With painstaking slowness, the elevator starts to rise. We only have two floors to go. Is that few enough to escape in time? Or too many at this slow pace, enabling the gunman to catch up?
I really don’t know. I’ve never done assassin math before. A giggle starts to tickle the back of my throat and I swallow. I know if I lose my control now, I’ll never get it back again. “You okay?” I ask Bianca.
“Yeah, you?”
I nod, my chin bumping into her shoulder. “You sacrificed our only weapon.”
“Nah,” she says in a shockingly calm voice. “Just buying us time until the real weapons get here.”
I want to ask what she means, but just before the elevator reaches our floor, Bianca untangles herself from me and pushes the emergency stop button. The car comes to a jerking halt. “What are you doing?!”
In answer, Bianca hits the red fire button. In only seconds the emergency operator comes through. Bianca doesn’t let him ask any questions before she shouts, “Help! There’s a fire! We’re stuck in the elevator and there’s a fire!”
I watch, speechless, as Bianca answers the man’s questions and tells him how much smoke she sees and gives him a very convincing cough to boot. He promises that the fire department is already on its way. We just need to keep our chests to the ground, our breathing slow, and try not to panic.
Ha. I’d like to seehimtry not to panic.
He’s still talking when Bianca hits the button again, disconnecting him. “Sorry,” she says, dropping back onto her heels. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m just trying to get as many people here as fast as possible. A fire is the fastest way. And all the flashing lights will act like a flare when Johnny gets here.”
Adrenaline is making me lightheaded. My feet are numb against the elevator’s smooth floor. My brain is sluggish, trying to keep up with what Bianca is saying. “Johnny knows where we are?”
“Bruce would’ve sent him a 911 before clearing us from the building. There’s no way he doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s just a question of how far away he was when he got Bruce’s message and how fast he’s able to get here. And how many cops are blocking the entrance after all those shots fired. So now we have to wait and see.” Bianca wraps her arms around her stomach. She shivers. It’s tiny, but I catch it. She might be putting up a calm front, but she’s just a scared as I am.
“Wait and see what?”
“Who is on the other side of the door when it finally opens.” She doesn’t need to continue for me to understand the options.
The fire department.
Johnny. Maybe Rem.
Or the man trying to kill me.
16
REM
Idisconnect my call with Aldo feeling even more on edge than when I left Ari’s office. My uncle’s parting words ring in my head.
I’m trusting you, nipotino. I need you to find la traditrice, velocemente. You’re the only one I can ask. Don’t let me down.
Just before Aldo left for Italy he tasked me with tracking down a traitor, someone who escaped him years ago. He gave me clear instructions that no one was to know of my search.
In the Family, when yourcapogives you an assignment, you get it done.
In my family, when my uncle asks me to do something, I always follow through. Always. Except, I haven’t been able to make any headway. Hearing his disappointment at my lack of progress was gutting.
I promise, I told him.I won’t let you down, Uncle. I’ll find your traitor. You can trust me, always.
I know, nipotino, he said.I know.
“Fuck!” I punctuate the curse with a punch, my fist putting a dent in the wallboard. A cleaning bucket topples from the nearby shelf and crashes into the collection of mops at my feet.
“You okay in there, boss?” Johnny asks through the closet door.
“Yes, fine,” I growl, like I’m not pacing a three-foot circle in a supply closet in the back of one of our clubs.
As soon as I got Aldo’s message I came down from Ari’s office, which is several floors up, and locked myself in the closet. The one place in this building that isn’t wired for surveillance. Not because we trust our staff not to steal the toilet paper (yes, even the mafia suffered during the pandemic), but because I removed the security from the room myself. At Aldo’s insistence.
