I had a feeling that things would go there after doing my research on Dempsey and learning that he had that in him. It only pissed me off even more that he’d gone anywhere near my boy with that mentality in him. I’d asked Marvin not to come but to be on standby just in case things did take a turn but held out hope that they wouldn’t.
Of course, sending Gabe with them is self-explanatory. I’m hoping Marvin can diffuse the situation before my son gets it into his head to take matters into his own hands. That’s my job. At least this whole situation had alerted me to the fact that I had eyes on me, men and women who were trying to bring me down, and even worst, they were planning on going after Pop.
I’m not worried too much about that. I’d spent the last twenty or so years cleaning up the spills from my family’s past and plugging up any holes left behind. The fact that ninety-five percent of our businesses were now legit was also in my favor, but it’s that last five percent I have to take care of now before this thing gets out of hand.
This means I can’t make any drastic moves in the near future, like going after Ricci on my own. Gabe hasn’t said or done anything in the last few days since coming back home, but I can’t shake the feeling that all is not as it seems.
His team is convinced that he’s not up to anything, but what do they know? The boy had dragged them off to Sicily without them being the wiser until they got there. At least I know he’s protected with them around if nothing else since they’ve already lost the fight even if they don’t know it yet.
The fact that Gabe got the drop on them the first go-round means he’s set the stage for all interactions going forward. I know my son; he’s never going to give them the lead, not ever. They’re his now. Whatever, I’ll figure it out. Right now, I’ve got this hump Dempsey and his cohorts to deal with.
“Tommy, I need you and the boys to work on something for me.”
“What is it, boss? Anything.”
“This cazzo, Dempsey, I want you to find everything you can on him, his family, his friends, anyone who’s associated with him. I wanna know who he owes, where he gets his dry cleaning done, where his kids go to school, who his wife is fucking while he’s out being a racist piece of shit. I want it all; you got me? Go back twenty, thirty years, to when he joined the academy.”
“Alright, boss, but uh, ain’t they watching you now?”
“I give a fuck who they watch. If their eyes offend me, pluck those shits out.”
“Everybody?”
“Everybody.” I’m gonna burn this motherfucker to the ground.
GABRIEL
It only took five minutes into the car ride back home for me to realize what Pop had said to my Uncle Marvin, or at least for me to get the gist of it. He spent the time switching off between trying to comfort his son and keeping me calm. I don’t know why they thought I would do something; I hadn’t said a word, and Lance didn’t give a shit about some low-wage scumbag with one too many bags of Doritos under his belt using some outdated insult that really just boils down to calling him lazy.
And as if to prove my point, Lancelot said just as much to his dad. “Dad, that word doesn’t mean the same thing to me as it does to the people on television and in the news. Gabe and I defanged that word when we were about ten.”
“Oh! How did you do that?” Lance looked at me as if to ask if I wanted to explain.
“You do it.”
“Okay, remember how Gabe and I met? When those kids used to bully me? Well, when Gabe went back to New York that time, I think we were like seven, he did some research, like a lot. You know how Gabe is. Anyway, like a few years later, he told me what the word actually meant and why people use it incorrectly. Gabe, you explain; you’re better at it than I am.”
“Fine! Basically, it boils down to this. That word, in a nutshell, means lazy. I simply told Lance that a people who built a whole nation over centuries without pay while their families were being split up and sold as free labor can’t realistically be called lazy. It’s a myth, a word used to inflict pain and fear, but it’s just a lie.”
“So, you see, dad, I’ve known that since I was ten, so that word says more about the person throwing it around than the recipient.”
“And what does it say about them?”
“That they’re afraid, of what I don’t know. It’s like when you’re in a fight, and you’re losing, so you use dirty tactics to regain the upper hand.”
“Like Tyson biting Holyfield’s ear in ninety-seven.”
“What do you boys know about that? You weren’t even born yet.” He looked back at us in the backseat while he drove. At least the twinkle was back in his eye.
“Classic boxing on Hulu Unc.” He popped a gut laughing, and his voice went back to his happy-go-lucky self once he was sure we were okay. We still went for ice cream, though, and sat like good little boys before we were released back into the wild.
He dropped us off at home so Lance could pick up his car. “I’ll see you later; gotta go make sure dad is really okay.” We shook on it, and he left. Pop was already back, so I went to see about him as well. Dealing with his anger helped keep my mind off of Gia, but by the time bedtime rolled around and all of my defenses were down, I kept imagining what Lance had described earlier about seeing her leaving school with her grandma.
I threw myself into my plot against Ricci as a way to cope, as a way to not go to her, to make sure she was okay. I thought of just sneaking into her house to watch her sleep, just to reassure myself that she was okay. But in the end, I gave up on the idea because it would serve no purpose other than to prolong the inevitable.
I slept fitfully and woke up still feeling unsettled, but in the shower, I did think of a way to put my mind to rest. I’ll just send a member of my team to sit on her house and maybe follow her to Virginia when they leave for a few days at least. It was an awesome idea, and I thought Denver would be perfect for the job, but before I could hunt him down to tell him what my plans were, the twins came bounding down the stairs.
“Gabe, is she with you?”
“Is who with me?”
“Gia, Gia’s missing.”
“What did you say?”
“Look, she sent this, but it was scheduled for delivery, which means she wrote this a while ago, like hours maybe.” Anna held out her phone for me to see, and at first, I couldn’t make sense of the words or figure out why she was so upset. Then I was flying down the outside steps two at a time.
No-no-no Gianna, what the fuck did you do? Her grandmother was coming out of her house when I peeled into the driveway. “Where is she? Where’s Gianna?”
“I was just about to come to your home; Gianna’s gone, she took off.”
“Took off? Took off where?” Why is nothing making sense?
She held out a handwritten note that basically said she needed some time to herself to deal with everything that happened and not to look for her and not to worry. This one gave the impression that she was coming back, while the one my sister received was an outright goodbye. I felt blood gush from my nose for the first time in about ten years.
“Gabe, Gabriel, young man.” This is my fault, my fault. Even those words made no sense to me; they just sounded like gibberish in my ears. The world was spinning, and I couldn’t get a grip, especially with the boulder on my chest. Eloise’s face kept blitzing in and out of my vision, and my head got so tight I barely registered the sound of wheels squealing over the pounding in my ears.