Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (23 page)

He shook his head. Breathing was minimum expectation for normal people.

“Can I be impressed that you are an absolutely masterful fuck?”

Exhausted but happy, he chuckled and nodded. “Oh yeah.”

~oOo~

Is he here yet?

I told you that I will text you when it happens. I promise.

It’s been HOURS. I want to see his widdle FACE.

Katrynn had been in labor all day, and the family was doing the ritual siege of St. Gabriel’s, waiting for the newest Pagano to show his squishy face. Bev, Katrynn’s best friend, was in the birthing room with John.

Katrynn’s parents weren’t there.

Tina had a big hard-on for babies. She had some kind of radar and could find an ‘oodie’ anywhere nearby. Joey thought that, now that they could fuck almost like normal people, and if things with Tina went the way he hoped they were going, there was a good chance he might actually be a father someday.

In the meantime, he was going to be an uncle again.

I’ve been around this block a few times now. Babies come when they’re good and ready. Maybe you’ll be here when he shows up. You’re coming to the hospital after you close the market, right?

Would that be weird? I don’t want to horn in on the family thing.

Mia famiglia è tua famiglia.

That got a long line of happy emojis and then
Ti adoro, bello.

Luca yelled “Scopa!” and swept all the cards on the floor in the middle of the ring of players.

FYI: you’re killing my Scopa game with all these texts. I promise I’ll send a pic if you’re not here when the shorty shows up.

A sad emoji.
Okay, fine. Love you.

Love you back.

~oOo~

Tina was at the hospital long before the baby was born. Even Rosa and Eli had made it from D.C. before he showed up.

Around ten that night, Bev came out to the waiting area and said simply that it was getting to the point where Katrynn and John needed to be alone.

Shortly thereafter, Nick showed up, with Sam, his mountain of a bodyguard, right behind him—and a couple of other men as well. One of those men had already been here, lingering near the elevators.

Nick had stepped up security. Normally, he only traveled with Sam, and Bev didn’t have a security detail as a rule.

Joey filed that away as a curiosity. Nick wouldn’t have come to the hospital if it had meant putting family at risk, and he wouldn’t have allowed Bev to be there, either. So the extra security must have been simply a new precaution. As far as he knew, things were quiet in the Cove. Nobody had challenged Nick in years, and he had cemented a wide swath of serious power and control.

After midnight, John came out to say that they were taking Katrynn back for a C-section. He looked drawn and worried, but he said that everything was okay, she’d just been laboring too long without enough progress.

For the next hour or so, just about everybody in the family paced or sat bolt upright in their seats.

Manny and Eli had gone back to the house with all the kids, but everybody else was there, waiting.

Not long after one a.m., all the siblings got a text at the same time: a picture of a doctor or nurse wearing scrubs and a mask and holding a bloody, angry baby. The accompanying text read
Giancarlo William Pagano, hot from the oven
.
We’ll call him Johnny. K is loopy right now but good.

“Oh my God, he’s BEAUTIFUL,” Tina raved at Joey’s side.

Joey laughed. Little Johnny might in fact be a beautiful baby—Paganos didn’t make anything else—but that was not the picture that would prove it.

Looking at Carlo’s phone, Adele caught the mania, too. “He’s got John’s nose!”

Joey took another look at the squished face of his newest nephew. Oookay. Sure.

Pretty soon, all the women were raving about the perfection of that gory little bundle. Joey met Luca’s eyes—they were the only non-fathers in the room—and they both laughed.

Chicks.

~ 16 ~

Tina stood at the glass front doors of the market and frowned at the opaque, grey curtains of water slamming down from the sky. The backsplash when the rain hit the ground was coming up at least six inches. Gross.

They hadn’t had a customer in more an hour; nobody was going out in this mess. She’d sent Kevin home early and had almost all the closing work done.

She looked down at her phone in her hand and read Joey’s last text again.

Sorry, baby.

With a sigh, she screwed up her patience and texted back,
It’s okay. I can get a ride with Kevin.
Telling him she planned to walk the two miles home would only make him worry. He had a twitch about being outside in bad weather, probably from his bout with double pneumonia.

Okay, good. Text me when you get home. I love you.

I will. Have fun. Love you back.

Joey was at a Sox game with her father and Matt. Her dad had had season tickets longer than she could remember; her parents were hardcore Red Sox fans and had gone as often as they could. Traditionally, about half the tickets had gone to special customers, like businesses that used their catering services regularly or long-time customers with special birthdays or other personal events. In the years since her mother’s stroke, he’d only gone to a couple of games and had given all the rest away.

This year, though, he had taken Joey and Matt to four games so far. Angie was always invited as well—there were four tickets—but he had declined every time. He’d taken the tickets to a few games to use himself with his own friends and associates, though, as usual.

Her Boston boys were supposed to pick her up from the market tonight; she had her Mustang at the Ford dealer for its scheduled maintenance. The rain had delayed the game almost two hours, and just as they had been deciding to give up and come on home, the tarp had come off the field, so there was no chance in hell they’d be back in the Cove anytime soon.

She and Joey had texted all through the evening, so she’d been abreast of the changes. They’d offered to come home anyway, even though the game had finally started.

The Sox were playing the Yankees. It was August, and the teams were jockeying for first place in the division. She could hardly ask her diehard baseball nerds to turn their backs on the game.

The rain showed no signs of letting up in the Cove, however. Feeling lonely, she turned the lock on the door and rolled the security gate down, then went to finish the last of the closing work.

~oOo~

She was in the back room with her bag on her shoulder, ready to go but listening to the thunder booming above the building, and wallowing in a surprisingly deep marsh of self-pity, when she decided that this was nuts. She had
two
brothers, and she was ninety-percent sure Angie was in the Cove.

He never responded to texts, so she called him. He answered on the fourth ring. “Hey, shrimp. What’s up?”

She could hear the pings and beeps and other strange electronic noises of an arcade—he was on the boardwalk, less than a mile away. Phew. “I need a favor. Joey’s with Dad and Matt at the game.”

“Yeah, I know.” Angie’s tone was sharp and irritated. “One big happy family. What of it?”

“My car’s in the shop. I need a ride home from the market.”

He chuckled. “Sorry, shrimp. No can do. I’m busy.”

“Jesus. Are you ever not an asshole anymore? I can hear that you’re at the arcade, Ang. You seriously can’t take less than ten minutes out of your oh-so-important life to help me out? Or are you up to your elbows in some pour guy’s guts?”

“You watch your mouth, little girl. Christ, the shit I let you and that mouth get away with. This is not a good time. I am working.”

Shit, he probably
was
up to his elbows. But she didn’t care. She was pissed and lonely and did not want to walk in the goddamn rain. “Fine. I will walk home. Two miles. In the dark and the torrential storm, with the thunder and lightning. Alone. Fuck you.”

After waiting a beat to see if any of that had made an impression, and getting only silence from her brother, Tina prepared to end the call. What a douche.

Just as she took the phone from her ear, she heard, “Wait—wait. Hold on. Fuck.”

She put the phone back and waited.

“Shit. Fine. Give me five minutes. Be ready at the back door. I’m not coming in. I’m picking you up and driving you home and leaving you in the driveway, and you are going to shut up and be fucking grateful. Got it?”

“Yes. Thank you, Angie.”

“Forget about it.”

~oOo~

Tina waited by the back door, and when Angie pulled up, the Challenger’s engine growling, she already had the door open as he honked. She ran maybe ten strides and was soaked through as she landed in the passenger seat.

“Christ, shrimp,” he complained. “Your wet ass is all over my leather seat.”

“Sorry—hey, Ang. Thank you for this. Really.”

“Forget about it. Let’s go.” He backed out of the market’s small lot and down the alley toward the street.

He was obviously not in the mood to chat; he sat straight up in his seat, both hands on the wheel, peering through the frantic wipers and the sheets of water that reflected back the beams of his headlights. Tina sat quietly, feeling sheepish for guilting him into this ride but also wicked glad that she wasn’t walking through a biblical storm.

As they approached an intersection, he slowed and said, “Tina, get down.”

He never called her by her name, and that surprised her more than his command.

“Please?” She turned to look at him. He was staring at the rearview mirror. The lights of another car behind them, filtered through the rainwater streaming down the back window, washed his face in a melting glow.

“Down. Get down. On the floor. Now.”

Instantly afraid, she did what she was told. More lights swung through the windows, and Angie stomped on the gas pedal. The Challenger leapt forward with a roar, and they were speeding down the rain-washed street—but to get home, he should have turned right.

Tina thought that the foot well of his car was the least safe place she could possibly be if they had an accident, and she started to climb back to the seat, when the back window blew out in a thunderous crash. For half a second, she thought they’d been struck by lightning. But the thunder went on, and more windows blew out, raining water and pebbled shards of auto glass down on her, and she realized that it was gunfire. She screamed.

Angie yelled in pain and lost control of the car, and then they were careening over the curb and the rough terrain of landscaped yards.

They did crash. The airbag deployed, catching Tina in the back of the head and slamming her face so hard into the seat that she heard her nose break. Pain exploded behind her eyes, but she didn’t pass out.

“Tina! Are you okay?”

Her mouth wouldn’t move, and she couldn’t think. It was dark and wet and cold, and she tried to get out of this weird shroud she was trapped in, but she couldn’t make sense of what was going on. She heard pain and fear in her arrogant brother’s voice, and that made the least sense of all.

“Stay down. Just stay quiet. Whatever happens.”

The car shook, and then there was more shooting and more shaking. She thought she heard Angie yell, but his voice was muffled and too far away.

The car shook again, and the shroud was torn away—oh, the deflated airbag. Right. That observation seemed incredibly mundane and also critically important.

Tina’s face was already swelling, and her eyes stung and watered. She couldn’t see who had opened her door, but she didn’t think it was rescue.

“I’ll take care of her,” a male voice said nearby.

“No. Not yet. I want to use her first.”

As understanding sank in, Tina wished for the cloudiness of the first few seconds, when she didn’t understand that they had been attacked, that she was caught up now in Angie’s business, in mob business, and that they were talking about killing her.

And using her, whatever horror that meant.

“She’s a girl. Let’s do it clean.”

“And my mother was an old woman. You do as I say, or I will need to fill your position, too. I want her.”

A moment later, Tina was grabbed under her arms and dragged out of the wreck of Angie’s car.

She fought, clawing and kicking, and tried to scream through her swelling face, until somebody—all she could see in the confusion of storm and fear was a vague figure—stepped up and hit her again. She had just enough time to marvel at how much that hurt before she didn’t feel it anymore and everything faded away.

~oOo~

God, she hurt.

The first thing Tina knew again was that: pain. Her face felt like it had been crushed in a trash compactor, and her neck and shoulders pulsed with hot spikes that shot down her arms and spine.

Her mouth was open—she couldn’t have breathed through her broken, bloated nose—and she tasted mud on her tongue. She was still soaking wet, and she lay on filthy concrete. Slight movement of her arms and legs told her than she was bound hand and foot, her hands in front.

She tried to open her eyes, but at first all she managed was a feeble brightening of the darkness. Her eyes were swollen. So she listened instead and tried to take stock of her body at the same time.

Male voices, at least two. No, three. Rough scraping sounds, like metal dragged over the concrete. Smaller, duller but more precise metallic sounds. Tools laid out on a table. Torture tools? Was she in a torture place?

A groan in a voice she knew well: Angie. At that, Tina forced her sore eyes to open as wide as she could make them, and she managed to see at least a little. The more she looked, the better she focused.

Angie was about ten feet away from her, bound by his wrists to a beam in the ceiling. His feet just skimmed the floor. They’d stripped him from the waist up. Blood ran down his right arm, over his shoulder, and made long trails down his bare chest. One eye was swollen to the size of a baseball, and that side of his head was awash with dripping blood.

They were in a cellar. As she moved her aching eyeballs to see as much as she could through the slits of her lids, she saw that it was just a normal unfinished cellar of a house. Cinderblock walls, slightly damp from the storm. If she could have smelled, she’d probably have smelled mildew. Glass-block windows showed flares of lightning as the storm continued. Between those flashing squares was a cheap metal shelving unit that held used paint cans, bottles of cleaning supplies, a bucket, a stack of rags—the usual accumulation of crap that wound up in everybody’s cellar.

The lights were bare bulbs in the ceiling, with string pulls dangling down. The floor on which she lay had been painted red years ago; the paint flaked and was worn away in long swathes, probably a map of the regular traffic patterns of the people who lived here.

A front-loading washer and dryer set, gleaming red and modern, stood next to an old, deep slop sink. There was an empty white plastic laundry basket sitting on top of the dryer.

In that innocuous space stood three men in dark custom suits and Italian dress shoes, all ruined by the storm.

She recognized each and every one of them. These men, who had shot at them, forced them to crash, taken them, bound them—these men were Angie’s
crew
. His
friends
.