Gun Moll (7 page)

“Okay, I’m
impressed. Let’s see if you can keep it up.”

“Just you wait and
see.”

As they entered
through the entrance leading to the main floor, music filled the air. The dance
floor was a connecting sequence of clear squares. Each square was illuminated
by colored lights. Overhead strobe lights spun all around. It was pretty
impressive, but what really drew Melina’s attention were the two silver-barred
cages elevated from the dance floor. Inside danced two women. Their movements
were fast and frenzied as they moved to the beat of the music.

“Well, what do you
think?”

“No matter where
you go, there are half-naked women,” Melina said.

Her companion
laughed, his eyes settling on her.

“Trust me, with a
real woman like you here tonight, nobody’s paying them the least bit of
attention. Let’s get a drink.”

Melina allowed him
to lead her towards the large bar, located at the back of the club. There were wall-to-wall
bottles of liquor. Taking the empty seat in front of her, Melina waited to see
what her handsome benefactor would do next.

“Hey.” He snapped
his fingers at one of the bartenders. “Whatever this lady wants, she gets. It’s
on the house.”

“Yes, sir.”

The bald, muscled
bartender turned his attention to Melina. “What can I get you?”

“Long Island Ice
Tea.”

“Coming right up.”

As the man turned
away to prepare her drink, Melina felt a hand on her shoulder. Lips brushed her
ear.

“I hate to rush
off, but I need to speak with one of the guys who run the place. I’ll be right back.”

“I’m a big girl.
I’ll be fine.”

“You sure are.”

The man winked at
her and then he disappeared through the crowd.

Not a minute
later, the bartender was back. “Your drink, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

Melina picked up
the glass and took a long drink. The liquor hit the back of her throat. Cold
and refreshing with tones of lemon, this was exactly what she needed. Three
more swallows and the drink was gone. Moving from her seat, Melina disappeared
into the crowd on the dance floor. The sounds of Jazmine Sullivan’s
Let It
Burn
filled the air. She loved the soulful melody and the old-school music
it was based on.

Moving her body to
the music, Melina danced to the song while silently mouthing the words. She
wondered if she would ever find someone who made her fire burn like an inferno
that would never go out.

Mac.

Mac.

The voice inside
her head whispered the name. No. He was arrogant and too cocksure.

He had a smart
mouth.

But he was also
sexy as hell.

Hazel eyes and a brooding
face.

She liked the look
of him and part of her couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to him than
smooth words and a handsome smile. From the way he moved in the ring, she
surely hoped he had that same finesse in the bedroom. Arms slid around her
waist, pulling her against a warm male body.

“I’m back. Let’s
party.”

“Let’s see if you
can.”

A hit of liquor in
her system and a handsome man on the dance floor with her. Maybe Dulcea had the
right idea, for once.

“C
ould you get those
girls any more naked than they already are?” Mac asked, watching two women
dance above his head in cages.

Guido chuckled.
“Skin is in, as the saying goes.”

Mac beat back his
scowl. Guido was a good thirty years older than the women he was leering at,
not that his age made a difference to the guy. The Capo still worked with the
kind of mentality that came with every old-school wise-guy Mac had ever come
across. Females were toys to be used well, used hard, and thrown away when the
men finished with them. Move on to the next before the last turned clingy.

Guido was also
married—happily, or so he claimed to Mac—to a good, old Italian woman who knew
her place and turned her cheek.

Yeah, a wise-guy.

Mac was no saint.
He liked women and he had more than a few over the years, but he never liked to
fuck with a woman’s head like some of the mob guys did. He knew men who had
upwards of five or six different women they were running alongside the wife and
kids they kept at home to keep face. Others had entirely separate homes from the
one the world got to see, including
goomahs
, illegitimate children, and
all that shady business.

Mac just couldn’t
do it.

He thought of his
mother and her struggle to manage her house while her husband ran around with
any woman who would take him. He considered his father, and how the man only
ever stumbled home when he needed to save face for the mob. To show he was
keeping up the family side of things.

That was not the
life Mac wanted to live.

“Come,” Guido
demanded.

Mac followed his
Capo through the throng of moving, sweaty bodies on the dance floor. With the
bass of the music pumping through the space and the lights overhead flickering
fast enough to make a person dizzy, it was a lot to take in. Mac enjoyed a club
every once in a while. It was a good way to meet someone who was looking for
the same kind of thing he was that night and to blow off some quick steam.

Unfortunately,
that wasn’t why he’d come to Throb tonight. Mac hadn’t actually been inside the
place since Guido opened the doors to the club a month ago, but he’d heard
enough to know it was a hotspot and making more money than a lot of people
knew. It wasn’t just the liquor and door fees making the cash, either.

Guido had hands on
the floor selling anything and everything from acid to ecstasy. He also had girls
who didn’t look like hookers but worked the backrooms like they were.

Or so Mac heard.

Sometimes, with
Guido Vasari, it was better not to ask.

Chances were, the
rumors were true. Guido was the sole owner of Throb, as well as five other
hotspots in the city. The Capo’s other clubs were full of mob money and mafia
business. Modern mafioso had to be a little more careful about how and with
whom they did dealings, after all. With changes in the world, came changes in
the mob.

Men like Guido had
to step their games up.

Mac might have had
a hand or two in that, but his Capo never cared to give him the credit for it.

“Ah, here we go,”
Guido said, pulling out a key.

Mac turned to
glance over the crowd one last time as Guido unlocked a door to expose a
staircase leading up to a dark hallway. As his Capo stepped inside and called
his name, ordering him to follow, Mac swore he saw someone he recognized.

Chocolate eyes.

Dark hair.

Caramel skin.

Mac froze, his
gaze zoning in on the crowd again.

Could it …?

“Mac,” Guido barked.

Mac shook the odd
feeling off.

The Capo glowered
at him. “We have shit to discuss. Get out of your head,
capisce
?”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“Good. I’d hate to
smack you out of it.”

Mac held back his
scoff and that was only for the sake of respect.

Respect.

That’s what the
mafia was all about.

Mac gave Guido
what the man wanted—again. “Let’s talk about the issue we’re having with the
Corelli crew and how to get it settled, Skip.”

Guido smiled. “
Grazie
.
Good to know my best
soldato
has his head on straight tonight.”

Solider.

Because that’s all
Mac was to Guido.

“Are you ever
going to get me the button?” Mac asked.

Mac wanted into
la
famiglia
. For now, Guido was Mac’s only way to the Pivetti Cosa Nostra and
the button.

Guido laughed.
“Not if you keep asking questions like that, Mac.”

With a wave, Guido
directed Mac up the enclosed staircase. The passage was so small, it felt like
the walls were closing in. At the top, Guido flipped the keys in his hand until
he found the one he wanted and unlocked the second door. Guido knocked once
before he pushed the door open.

Mac tried not to
act surprised at the sight of a bleached-blonde hanging off the arm of Guido’s
enforcer, Tip. Well, everybody called the guy Tip, but his real name was Sammy.
Mac still hadn’t figured out how Tip got his nickname and chances were, he
didn’t want to.

Tip held the
female’s hair back as she bent over on his lap with a rolled up bill in her
hand, stuck up one nostril. The distinct sound of snorting followed and white
lines of powder disappeared off the glass coffee table.

“What’d I fucking
tell you, huh?” Guido asked as Mac closed the door.

Tip shrugged as he
yanked the girl by her hair and pulled her into a straight position again. She
was blitzed out of it, if her pupils were any indication. Tip looked to be in
the same shape, if not worse.

This was the kind
of enforcer Guido had watching this joint when business was going down?

Fucking useless.

“Having fun,
Boss,” Tip said, a slow smile curving his lips.

God, the man was
stoned out of his mind.

Mac took note of
Guido’s frown, but the Capo just seemed defeated at the scene. What in the hell
was going on, anyway? Any other Capo would have kicked the enforcer in the
teeth and gotten him the hell out of the joint to save some face. Maybe even
got the guy whacked, to end the nonsense altogether.

Hard drug use had
never been acceptable in Cosa Nostra, as far as Mac knew. People turned their
cheeks to a little bit of substance use here and there, but full-on addicts
were something entirely different. It just wasn’t allowed.

“Get her out of
here,” Guido growled.

Tip laughed.
“Yeah, all right.”

“And clean
yourself up before you come back,” the Capo added.

“Sure, sure.”

Mac waited while
the giggling blonde and the enforcer made their way out of the large office.
Guido said nothing as he hit a few switches on the wall panel and lit up the
room with more lights. Hardwood floors, buffed and polished, gleamed. High
ceilings with bronze fixtures rested above their heads. Guido’s large, cherry-oak
desk rested in the middle of the room, commanding attention.

The Capo took the
leather seat behind the desk, pushing the papers on the top out of the way. “Goddamn.”

Mac figured it’d
be rude not to ask about Guido’s troubles, even if he was annoyed with the Capo
for overlooking him constantly. “Something wrong, Skip?”

Guido glanced up,
his dark eyes flashing with tiredness. “I’m getting too old for this game,
Mac.”

“I don’t know, you
do all right.”

He was still one
of the highest earning Capos in the Pivetti family, after all. That was
something to take note of. Even if all of Guido’s earnings were made by his
crew and their hard work, who really cared?

Apparently, no
one.

“I didn’t know you
were having issues with Tip,” Mac said.

Guido waved the
statement off. “I’m not. He’s just going through some shit, that’s all. His
wife is due to have their kid right off soon and Tip’s just doing what he does
to manage the stress.”

Wait, what? The
guy had a wife and a baby on the way, but he was spending his nights in a club
getting high with whatever female was handy? And Guido was turning cheek to
that kind of behavior?

Mac did a double take
of his Capo. “Skip—”

“I’m not in the
mood to discuss my enforcer’s business, Mac. We have other things to handle
tonight.”

Mac nodded.
“Fine.”

“Your boys fucked
up.”

“No, your boys
did,” Mac corrected. “I was there and told them to wait, Skip. I said the truck
wouldn’t be beyond the Corelli lines. They were cocksure and went in without my
approval. By the time I got in on them, they had already picked the truck clean
and clipped the driver.”

Guido scowled.
“The driver was supposed to be paid off, not killed.”

“Like I said, they
went in cocksure and stupid. That’s what arrogance does.”

“The fact
remains,” Guido barked, “you have a problem.”

No, Guido had a
problem.

Mac chose not to
correct the man on his mistake again.

“The job was a
screw-up,” Guido said, sighing harshly. “A major one, Mac. Now, I’ve got
Anthony Corelli and his crew sharing words and fists with any Vasari crew they
can find. It’s bad enough that it has made its way to the boss. And now I’ve
got the threat of Luca settling the feud, if Anthony and I can’t get it
corrected ourselves.”

“So give Anthony
his share of the truck,” Mac said.

Simple fix right
there.

Anthony Corelli
was a Capo of another Pivetti crew. His territory lines hugged Guido’s in the
Kitchen in several different spots. Parts of Little Italy were still considered
no-man’s zone because no one really knew who the fuck it belonged to.

Nonetheless,
Anthony was due his take on the truck. The men Guido had sent to Mac for the
truck job had been useless, ignorant idiots. A bunch of street thugs in need of
a good ass kicking. Usually, Mac got a few good guys mixed in with the bad—guys
who would keep an eye out for the fuck-ups and keep them in line.

This time, he got
nothing.

Nada.

A mess, that’s
what.

And Guido wanted
him to take the blame for it.

“Give Anthony his
take,” Mac repeated. “He’s owed it, Guido. They skipped onto the truck in his
territory, there’s no questioning that.”

“Still my crew,”
Guido said, unfazed. “And that
cafone
just likes to cause me trouble.”

Mac had to wonder
about that, considering the stance Guido was taking now. The rules about
territory and cash were clear. If it was someone else’s streets, you paid them
their dues. Guido knew this even better than Mac did.

“If Pivetti steps
in …” Guido trailed off, scowling again.

Luca Pivetti was
almost like a damned myth to Mac. He’d heard the man’s name whispered and seen
the guy’s picture splashed across news broadcasts, but that was about it. Luca
was the face of the Pivetti crime family—he ran the organization and he ran it
hard, fast, and cruel. Mac, being as small of a fish as he was, had yet to have
the pleasure of actually meeting the Cosa Nostra Don.

But he sure as
hell wanted to.

Luca had three
daughters and an illegitimate son, with the oldest being the boy who was thoroughly
mixed up in Cosa Nostra. The daughters were held in esteem to the family, the
perfect
principessas
in waiting. What they were waiting for was a
mystery to outsiders, but to anyone inside the organization, they knew the
truth. Marriages. Arranged ones.

“What do you want
me to do, huh?” Mac asked. “They didn’t follow my directions.”

“And in turn,”
Guido said, pointing a finger at Mac, “you didn’t follow mine,
soldato
.”

“
Sì
,” Mac
admitted, though it nearly killed him to do it. “I’ll figure out a way to fix
it—maybe kill the problem by paying Anthony out with my money.”