If The Seas Catch Fire (20 page)

Behind the Mafiosi were three workers in dingy, threadbare clothing that contrasted sharply with the expensive tailored suits of the Maisanos. Sergei thought he heard the men speaking in hushed Korean, but he didn’t pay them much attention. They weren’t part of his agenda.

Privitera, however…

Sergei grinned as he headed down to the bedroom to hide. He had his target.

Cape Swan, California. Population: One less Italian motherfucker than yesterday.

Question was, he thought as his grin fell, what to do about the Koreans? If Felice blamed them, he wouldn’t hesitate to punish them. Sergei couldn’t back out, though. He’d just have to make sure the hit happened while there was no possibility of the immigrants taking the fall. That would be easy enough. Just wait for—

“Hey!” Felice called out to someone. “Thought you weren’t gonna make it!”

When the response came, the voice turned Sergei’s blood to ice:

“I told you I was on my way.”

Sergei’s throat constricted.

Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.

Dom?

That changed
everything
.

His orders had been clear—kill the second highest ranking man aboard the boat.

Which meant second in line was Dom. No one else on this boat came close to either of their statuses within the family. Being the son of the boss, Felice was the top dog unless Corrado showed up, and there wasn’t nearly enough security for that. Felice’s cousin-slash-adopted-brother? Easily second in line.

No two ways about it—Dom was the mark.

There was no getting off the boat. No getting out of this contract. He had to finish the job, or it would be his head.

Nausea swept over him.
Oh God…

As the crew went to work above decks and the boat pulled out of the slip and cruised away from the marina’s protected inlet, Sergei didn’t dare stay in one place. He moved around as stealthily as he could, staying absolutely silent and out of sight, keeping tabs on everyone he could.

As he passed the living area at one point, he caught a glimpse of the three Koreans lugging empty crab pots in and staging them in neat rows. Felice supervised. Dom hung back in the shadows. Security loomed even further in the background.

And all the while, Sergei prowled around the boat, trying to keep his stomach from coming up his throat. This wasn’t seasickness. This wasn’t something he’d ever experienced during a hit.

He shook himself. Even if Dom was the mark, he’d come here to fill a contract. Which meant obeying the orders he was given. The fact that he’d been in bed with the man—or that he’d gotten
way
too close to him in other ways—was irrelevant. It was fucking go-time.

The boat headed out of the harbor, and then hauled ass toward the open sea. For the moment, the three Koreans stood outside smoking, and the Italians were out of sight. Likely enjoying some early morning wine in the shade of one of the upper decks.

This much, Sergei had planned for. The boat had its own rendezvous point several miles off shore, and there was nothing for him to do now except use the time to figure out how to get his mark alone after the boat was back in the harbor.

But the game had changed. This wasn’t just a nameless, meaningless goon.

This was Dom.

Indisputably the second highest ranking man aboard.

Fuck.

*              *              *

A couple of hours after they left the harbor, the boat was far enough into the open sea that the land was a fuzzy gray-green line on the horizon. Up ahead, a red and black cargo ship bobbed in the waves.

The boat stopped beside the ship. A meeting was going on—Sergei couldn’t hear the specifics from his current hidey hole—a small alcove behind the galley—especially not with crew members moving boxes into the living area nearby.

Then everything wrapped up, and the boat was on the move again, but as it neared the harbor, stopped at one of the bobbing orange buoys. A crab pot. Then another. And another. Each time, they came to a halt, and the boat rocked gently in the water while the Koreans switched out a crab pot. Sergei memorized how long it took them to swap out the crab pots, calculating how much time he’d have to get off the boat and grab his gear before the propellers started again.

He was ready.

And as the boat approached another buoy, Dom was in the galley. Alone.

Around a corner, watching Dom in the reflection of a semi-tinted window, Sergei gnawed his lip. He drew his gun from his belt and rested it against his thigh.

It wouldn’t take much. Open the door. Put a bullet through his brain. Climb down off the stern. Grab his gear, dive, and swim like hell so no one saw him beneath the surface and the bubbles off his regulator didn’t give him away.

All he had to do was shoot Dom.

Right through the back of his head, so he never knew what hit him.

Shoot him. Let him drop. Watch him die.

Sergei closed his eyes and slowly, silently pushed out a breath.

I’m losing my damned mind. He isn’t
Dom
. He’s a Maisano. He’s the mark.

Except he
is
Dom.

He’s a made man. He’s one of them. He’s…

Dom.

Shit.

On the other hand, Baltazar hadn’t specified the mark’s name. The boat was huge, and Sergei could easily lose track of everyone on board.

This kind of job was meant to send a specific message. It was much like when the assassins of old would leave a knife in a sleeping king’s pillow, inches from his head, so that when he awoke, he’d know just how easily they could have killed him. This job was meant to tell Felice Maisano how vulnerable he was. For reasons Sergei didn’t need to know, someone was putting the squeeze on the man, and they were sending a very loud warning.

One that would, in theory, be received whether the stabbed pillow was Dom or Privitera.

He gulped. It was an enormous risk. He was supposed to take the shot, not make the call. But they hadn’t given him a name. There was no guarantee he’d know Dom was aboard. He hadn’t seen the faces and didn’t know the names of the crewmen driving the boat, or the men who’d come over from the cargo ship. On a vessel this big, Dom could’ve slipped past his radar. Especially since he’d arrived late anyway.

Oblivious to Sergei watching him and contemplating his fate, Dom left the galley.

Sergei released a breath. Sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his neck.

Privitera it was. He couldn’t kill Dom. He just couldn’t. If a contract came along, and Dom was explicitly named as the mark, then he’d have no choice. But that wasn’t the case here. He didn’t think it was all that likely anyway—Dom was high up in the ranks, but not a key player. Men who coughed up money to take out hits wanted more important targets. Someone like Felice, if he didn’t listen to the message that Sergei had been sent here to convey.

As long as no one named Dom as a mark, Sergei wouldn’t have to cross this bridge again. He hoped.

Now… Privitera.

Sergei’s opportunity came when Privitera went past him on the way to the head.

Sergei’s stomach clenched.

Do it now, or take out Dom.

Heart thumping, he slipped out of his hiding spot.

He glanced outside. Dom and Felice were on the bow, sipping wine and talking. The workers and security men were in the living area. The boat’s crew were… well, they weren’t up here. That was all he cared about.

Sergei took a bottle of wine from the rack and sneaked past the door to the head, stepping out onto the exterior deck. He waited there until the latch on the head clicked, and then he crouched, set the wine bottle down, and let it roll along the deck. It was loud enough for Privitera to hear, and when it clinked against the bulkhead, it was less obtrusive than shattering glass.

It worked: Privitera stepped out and leaned down to pick it up.

He had his fingers on the bottle when he froze.

Slowly, he turned his head, and looked right up the barrel of Sergei’s pistol.

“Stand up.” Sergei drew the hammer back. “And don’t make a sound.”

The meeting at the cargo ship had gone well enough. As always, the cargo crew sent a smaller boat out to meet the yacht, and from there, two contacts and two security guards had joined Dom and Felice on board. While the Koreans and a few men from the cargo ship transferred a dozen or so boxes onto the yacht’s lower deck, there was wine and food on the uppermost deck. Everyone introduced themselves, discussed business, and negotiated prices. The man on the ship didn’t speak much English, but the shipping manifests were clear and appeared to be correct, so Dom could work with that.

Once the meeting was adjourned, the men and workers returned to their boat, and the Koreans got to work on the lower deck. Dom stood in the background while Felice supervised.

Working quickly, the workers tore open boxes and rifled through stacks of counterfeits like children searching through cereal boxes for toys. The counterfeits were mostly designer clothing—not cheap knockoffs, but the real deal, manufactured according to the designer’s precise specifications, but in unauthorized factories in Italy and China. They’d be distributed amongst retailers in California, and sold at boutiques for eye-watering mark-ups.

They were just a front, though. Buried within the stacks of dresses, jeans, blouses, and swimwear were bricks of cocaine. One kilo apiece, wrapped in plastic.

Once the bricks were fished out of the boxes, the men quickly wrapped them in additional plastic and taped them. Then the bricks were stacked on a platform that was normally hidden by the coffee table. If the Coast Guard got too close, the platform dropped down and extended into the water between the catamaran’s hulls, quickly and quietly jettisoning the cocaine. A potentially costly but effective precaution against one hell of a prison sentence.

Assuming they weren’t boarded, though, and things progressed normally, the next step was to load one crab pot with a few kilos, and drop it for one of the fishermen to pick up. By the time the yacht returned to Cape Swan, there wouldn’t be a single grain of cocaine onboard. Every boat in the Maisano fleet had been searched a few times, and much to the investigators’ frustration, nothing had ever been found except for a few cases of contraband textiles. It was a foolproof system, one carefully developed with a thorough understanding of the laws and regulations they were breaking. A virtual guarantee that none of them would ever do time for narcotics trafficking.

When Felice was apparently satisfied that everything was progressing smoothly with today’s shipment, he gestured for Dom to follow him back to the upper deck. There, he poured them each some wine. They clinked their glasses together, and each took a sip.

“So.” Felice swirled his. “With business out of the way, I brought you out here for a reason.”

Dom’s stomach clenched. “Oh really?”

“Everywhere else in town, the walls have ears. And I’m curious…” He paused, gazing into his glass. Then his eyes flicked up and met Dom’s. “Has my brother seemed… strange to you lately?”

“Strange?” Dom set his glass down. “How so?”

Felice scowled and shook his head. “It’s hard to even put my finger on it, to be honest. But when I’ve been to his house and his offices recently, I’ve seen people coming and going who seem… suspicious, I guess.”

“In what way?”

“He has a lot more of these people”—Felice gestured flippantly at the two Koreans who were pulling up another crab pot—“working for him than I realized.”

Dom scowled. “So he’s got some immigrants on his payroll?”
Maybe he’s even paying them properly, instead of exploiting them like you do, asshole
.

“Except when I’ve asked, he doesn’t say what they’re for. What are they doing?” Felice folded his arms. “Why aren’t their pay slips in the books?”

Dom chewed his lip. Undocumented immigrants were hardly unheard of. And it wasn’t at all unusual for men to take the immigrants who were under contract, and have them do some work under the table—anything from pulling weeds to transporting drugs. Most of the contractors were desperate to make ends meet and pay off their debts, so they eagerly took the work. Dirt cheap labor for the Italians, extra money for the immigrants—in a perverse way, everybody won. Luciano had never seemed to approve of that practice, but even if he’d changed his tune, it didn’t seem
that
out of the ordinary.

Dom shifted his weight. “What do you think his game is?”

“It’s hard to tell. He’s operating something on the sly, though. I can fucking feel it. And the thing is, well, let’s face it. We all know that if something happens to my father, or he retires, Luciano’s taking his place.” Felice took a deep breath. “I’m just worried he might make a play to get that inheritance sooner than later.”

Dom studied him. “That doesn’t sound like Luciano.”

“Then you haven’t been paying attention,” Felice muttered into his glass.

“Luciano’s the one who tries to talk your father out of calling in hits.”

“He is.” Felice set the glass down and rested his hands on the railing. “Which means he’d be the last one anybody would suspect of taking out a hit of his own. Especially one on Dad.”

Dom pursed his lips. “I suppose that’s—”

A panicked shout made them both jump. They turned as one of the workers rushed up onto the deck, screaming something in his own language.

“What?” Felice snapped. “What are you saying?
English
, asshole.”

The man stopped, took a few breaths, and in broken English, said, “Downstairs. He’s…” He drew a finger across his throat.

Felice and Dom exchanged glances. Then, with Felice’s soldiers hot on their heels and their pistols in hand, they rushed down to the lower deck and out onto the stern.

“Oh, my God.” Felice covered his mouth and turned around. “Fuck.”

Dom stared, swallowing hard to keep his breakfast where it belonged.

On the sun lounge, Privitera lay as if he were sleeping, his hands folded on his stomach, his hair and tie fluttering in the gentle sea breeze. He even had a wine bottle lying across his lap, as if he’d been about to settle in for a drink.

The only problem was that gaping wound across his throat and the blood trickling between the chair’s plastic slats and pooling on the deck like rainwater.

“Get the fucking Koreans out here,” Felice snarled. “Now!”

One of the security goons hurried inside.

“They did this,” Felice said. “They fucking killed—”

“That’s insane,” Dom said. “They’ve been in here working.”

“Yeah?” Felice gestured at the body. “Then who the fuck did do it? Because the crew is all upstairs and this doesn’t look like a fucking suicide, Dom!”

“I don’t know, but it wasn’t them. It could have been—”

“Which one of you killed him?” Felice bellowed as the men were shoved out onto the deck.

They all balked, staring at him and gaping.

“No, no!” The one who’d sounded the alarm said. “I saw blood.” He pointed a shaking hand at the pool, which had extended far enough across the deck to be visible from inside. “Saw blood! Didn’t kill!”

“Uh-huh.”

“The hell you—”

“Felice,” Dom said in Italian, “you don’t know it was one of them!”

“And you don’t know it wasn’t.”

“For God’s sake—”

“All right. Fine. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. But somebody on this boat did, so
he
can be a fucking example in case they’re thinking of trying it again.” With that, Felice turned and calmly unloaded a single round into the gut of the man who’d sounded the alarm.

The poor man howled in pain and crumpled to the deck.

The other two surged toward him, but Felice’s men stopped them.

“Get back to work,” Felice snarled. “Or you can have one too.”

Shaking, the men looked at each other.

“Back to work!”

They scattered, hurrying back to their staging area.

Felice scowled at the writhing, moaning man, and stalked back inside. “Security. We’ve got someone on board, and I want him
alive
.”

Dom crouched beside the wounded man and pulled out his pistol. “I’m sorry about this.” He tucked the gun up under the man’s chin.

The man groaned feebly and grabbed Dom’s arm. For a moment, Dom thought he was going to push his hand away, but he guided it upward. To his temple. Their eyes met, and the desperation hit Dom in the gut.

“It’ll be over soon,” Dom said quietly.

The man released his arm, and his eyes slid closed.

Dom pressed his finger into his own ear, the one closest to the bleeding man, and fired.

The body jerked, and then the man was still, but inside the boat, fresh chaos erupted. Two of Felice’s security guards appeared, guns drawn, but Dom put up his hand.

“Relax.” He gestured at the body. “Just putting him out of his misery.”

The men exchanged glances. They lowered their guns, but didn’t holster them.

Felice stormed back out, shoving the men apart so he could get by. “What the fuck?” He threw up his hands. “Dom, what the hell are—”

“We’re not animals, Felice.” Dom rubbed his ringing ear. “You made your point. There was no need to let him suffer like that.”

Felice sighed sharply. To one of his men, he said, “Have the captain take us back out to sea. I don’t want a body floating in the harbor.” To the other, “Tell them”—he jerked his thumb over his shoulder—“to toss their buddy when we stop.”

The men left the deck, and Felice glared at Dom. Gesturing at the body, he growled, “You almost put a fucking bullet through my boat, you know!”

“Put it on my tab,” Dom muttered.

Felice’s nostrils flared. Under his breath, he muttered, “Piece of shit,” and went back inside.

Alone, Dom exhaled. He glanced at Privitera. Then at the dead Korean.

Corrado was going to hit the roof. He loathed Felice’s disregard for their immigrant labor. And one of their own being offed right under their noses? On a boat?

Dom’s gaze slid toward the interior of the boat. The back of his neck prickled. Someone had done this, and whoever it was, they were still on board. Any other time, he might’ve suspected Felice, but he and Felice had been all but joined at the hip since they’d pulled away from the cargo ship.

Which meant it could’ve been anyone else. Literally anyone.

On his way back in, Dom kept his pistol handy. Safety off. Round in the chamber.

Couldn’t be too careful…