“I already read what you were bequeathed, Mrs. Russo.” The lawyer stands his ground in the face of a furious Penelope.
“As his wife, I am entitled to more than that no matter what the will says. I’ll sue.”
He hands her a document. “You signed a prenup when you got married. You’re entitled to only what he allows you to have.” Her face pales as she reads the piece of paper he handed her.
Lorenzo gets calmly to his feet and adjusts his suit jacket before looking Gio in the eye. “I will expect weekly reports on everything that is going on within the family business.”
Gio snorts. “Yeah, and why would you think that would start happening? Just because Dad is gone doesn’t make you any higher on the ladder than you were. You report to me, and you report to Tori. Just stay in your lane and keep your head down, Renzo, and we will all be okay. Enjoy your whores and your coke, and Tori and I will continue to run Dad’s empire just like he wanted us to.”
The look of pure fury that flashes through Lorenzo’s eyes is nothing short of staggering, but instead of arguing, he wraps his hand around Penelope’s arm and helps her to her feet. “You two haven’t heard the last of me,” he growls.
“How fucking cliché,” I drawl as he leads her to the door. “Oh, and Penny, darling, make sure your shit is out of this house by tomorrow, or I’ll throw it on the front lawn.” The satisfaction I feel at telling her that is almost as good as an orgasm. Almost.
* * *
Aweek after the reading of the will, Gio and I discovered who planted the bomb. He was some idiot off the street who didn’t even consider how many cameras were situated around the hotel and casino. He can be seen casually strolling up to the limo while it was parked in the underground parking lot and sliding beneath it before emerging five minutes later. Once we had his face, it was just a matter of Gio’s tech guys running it through facial recognition before we had a match.
He didn’t even bother to hide, and I think it’s a genuine surprise to him when, accompanied by my henchman Sam and Dean, I blow a hole through his apartment door and let myself in, passing the shotgun to Dean to hold onto so it doesn’t ruin my aesthetic.
“What the fuck? Who are you?” He jumps up from his seat on the couch.
Sam and Dean stand on either side of me while I wait. I hear one of them mutter, “Fuck,” and the other one sigh.
“She’s Azrael, the Angel of Death,” I hear Dean deadpan dryly. Seriously, how hard is it to get good henchmen around here?
The guy, whose name is Stan, looks confused. “Huh?”
I wait, tapping my foot.
“She’s your worst nightmare,” Sam mutters, and I throw my hands up in frustration.
“Thanks a ton, assholes. You’re really trying to sell the image. How am I supposed to intimidate people when you won’t even take this seriously?”
“Well, if you just told them your real name, it would be enough to make anyone piss their pants,” Dean snaps back.
“Yup, just hearing the name Russo is enough to make someone fearful, especially the cocksucker who killed your dad,” Sam drawls and waves at the guy. “Look.”
The guy is now gaping at me, his face has paled, and I can see his hand twitching like he wants to reach for a weapon or something. I pull my gun out of my holster and point it at him.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Stan.”
“I… I… I didn’t know it was your dad’s limo when I was paid to do that job. I swear, I just thought it was some rich whale staying at the casino. They pay me not to ask questions, just to do the job. They assured me there were no cameras to catch me planting the bomb.” He’s talking furiously now, the words spilling out of his mouth in the hope it might save him. Spoiler… It won’t.
“They lied,” Sam drawls, shaking his head at the guy’s idiocy.
“Now you’re going to tell me who gave you the bomb, and maybe we will leave here and never come back.” This time it’s me who’s lying, but the thing about being a woman is that men believe you if you take the right tone. And sure enough, hope blooms in his eyes, and I feel a wave of smug satisfaction roll over me.Got him.
“His name’s Franz. I don’t have a last name, but I met him at Purgatory. It’s a bar down on the waterfront and is run by the Horsemen. He told me it was an easy job for easy cash, nothing else, I swear. He didn’t even mention who paid him, just that they had paid him to make a bomb that would blow up a larger car and was easy to plant.”
Although the Russo’s run Suncity, there are always others trying to muscle their way into some of the action. The Horsemen are a biker gang whom we occasionally contract with to protect our trucks on drug runs. We have an easy agreement. We pay them well to protect our drugs, and Lorenzo pays them well to distribute it through other states too. To hear they may have some kind of connection to Dad’s death is surprising to say the least, but I don’t let that show.
“And he didn’t mention who?” I press.
“No, nothing, he gave me the bomb and the cash in a backpack. His instructions told me where and when to plant the bomb and the license plate of the car.”
“And that’s it? You can’t think of anything else to tell me? What did this Franz look like?”
“I don’t know, he was average, about the same height as me with brown hair. There was nothing special about him.” I can see the guy thinking. “Oh, wait, yes there was. When he handed me the backpack, he was missing two fingers on his right hand.”
