Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75737 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
"I know, Luca, I fucked up," he said, shaking his head.
"She's looking for something. And she hasn't found it yet. I doubt she's done here. I need you to get some more men on this. If Angelo needs more help with the cameras, get someone on that too."
"Already done," he agreed, going for his phone as I turned to make my way back to the office.
"I have nothing for you, Luca," Angelo told me when I moved in behind him. "I'll try to run the plates. All I can tell you is she is gorgeous and must spend more time hitting the pavement than you do."
"She's South American, most likely. That's something. I haven't heard about anyone stepping up from that part of the world. But we'll look into it. Until then, I need more eyes on these monitors, more feet on the ground. I'm having it all set up. You direct them when they get here. And I want first call if you see her again."
"Will do, Luca. Again, sorry. There's no excuse."
And there wasn't.
At least he knew that.
Knowing that the consequences of fucking up twice could mean him standing between containers with a bullet in his brain meant that he wouldn't let this shit happen again.
"I want an update tomorrow. Someone needs to have answers for me."
"We will have something," Angelo agreed, giving me a nod.
"And have someone figure out what is coming in those containers from South America. If we can find what she is after, maybe that will lead to her."
"Got it," he agreed, reaching for his phone, calling in his security crew.
Half the organization would be pulling an all-nighter.
Once upon a time, when I was the one doing the grunt-work, I figured I would feel guilty when put in the position of power.
But the fact of the matter was, when you fucked up, it was your job to fix it.
Security was lax.
We'd known peace for too long.
Clearly, the peace was over.
And the new war was starting the way all the greatest wars have.
With a beautiful woman.
Chapter Two
Romy
That was too close.
What I did had inherent risks. I knew that. I accepted that. I weighed the pros and cons, the possible outcomes, and I decided what I was doing was worth whatever might come my way.
There were worse consequences, worse outcomes.
Besides, for a supposed mafia stronghold, the security had been surprisingly lax.
Or so I thought.
But the first three nights, I'd been able to walk around relatively freely, having learned the general routes of the security guards who did their rounds. And, luckily for me, if one happened to go a rogue route from their usual, they were preceded by their clomping footsteps and the almost constant smell of cigar smoke.
It was child's play avoiding them.
As for the cameras, I didn't give them much thought. I never planned to be around long. The intel I'd gotten had said the container I was after should have docked already, been unloaded, placed in a pile.
I should have been able to find it, crack it open, and retrieve what I needed out of it, then gotten back out before it mattered if they saw me on camera, before it could have led to some nasty interrogations. Or worse. This was the mob we were talking about, after all.
And I was nobody but a stranger invading their turf.
I'd done some research on the plane ride back from Venezuela, figuring it was smart to know what you were getting into if you were going to be doing something illegal, something as dangerous as encroaching on organized crime territory.
The docks, as they were commonly referred to, even if the official name for the place was the Central Jersey Port, had been owned and operated by the New Jersey Cosa Nostra for thirty-nine years, having been purchased at an impressive bid by Antony Grassi.
There wasn't much to be found around about the Grassi family, unlike their connections to the Five Families—the New York City—mafia, they'd managed to stay relatively out of the papers, out of the prison system. So there wasn't much to report. Though there had been some chatter about missing persons who'd had mob ties. Anyone who knew anything about the mafia knew that there were no such things as 'missing persons,' just bodies that had yet to be found.
Being on their docks without permission could easily warrant an execution-style murder then a body tossed into the ocean.
Cement boots, as the saying went.
I wasn't afraid of dying.
I was afraid of dying before doing what I needed to get done.
That was why I wasn't deterred.
Even though my heart was threatening to break out of the confines of my chest as I drove down the highway away from the docks, trying to put some distance between the man who'd been right on my heels and me.