High Stakes (24 page)

Suddenly, I’m pulled into someone’s broad chest and initially I resist, but then I recognize his voice and I sag into his arms, breathing in the scent of his cologne.

“I apologize, officer. My fiancé is just shell-shocked.”

“She should see a doctor,” he says in a grim voice. “Her too,” he adds, gesturing to Mrs. Cesare.

He stalks off and Vince kisses my ear before he whispers in a shaky voice, “We need to get out of here before these idiots recognize me.”

Pulling me gently, we walk back into the kitchen where there are less cops. I grab Mrs. Cesare’s hand and lead her back into the kitchen.

“Vincent, what is going on?” she screams.

He ignores her. “She needs to see a doctor!” Vince voice bellows.

They let him go out the back door after taking his information, and my whole body tenses as I feel the cold air biting my skin. The coats were left behind.

Mrs. Cesare’s fingernails bite into my hands.

I’m safe.

No fucking way am I safe.

He leads me to the car and opens the door, waiting for me to get inside. His face cracks with impatience as I consider sprinting away from him in the opposite direction.

“I—I’ll go to my dorms.”

“What?” he snaps.

“
Please let me go
.”

With a furious expression on his face, he grabs my shoulders and forces me to stand near the passenger side.

“Get in.”

“No,” I say in a weak voice, knees trembling.

“I’m not fucking around, Adriana.”

The rudeness seems to snap Mrs. Cesare out of her shocked state. “Vincent, that’s no way to talk to your fiancé.”

“Ma,
shut the fuck up and get inside
!”

There’s no winning against that voice. For a moment, Mrs. Cesare looks apoplectic with rage, but I grab her hand and usher her inside the car. I slide inside after her and flinch as he slams the door. When he slides into the car, the look he gives me makes me want to run and hide.

“Ma, I’ll take you home.”

She sobs into a handkerchief. “Two of my sister’s kids were hurt. We need to go back there!”

“No,” he bellows. “I don’t need the cops to know I was there.”

I gasp. “What about the gun you left behind?”

He shakes his head. “It’s untraceable. No serial number.” He guns the engine and we peel out of the street. “I’ll take you home, and then we can make arrangements to see them in the hospital.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

I look at her gulping, white face, feeling more disturbed as she breaths in shallowly.

“Mrs. Cesare, you need to calm down.” I seize her hand and squeeze.

“I’ll fucking kill them all!” he suddenly screams.

“Vince!” I glance at him, and what I see scares me. He’s the embodiment of rage. His face turns to me as if he’s ready to say something nasty to me, and I quickly look away.

It takes a half hour to calm Mrs. Cesare enough for her to enter her apartment, and by then Vincent’s temper runs high.

My body slams into the car seat as he throttles the engine. “Ow!”

His neck twists sharply as he looks at me and his eyes lighten for the first time. “Sorry.”

The pain in his voice makes me remember mine. I almost died tonight—again. Getting shot at is something I’m not supposed to get used to, but even Vince looks panicky. Maybe the death of two captains and the attempt on his boss’ life convinced him that he isn’t invincible.

The pressure in my head explodes as we drive closer and closer to Manhattan. “What if they’re there, waiting for us?”

“They won’t.”

“But—”

“Jesus Christ, Adriana!” He pummels the steering wheel as we get stuck into traffic. “Fuck!”

Calm and collected Vincent is gone. It scares me the way he scans the parking lot when he parks, his unflinching confidence gone. We somehow manage to reach his apartment and when the door closes behind it, Vince makes sure to lock everything. After a quick sweep of the apartment, he takes me in his arms in a bruising embrace.

Maybe he needs to be comforted, too.

But nothing comforts me. Nothing can take away the pounding sense of dread I feel, standing so close to the windows. Bodies flash in front of my eyes.

“They’re picking us all off. They want to kill the leadership of our family.”

“Who?”

“The Rizzos.”

I exhale a long moan. “Why would they want to do that?”

“It’s complicated.”

Unwinding my arms from him, I beseech him with my eyes. “If Maria stayed, she probably would have been killed. Do you realize what that means to me?”

He slumps against the wall. “You think I’m okay with what just happened? Two
capos
dead. Jack got shot and I have no idea if he’ll survive.”

“You’re going to get killed. They’ve already got a third of you.”

“I’m not going to get killed. It didn’t work.”

“So they’ll try again!”

Vince’s phone vibrates and he immediately answers. “How is he?”

I watch his shoulders slump and his eyes close. “For how long? Okay. I’ll meet you later. Thanks, bye.” His eyes glaze over as he hangs up the phone and his whole body tenses. “Two of my cousins are dead. They’re starting surgery on Jack now.”

A shock goes through me as I recall the two bodies collapsed on the floor. “I’m sorry.”

He clutches the phone over his chest, his eyes staring out at me. He looks lost.

* * *

Shoeless, I wander the apartment in circles, debating whether I should sneak outside while he’s asleep. He came in early last night. I know better than to ask what he was doing, but he collapsed into bed with his clothes on and has slept through the morning.

It’s noon. I’ve a class at 1:30
.

Chewing my lip, I debate whether it’s worth the risk to go. My grades are in the toilet because I’ve missed so many classes. I’ve been dying to get out of the apartment, and Maria’s frantic phone calls tells me that she found out about the shooting.

I know that he’ll freak out if I leave.

I’ve read all the articles online about what happened:
Deadly mob shooting claims four lives at Greenwich Village restaurant, Vittorio slaughter at notorious mobster hangout, Vittorio-Rizzo war far from over as deadly shooting takes four.

Somehow, they make me feel more removed from the whole thing. Like I didn’t just come back from a chain of funerals. I remember the envelopes stuffed with cash that Vincent slipped into the widows’ hands. Such a strange custom.

All in all it was a depressing week. I don’t want to waste a second of my life, and I’m tired of being cooped up in this apartment.

Gazing at Vince’s sleeping body, I scribble down a note and grab my backpack, slipping on my shoes at the last second. My heart pounds as I reach the doorknob and twist. I don’t feel safe when I’m in the elevator going down, even as I sprint across the street into the subway.

Still, a heavy weight lifts from my shoulders as I sigh into a plastic seat. I’m finally free. For now. I know that what I’m doing is stupid and that there are people who want Vince dead, but I can’t sit in Vince’s apartment with all of the shit that happened playing over and over in my brain.

I stride across the campus, feeling lighter than I have in weeks as I walk among fellow students, who walk briskly through the cold air. My teeth chatter and my nose runs, but I’m happy to be out of that place.

My strides are faster when I see my dorm. There are a few things I forgot that are still there, and I can catch up with Maria.

“Excuse me, Ms. Baldino?”

I look around and see two men in trench coats, which hang open to reveal their suits. The man who spoke to me has a receding hairline and wears a severe frown. My breath hitches in my throat.

“Yes?”

He pulls out his badge and my heart sinks. FBI.

Oh, fuck.

“Special Agent Eric Palmer, FBI. We’d like you to come in for questioning.”

* * *

I’m in deep shit.

That’s all I can think of as I sit in a dark office surrounded by at least six men who wear somber expressions as if my mother died.

You can’t say anything.

“Ms. Baldino, we know you’ve been involved with Mr. Cesare and we know you were at La Ciccia weeks ago during the shooting.”

My head snaps towards the balding man who accosted me at Columbia. I don’t say a word as he stares at me. I look back unblinkingly until my eyes start to water.

“So?” I say aggressively. “Am I under arrest?”

“No,” he says in an even voice. “But it’s in your best interest to hear what we have to say.”

I don’t think so.

“You were almost killed, and we know that it wasn’t the first time your life has been in danger.”

The blood drains from my face as I clutch the wooden table, staring at their faces. Are they bluffing?

“Months ago someone robbed one of Nicky Santoro’s card games, didn’t they? Illegal gambling conducted as a business is a federal crime, and we know there was a mishap. People were killed.”

How do they know all this shit?

My insides churn with piping hot fear, but I keep the lid clamped down. I will not break. I will not talk. My lips stay firmly sealed and my hands slide under the table.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?”

Agent Palmer gives me a shit-eating grin as he looks at my blanched face.

“Face it, Adriana. It’s only a matter of time before you get caught in the crossfire of this war between the Vittorios and the Rizzos. We’re not asking you to testify or wear a wire. We just want information. In exchange, you’ll enter the Witness Protection Program. Or you can keep lying to yourself about what kind of man your fiancé is.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeat, a little more harshly.

Agent Palmer glances at the others before giving me a frustrated look. “Do you realize you’re engaged to a man whose family is responsible for your father’s death?”

Wait, what?

My heart stalls as I look into Agent Palmer’s steady gaze. “What are you talking about? My father was killed by—”

“The Vittorios. Why do you think the police never followed up on the case? They knew what happened, they just didn’t know who exactly was responsible.”

No, it’s impossible. Mom would have told me.

“I don’t believe you. You’re lying.”

“You just don’t want to believe. Your dad borrowed a lot of money from the family, Adriana. He got involved with the wrong people, and they went to your house to collect. They were going to ransack the place, but something went wrong.”

It makes so much sense that I want to vomit.

“No, that’s wrong. That’s not what happened!”

It’s not right. It can’t be. They’re just trying to trick me.

“Yes, it is,” he says in a deadpan voice. “They killed your father.”

Chapter 11

It can’t be true. I don’t believe it.

I’m stuck in a fog as they drop me back on campus, just in time to make my 1:30pm class. My phone buzzes like a hive of angry bees, but I ignore it. I walk away from campus, intent on getting the truth. The elusive fucking truth.

It explains everything—why my mom was always so paranoid and why she needed all those payments to pay off loan sharks harassing her. Then why didn’t I ever see them?

Heading downstairs, I jump for the first train towards Brooklyn. It’ll be a long while until I get there. Plenty of time to think. The Feds gave me a card, which I hold in my fingers. They implored me to call if I changed my mind.

Amazed, I watch as people enter and leave the subway car without a care in the world. They have no idea what’s going on around them.

I feel like I’m being watched.

The paranoia swells inside me again. My neck cricks as I glance around, my chest tightening. I twist the ring around my finger ceaselessly. My eyes follow every person who boards the subway. Could they be one of Vincent’s? Following me?

What if they saw me being picked up by the FBI?

My body sways on the seat at the thought of what that would look like to Giacomo Vittorio, and then I’m fervently glad that he’s currently in the hospital.

The journey to Brooklyn is entirely too quick. I clamber up the steps on tired legs, my eyes seeking out my mother’s brownstone, which is only a few blocks away. My heart beats with a mounting sense of dread as I approach the house.

Please let it not be true.

My fist hammers on the door and I gasp when the door opens immediately, as if she was waiting for someone. My mother is dressed in normal clothes, for once. A faint tinge of color on her lips tells me that she even used lipstick.

“Oh, it’s you,” she says in a disappointed tone. “If you’re not going to help me, just go away.”

“We need to talk.”

She closes the door, but I elbow my way in.

“Adriana, how dare you?”

“Mom, we need to talk!”

The edge in my voice makes her walk backwards into the shitty house. She closes the door behind me and that familiar sense of skin-crawling fear descends on me.

“Mom, who really killed Dad?”

Mom’s eyes widen and she absentmindedly picks at a spot on her face. “What are you talking about?”

“Did he get mixed up with the wrong people?”

Her mouth trembles as she ignores my question, walking into the living room to pick up a lighter on the coffee table. Her tortured face lights up periodically in the flame’s light.

“We owed them a lot of money. Sal should have never done it, he shouldn’t have taken money from those animals.”

Her voice drops, sounding more raw than I’ve heard it in years.

I’m too stunned to move a muscle. “I thought you said he gambled it away!”

The cigarette glows a bright red. “What was I supposed to tell you? He did like to gamble, but your dad took money from a loan shark to start his auto shop business. Well, it was a failure. Your daddy didn’t know how to manage a business.”

The smoke rises from the cigarette in a lazy spiral.

“Then they wanted their money back,” she inhales suddenly. It’s a sharp, painful sound. “He kept failing to make payments, so they c—came and they took him by the throat.”