Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (24 page)

These were Pagano Brothers men.

J.J. Nicci, Angie’s boss, a capo in the organization, stood before Tina’s brother, his arms crossed over his chest.

Had Angie betrayed the Paganos?

No—he would
never
. He worshipped Nick Pagano like a god. But what? Why?

“She’s awake, J.J.”

Tina didn’t see who’d spoken, and she couldn’t make out whose voice it was, but he had obviously seen her.

Angie had been slumped, inert, but at those words, he reacted, fighting at his bindings. “Don’t. J.J., leave her alone. Please. Please.”

J.J. looked over his shoulder, and a repulsive smile sliced across his face when he saw her. “Put her up over there.”

Nobody moved. A heavy blast of thunder shook the floor, and lightning flashed in the glass-block windows. Rain pelted the wavy glass.

J.J. turned fully to the man he’d spoken to and said, “If I have to repeat myself again tonight, Frankie, you will not leave this cellar. You are loyal to me, or you are not. Make your choice now. Either do as I say or join Angie on the beam.”

Tina watched in helpless shock and terror as Frankie DiMello turned and came toward her. His rain-soaked shoes—cognac-colored leather wingtips, very fancy—stopped inches from her face. Mud had spattered the hems of his pinstriped slacks.

He wore bright green socks.

Hiking up his pant legs, he crouched and gently, almost affectionately, slid his hands under her. “Sorry, sweetheart,” he mumbled as he picked her up.

She tried to speak, to beg, but nothing came out but an airless whine.

Lou Rossi helped Frankie hang her from a beam by her wrists, just like Angie—except that she was much shorter than her brother, and she hung freely. Her already agonized neck and shoulders blasted with this new pain, and she screamed as soon as they let her go.

“God! J.J., no! Fuck! She’s an innocent!” Angie fought harder, and J.J. punched him in the gut.

When Angie and Tina had both gone quiet, J.J. said, “My mother was an innocent, too.”

“I didn’t hurt your mother! I would never hurt a woman!”

J.J. turned his head and flashed a look at Frankie. This time, his man didn’t hesitate at all. He spun and punched Tina hard in her already broken face. She felt her eye socket give like a crushed soda can.

Dimly, through an ocean of shock and pain, she heard her brother roar in impotent fury.

All but blind now, as soon as the first blast of pain subsided into its drumbeat, Tina made herself focus the sight she had left. She needed to see what was coming, or she would never withstand it.

She and Angie were going to die here, that was obvious. But first they were going to hurt.

This was what her brother did when he was ‘working.’ This was the life he had chosen to live. And it was how he would die.

Fuck him for taking her with him.

J.J. spoke again. “My mother had a heart attack standing at my father’s grave. She dropped dead
onto his fucking coffin
, Ang. You were there. You saw. You don’t think the man who killed my father killed my mother, too?”

“I didn’t kill Julie.”

Again, J.J. turned his head, and again, Frankie punched Tina, this time in the stomach. She puked, and it was bright red with blood. But she didn’t cry out. So much pain vied for attention in her body now that it was like white noise. She tried to keep seeing, but everything was turning into indiscernible grey blobs moving jerkily across the dimming screen of her vision.

She tried to speak again.

“Angie…please…”

She gave up; she had barely made enough sound to hear herself, and she didn’t know what words could possibly do to help her.

“God, please! Just let Tina go. Please. Don’t hurt her anymore. Do what you want to me. Let her go. Let her go. I didn’t kill your father, J.J. I didn’t.”

“No, Nick killed him, didn’t he? Got his manicured hands dirty for the first time in years. I guess that was supposed to be an
honor
, the great don doing it himself. The fucking King of New England.”

“Julie tried to move on Nick.”

J.J.’s voice got strange and low, almost intimate. Tina couldn’t see, but she sensed that he’d moved in close to Angie. “And how did Nick find out about that?”

Angie didn’t answer.

A big grey blob moved near Tina, and she just managed to brace before the impact of another fist to her face—and another right after it. The bottom half of her head seemed to shift out of place, and an iron spike of pain stabbed through her left ear. Sound dampened on that side of her head, and she felt a new stream of wet heat trickle down her neck. They’d blown her eardrum.

Okay, she didn’t want to focus anymore. She didn’t want to be awake while she was beaten to death. There was nothing she could do to stop it, so she wanted to be far away when it happened.

She searched for unconsciousness but couldn’t find it. Apparently, God wanted her to know all this pain.

“You bastard,” Angie snarled. “I saved your ass with Nick. I told him you were true to him. I swore.”

“You want to talk about
true
? You were my man! Mine! You handed my father to him. You as good as made me an orphan. But I sat at that table anyway. My parents fresh in the ground, but I sat there like a good soldier and waited to hear what the king had to say. My loyalty in the face of what I lost should have been rewarded. But he jumped the Face right over me and put
him
at his right hand. Left me sitting there like an asshole. And you expect, what,
gratitude
from me now? No, Angie. I’m not grateful. I’m going to finish my father’s work. King Nick is going down.”

“And you hurt a girl to show how strong you are. You sniveling piece of dog shit.” Angie’s tone had gained an edge of fight.

There was a flurry of soft sounds of impact. Her brother’s accompanying grunts told Tina that he was being beaten.

“I want you to know how it feels to see your own family suffer, Angie. I want you to
feel
it. You’re gonna watch while we beat your baby sister to death. You’re gonna see every second of her pain. You’re gonna hear her last breath. And then I am going to carve out your broken heart.”

Tina heard all of that with an academic interest. Once she had comprehended that she was going to be beaten to death and that she would not be allowed the ignorance of unconsciousness while it happened, calm had settled into her head. The pain was already intense; she didn’t know how it could be greater.

Like the crew rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, her brain had begun to catalogue her injuries—or, at least, to guess at them: a concussion, most definitely; a broken nose; a broken jaw; broken eye socket—orbital bone was what that was called; a ruptured eardrum. Possibly also a dislocated shoulder, if the odd cant to her right shoulder, and the vicious bite of pain inside it, was any indication. The bloody vomit suggested internal injuries as well.

They were pretty close to finishing their job, she thought.

“Get to it,” J.J. said.

Grey blobs were moving near her again. This time, it wasn’t just Frankie. This time, they all went at her at once. She swung from the beam like a punching bag.

Angie screamed—he
screamed
—“Teenie! Teenie, God! No! NO! NO! Jesus fucking CHRIST!”

Interesting. She couldn’t remember the last time Angie had called her Teenie. Matt still did, but she had probably been in grade school when Angie last had.

Unconsciousness was withheld from her for a very long time.

~ 17 ~

Tina was in surgery when Joey, Angelo, and Matt got to St. Gabriel’s.

Angelo had gotten a call from Nick that Angie and Tina were hurt and he should get to the hospital as quickly as possible.

Tina had gotten caught up with something deadly in the Pagano Brothers.

But Nick wasn’t at the hospital. Dominic Addario, an old capo, was waiting for them. He had no news that he would share about what had happened, except that Angie was still in the ER, waiting to be admitted for observation, and that Tina had been rushed into surgery.

Angelo went back to see his son. Matt and Joey went up to the surgical floor. They didn’t speak. Joey couldn’t have formed words if he’d wanted to; he was far too stressed out. They sat side by each and stared at the television on the wall, which was showing weather reports. The storm had moved south, out of range.

Two of Nick’s men loitered in the corridor between the waiting area and the locked doors of the surgery wing. There had been guards in the ER, too.

They’d been waiting for more than an hour when Tina’s father came into the room. He was pale and shaking, and Joey thought he’d never seen an angrier man in his life.

Matt stood and went to his father. “What happened?”

Joey stood, too, but waited by his seat, unsure what his place was here. Angelo waved him over.

“They have him drugged up pretty high, and he didn’t make much sense. He got your sister caught up in some internal trouble.”

“I-internal?”

Tina’s father nodded.

Somebody in the organization had gone after Tina? After
family
? Joey’s fists clenched, and his chest got tight. His tank was behind him, on the floor by his seat, but he didn’t want it.

“I don’t understand,” Matt said.

“I don’t either, son. Angelo’s beaten up bad, but your sister…he said they meant to beat her to death.” His voice broke, and he put his hands to his face.

Joey could only yell—all sound, no sense.

“What the fuck? Why?” Matt shouted.

“I don’t know,” Angelo wailed into his hands. Matt pulled his father close and held him while he cried.

The Pagano Brothers guards came to the doorway, drawn by the noise. Matt yelled, “Back the fuck off!” and they did.

Joey couldn’t breathe. He could barely move. He stumbled to his tank and hooked the cannula over his ears.

He fucking hated being so weak. He couldn’t protect her. He couldn’t take care of her. He couldn’t avenge her.

~oOo~

The shift change from third to first was underway when the surgeon finally came into the waiting room and asked for Valentina Corti’s family.

Rather than sit with them in the waiting room, the doctor led them to a room near the nurse’s station and closed the door.

There was a large, generic print of a calm ocean on the wall, and two big boxes of tissues on the low table between two upholstered sofas.

Jesus, was she dead? Was this the room where they broke that news?

“How is she, Doc? Please.” Angelo sound old and broken.

“She’s in critical condition. We’ll move her to the ICU after we get her stable in recovery.”

“Sh-sh-she…not…s-stable?” Fuck, he was a moron.

The doctor gave him a moment’s estimation, then said, “Her injuries are extensive, and the surgery was difficult. She’s struggling. If we can keep her going for the next forty-eight hours, then her prognosis should improve.”

“What are her injuries?” Matt asked, his voice mechanical.

The doctor took a breath before he answered. “As I said, they’re extensive. We had a team of surgeons working on the most critical issues, but she will need more surgery when she’s strong enough. Both of her orbital bones—her eye sockets—are fractured. We can’t repair those fractures yet, but we are protecting her eyes until the swelling recedes, so she’s functionally blind, at least for now. Her jaw is fractured, and we’ve wired it shut. Three molars were broken. We removed them before we set her jaw. Because her nose is so badly broken and her jaw is wired shut, we had to perform a tracheotomy to be sure her respiration is unobstructed. Her left eardrum is ruptured. It might heal, but we’ll have to see. For now, she won’t have any hearing on the left side. She has a fracture of her occipital bone—the back of her skull. Scans show minimal swelling and no other damage to her brain, but we’re going to watch that very closely—bleeds or blockages could develop quickly and do lasting damage. Her right shoulder was dislocated. We’ve reset it and immobilized it. Three fractured ribs, one of them a full fracture, which punctured a lung and caused extensive internal lacerations.”

Joey realized that the doctor had moved from top to bottom, listing her injuries methodically. He understood why—there were so many that he might well have lost track otherwise.

He felt violently sick, and only a force of will held his gorge down.

“Oh my Lord,” Angelo moaned and crossed himself. “Oh my Lord. My baby girl. I don’t understand.”

“I don’t, either. The word miracle is a dangerous word to throw around in my business, Mr. Corti, but I think it applies here. Somebody wanted your daughter dead, and I don’t know how it is that she isn’t, except that God wanted her alive. This is a miracle. So there’s hope.”

~oOo~

Tina’s father fell to his knees when they were allowed to see her. For this first time, the nurses agreed to let all three of them in. Angelo went first, with Matt just behind him and Joey in the rear. When Angelo cried out and fell, Matt went down, too, holding his father, and Joey was left standing, staring at the small figure in the bed.

He sucked air from his tank and tried to find calm. But how could he be calm?

How could that be Tina? If not for her dark hair on the pillow, he wouldn’t have believed there was a person in that bed at all.

Her eyes were covered with padding and wrapped with white gauze. What little of her face he could see was…not her face. It was a misshapen purple mass.

A trach tube rose from just below what must have been her chin. Her right arm was set in an awkward position, on pillows, and that shoulder was bound in a brace.

Cuffs of white gauze circled her wrists. Even with so few details about how or why this had happened, Joey knew that she had been bound, and under that gauze her skin was raw from the bindings.

Wires and tubes trailed from her head and chest, and machines whirred and beeped and pumped beside the bed.

How could that be Tina? His beautiful, brilliant, lively, sweet girl. His little emo doll, who had never outgrown her love for Evanescence. The therapist who helped hurting children find a way to connect with the world. The woman who’d singlehandedly brought him back to life. How could that lifeless form be her?

Matt had Angelo back on his feet, and he stumbled to his daughter’s bed. “
Tesorina, tesorina, tesorina
. What will I tell your mother? What did they do to you? Why?” he lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “Oh God, why?”

If there was a reason, Nick knew it. Joey’s hands had been clenched for what seemed like hours, but they rolled even more tightly, and his short nails dug into his palms. He had never known fury like this before. It filled his chest with hot lead. But he could do nothing.

He couldn’t even call Nick and demand answers. He had no words.

~oOo~

We’re all going batshit, Joe. There’s nothing we can do? Moral support?

Not a good time for a herd of Paganos. Not Angelo’s favorite people right now. I’ll let you know how she’s doing, but for now, stay away. At least until she wakes up & we know she’s okay.

No change?

Not yet. I’m not leaving. Sorry about work.

Don’t sweat it. You’ve got the schedule nailed down, and we’ll cover anything new. Just focus on what’s important.

Thanks, Luc.

You need anything? Fresh Jockeys? Toothbrush?

I’m all set. Thanks.

Twelve hours after she had been moved into the ICU, almost twenty-four hours since her father had gotten Nick’s call, Tina was still unconscious. The nurses wouldn’t allow more than one person in the tiny glass room with her for any length of time, so Joey, her father, and Matt took turns sitting at her side while the other two paced the halls, or went down for food and drink. None of them had yet slept.

Angie had been released that afternoon and come straight up to see her, but when he’d shown up with no more damage than a some bruises and a bullet graze, while his sister lay on death’s door, and wouldn’t say why Tina had been hurt or offer any information at all, Matt had shoved him away. After a row that had the Pagano Brothers guards intervening, Angie had stalked off and hadn’t been back since.

Joey stayed in touch with Luca, telling him what he could. Which wasn’t much.

Matt was outside, clearing his head. Impatient to get back and sit with her, Joey stood and stared through the window of her room. What the hell had happened? An internal beef? An innocent getting hurt? Had Nick lost control of his business?

And where the fuck
was
Nick? A whole day had passed, and the don hadn’t paid a visit to the innocent woman, the sister of one of his men, who had been hurt on his watch.

It all stank like rotten meat, and Joey was powerless to make anything right.

Tina’s father stood and leaned over to kiss his daughter’s battered face, and Joey went in, knowing that it was his turn.

Angelo was still leaning over her, and Joey thought he might have been praying. He’d been doing that a lot. A nun who had made the rounds of the ICU had prayed with him and left him a rosary, and he’d been fondling the beads ever since.

“Oh God,” Angelo gasped. “Oh God. Nurse! NURSE! Get the nurse!”

Joey didn’t have to—he was being shoved out of the way already.

“Her face! Look at her face! Is that a stroke? That’s a stroke!”

Suddenly, the nurses were talking fast in terms Joey wouldn’t have been able to follow under the best conditions, and other people were running in, and they were throwing parts of machines onto her bed.

“CLEAR THE DOOR!” someone shouted, and Joey jumped out into the corridor as they ran, pushing Tina’s bed through the door and away.

They’d almost run Joey down, because he’d stopped hard in the corridor.

Nick was standing there, in a crisp navy suit, with his constant guard, Sam, at his side. And Angie.

A blazing fury burst from Joey’s dysfunctional chest, through his body, and without thinking of anything, feeling only his love for Tina and his fear for her, his anger and his frustration, Joey cocked his coiled fist and buried it in Don Pagano’s face.

He knocked Nick right off his feet.

Sam slammed Joey against the wall, one arm across his chest, the other cocked for a blow that might well kill him. Murder was carved all over the rocky crag the man called a face.

“Sam. No.”

Nick hadn’t raised his voice at all. He might have been simply disagreeing with a point in a conversation instead of sitting on the floor of a hospital corridor, blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. But Sam backed off immediately—he dropped his tree trunk of an arm from Joey’s chest and took a single step backward, his eyes on fire with threat.