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“I want that money,” I said, sitting up straighter.
Greta laughed. “Because you’re so hard-up for cash?”
“Because if Bianchi discovers I have the money, there’s no reason for him to go after Heidi.”
Her eyebrows reached for her hairline. “I always knew you were a big softy at heart, but really, Deo? Going to all this trouble for a woman you didn’t know existed two days ago?” She shook her head exaggeratedly. “You must think she’s got one magical pussy,amico.”
“As magical as a unicorn,” I joked. Or was it a joke? Christ, there was definitely something about the woman that was doing a number on my head.
But for the time being… “I’d like to send some of our men to sweep the buildings and see what they can find,” I said to my father, dropping my hands, giving up the hope that the muscles there would ever relax. At least not so long as a particular dark-haired, defiant doctor and her—possibly magical—cunt were gracing my bedroom.
“You don’t want to go with them?” my father asked, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
I shook my head. “I’d like to go cage one of the Free Birds and see if I can make him sing.”
Greta laughed. “Now, that sounds more like the Deo I know and love.”
“Do you want to come along for the show,amica?”
She waved her hand in the air dismissively. “Nah, I’ll stick around here and see what trouble I can get into.”
I sighed, wishing she was kidding. But I knew she wasn’t.
***
“How do you want to play this, boss?” Vito asked from the front passenger seat of my Ferrari 488.
We were parked outside The Coliseum, a bar that had once belonged to Belemonte but had closed after he vanished off the face of the earth—at least so far as the cops knew.
But closed bars didn’t usually have people moving around inside them.
“Tell Bruno and Carmine to head around back,” I told Vito.
They were parked in the Mercedes behind us, maybe just as eager to make some birds sing as I was. After all, these men were in league with the men who’d shot Aurelio.
Vito typed a message into his phone, and the Mercedes pulled out around us a moment later, circling the bar and disappearing around to the employee entrance in the back.
“We’ll give them a minute to get in place, then we’ll go in the front door,” I told Vito as I withdrew my Sig Sauer from its holster and checked the clip. “If they try to run, Bruno and Carmine will have the only other way out of the building covered.”
Vito nodded and flipped the safety off his guns. “How many of them are we keeping alive, boss?” he asked.
“It looks like there’s five or six men in there,” I said, squinting to watch through the gauzy curtains that covered the windows like we’d been doing for the past several minutes. “We only need one. But if any of them are kids, shoot to wound, not kill.” I didn’t need any more dead kids on my conscience.
Vito nodded. “Maybe a bullet hole or two will make the young ones think about a new career path,” he joked like maybe we were doing them a favor.
“I’m all about empowering youth.”
A minute had passed. I got out of the car, keeping my gun tucked inside my jacket for the time being. There was no sense in drawing an unwanted audience to this show.
Vito followed suit, and we crossed the street, keeping watch on the bar’s window. There were no signs of movement there at the moment, no indication we’d been spotted.
Outside the door, we paused, listening. The murmur of several raised voices seeped through the Coliseum’s door. They were arguing, but the sound was too muffled to make out the context of the dispute.
“Wait,” I said, holding up a hand. “The sounds in there will cover the lock; pick it,” I told him. It would give us the best shot at taking them by surprise.
He nodded, holstered his gun, and pulled out a lock kit, and I stepped behind him, blocking the view of any passerby as he deftly worked the lock free.
Perfetta.
