Everyone in the Bay Area knows the Coppola family. They shop at the same grocery stores as the elite do, eat at the same restaurants, and their kids are enrolled in the same private schools.
This doesn’t make their families less dangerous.
Which is why I don’t fuck with them.
“She should stay,” he answers like an afterthought. “Something tells me your girl doesn’t realize the role she plays in this.”
Talent’s jaw clenches, and he sits up in his chair. Anger and frustration radiate off him in waves, showing me a side of Talent I’ve never seen. He’s treacherous. “Did you know he was going to show up tonight?”
Giovanni smiles and says, “We expected him.”
Talent scoffs and shakes his head. “Have you known where he was this entire time?”
Wilder rests his hand on top of Talent’s as if to say, watch your mouth.
Giovanni pivots to confront Talent. In the blink of an eye, the man who’s dripped charisma cuts it off like a faucet, embodying the very description of a deadly Mafioso. “You know the answer to that as well as I do, Talent. He managed to outrun us, until today when an acquaintance spotted him. If he didn’t show up on his own tonight, we planned to bring him in ourselves.”
“The cops don’t know anything. I’ve been stringing them along,” Phillip cries out. “Let me explain.”
With a curt nod, the man sitting closest to Giovanni stands to his feet and pulls a gun from his waistband and aims it directly at Phillip’s head. I suck in a sharp breath, but no one else in the room bats an eye at the nightmare unfolding before us. Talent places his hand on my thigh and squeezes my knee, but I find little comfort in his attempt to ground me.
“Don’t waste our time with your futile lies, Phillip. There’s a long list of offenses to answer for.” Giovanni rocks back and forth in his seat with his hands in front of him like a prayer.
“Nothing comes in or out of my territory without my knowledge—not a dime bag of dirt weed, and certainly not the heroin you were running for the competition on daddy’s fleet. Was the inventory I hired you to transport not enough to pay the bills? Or is the problem that you used it as a personal stash and got yourself in a bind?” Giovanni asks cynically. He waves Phillip away before he can answer for himself. “The day you got picked up by the FBI was the luckiest day of your life, but it only extended the inevitable. And it gave you more time to fuck shit up.”
The gunman whips Phillip across the face with his weapon.
I take Talent’s hand, and he pulls my chair closer to his.
“Your second offense was making a deal with the feds,” Giovanni continues nonchalantly, like this is the lesser of the evils. “And your third and final offense was turning your back on Talent Ridge.”
“I’m sorry,” Phillip cries. His face is bloody and bruised. “Talent, please.”
“I never liked this guy. I tried to tell you over and over, Talent. He has no character,” Giovanni says, turning his attention to Talent. “But it ends tonight. He’s left me no choice.”
“Wait.” Talent sits straight, blocking Giovanni’s view of me. “Do what you have to do, but she doesn’t need to be here for this.”
The air conditioner kicks on, and goose bumps form on my skin. I shiver, but it’s not from the cold.
“Fine, go,” Giovanni says, dismissing us with a flick of his hand. “We’ll talk later.”
Talent stands to his feet and quickly drapes his jacket over my shoulders, like it could possibly serve as a shield between the horrors of this room and me. Talent practically carries me away, and we don’t make it through the door before the other shoe drops.
“Let Inez know I’m ready to talk when she is,” Giovanni says in an even tone.
I look over my shoulder in fear and shock, and he winks.
“Keep walking,” Talent mumbles, pushing me far away from the meeting room.
Stepping out of the hallway to discover the party hasn’t slowed down fills me with fresh anger. I turn on Talent and shove my palms into his chest, but he quickly spins me around and urges me to keep walking. A server carrying a tray of drinks walks by and smiles, and it’s all I can do not to knock it from her hands. The tables have been rearranged to expand the dance floor. The fog and light show distorts the faces of the dancing bodies who drink, celebrate, and move like a man isn’t going to be killed in the other room.
I shake free from Talent’s jacket once we’re outside and hurl it at him in an attempt to run away. My heels click on the concrete floor, and I quickly realize I won’t get far in stilettos and stop to unbuckle them from around my ankles. Talent catches up and gathers me in his arms.
“Go away,” I shout with a swelling rage.
“Lydia, get in the fucking car,” he growls, carrying me over to the limo. “I’ll explain everything once we get home.”
Our driver looks the other way as Talent shuffles me into the back of the vehicle, ignoring our argument like it’s just another day on the job. If he works for the Coppolas, I can only imagine the things he turns a blind eye to. Drug deals. Human trafficking. Murder.
Inside the limousine, I climb as far away from Talent as I can. He sits right beside the door, slamming it closed behind him.
“You lied to me,” I say, unbuckling my heels.
Talent drops his head against the headrest and exhales. “I didn’t lie to you, Lydia.”
My shoe hits him in the chest, and I lift the second to throw next. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
Scrubbing his hands up and down his face, he claps his hands on his knees and says, “Twelve weeks ago, the Vogels were picked up by the FBI and ATF for transporting heroin on their yachts. It was a small run from San Francisco to Mexico, but because it crossed borders, the big guns got involved.”
“Yeah, I heard that part. What does that have to do with me?”
He looks away as the limo driver merges into traffic, heading back to Grand Haven. And I know that whatever Talent is about to admit is big, because he doesn’t look at me when he says, “We got word right away, but their arrests didn’t go public because Phillip Vogel turned informant. Phillip made a deal he couldn’t keep. He couldn’t prove he runs drugs for Giovanni because the stash he was caught with belonged to some city gang, and Gio doesn’t use him regularly. So, his only tie to the Coppolas was through me.”
“But you said—”
“I’m not in the mob, Lydia. That’s the truth. Nothing ties the Ridges to organized crime, but my family has worked closely with their enterprise for a very long time. I was born into this life.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I say, but I know exactly what being born into a life I didn’t ask for is.
“My mom’s maiden name is Morelli,” he admits. Pamela Ridge has deep generational ties to the community, but her maiden name doesn’t ring a bell. “When she was a kid, her uncle, Lando Morelli, owned a sandwich shop downtown that seconded as a meeting place for the Coppola crime family. Once a week, they’d meet in the basement, and as a kid, my mom would serve them food and refreshments. They’d tip her. They grew to love her, but she didn’t understand what kind of people her uncle worked with until she got older. And by then, it was too late.”