“Enough,” I snapped, tired of it all. “Greco can stay alone if he wants it so badly. And you, Jack, will say nothing about his whereabouts.”
Angelo’s glance made me wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut, but he backed me up. “Alright,” he said to Greco. “You stay alone. And you can even have a gun, if you like, but we’re locking you in. And I’ll come to check on you personally.”
Greco’s eyes slid away from Angelo’s and his face darkened with a scowl. He didn’t like the terms.
But he wasn’t going to argue with the Monster of the Morellis.
* * *
After Jack had drivenus all to the safe house, where we locked Greco in—with a gun—Angelo and I took a cab back to our motel and fell into bed. I was exhausted, though Angelo seemed even more alive than usual.
“We did it, kid,” he murmured, pulling me close. His hands were all over me, and tired as I was, I still wanted him. I let him work an orgasm out of me, out of the both of us, actually, as he stroked both our cocks together in one hand, and then when my mind was clear, I turned it back to the problem at hand.
“Who do you think did it? A rival crew? A group of drug-runners?”
Angelo was quiet for long enough that I thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep, and then he said, “I don’t think there was a group in there attacking the Bernardis. I think it was one person. One man.”
“Oneguy? You think one guy took out all those mobsters?”
“It makes more sense to me. It was a quiet, fast job. Professional. Pragmatic. Surprising. And every cut I saw on those bodies looked like it was from the same blade. I think it was our assassin again.”
Nausea bubbled up in me again at the thought. “And they left a verbal message with Greco this time, threatening you?”
“Do you remember the scene in that shipping container, Bax?”
“I’ve been tryingnotto.”
He gave a grim smile of acknowledgement and carded his fingers through my hair, petting me. “That’s for the best. Yes, wipe it from your memory; I looked enough for both of us. Those bodies were laid out in a heart shape around the chair.”
I stared at him. “A heart?”
“I don’t think it was a threat,” Angelo concluded. “I thinkGrecowas the present.”
Chapter Thirteen
As Angelo had promised him, we looked in on Donnie Greco late next afternoon and found him alive, unhappy and ungrateful. Angelo locked him into the safe house again without engaging with the insults Greco threw our way. It reminded me so much of the time Angelo had lockedmeinto his own safe house back in Brooklyn that I started grinning once we were back in the cab, and I couldn’t stop.
“What’s so funny?” he asked, but I just shook my head.
“It’s nothing.” Watching the night lights of LA speed past in the taxi, I felt my heart lifting. I’d already been in touch with Gina Garcia, who had been first grumpy, then astonished, and finally excited to hear that we had Greco in what she called “custody.” I supposed in some ways it could be seen as a citizen’s arrest—except for the part where Angelo and I were also wanted criminals.
“Not for much longer, maybe,” she’d said, soundingmuchwarmer than the last time we’d talked.
“Maybe,” I’d said. “We still need to get him to you.”
Gina was still working with the Safe Center Task Force, although she was due to leave for Quantico soon for the new FBI trainee intake. We’d be able to catch her in New York if we hurried, she said.
“You alone, understand?” I reiterated. I was under strict orders from Angelo to refuse any offers to turn him in to local LE or the Los Angeles FBI offices. It was Gina or no one.
I didn’t disagree. Gina was the only one I trusted to do the right thing with Greco—if only so she could notch in a few achievements to help her up that greasy pole she was so eager to climb.
I glanced over at Angelo, who was staring at the streets whizzing by with a distracted, thoughtful expression, and remembered his words the other night:You’re all the family I need.
For the first time in a long time, it seemed like everything was going to be alright. I reached across the seat and took Angelo’s hand in mine, smiling at him when he looked over at me.
* * *
Castellani’s placeat night was only more foreboding, if that were possible. The front facade was lit up with external floodlights as though it were some kind of historical monument—which, for all I knew, it was. Maybe that house was an architectural landmark. I would have believed it.
