Vendetta Read online

  This is what I do. I’m a made man. Born and bred into this life, I had no choice. This is my family.

  Being born into this family you might think you could get out, become someone new, but your demons, those things that were bred into you, will always be just below the surface, and the minute you start to think you are good, human, kind, or respectable—those monsters just stick their claws deeper in and drag you back into the darkness.

  I drive past the little outdoor cafe right next to Patterson's office and there he is, sitting peacefully reading the paper. We still have nice enough weather to eat outside I guess, even though the leaves are turning and falling early this year.

  Patterson is alone. When his eyes meet mine, he runs.

  Pussy.

  I hate when grown men make me chase after them.

  With a sudden wind whipping through his hair, his lips draw back and his arms fling forward, pushing the table over in front of him. Coffee splatters into the air, pages of his newspaper flutter in the wind and the small glass table slams down across the cement, sprinkling glittery shards of glass all over. His hands flail around as he scrambles with his footing and ends up stumbling into the cafe. He sways for a second, pushing past a waitress holding a tray of dishes that crash hard to the ground.

  I jump over the table easily and chase after him into the cafe. "Hey, Betty," I smile at the waitress, "sorry about that." I run past her, an arm’s reach from Patterson, but I don't grab him, not yet. I want to let him think he has a chance. "Can I get a coffee to go? I'll be like two seconds," I call out as we run into the kitchen.

  Hope she remembers how I take my coffee.

  Patterson is an older man in his late fifties, panting and wheezing. I guess he decides his best bet would be to stop me by grabbing plates of food and throwing them at me. Idiot. I’m definitely going to make him clean up this mess before I handle Tony's wishes.

  "Get away from me, get away!" he screams, lunging down a handful of steps. Losing his footing, he crashes hard into the wall causing the framed photos that decorate the surface to fall to the ground. "Someone call the police! Please, please help me!" Idiot. This is one of Tony's businesses. Who the hell would call the police on me?

  At the end of the hallway there’s a closed door. "Dead end, Patty." I smile to myself, anticipating how the chase will end.

  He hurls all his weight against the door, smashing it open and wildly looking around for some sort of weapon to defend himself with.

  Laughing, I across my arms and lean against the doorframe; the only exit out.

  Patterson fumbles his hands through the desk in the office, flinging papers everywhere. A small screwdriver sits at the edge of the desk, under some of the papers, and he grabs it and holds it out in front of him. "Stay away, Corrado. Stay the fuck away!"

  I pull out my gun, aiming it right at his head. "That'd be the stupidest thing you ever did, Patty."

  He teeters for a moment, then drops the tool to the floor and holds his open hands up on either side of his head. "Fuck. Corey. Fuck. Why are you here? I didn't say shit. He knows I won't say shit! Corey. Listen to me. Listen!" A wet spot spreads across the front of his pants. The strong smell of ammonia thickens the air. Then the horrible stench of deep dark bodily fluid follows behind.

  "Patty, did you just piss and shit yourself?" I’m honestly in shock.

  "Don't kill me. Please. Please."

  "What the hell do you feed yourself? That's the most foulest smelling shit I've ever smelt in my entire life."

  "Let's work something out, Corey. I'm not going to say anything. I…I promise."

  "Right, Tony believes you." I don’t even know what this is about, but he must have fucked up big time.

  “Look, Corrado, please. I…I…”

  He’s watching the barrel of my gun like I’m some old-school hypnotist. “I…I…I what Patty, I feel like you’re wasting my time here and I should get rid of you quick.”

  “I didn’t say anything, okay? Okay? But listen, listen to me, okay?”

  I scratch my gun at the bottom of my chin like I’m listening.

  “The Russians are asking questions, you see? They…they offered me money, a lot of money for information on what Tony’s doing.”

  “Lies you tell. Maybe I’ll set your pants on fire. You ever wonder what it would feel like? To get your legs burned up like that?”

  “Corrado, now listen to me. Just keep listening.” He’s holding out his hands in front of him, like his palms could stop bullets. Newsflash: They do not.

  But I still, like I’m ready to listen to all the important bullshit he’s about to tell me.

  “What they’re saying, Corey. It’s big. They’re saying it’s bigger than girls and guns he’s running.”

  “You going to tell me he’s running drugs? You’re his best customer, you’ve been for years.” I can’t help but laugh. “We both know what businesses Tony has his hands in.

  “No, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s big, Corrado, it’s the Russians and the boys from Chicago and Jersey, all of them, they’re talking.”

  “Then you better start talking about what they’re talking about. Right. Fucking. Now.” My tone is steady and the gun at his forehead very persuasive.

  “This is huge, it affects everyone, it's more than girls and guns, drugs and shit, it's bio-engineered weapons and he's looking to those fucking habibs for the highest bidder.” His words stutter and trip over each other as they spew from his mouth.

  “First off, you’re being racist and I fucking despise that. Second, you’re telling fairy tales, Patty. Tony wouldn’t do anything like that.” Maybe he would, I wouldn’t put anything past Tony. He’d sell his own mother to make a few dollars.

  I raise my hand and bring the butt of my gun hurling down to his face. The crunch of bone is loud and brutal.

  Patty’s head jerks back, his knees buckle, and his hands fly up to cover his head. “I swear to God. I didn’t say anything. Tell him I didn’t say anything. You gotta believe me.”

  Another foul smell hits my senses. I think he shit his pants again.

  “I didn’t say anything about the bio stuff…or…or the kids. I swear to you.”

  My veins turn to ice in my body. Biochemical weapons and the kids? “Start talking, Patty. What are they asking and what exactly do you know?”

  He coughs and spits blood. “I don’t know much and I’m not telling you anything.”

  “Tell me what Chicago and Jersey were asking then.”

  “They heard…they heard some rumor that he was buying some chemical stuff from off the black market, but not…not only chemicals, people too.”

  I need proof. In the last few months I've seen glimpses of things dirtier than normal, but not this. Tony is still trying to keep me outta trouble. I knew he was into the girls dancing and making money with their bodies at the club, and the drugs, but things beyond that I don’t know about.

  And why wouldn’t he be into deeper shit, right? This isn’t the 1990s anymore. Today’s organized crime is fucking global and everyone will do just about anything to be on top.

  “You said kids, Patty. What’s he doing with kids?”

  “I...I don't know what the fuck he does with them. I know he's been making a mint on the legal fees. I'm his fucking lawyer, Corey. His lawyer!”

  “Why's he asking me to kill you?”

  “I...I saw something. I saw something. He had a truckload of kids. The Russians don't want to do business with him anymore. So he...he went to the black market and for a measly five grand he bought a dozen kids. Most were infants, but two, Corey, two were old enough for him to use. You know he's a sick fuck.”

  “He doesn't sell girls, Patty. He's got the club, those girls party willingly.”

  “These aren't girls he's selling, Corado.”

  It makes my stomach roll. Tony is digging his own grave. I've seen the money laundering, the drugs, even the dancers using their bodies. He's told me to get rid of
people. But he's played it smart since I've come back into the family. There's no one thing people could pin on him, not fucking one. He lets everyone else do the dirty work, he just implies what he'd like.

  But is he capable of child trafficking? Of biochemical weapon purchasing?

  Yes, yes he probably fucking is.

  Tony is a sick, sick fuck.

  When I was fifteen, my mother let me spend the summer with Uncle Tony. It was the summer after my father was killed. Tony thought I needed to learn how to be a man, learn not to grieve for something that already happened. He took me to a woman with a thick bush who let me come inside her while she smoked a cigarette. Then she got me so high I ended up having to spend a week in a hospital. It threw me in the center of his constant hurricane. I take care of my family. It's what I do. I’ll give him a job, a good career, working for me, he told my crying mother. He’ll never want for anything in his life.

  "Corey. What are you going to do? What are you going to do to me?"

  "I'm going to make you disappear, Patty."

  I take Patty to a place only I know of, this way nobody will ever get hurt with the information of where I hide the bodies. No one questions me. They'd stop breathing if they did.

  Chapter 2

  Corrado

  It's just past ten when I pull up in back of the club. As I close the door and walk over the gravel I hear the music. There's no rush to get inside. They're playing some slow song and I know it's nobody I want to see up on stage. There's only one girl I ever watch. Only one. The others are all rotted, watered-down eye candy.

  Making my way into the club, the balls of my feet tingle with the vibration of the music. The smell of beer, cigars and sweat fill the room.

  I nod at Junior who stands watching the back door. The place is packed. Of course, no one in the city does a strip club like Tony does. No one.

  "Hey, Junior, what's doing?" I ask, giving his a pat on the shoulder.

  "Hey, C. The big guy is getting ready for the card game in the back tonight," he laughs. "Conchetta is away for the week, guess he wants to wet his dick a few times before she comes home." He brings his hands across his chest. "You wanna go in, he ain't busy. Just taking care of some business with my pops."

  I shrug. Whatever. No rush.

  "Hey, Junior, this morning I caught your pops making pancakes for Tony," I say, laughing and punching his arm.

  Shaking his head, "Yeah, Carmine told me he threw pancake batter at you. It's fucking crazy the way Tony gets when Connie's not around, right?"

  We laugh together as the music pumping through the speakers changes. My eyes scan around the room. That strange carnival music-box beginning, it gets me instantly hard. The first synthesized chords to “Bad Girl” by Girls Love Shoes echoes across the room. The stage lights up and my muscles tense in anticipation. A shadow moves behind the lights, darkness dancing like pure sex.

  Thick black hair slides over her tan skin, arms and legs, curves and muscles a heady mixture of soft and hard. She's nothing like the other girls, she’s dressed in leather and lace, fishnets and skulls. No tassels or glitter for her.

  You can tell by the rest of the club that this dancer is different just by the temperature of the room. The first click of her heels against the floor—the first sounds of the music-box bells, and the temperature rises—every damn time.

  A heady thick feeling grows in the room, a sense of density. A slow buildup of white-hot static electricity charges through the air. It hums across your skin, tightening your flesh. You can see the men leaning forward, clutching their hands over the cool glass of their drinks. Business suits in the back edge closer with their sweaty palms grinding over the front of their pants. Even from Junior standing right beside me with his lingering eyes that somehow seem to caress her legs, her stomach, her breasts. As if she’s drugging us with her flesh, her sweet poison seeping into our skin. Infecting. Devouring. The other girls pale in comparison, vanishing into background music and disappearing like some needless extra key at the bottom of a junk drawer.

  Her stage name is Felony, which I think is the best damn name for a stripper I ever heard.

  Tony says the real name she gave him was Mallory Knox, but I call bullshit on that name. I Googled the hell out of it, but the only thing that came up was a character from some movie made when I was like two.

  The first time I saw her, she came strutting into the club like she should own the place. She was beautiful. Piercing blue eyes, waves of thick black hair. "Dove sei stato per tutta la mia vita?" Tony yelled. Where have you been all my life?

  We stood facing each other as Tony spoke to her, and I watched as her eyes slowly slid over to meet mine. It felt like someone had slammed a serrated knife into some empty place in my chest and gutted me right down to my dick. My eyes locked on her mouth as she spoke to him, she needed a job. A friend had sent her. And suddenly she was the only thing that was there, there was nothing—no one else in the room but her. Everything else just went and disappeared on me. Dove sei stato per tutta la mia vita?

  She doesn't know I watch her every night she dances here. She’s become my little secret obsession, and I want to know more about her. I know she's not here for the money. I know, because she never does extra. She never does a private show. Even though everyone asks her to. She's not a washed-out mess like most of the other girls here. A filthy fishbowl of troubled souls. Each with their own personal tragedy. Each one worse than the last.

  Girls come to work here because they’re broken. If you’re not broken, a place sours you, this existence emotionally mutilates you, slowing your blood and chilling your heart. All the little girls that once thought there was so much in their life to look forward to, come here to drain and wash out after whatever tragic daddy issues they've met with have destroyed them.

  Next to me, Junior speaks in whispers, "Jesus. That girl is perfect." A sheen of sweat drips down across his forehead and cheek. His hand flies up to wipe it off quickly.

  She turns her back and bends straight down, her lips brushing past her knees, her perfect ass is all we can see. She melts like dripping honey across the stage, sticky, sweet, dirty. Bending and folding, stretching and sliding, as graceful as a ballerina, and as dirty as sin. She raises her hand, and a knife appears out of nowhere. Slipping the blade beneath the thin fishnet material between her breasts she slices through. The black material falls away and her perfect full breasts, shuddering with her breathing, are bared to all of us. Each man in here feels like it’s a special present just for him.

  My fists tighten wondering how soft her skin would feel if I touched it. Her stomach quivers with exertion. The lightly inked lines of a tattooed snake coil fluidly across her right hip, its head dipping under the material of her leather and netted bottoms, as if hiding, waiting for just the right time to strike.

  She dances and shows no more. Never any more. She doesn't have to. She just dances and slides that sharp blade across her flesh, never breaking skin, and never having to show more of it. Instantly the club reeks of sex.

  The back door opens. Tony sticks his head out and smirks. "Gets quiet out here when that one dances. Every time." She's his best dancer, he knows this, there's a special twinkle in his eye even when he watches her. "Corrado, come in. Stop drooling over the girl."

  I don’t want to miss the end of her set but I know it won’t do me any good to keep watching.

  I walk in behind him and watch him sit behind his monstrous Old World Italian-style desk, the one that used to stand in Giana's father's office, the same one we would play under when we were kids while our fathers discussed family business.

  Tony waves for me to sit down. His dark black olive eyes throwing imposing glares at me. "You took care of that situation I told you about, correct?" Tony asks, as he brings a glass of brandy to his lips. Three thin white lines of powder are laid out on the desk in front of him and as soon he sets his brandy down he quickly snorts them all.

  "That blow is going kill you one
day," I say.

  "Ah. I'm invincible," he laughs, wiping his hand across his nose. "God won't ever forgive me and the devil needs me here."

  Totally believable, if you ask me.

  "What happened today with Patty?" he asks, opening his humidor and walking his fingers over the layers of cigars until he finds the perfect one to smoke.

  "We had an enhanced interrogation of sorts," I say, smiling.

  Tony has a hard-on for speaking in euphemisms, just in case someone is wired. "Was the situation neutralized?" he asks, cutting his cigar.

  "The situation assumed room temperature," I smile. "However, it was quite noisy."

  His eyes narrow. His lips curl up into a snarl. "What was said?"

  “Your associates are getting worried you're getting into business you have no business getting into.”

  He brings his torch up to his cigar and burns the end, deep in thought. “May need to depopulate the area,” he mumbles to himself.

  Depopulate the area? He’s going to get us all killed.

  “What are the consequences to surround yourself with those…” I try to think of the right words. “Those with severe appearance deficits?” At the rate he's going, the FBI won't get him, one of his associates will.

  "What, now some shitty little twenty-something-year old kid is gonna come in here and tell me what to do?”

  What the fuck?

  "You think extermination is going to solve your growing rodent problem?"

  "What the fuck do you want, Corrado? You advising me now? How long ago did your balls drop, a week? Corey, you just got out of state. I promised your mother I'd give you a job and I'd keep you safe. Keep your stupid thoughts to yourself."

  "I just want in. Who could you trust like me? Huh? Who?"

  "You are such your father's son."

  “Tony, come on.”

  “There’s plenty of things about the business you are never going to know about. You got enough on your plate. And your Aunt Connie would gut me like a pig if anything were to happen to you.”