AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Morning, O’Reilly.” Capecce’s tone was civil, his smile professional. “Are you here to meet with Jennings?”
That’s how they were playing it, was it? Fine. He could play nice too. “I am.”
Capecce nodded. “Could you tell him I’ll be stopping by his office later this afternoon? I’m going to need the final list of charges, preferably before the weekend. He’s still in court right now, though, and I need to head out in a few minutes.”
Incredulous, Roman stared at the man for a long minute before flicking his gaze over to Sabina and then back again. “You’re kidding me, right? That’s all you have to say?” Didn’t he care at all about the woman he was supposedly marrying in two months? Where was the anger? He should have been swinging at Roman, ready to defend his girl.
Not just a hypocrite, then. One blind to what was right before his nose. That sort of guy deserved to have his girl stolen from him. Sabina would be better off without Lorenzo Capecce.
Not that she was any of his concern anymore.
Capecce cleared his throat. “I see little point in recriminations. I think your actions speak loudly enough about what kind of man you are. I don’t need to add my voice to the mix.”
Irritation crawled up his spine like a million spiders. “I was just doing my job, which happens to be upholding the law that you are supposed to represent.”
Capecce breathed a dry laugh and shook his head. His eyes shifted again, dimming. “Nowhere in the law does it say to get to the father by breaking the daughter’s heart.”
Roman unfolded his arms just to fold them again the opposite way. “Since when do you care about her heart? You know what I saw in my six months undercover, Capecce? I saw Sabina. I saw G. I saw Val and Tony and cousins from both families. But I didn’t really see you, now did I? Where were you when you should have been at her side?”
Capecce’s lips pressed into a thin line. For one blessed second, Capecce looked like he’d haul back his arm and let loose—something Roman found himself itching for. But in the next moment, Capecce relaxed his jaw, uncurled his fingers. “I’m going to do all I can to make sure you get out of Chicago alive. I’m just not sure right now if the desire is genuine or if I only want you to live long enough to regret this.”
Coming from a Mafia lawyer, it wasn’t much of a guess. “I know which one I’d put money on. I have a feeling before this is over, you and I will settle this score, Capecce.”
Capecce’s shoulders sank down, making him look suddenly tired. He shook his head. “There is no score, O’Reilly. At this point, I’d say we both lost.” He looked back at Sabina to illustrate his point. She stood against the wall, hands clasped in front of her and eyes cast anywhere but at them.
Roman had never wanted to hurt her. He hated the Mafia, but he wasn’t so blind that he didn’t realize there were innocents caught up in it—like Sabina. He’d known that from their first conversation. She was just a young woman who loved her family, who never saw the evil they were doing. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her. But he couldn’t have really let himself care about her. Right? He wasn’t that big a sap.
When Sabina tried inconspicuously to wipe away a rogue tear, something inside him knotted up and tied his tongue. He had been telling himself all night that he couldn’t possibly care for the daughter of a mafioso. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so sure his heart had gotten the message.
“Yes, Governor. I’ll be sure and tell him.” Lorenzo chuckled, mainly because he was expected to. “Have a good weekend, sir, and give your wife Manny’s best.”
His smile faded as he replaced the tarnished brass receiver of his candlestick phone. That was the last of his scheduled phone calls, thank heavens. He wasn’t sure how much more glad-handing he had in him.
He sighed, leaned his forehead onto his hands and closed his eyes. He supposed he should count his afternoon as a victory. It was all but guaranteed that Manny would be out of jail before business halted on Saturday. Between the mayor, the governor, and a few other politicians who had been well paid over the years, the charges weren’t going to stick. The more serious charges of murder would be dropped for lack of evidence—though the evidence wasn’t so lacking that they would have dropped them for the average joe—and the bootlegging would either be ignored or paid for in fines that would do little damage to Manny’s wealth.
O’Reilly hoped to nail him for his holdings in the Levee, but the evidence he had for that truly was flimsy. The establishments from which Manny had made his money before Prohibition were screened through several underlings who would take the rap for it before Manny would. And since everyone knew they were underlings, they’d probably be let go, too, unless one of them promised to turn.
But Lorenzo knew that wouldn’t happen. Omerta wouldn’t allow it. It was one thing to kill another Sicilian, to prey on him and destroy his family, but there was a code of honor. One simply didn’t rat out a fellow Sicilian to the authorities—a lesson he was raised knowing. Authorities couldn’t be trusted because authorities could be bought.
A crushing truth, when you were too poor to do the buying. But Manny wasn’t that, not these days. “The government isn’t my enemy anymore,” he had said to Lorenzo that morning, smiling and leaning back on his thin cot as if it were a luxurious chaise in a resplendent boudoir. “The government is made of men who are easily…persuaded, let us say, to my way of thinking. My only enemy, Enzo, is my competition, and as long as you get me out of here soon, they will be easily managed, too. We all experience these hiccups. We just have to be sure it doesn’t turn into more, or they’ll see it as weakness and move in on my territory. That’s when we’d have problems.”
With a few phone calls, he had turned the whole situation into a victory for Manny. But certainly not a victory for the law, and Lorenzo couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just sullied his own hands by helping his godfather circumvent justice.
Criminal lawyers were hired all the time to defend the guilty—hadn’t he participated in countless debates about that in law school? Everyone was entitled to a defense, rich or poor, guilty or innocent. It was his duty to do whatever he could for a client. Any client.
That didn’t make his hands feel any cleaner right now.
A knock sounded on his open door. “Lorenzo? I think we have a problem.”
Lorenzo turned weary eyes on his mentor and boss. A frown furrowed Bernard Stein’s brows. In a habit Lorenzo had come to know well during his years in Stein’s law classes, the older man jammed a hand into the pocket of his suit jacket and jiggled a fistful of loose change.
“What is it, Mr. Stein?”
Stein offset his jaw in contemplation. “Miss Gregory just told me that you’re on the Mancari case. Now, son, I know you tend to think the best of people, but don’t you know that man’s a gangster?”
Oh, boy. He should have realized this would be a problem. Lorenzo cleared his throat, prepared to come clean.
As usual, Stein didn’t wait for an answer. “I know everyone’s entitled to a defense, but I don’t want this to be known as a firm for the Mafia. It can be tempting—don’t think I don’t know that. Those men pay their lawyers well.”
