Now, I don’t know about anyone else, but the idea of falling from the second story wasn’t as terrifying as the idea of dropping from somewhere higher. I was steadily climbing, passing our floor and still rising. I grabbed the phone and pressed the single button, but it was dead. My hand went for my cell phone, though I didn’t know exactly who I was going to call, when the elevator stopped on the seventeenth floor. The bell dinged and the doors opened. A group of men stood waiting to get on, but I didn’t care; I was getting off this mechanical menace!
As I started to push my way through them, I recognized, to my alarm, they were converging around me. I opened my mouth to scream as several pairs of hands took hold of me, one of them reaching around, covering my face with a rag. A sweet odor assaulted my senses and blackness hit me.
When I came to my head was still groggy. I wondered if this was just another strange bad dream, but, as soon as my focus returned, I knew this was reality. I was leaned back in a chair with a man on each side holding me upright and another man seated in front of me, studying me intently.
Clarity was returning as I tried to pull myself free. My battle was short lived, and they pushed me roughly back down into the chair.
“Don’t be so upset Annalisa, not yet anyway, I just need to talk with you,” the man across from me murmured in a condescending tone.
“Let go of me!” I growled, still trying to jerk myself free from the men around me. “This isn’t how you tell someone you need to speak with them!”
“If you promise to sit still, I’ll have them turn you loose. I honestly don’t think you’ll want to leave before you hear what I have to say, if you love your husband, that is.”
That hit me harder than the rag that knocked me out. I stopped struggling immediately and the hands released. I think I’d have rather been plummeting to my death in the elevator than for this to have anything to do with Micah.
“What’s this about?” I asked, calmness trying to replace my angered fear.
“My name is D’Angelo,” he began.
I knew the name; this was deadly serious. In Micah’s former mafia life, he obeyed this man’s every command and the command was always to kill someone. As far as I knew, I was the only person to ever survive those orders.
“Do you know who I am?” he asked, low and even.
I could only nod.
“Good. I trust I can ask my assistants to leave and you won’t cause me any problems, correct? We do need to speak in private.”
“Yes,” I tried to say confidently, but it came out as a whisper.
He looked up at the men and they left immediately. He was as unanimated as stone until the door clicked shut, and then he began, “It wasn’t supposed to go quite this far.” An odd smile spread on his leathered face. He was very much Italian. His hair was deep brown and graying along the sides, his eyes were a penetrating black/brown and they had that vacant quality that Micah’s used to get when he had to kill someone. “You weren’t supposed to get married until next month and when I found out it had been moved up, I couldn’t get to you quick enough.”
I was mute, not by choice, but by fright.
“You didn’t move things up due to a pregnancy, did you? That would only complicate matters for Micah.”
“N-no, we just…” I couldn’t explain and he evidently didn’t want to hear an explanation anyway, he just wanted to be certain I wasn’t pregnant. My heart thudded against my chest. It was possible I could be, but I would only be days along and there was no way I was telling him that bit of information.
“Good, then maybe we can salvage this whole thing after all. Micah would never stop looking for you if there was a baby involved.”
The heat in my body felt as if it had been drained and I was now aware of how very cold my hands had become as I unconsciously wrung them together, “What do you mean? Do you have plans to kill me?”
D’Angelo laughed softly, “Of course not, my dear, that simply wouldn’t work to help my cause. I did consider that, but I want him angry, not heartbroken. You’re going to leave your husband, and he’s coming back to the family by his own free will.”
“There is nothing you can do to make me leave him,” I said through a quivering voice. In a matter of moments, I was going to discover how wrong I was about my statement.
“Of course there’s nothing I can do, but I won’t need to when you know what’s at stake.” He reached behind him and picked up a folder and pulled a handful of papers from it and laid one on the table in front of me, “Do you know what this is?”
I could see at a glance that it was a contract on David Gavarreen. I looked up at D’Angelo; there was no need to say the vile words when it was obvious the piece of paper represented the end of David’s life.
“Yes, you know what it is,” he replied when he saw the look in my eyes and took note of the fact that I was refusing to state it. “He should have died months ago, but the family recognized the serious flaw in removing him for his disregard of policy. Giorgio Gavarreen lost one son to you and he couldn’t take losing the other for insubordination. He knows the rules, but he openly threatened the family should any harm come to his remaining son. Giorgio used his family’s position to get them to release Micah, but he won’t let go of David.”
“What does this have to do with my leaving Micah?” I asked, wondering if I was about to become some kind of trade for David’s life.
His hand went back to the folder and removed more papers and spread them on the table. “This is where you come in,” he stated.
To my horror it was plain to see he was showing me contracts on Giorgio, Celeste and Gwen. I felt faint, every ounce of bravery and stubbornness washed out of me. It was a sick relief to me that Micah’s name wasn’t among the contracts. I reached out and separated them to make certain I was seeing it correctly.
“No, his name isn’t there,” D’Angelo answered what hadn’t been asked.
“Would you have shown me if it were?”
“Our family gave the blessing for him to leave, and they don’t go back on their word.” He sounded angry for me asking that question. Evidently, he wasn’t used to someone questioning his integrity.
“Why all of them?” My eyes were beginning to sting with the need to release the pain slamming my senses.
“His entire family knows too much about everyone in our organization. Giorgio has financial dealings with every person, the money they have, what they did to earn it, how they have invested it, where they have invested it; if he goes ballistic he could take us all down.
“And then there is the issue of his lovely wife, Celeste. She’s created new lives for so many of our people, documents and records, complete histories. She helps create identities for those that do complicated hits so things can’t be traced back to the family. If she loses her husband and son, she could wreak havoc.”
He pulled Gwen’s contract away from the others and tapped his finger on it for emphasis. “Gwen is truly the worst of them all. She is our inside connection to law enforcement. We have nearly free reign in Louisiana because of her knowledge about what is happening and where. She keeps heads turned the proper direction when we have a mess to clean up or records and evidence that needs to be, well, let’s just say adjusted. She almost blew that trying to cover for Micah’s escapade with you.
“The FBI is still curious and she’s had to become more legalistic since then so she doesn’t end up in the federal pen. She has a whole rank of officers that are loyal to her. She’s played them like fools, but should she decide to change her ways, we’d be all but shut down in that state.”