Tempted By The Mafia Boss

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Salvatore

I’ve had no contact with her.

No contact with Mimi. I just sent the letter.

That’s how I want it to be.

It’s better this way.

This way she doesn’t have to see me or hear from me and be reminded that we can’t be together.

Better to just leave her alone. Even better because I need to focus and home in all my abilities. Raw street abilities that I need more than ever.

I never knew how much I would need to focus until now . Now that it looks like we’re standing in limbo, not knowing what to do or what direction to take.

We spent all the last few days looking for Stephanou and hitting up all the Fontaine hangouts all to no avail.

A fool would think they’re hiding like rats. I know they’re not. A pack of mobsters like us on the hunt is bad by itself and is enough to cause fear but I know they’re not scared.

They’re playing with us.

Stephanou is playing with us.

I’m with Gabe and Nick. We’ve just come back to the family home to plan. We’ve made this our central point to meet.

It’s been a week and we’ve had nothing. That’s not good.

“What do you think we should do boys?” I ask. I’m open to their suggestions.

“I’m trying to brainstorm. It’s very clear that people are being told not to talk to us,” Gabe puts in.

Nothing is truer than that. I’m seeing the same kind of fear we witnessed in Cole. Although with him I can’t be too sure if he was scared or hyped up on the shit he’d taken.

People are scared to talk though.

Of course they would be. It’s Stephanou Portaleu. You know from the name not to fuck with him and be foolish enough to implicate yourself.

We’ve searched the underground and nothing.

The door crashes open and Vincent walks in shoving a guy forward, ahead of him who’s been gagged. He had his hands bound in front of him and looks like he’s been beaten.

I have seen Vincent in days and when I saw last saw him he was pretty much the same as he was after I found him with Sorcha.

Now he looks like he’s just come out of hell.

Vincent kicks the man making him fall over and knock his face into the hardwood floor.

“Get the fuck up, you fucking dog. Fucking get up,” Vincent shouts and kicks him again.

I don’t know who this guy is but I already know there’s a chance he won’t be leaving here alive.

The guy crawls on the ground like a dog .

I walk up to them. “What is this Vincent?” I ask.

“Boys meet Agent Grant. The fucking fed who put me in this mess. Fucking bastard.” Vincent pulls out his gun and aims it at Agent Grant.

It must definitely be a cold day in hell for us to have a fed in this house.

Nick and Gabe join us and we stare at Agent Grant who is sobbing.

Vincent rips the gag from his mouth and growls at him.

“Fucking talk and tell me what I want to know, or it won’t end with you,” Vincent spits. “I will kill your family, every last one of them to make you pay.”

I glance at Vincent and see he’s being serious as fuck. He will do it, he would do it and show no mercy.

“I didn’t know this would happen I swear it. I swear it,” Agent Grant cries.

“Lying fuck. You fucking liar. Let me bring you boys up to speed. This sick fuck here linked up with The Fontaines. He’s working with them, probably sipped tea and ate fucking biscuits with them, pretty sure too he knows who our pest is.”

Jesus Christ. What the fuck? I raise my gun too and aim it at Agent Grant.

“Please no… I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know. It was a job. It was just a job. I didn’t know anyone was going to die.”

“No? You fuck with Mobsters and didn’t know there would be consequences?” Gabe shouts.

“I want all the details, everything,” Vincent seethes. “You met with me and fucking played me. My wife is dead because of you. You will tell me everything I need to know. I want it all from the beginning. I want to hear how and why. I want to know what led to this. A world where my wife is dead and my son doesn’t have a mother.”

Agent grant shakes, eyes on Vincent. Eyes pleading that he might spare him. pleading for mercy. Hope that if he tells him what he needs to know he’ll spare his life.

“Last year I was approached by Marc Fontaine,” he begins. “he’s had people watching you for a while. Long time. Listening and watching and looking for a way to destroy you for killing his brother and weakening their structure.”

“Go on,” Vincent urges.

I listen intently interested to hear the shit.

“At first he wanted to look into your assets and get you that way. Weaken you all and have your shipping company seized. It didn’t work. I put in the request to make it happen and my superiors denied it. I figured either they were more afraid of you or they just wanted to keep out of trouble. So Marc found another way when we stumbled upon the knowledge that you had business with Lawrence and Stephanou’s company. When Marc realized you had no idea who you were truly working for he used it to his advantage. The first part of the plan was to bring down Stephanou’s empire at your hand. You’re doing. All you. Make him mad enough to come back to Chicago and entice him with enough money to take you all out. Having lost everything made him agree to the money to wipe you out. Take control of what you have but most of all destroy the leading Giordano line. Your father and your brothers. Assassinate you. Instigate a blood war amongst you with a man who can get the job done. That is where we’re at now.”

He’s right that is where we’re at now. Fucking right.

There is however the matter of the enabler. The rat, our rat. None of this would have been possible if they hadn’t made it so.

Who are they?

Who are they really?

“One of our guys is working with them,” I point out. “Who is it?”

Agent Grant looks to me and shakes his head. “I don’t know. I have no idea. They have a lot of people working with them. I don’t know more than what I was told to do. We met at the meeting place and I did what I was told to do.”

“You mean what you were paid to do,” I snap because he’s making it sound like he was forced.

“I got in way over my head. I didn’t know what I was signing up for,” he stutters.

I’m not the one to tell that. I don’t accept shit. A person will always say bull shit like that when it goes wrong and act like they didn’t know what they were doing was all wrong to begin with.

“Where did you people meet?” Vincent snarls. “Tell me right the fuck now!”

“It’s an underground facility. I don’t know how to get there. I was taken by blindfold. It looked like it was underground, like the sewers. I don’t know anything else. That’s where they meet.”

“Who is they?” I demand. “Who, who did you see there?”

“The three Fontaine brothers and Stephanou Portalou. There were some other guys. It’s a whole operation. It looks like they have government ties. There’s no way such a facility and set up can exist like theirs without it. The place was big and had computers and everything, set up like our offices at the bureau, but looked more like an old factory.”

Well we were already well versed in them having ties to the government. The underground facility explains why we can’t find shit.. Where is it though?

“How did you get there?” I ask.

“I met a limo at the civic center and then I’d get transported there with a bag over my head,” he answers.

“How long did it take you? You must have an idea of that.” Vincent balks. “Give me an idea of time.”

“We met at different times in the day. I have no idea on specifics.” Agent Grant mumbles. “I think maybe it was over an hour, probably close to ninety minutes.”

Fuck. That could be anywhere. One hour to ninety minutes’ drive depending on what time you’re driving could be anywhere. It could be out of Chicago, It could be in Chicago and the fucking underground is massive.

“What else is there?” Vincent holds the gun out and pulls the trigger back.

“I don’t know anything else. Please… I don’t know.”

Vincent’s hands shake. “You see me I’m a mobster, I’m a bad person, straight up. It’s kill or be killed for me. You… are the worse kind of person. The kind people trust to do the right thing. You take an oath of such. You’re supposed to be good and do your job. Men like me are the kind that would do a thing like what you did. Take payment to be a fucking crook. Not men like you. I will kill you like the criminal you are.”

Agent Grant’s eyes go wide. “Please no-”

Bang, bang. Bang!

That’s all I hear. I hear then I see Agent Grants body crumple to the ground, blood spraying from his head.

All three rounds of bullets went straight to his head. Same spot.

Blood pools on the ground and Vincent drops his hand to his side and walks out.

I follow him catching up with him in the corridor.

He stops and looks at me.

“Salvatore don’t.” Vincent holds up his hand. “Don’t say anything to me. Got an interesting call today from Stephanou. He wanted to tell me how he raped my wife first before he made her beg for her life. He made her beg before he killed her. He thought I should know. He said he’ll make me watch him kill Ma, then make me beg for my life too. Fucker… he’s dead when I find him.”

It all just keeps getting worse by the minute. All of it.All text © NôvelD(r)a'ma.Org.

I grip his shoulder and hold on tight. “Vincent I am going to help you. I am going to help you. We will do this. I promise you.”

Vincent takes my arm too. “Salvatore… it’s the first time where I don’t know what the hell to do. The Fontaines are too powerful. If they can do all of this, they’re too powerful. They keep coming back. This time it’s sneaky as fuck and they’ve called out this mad man. How do we bring them all down? How? We all believe they can’t do shit because they don’t have the connections we have but they have the government and it makes everything we have look like shit.”

“One thing at a time.” I tell him, it’s the best thing I can think of saying because he’s fucking right.

Fontaines have the government. We can’t go after the government.

How are we supposed to do that?