her, and that’s when I knew—it was his blood that pumped though her heart, his soul wrapped in hers if such a thing were possible. The fierceness in his eyes that night as he’d questioned me about where she’d gone, what her new name was—burning ashes. Full of torment and yearning just like her eyes had been, only she had learned to mask her pain with opaque ice.

  He had a will of iron that had been forged in his raw passion for her, and it raged from him. It was palpable and pushed at me, like a wave in the ocean. This was being in love? This burning incineration?

  I braked in the traffic on the exit ramp. Had he ever found her? Were they together now? Oh, for fuck’s sake, why the hell did I care?

  Finger was a fearless, intelligent man, and I ended up hiring him for a job that Val had fucked up. Finger delivered, and the payoff for both of us had been undeniably huge. Boss was impressed, capos silenced, Val livid. So good.

  Then and there I decided to keep my connection to Finger to myself. I had ruined Med’s stellar reputation in a matter of months thanks to Serena. I’d scored big on the Outfit’s resourcefulness scale with my Finger connection. But would any of those successes trump the blood issue? Would anything, ever?

  No.

  I knew that, so did Val, so did the Boss.

  The Boss knew he could rely on me, though, and I’d worked hard to prove that to him over and over again. I provided steady income, no excuses, no complaining. But no matter how much I accomplished to lift myself up, I was dragged underfoot. Being a “consultant” as the Boss had named me was fine, runni
ng his prostitutes was fine, but it had gotten to the point I wanted more—my own territory, my own business within the business.

  Rules were rules. Tradition was essential. My blood would always be an issue. I was the Tom Hagen of the Guardino crime family, for fuck’s sake. But this wasn’t a Hollywood film.

  I was in, but at the end of the day, on the periphery, out.

  I maneuvered through the usual traffic in Lincoln Park and guided my black Range Rover into its parking spot in the garage under my building. José, the uniformed doorman, greeted me in the lobby and hit the button in the elevator that led to my apartment.

  Once inside, I threw my trench coat on the vintage leather Barcelona chair my mother had given me as a housewarming gift when I’d bought the apartment. An ache raced over my skull. I needed a drink.

  At my bar, I poured myself a Laphroig in my favorite glass and drained it in one swallow, my throat burning. I poured another.

  Swirling the bracing liquor in my mouth, I took in the Chicago skyline. Earlier, when I’d gotten dressed and taken in this very same view, I’d felt more sure of myself, of my place, my future. Over the years I’d become good at kicking any self doubts to the curb before they flowered like a deadly plant releasing noxious fumes, rendering me immobile. I relished problems, finding a way out of their maze, breaking their code, solving, squashing.

  Today, though. Fuck, today there had been no resolving.

  I put down my empty glass. I knew what I wanted, needed. I dialed my soldier, Paul.

  “Did you find Salazar?” I asked.

  “Perfect timing. Just tying him up.”

  My pulse ticked in my neck. “I’ll be right there.”

  I took a cab to Bridgeport and walked up and over the three blocks to our basement holding cell in a pawn shop owned by Paul’s cousin. The tension in my muscles pounding, I charged down the winding metal steps and pushed through the door.

  Paul’s eyes widened at the sight of me and he quickly stepped aside. He knew.