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“Fuck you!” I reached for the phone, and Pete moved his hand away from me, laughing. “I trusted you to look for a clue, not ogle my fiancée.”
Pete’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Chill the fuck out. I’m just fucking with you. It doesn’t matter who they’re attached to, tits are tits.”
“Gia has been gone for weeks now. I am not in the mood for fucking games, Pete. Stop staring at her tits and help me figure out where the fuck she is.”
Pete paused the video and stepped in front of me, pressing his forehead against mine. “Talk to me like that again, and you’ll be taking Sal’s place on that table.”
“You wouldn’t,” I countered.
“Try me, baby bro.” Pete pointed his finger into my chest and shoved me back, causing me to lose my balance.
“She’s in AC.” Pete handed the cell phone to me. “Looks like The Flamingo Lounge off the boardwalk.”
Pete looked to Marco who nodded in confirmation. “Has to be.”
If anyone knew the interior of any strip club in the United States, it was my brothers. They ran a significant portion of the whorehouses and strip clubs across the country on behalf of the family. We had an interest in almost any business involving drugs, whores, guns, and gambling. There was always a slice of the pie, waiting for us to take it.
I looked at Sonny. “Drive us to AC.”
We arrived at The Flamingo Lounge around four o’clock in the morning. The parking lot had a few cars scattered about, but for the most part, it was desolate. Only a real degenerate would be at a strip club this early on a Tuesday. Atlantic City was the smaller East Coast version of Las Vegas. And just as corrupt.
We controlled our fair share of brothels out West and a handful scattered up the Atlantic Ocean, including those we owned along the shore in New Jersey. The DiSalvo crime family owned The Flamingo Lounge and most of the clubs and bars on this stretch along the boardwalk. They helped us break into the business after my father had taken over for Jimmy “Scags” Scaglione. The DiSalvos cut us in on some of the action, the rackets at the casinos included. But we were visitors here and had no place to come down with guns blazing.
“You let me handle this,” Pete warned, glancing at me over his shoulder in the front seat. “Don’t open that mouth of yours. I can’t walk into the club, demand to see Dante, and then accuse him of taking your girl. There’s an order to things. Understand?”
I knew the order of things in our world. Like my father, Pete always made it a point to emphasize common sense shit to me, as if I was an errant child who needed a reminder. When it came to Gia, I had no limits. I would do anything to get her back, and that made me a danger to my family. I knew it as much as Pete did. Love made me do crazy shit, and for Gia, I would do anything.
I held out my hand to keep Pete from going any further. “Got it, bro. Calm down. I won’t say a word.”
“You’ve been a loose cannon ever since your girl went missing,” he shot back, throwing his arm over the headrest, pinning me down with his menacing gaze. “Let me do the talking. Better yet, you can wait in the fucking car with Sonny.”
Sonny rolled his eyes at me in the rear view mirror. He was pissed that I somehow managed to get him added to Pete’s shit list. It didn’t take much to annoy my older brother. If it were up to him, he would cut me loose. But the old man had insisted I become a Made man like him and every other man in my family. Being Made wasn’t a choice for a Morelli. It was a rite of passage.
Pete and Marco exited the car, slamming their doors behind them. I was angry with myself for mouthing off to Pete and for getting both Sonny and me reprimanded for it. I hated the hierarchy in our family.
Pete allowed Marco to have more freedom than Sonny and me. Even so, Pete was still in charge of all of us. One day he would become the boss of this family. Not me, and certainly not Marco, though I had no doubt Marco wanted the chance to succeed the old man more than Pete.
Sonny turned around, resting his elbow on the center console. “Thanks for that, dickhead. I’m sick of Pete putting me in the fucking corner because you have to go and have a pissing match with him every hour.”
“Sorry, Son.” I leaned forward in my seat to meet his gaze. “He makes me so fucking mad. You don’t understand. With Gia missing, I’m not thinking straight.”
“I miss her, too, Lo. I want her back just as much as you. We will find Gia. And I will help you take down whoever had a hand in her kidnapping.”
I was about to answer Sonny when I heard the first pop of a gun followed by several others. Without hesitation, Sonny and I got out of the car and headed to the entrance of the strip club. Pete and Marco had only been inside for a few minutes. I leaned against the brick wall, to the right of the door, and Sonny pulled it out toward us, using it to shield his body.
I poked my head into the building and caught a glimpse of an empty stage and tables. Unlike most strip clubs, a bouncer wasn’t posted up at the door. He had to be close by, though. With my gun in hand and Sonny covering my back, I took one step into the club. But Sonny tugged on my shoulder, releasing his hold on the door as he moved me out of the way. A bullet sunk into the metal. One more. Then another.
We couldn’t go inside, not without getting shot. So, we waited a few seconds, contemplating our next move.
“We can’t leave my brothers in there,” I told Sonny.
“Go around the building,” he whispered. “There’s another entrance the girls use. It leads to the dressing rooms.”
Marco had taken Sonny under his wing while I was in college. It was my job to follow Paulie and learn how to be my father’s consigliere. And it was Sonny’s job to learn the family business. My brothers preferred to stick with whores, where my cousin Tony and his crew liked to deal in drugs and stolen cars. Our businesses were split between different crews and family members, so no one had too much power. But my father controlled all of us. We were pawns in his game, nothing more than his humble servants.
I sucked in a deep breath, holding my gun out in front of me. “Lead the way.”
Sonny glanced up at the security camera on the wall above us to check its movements. He waited until it turned to the left before he got in front of me and inched along the wall. I followed behind him, glancing over my shoulder as we made our way around back. We snuck into the building through the back door and into a large, open dressing room, full of vanities and racks of clothes.
