Long Live the King (An Italian Mafia Romance Duet #2) (6 page)

The goofy-looking salesman drops the keys in my hand and walks to the back of the car. “Congratulations,” he says with a broad, enthusiastic smile. A smile that is obviously thankful for the commission.

“Wait, what? You already bought it?” I ask, looking at Dominic.

“It’s yours,” he replies.

“But, I don’t even see a price. How much is this?”

“Asking price for a 2016 AMG S63 is $163, 150,” the salesman replies, grinning from ear to ear as he attaches the dealer plates. “But Mr. Collazo just bought it for one-fifty.”

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” I yell by accident. “I didn’t know it was that much. Wait, Dominic, you do
not
have to buy this. I didn’t see the price, and I definitely didn’t know it could get that expensive. Oh my gosh!”

Dominic smiles again, completely nonchalant.

“Have you forgotten who I am?” he asks, playfully. “Let’s go. Take me for a ride in your new car.” He pops open the passenger door and climbs in just as the salesman thanks me and walks back inside. Just like that, the car is ours. It’s mine.

I try to get over my excitement as I drop into the driver’s seat, but the beauty of this car is too much. I take another minute to marvel at the interior, and then another to be astonished at the low rumble of the engine when I crank it up. I slowly press the gas and pull into traffic, laughing at how people are staring.

Dominic finds something soothing on the radio station, and we spend the next hour cruising through St. Louis. I thank Dominic about a million times before I realize it’s probably annoying him, and I drive with nowhere to go.

I flick on the white interior lights as the sun completes its descent. Even after over an hour, I still can’t believe Dominic bought me a one-hundred fifty-thousand dollar car like it was just another run of the mill purchase.

“Dominic, I know I’ve thanked you more times than I can count, but I just have to say it again,” I start, but he cuts me off.

“No, you don’t. You’re welcome, babe. Just enjoy it, and don’t let the bullshit with your job stress you. We’re happy together, and that’s all that matters. People can think what they want. Like I said earlier, the world is ours. So, turn your new toy around and take us home.”

“With pleasure,” I reply.

I hit my turn signal and turn us around at the first opportunity. Just as I get on the highway, Dominic’s phone starts ringing in his pocket. He doesn’t look happy when he sees the name on the display, and his mood immediately changes.

“Frankie,” he says when he answers, then he just listens. I can’t hear what Frankie is saying on the other end of the call, but I can tell it’s not making Dominic happy.

“Goddamn it. Alright,” is all Dominic says before hanging up. When I look at him, the smile he’d been carrying since we woke up this morning is completely gone.

“Is everything okay?” I inquire.

Dominic thinks on it for a second before answering, “Go to the Lumiere.”

“Okay, you’ll be okay to get home after I drop you off, or you want me to wait for you?”

“Don’t wait for me,” he answers, his mood completely reversed. “This shit is gonna require my full attention.”

Dominic

I
pull the doors to the conference room apart and find Frankie, Tommy, Jimmy, Sal, and John all standing there waiting for me. Their immediate reaction seems to be relief from my arrival, as if they’ve encountered some sort of monster that only I can scare away. I’m already annoyed that I had to be pulled away from Alannah because of this bullshit, but seeing their anxious faces really irks me.

I fight back the urge to call them all pussies as I greet them with our customary hugs and walk over to the table, taking a seat in my red leather chair. After I’m seated, the rest of my roundtable of gangsters takes their seats as I light up the cigar that was already waiting for me in a marble ashtray. I light it up, blow out a white pillow of smoke towards the ceiling, and exhale.

“Okay,
la mia famiglia
, somebody tell me what the hell happened tonight,” I begin, resting my arms on the glass table.

Frankie clears his throat before speaking.

“We’ve got a problem, Dominic,” he starts. “Jimmy’s crew stopped the Big Vic truck on the highway tonight. The driver pulled a gun again, but they beat the shit out him and sent him running off, leaving his truck behind. When they opened up the trailer on the back, they saw it was a refrigerator truck full of boxes. Some of the boxes had frozen meat inside, and some of them held frozen money.”

“Frozen money.” I reply, unsure of if I’m asking a question of just restating the fact.

“Yeah,” Jimmy chimes in. “As it turns out, Big Vic’s is a meat packing place up in Chicago.”

When I hear the word Chicago, I feel the urge to rub my forehead from instant headache.

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“Yeah. Like I said, we’ve got a problem, because Big Vic’s is owned by Victor Fronzo,” Frankie informs me, just like I was knew he would. I let out a loud sigh and let my head fall backwards onto the seat cushion.

So, here’s how this works. Everyone knows the Original Five Families in New York, but what most people don’t know is that La Cosa Nostra is everywhere. We’ve got families in California, Las Vegas, New Jersey, St. Louis, and of course, Chicago—and that isn’t even all of them. The Family in Chicago is called the Chicago Outfit, and in the rare occasion that the Commission gets together in New York, the entire Midwest is represented by the boss of the Chicago Outfit, Victor Fronzo.

Victor is seventy years old, and probably the most ruthless boss left in Our Thing. See, everyone else has been replaced by younger bosses, but not Victor. He’s managed to avoid trouble and jail time better than anyone in the history of La Cosa Nostra, and his family is the most loyal I’ve ever heard of. They
do not
go against Victor, and they will brutally murder anyone who disrespects his name. My father once told me a story about how Victor’s consigliere, Giovanni Cirillo, cut a guy’s dick off for getting drunk and making a pass at Victor’s daughter. Under Victor’s orders, Giovanni cut the guy’s dick into ten pieces—he shoved one piece up the guy’s ass, placed one piece in each of his hands, and then shoved the rest into his mouth, all
before
he actually killed the guy by slitting his throat. Giovanni is just as ruthless as his boss, and together, they can be a huge fucking thorn in anybody’s side.

Victor Fronzo is old school, and he doesn’t like this new style Our Thing seems to have with the younger bosses. He’s the last of a dying breed, and crossing him means imminent death. The fact that he visits with the Commission face to face gives him a lot of swaying power when it comes to decisions the Commission makes. So basically, if you’re a made guy and Victor wants you dead, he’ll get the approval he needs from the Commission with no trouble at all. They back him up all the way, because he’s their bridge to the past. He’s their representative for how things used to be. If you have trouble with Victor Fronzo, you’re fucked.

I’ve never been afraid of another man, and I never will be, but that doesn’t mean I don’t take certain guys seriously. This isn’t some young
micio
from Russia trying to be his father. I’m smart enough to admit Victor and Giovanni are the real deal, so I have an instant headache because this is an instant problem that won’t go away on its own.

“Victor fucking Fronzo,” I exclaim, repeating the Chicago boss’s name to myself. “Well, you’re really on a roll, Jimmy.” The new capo doesn’t even look up at me, so I just roll past humiliating him. “Alright Frankie, call up Giovanni and arrange a sit-down.”

“You got it, Dominic.”

Dominic

“O
kay, I don’t like this.”

“I know, but I gotta take care of this before it blows up.”

“But you said this Victor guy is the most ruthless boss you’ve ever known. Seeing as how you’ve been involved in this your entire life, I’d say that’s a pretty big deal, Dominic.”

I can hear the worry in Alannah’s voice, and I can definitely read the way it’s written all over her face. Even after a year in this life, I know she isn’t completely comfortable with everything that goes on, though she tries her best to act like she is. She knows nobody takes care of business better than me, but her love for me makes her worry. I love that she loves me that much, so I don’t try to tell her not to worry when I know she will anyway. My only goal is to show her that even though she worries, I almost come out unscathed.

You better remember it forever, I’m Dominic Collazo.

I stop what I’m doing and walk over to Alannah, who’s sitting on the edge of the bed, still wearing her “pajamas,” which is a nothing but a big St. Louis Blues jersey. The apprehension is deep in her eyes, and even though there isn’t anything I can do to take that away, I can do my best to try to make her feel better about it.

“Listen, babe,” I say, as I kneel in front of her and take her hand. “If I don’t go down there and take care of this right now, we’re gonna have a fucking war in the streets of St. Louis. Victor Fronzo is an old hard-head, but you know me—I’m gonna take care of it like I always do. You’re gonna worry no matter what I say, but try not to. Victor’s a boss just like me. He can’t make a move on me without approval from the Commission, so the last thing that’ll happen is a shootout. Everything will be fine, and I’ll be back late tonight. You know I got this. This is just how we do business.”

Her worried expression doesn’t change a bit.

“I know,” she says in a whisper. “I just couldn’t take it if anything happened to you. I’d kill him myself if he hurt you.”

I just have to smile after that one.

“Well I appreciate you getting all gangster for me,” I say behind a light chuckle. “But you won’t have to kill anybody, because nothing’s gonna happen to me. I promise.”

I give Alannah a gentle kiss on the lips before getting up and going back to my side of the bed. I grab the duffel bag that’s there waiting for me and finish stuffing in the bullet proof vest. Then, I toss in two nine millimeter pistols from behind my nightstand, a three-fifty-seven Magnum from the closet, and a shotgun from under the bed. Frankie’s already downstairs waiting to take the four-hour trip to Chicago to sit down with Victor and Giovanni.

Time to go to work.

“Why didn’t we know the truck belonged to Victor Fronzo?”

“I don’t know, Dominic. It just never crossed any of our minds,” Frankie says as we exit the highway and head towards Chicago’s inner city.

“I feel like this could’ve been avoided,” I reply, looking out the window at the bright lights of the city. “Robbing our own guys doesn’t look good, you know. It looks like we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing. Like we don’t have any control.”

“Yeah, I know,” Frankie answers. “Don’t worry about it, Dominic. I know you’re like a prodigy in This Thing of Ours, but you can’t know everything all the time. Sometimes mistakes are made.”

“Mistakes in Our Thing get people killed,” I snip. “Especially bosses.”

“It’s not the mistake that gets people killed, it’s the action after the mistake. It’s all about how you handle it afterwards. We did the right thing by reaching out to Victor last night and setting up this sit-down for today. As long as we go in with an open mind, knowing we’re gonna have to bite the bullet.”