Page 109 of I Would Beg For You
Don Giorgio sighs. “Run me again through everything you’ve found.”
I sit back and take a deep breath. “Connor Gatling is the Westchester County cop who led the raid into our hotel room. My men found him, and he’s confessed it was all arranged by a crew of Albanians associated with Joel Smith and Dominic Billings. The two owe them money, big time.”
“But you don’t know if it was sanctioned by their mob leaders.”
“No.”
That’s what we haven’t been able to find out yet. Even Reeves is hitting walls of his own.
“So, you have a canary that sang,” Don Giorgio says. “Dealt with, without a splash?”
“Yes.”
Pesci took him, broken foot and mangled hand and everything, to an empty field on the outskirts of my territory where he met with a bullet in the head. The body was dismembered on the spot, the blood covered by tilling the earth, and the parts flash-frozen. They’ll be ending up in a vat of lye each later today. Gatling’s partner, a man named Thorsen who stood outside the room the whole time, had his house burned down. Some lucky kid with one of Pesci’s crew as a dad will be coming home to a new pet tonight—Thorsen’s been led to believe his beloved dog died in the blaze; we just reassigned the animal to a more deserving home.
“You have a name?” Don Giorgio asks.
“Cazzo by the name of Berisha. He runs a small-time crew out of The Bronx.”
Don Giorgio sighs. “You know our people are close.”
I do. Even on the Old Continent, the ties between Albania and Italy are still strong, and it’s not a coincidence so many Albanians have settled close to Little Italy in New York. There’s a history of strong kinship between our two people.
“I don’t want a war,” I state.
“I understand. You want your wife back. This is because of that bastardo who fathered her, not because of you.”
So, you can’t go in all gun’s blazing.
I hear it, though I don’t want to. My jaw clenches, and I don’t hide it.
“You think they don’t know who they’re tangling with?”
Are they not aware who Naomi really is, the wife of an Italian-American Mafia Don?
“The news of your confirmation into our ranks hasn’t made so many ripples outside our community yet. So, they might still be living under a rock.” He chuckles at his little joke.
“They’ll find themselves under the rubble soon enough,” I mutter.
The old man sighs and shakes his head. “I’m glad you came to me first. Let me help. Three hours. Can you give me that?”
At this point, three hours won’t make a difference. It’ll still be broad daylight by then, and we can’t strike unless under the cover of darkness to not give away our advantage and lead with the element of surprise.
“What are you going to do, may I ask?”
“I’ll reach out to my contact on the Albanians’ side.”
I can’t help it, chills run down my spine at his words. That shadow government thing I discovered in our syndicate? It appears every mob has one, and the ones at that level of leadership know each other pretty well, like reluctant comrades.
But something else rankles in its wake, and I tense up. “What if your contact informs Berisha of my intent? Naomi could—”
“He won’t.” The old man’s face grows shuttered. “We can’t have a war.No onewants that.”
If this person tells Berisha and Naomi ends up dead, it’ll be all the validation I’d need to scorch them to the very last one. They’ll want to stop that, too…I hope.
Three hours later, it’s my hope that’s validated.
We’re at the Scarsdale house—it’s our HQ at the moment. We need to be able to move fast, and having to travel more than an hour and a half each way just won’t cut it, like if we’d gone back to my home or even the house in Short Hills.
