Mr. Corporate (Mister #3) (35 page)

“You have no control, do you?” Mysterious is sitting across from me in Five’s private jet as we try to race Victoria back to the East Coast. He’s drinking a mint julep, complete with a few sprigs of mint leaf sticking out of it, and something about that is so wrong. I get he’s from Kentucky, but who the fuck drinks mint juleps?

I decide to ignore him.

“I mean, this chick, Corporate. She’s got you by the balls, man. She’s got us all by the balls. And I’ll tell you what, I don’t care for it. I’m the master in my relationships. My woman would—”

“Would you shut the fuck up?” Five says, from across the plane. He’s got the
Wall Street Journal
spread out in front of him, scanning the financial page like this is just another day.

“What?” Mysterious says. “Don’t get pissy with me, Rutherford. This chick is gonna ruin everything.”

“Use my real name again, motherfucker,” Five says, looking up, expressionless, “and I’ll throw you out of this jet from thirty thousand feet.”

I have to hide my smile. Not many people talk to Paxton Vance that way. But Pax just shrugs it off and says, “Don’t wet your panties,
Five
. Corporate’s one of us. So what if he knows your real name? And I’m just fucking with him, anyway. You’re so fucking serious.”

“Yeah,” Oliver says. He’s also been doing his best to ignore the fact that shit is going wrong in just about every way at the moment. “Which means we cut him slack when he needs it, Pax. And he needs it, OK? I know Victoria better than you do. So I know there’s no stopping her once she’s got an idea in her head. And it’s partly our fault for encouraging her last night. So shut the fuck up and chill out. We’re gonna land less than an hour behind her, so we’ve got time. Five’s got the addresses of all the Gori businesses and we’ve narrowed them down to two or three possible places where she might confront him. Until we’re on the ground, just drop it.”

I have to hand it to Oliver Shrike. He’s always been in control of his shit. Maybe it is weird that he never has a girlfriend, but whatever. He’s good people. He must have a valid reason for that. He’s not excitable. In fact, Oliver and Five have a lot in common and it occurs to me, maybe they’ve known each other for a long time. Maybe they are related or something?

“We’ve all got a lot at stake here, so I get it,” Five says, folding his paper and pushing it aside to reach for his coffee. “You’re worried. And you’re next, right?”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Pax asks.

“Well, we know more than we told Tori,” Five says. “She thinks this is the end game. She really thinks Lucio Gori is the one who set us up.”

Five looks at me and I have no escape, so I just shrug. I’m not telling him shit unless I have to. And I don’t have to
yet
. I’m not convinced this is all tied back to what I suspect. Best to keep that secret under the hood a little longer.

“But it’s not the end game. None of this Lucio shit adds up, does it Corporate?”

I shrug again. Keep fishing asshole. I’m not gonna bite.

“So you’re next, Mysterious,” Five says. “Then Oliver, probably. Lucio cannot be our final target; it can’t be that easy. So you better step your shit up, son. And pull yourself together.”

“Maybe we’re wrong?” Pax says, taking a seat across from me. “Maybe it’s not who we think.”

But he doesn’t ask it like a question. He doesn’t ask it because he knows his theory is weak. I know this is tied back to Liam. They know this is tied back to Liam. But what they don’t know is how Liam got involved.

I don’t know that either. So I keep my mouth shut and think about all the moving parts in this machine.

We each have a theory. Even Nolan and Mac have one, but we’ve thrown those out. I don’t think Nolan’s sister, Claudette, is the mastermind behind all this. Besides, she wasn’t around back when we were accused of raping that girl. She was off causing trouble somewhere else. And Allen, the reappearing thorn in Mac’s side,
was
there. But he’s just not smart enough to pull off a con like this. Besides, he could’ve gone down with us.

Should’ve gone down with us, I correct myself.

“We’re not wrong,” Oliver says. “It’s definitely Liam calling these shots. He’s pissed off that West stole that treasure. And you know what? I can’t believe I’m saying that with a straight face. Who the fuck gets caught up in some kind of buried treasure scheme?”

He’s looking at me with an accusatory glare. “Hey,” I say, throwing up my hands. “I was seven years old. I didn’t ask to find that shit.”

“But you played along,” Five says, our temporary alliance gone.

“I was
seven
. What kind of seven-year-old doesn’t wish he’d find buried treasure?”

“Your life is some kind of
Goonies
movie sequel, Corporate,” Pax says, smiling.

I smile back, because whatever. We’re all in this together now, like it or not. We’re a team.

“I’m waiting for the cool shit to start. Maybe we’ll get to play the bones with sexual torture devices?”

Pax, Oliver, and I all laugh. Fucking
Goonies
was a favorite in the frat house when we were partying.

“Laugh it up, you assholes,” Five says, opening up his laptop. “And you won’t have to wait long for your shit to hit the fan, Mysterious.” Five takes a sip of his coffee. “Like I said, you’re next.”

“We’ll see,” Pax mutters, finding a loose thread on his suit coat to pick.

I shrug. “Maybe you’re right,” I tell Pax. “Maybe it’s not Liam and this Lucio fuck will get what’s coming and everything will go back to normal.”

“Normal?” Oliver says, swiveling in his chair like a kid. “I don’t think the lives we were living before all this started back up were anything I’d call normal.”

“Mr. Five,” the flight attendant says in a soft, apologetic voice. “We just got word that the Mister jet has landed. Miss Arias took a cab from the airport. They’ve got a tail on her. We’re a little ahead of schedule, so we’ll be landing in about thirty minutes.”

“Good,” Five says. “Make sure the helicopter is ready. Mysterious, I hope you can land that thing in Brooklyn. Because if not, Corporate can kiss his girlfriend goodbye. My associate just sent me a slew of reports about Mr. Lucio Gori’s suspected offenses.” Five stops talking and looks straight at me. “Do you want to know? Or not?”

“Tell me,” I say, my heart beating faster than ever. “I want to know just who this fuck is. I want to know all of it so when I kill that motherfucker, there’s not a drop of remorse in my blood.”

“Sex trafficking being the most serious on this list. Of course, he was never charged, or even brought under suspicion. His father had deep pockets and connections that go back more than fifty years. Alonzo Gori, Lucio Gori Senior’s maternal grandfather, started a trucking company in Brooklyn in the early sixties and since then their territory has grown steadily. Gori Senior was made boss in 2001, after he killed his own father in an argument regarding online gambling.”

He pauses there, waiting to see if I say anything.

But I don’t. I know when to keep my mouth shut.

“Since then, most of the online sites have been shuttered, and business moved away from drugs and towards the sex slave business due to increased demand in other burgeoning crime families, especially the Russians.”

He stops again, but I stay silent.

“OK,” Five says. “You can keep your own confidence if you want, Corporate. But this shit will all come out in the end.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Pax says. Apparently this is news to him, which should make me feel smug. Five is clearly his source. Apparently Mr. Mysterious isn’t omnipotent.

“We can wait,” Five says. “No one’s life is on the line or anything, right?”

“Just get on with it, will you?” I snap. “If I had more info you needed, I’d fill you in.”

“Right,” Five says, looking back down at his computer. “An unnamed girl got away about fifteen years ago”—Five glances at me to make sure I picked up on the timeline, and I have—“and a sting operation was put in place based on her private testimony to a judge.”

“I guess we can safely assume that was Victoria?” Oliver says.

I ignore him as Five continues. “She disappeared before the trial and nothing ever came of it, aside from rescuing about half a dozen girls from a slave house in Brooklyn. So looks like Lucio has been biding his time. But now that Victoria is on her way back to confront him, all bets are off as to how he plans on paying her back. So there you go, Corporate. You keep your secrets. But if something happens to your girlfriend, don’t blame us.”

I swallow hard as the seriousness of what we’re doing hits me again. Like a fucking brick to the chest.

“Don’t worry,” Pax says, leaning over to clap me on the shoulder. “She’s gonna be OK. We got your back, bro. No matter what, we got your back.”

I believe him, of course. Pax doesn’t say shit he doesn’t mean.

But there’s so much more going on than they know.

I do have more secrets.

Chapter Forty-Seven - Victoria

The main hub for the Gori crime family is Flats Trucking, a large warehouse with a small five-truck fleet that has no purpose whatsoever other than the obvious cover they need for their illegal money laundering. I can remember cops being there all the time when I was a kid. I used to think,
Finally. They will go to jail and I will never have to see any of them again. Lucio will be locked away and I will be safe.

But they were never arrested. They never went to jail. I was never safe. My adopted father was the only who cared back then, and he wasn’t even in the area. He made some kind of deal with Lucio and took me far enough away to let people forget.

“He’s reasonable,” my father said that day. “He understands when he can’t win.”

I used to believe that.

No. Wait, I never really believed it. I wanted to think my father is all-powerful. That he was the strongest man alive. That he could save me from anything because he talked Lucio Gori into letting me go fifteen years ago.

But it was a deal with the devil, as they say.

So no. No one is clean in this. Not the Gori crime family. Not my father. Not me.

I get dropped off about three blocks away from the trucking company. They don’t hang out there anyway, it’s just a front. No, I get dropped off at ground zero for the Gori family.

Hederman’s Bar.

There are three or four bars where Lucio always worked and hung out. But Hederman’s was always his first choice.

So it’s my first choice now.

I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I just feel the need. Some kind of internal need to confront him. The only recording device I have is a cheap pay-as-you-go phone I bought, along with a fake leather purse, at the airport. I doubt the sound quality will be great inside my purse, but I switch on the voice recorder as I approach my destination.

There are no windows to look in from the outside, but there are plenty of ways for them to see out and it starts with the CCTV camera mounted at the corner of the front door.

The bar is always locked. You knock, you wait, they come, or they don’t. You go in by invitation only.

I don’t need to knock. It opens just as my knuckles are grazing the old, weather-beaten wood.

A man appears on the other side, someone I have never seen before. Young, muscular, frightening.

He doesn’t ask who I am or what I want. That’s not his job. His job is to open the damn door, so that’s all he does.

I step into the hazy darkness. It smells like cigar smoke and stale whiskey. There are four men playing pool in the back, three couples having lunch in the dark red booths along the perimeter, and no sign of Lucio Junior.

I stare at the bartender, who is doing his best to ignore me, but failing. When he notices me noticing him, he ducks his head and begins wiping down the bar.

Lucio does that to people.

Scares them.

“Violeta,” the smooth voice says from the far side of the bar.

The way he says that name makes my stomach clench in fear. I hate that name, I hate that name, I hate that name.
Keep calm
, I tell myself.
Just keep calm
.