Hard As Stone (Beautiful Betrayal Book 1) (2 page)

“Yeah, along with my Ferrari,” the other snorts.

Unconsciously, I clasp my hands like some poor schmuck. Is this my impression of a humble priest? On that thought, I exhale in disgust and cross my arms over my chest. Revealing too much already, I resist rubbing my thumb over my index stump. The remnant of a night of terror, yet for whatever reason, it soothes the ragged part of me that refuses to mend.

Unequivocally, this isn’t the future I’d envisioned as a kid. Sure, I’ve done hard time. Twelve years and counting. Four at Princeton. Two at Harvard. Six in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in good old Beantown. Next year, I’ll—

“Put the cell back. He’s good to go,” a guard declares to the two dickheads as if I’m invisible.

I proceed through the motion of picking up my car keys, wallet, gum. Rechecking the locks on my briefcase, I field their questions about how much I earn. Where I purchased my iPhone. If I thought a corrections guard would get approved for an Amex. Pretending to make nice is an exercise in self-control.

If these idiots only knew what I can do with a switchblade. A hunting knife. Hell, a blunt spoon, they’d shut their gaping pie-holes.

By nurture, not nature, I’m a shark. As such, only once have I detoured from my carefully constructed strategy in rendering my revenge. A necessary chore and what I classify as taking out the garbage when an asshole in personnel screwed with my plans. There’s a risk of doing one’s job too well. I proved that point to the know-it-all administering the lie detector test after he’d repeatedly asked me about my Calabrian heritage, about my father, and our family company. Nothing of importance relative to my application for federal employment.

Vince wasn’t around and I took care of business. Since that hiccup, my hands are fairly clean. I specialize in prosecuting white-collar tech crime and have earned a hardball reputation in combing through evidence. Extricating the dirty details.

All the hours I’ve spent working my ass off in the U.S. Attorney’s office will be over soon. An arduous trek, and me patiently standing here is a testimony that we reap what we sow. These morons require a lesson on how to act. But it isn’t my problem; no more than if they were pesky flies circling a dumpster.
Babbos.

My endpoint is near. I’ll cash in after the payoff.
Then there will be no reason to hold back.

“Gentlemen, enjoy your night.” I retrieve my case and follow the cagiest of the bonehead guards. Silently, we enter the underground tunnel. An emergency exit, it connects the holding facility of the federal courthouse to a restaurant across the street. Ten more feet and there’s a metal door and a man waiting.

“He’s clean,” the guard says, stopping short of the point where the courthouse property ends.

Down this basement passage lies an upscale Sicilian restaurant that is probably booked solid for the holiday. It’s also owned and operated by several astute families with ties that run deep and hence the underground connecting corridor. One of many subterranean hallways.

I walk up to the other guy. Dressed in all black, he nods respectfully. There isn’t a trace of veiled animosity or smirk on his face. It isn’t my reputation that garners this man’s reaction. His nonverbals speak of his employer’s power. He presses a switch on the corridor wall and steps back.

The door slides open. From the hall, I stare into the dark eyes of the man I haven’t seen since I was five, half-frozen, and scared shitless. In the midst of a turf war, right after my father was killed, and I’d been sucked into the eye of a nightmare.

“Damiano,
buon Natale
,” Santo Aldebrando says in a smooth rasp. He doesn’t call me by my given name. He doesn’t get up. He doesn’t do more than drop a sugar cube into his espresso. Without breaking eye contact, he picks up his spoon, and stirs the caramel-colored froth, unearthing memories within me while ripping apart my plans.

“
Zio
,” I exhale, recalculating if this is another hiccup or a juncture. Either way, encountering my uncle might dismantle the countless details I’ve constructed. I’m blindsided, but not enough to detour from my goal.

Crossing the threshold into this room becomes the Rubicon River. Effectively, I’ve got zero options if I’d like to live to see next week. So I make my choice, enter and set my brief case on the floor. The piper has arrived and he expects to be paid. The only question is how much?

“
Caffe
?” he inquires as if we’re lounging about on his estate hidden outside Calabria. To some savory folk, he’s known as
The Saint
. A boss and big earner but in the wind aka on his own.

He’s my uncle. My mom’s elder brother. It’s been twenty-five years to the day since he and two of his brothers tortured and questioned my kidnapper for hours. Afterward, my uncle put a gun in my hand, instructing me in broken English how to fire it at close range.
I aimed the Colt at the head of my captor. My uncles explained it was a matter of pride and quoted the Bible and Dirty Harry.

I was still in kindergarten when I executed my first target. There was no eye for an eye. Santo didn’t rescue me, he created a monster.

Wrapped in a blanket and splattered in blood, I was placed inside an idling truck. From the cab, I brushed away bits of skull from my face and learned about the texture of brain matter. Outside, yards away, my uncles dug a grave. They dumped the body minus hands and a head in that hole, spitting on it before they set fire to a ransacked cabin in the backwoods between Athens and Atlanta.

Santo’s wrists aren’t cuffed and his feet aren’t shackled. I hear the muffled voice of another man ask about PanCorp Banks, then I see it’s Judge Bloomberg exiting the john, zipping his fly followed by a woman buttoning her top. The possibility of my uncle imprisoned doesn’t compute. This is an existential crisis that blasts open and hits me. The Saint isn’t being held. It’s more encompassing than a grand jury indictment.

The fact that a federal judge with a lifetime appointment is shooting the breeze with The Saint makes this whole event surreal in a heartbeat. The detail that Bloomberg just shot his wad into a woman with a patch over her left eye is overkill.

Wearing a dark suit and a Cheshire grin, Santo sits sipping espresso as Bloomberg takes a seat. It feels like I’ve been electrocuted but I don’t react.

The woman wearing a patch asks me, “
Caffé? Limone
?”

I nod at the offer of espresso and murmur, “
Grazie
.” A barrage of questions storm my brain. Each vies for first place on what is going on. But I’m hyperaware that the door to this meeting room is wide open, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s only a stupid fish can’t keep his mouth shut.

“Damiano.” My uncle quietly observes me. “My sister is proud and I see why. You’ve grown into a man. Your father would be honored.”

I smile, but there is no mirth. The clock has just begun to tick, and I’m aware without my consent I’ve been drawn into a highly sophisticated game. The stakes are beyond life or death.

Weighing all that he has both said and not, I lean down and hug my uncle. “Santo. It’s been too long.”

“Yes, but necessary. My absence from the States has permitted me distance. Useful in assessing a situation.”

Mom hasn’t visited Calabria in decades, nor does she discuss her brothers, cousins, friends, childhood or our 'Ndràngheta lineage. It’s as if they had never existed and I don’t press. Except for her sister and my cousin, all connections to our Calabrian family, for the record, have been severed.

As a kid, I’d assumed she blamed Santo for my dad’s death. But with the government confiscating any and all assets owned by my father, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the funding source for the large gated house where we lived, the army of servants (some in dark attire brandishing poorly hidden weapons), or my tuition to Exeter came from The Saint.
Unseen and not heard from in years.

But he’s seen Mom or spoken to her recently, and must’ve convinced her to keep his reappearance a secret.
Distinctly, I’m all too aware of the web he’s weaving.

“Why are we meeting here?” I ask in a monotone.

“Our host.” He inclines his head then says, “Judge Bloomberg, may I present my nephew, Atticus Damian Stone.”

“We’ve met,” I offer. Bloomberg was appointed by Nixon in the 70s. He hails from Philly. A conservative and connected.

“That we have.” Bloomberg sets down his cup and motions to the empty chair. “And when we cross paths again, we won’t ever discuss this meeting. This is about greasing the skids. Understand?”

“Completely,” I reply curtly, unbuttoning my jacket, and taking a seat.

“We’ve all got our parts to play, Tuck.” The judge signals to the guard out in the hall and barks, “Jeff, no interruptions.”

The guard bobs his head, hissing out a, “Yes, sir.” His words echo off the walls like shuffled papers.

Only disturbed by the woman placing a cup of steaming espresso in front of me. She returns with a lemon and efficiently grazes the edge of a sharp blade over it. In military precision, she flicks a tiny curl of lemon next to my cup. The rind is bright yellow against the white of the porcelain saucer. A contrast to the gray walls, fluorescent fixtures, and cement floor. With a promise to return with food, she exits the room, shutting the door behind her.

Santo reaches inside his jacket. He withdraws an envelope and a pair of reading glasses. “It’s time we figure out a way, we can all help each other. I’ve waited for this day, and
Damiano
, you’re ready to break free of the maze. Eh?”

My eyebrows rise incrementally.
Maze?
More like a jump from the fire into a vat of boiling oil. How many times can a man die and in how many ways? I’m about to find out, but I merely say, “Agreed.”

“And Vincenzo?”

My muscles go rigid. I freeze. Then I consciously relax my face, running through a body cue
checklist that takes two or three seconds, top. Now isn’t the moment to admit Vince is waiting outside. In case I decide to off my uncle, I lie, “He left for Montreal. It’s been a while and no word.”

“Always was a bad nickel.” Santo’s cold stare holds mine as he unsheathes a folded document. If he means a
bad penny
, he’s one to talk.

“When did you get in?” I ask to forestall further conversation relative to Vin.

“I came right from the airport. Judge Bloomberg was kind enough to send his driver.” Santo smooths the papers with his palm before handing me a copy and the other to Judge Bloomberg.

I scan the page, reading my name several times in the context of being a candidate in the upcoming senate race. A twist to the gestalt of our family history. What’s proposed is a stag hunt. My uncle presents a standard matrix with players, strategies, payoffs. Not far removed from the course I’ve devised, yet this detour delivers two targets simultaneously into the crosshairs.

“You’ll be under the radar,” I say to my uncle.

He peers over his reading glasses at me for a millisecond longer than necessary. “It serves us all. The judge will act as facilitator.”

Does Bloomberg realize deals are signed in blood when it comes to The Saint? Any collective action is funneled back to Santo. I recalculate the steps on how to serve the revenge I’ve plotted while dealing with The Saint’s pretense that everyone has something to gain. We’re alike in how we both are playing a zero-sum game. Similar to poker. One pot. One winner. Not far-off from my original trajectory as long as I remember who I’m dealing with.

“Is this a case of history repeating itself?” I have to ask.

“Your father’s death was avenged. PanCorp won’t stand in your way.” He slides another sheet of paper across to me. “Our bond interests no longer intersect theirs. Let that go. You’re hungry. The timing is right.”

He taps the top of the sheet, drawing my attention to the paper in question. It’s a fully conveyed deed of absolute sale.

“Rearden?” I fight back the slice of rage consuming my vision. My hands shake as I pick up the property deed to the plantation in Buckhead once owned by my dad. It’s where we last lived together as a family before he was killed.
Executed,
I bitterly remind myself. I stare at the signature of Mick Silver’s henchmen. An Irish twat. He’s the head partner of a Fifth Avenue law firm cloaked in tailored threads, influence, and a Cambridge degree.

My uncle smiles. “Paid in full. Of course, your mother will live there as well. It is her rightful home, is it not? Agree to the terms of this deal and it’s all yours.”

Santo’s adept read of my tells must be managed.
PanCorp and their phony public bond auctions are still going strong, bilking townships out of billions and the Feds are clueless. Another Irish mob gimmick has suckered the feds. Regardless of what my uncle asserts, history has repeated itself. Even if it hadn’t, I’m not ready to forget.

Years ago, it was my father’s brokerage house family that had historically acted as the middleman in those deals. I’ve never argued that my dad was a straight shooter. His mistake was believing his wife’s mob in-laws wouldn’t connect the dots. Mortal mistake and, in effect, put my dad dead center between thieving Titans. Not a great place to be during a squeeze, especially when The Saint had the Bratva and cartels on his side.

My uncle was hardly on hiatus. Evidentially, from the names mentioned, he’s been busy over the years.
Learning English and honing his game theory
. Anyone who believed the rumors that The Saint had sold his interests to the families in power and had closed up shop are about to be rudely awakened.

Just goes to show you can’t trust a liar. A sin I’m guilty of and a textbook example of being shortsighted as I’d worked to uncover the disturbing facts surrounding my father’s death. Not that I had to search high and low for trouble.
Trouble always seems to find me.
A reason why I maintain an open mind and tuck-n-roll whenever advantageous.

“I accept.” Overtly, there’s no plausible way to refute my uncle’s offer. I hold out my hand, which he immediately clasps.

“My sister will be pleased to return home,” Santo says knowingly.