The case collapsed there and then.
Joey was freed from the court in a blur of camera flashes, yelling reporters, and dark looks from the court officials. The Prosecutor was hustled away by his team and the cops, as the watchers in the gallery—almost to a man and woman, supporters of Joey Diamonds—began cat-calling, laughing, and jeering. No amount of gavel bashing from the Judge could quiet them down. The uproar continued to ring in Joey’s ears as he was propelled from the court into a waiting limo, where he bounced onto the leather seat, and settled, breathless next to the serene, smiling Te Amo.
The limo slid away from the courthouse like a shark, into the teeming waters of New York City traffic. Joey was still trying to put his thoughts in some order, as Te Amo passed him a flute of chilled champagne and lay back in her seat, laughing.
Joey drank the slow bubbling liquid, and enjoyed the feeling as the cold worked its way down into his belly. It didn’t dampen the fire within, but it was an instructive portent of the cold revenge he would take on those who had put him in this position.
“He’s my brother?” Joey knew saying that was going to take some getting used to.
Te Amo shook her head, “Half-Brother. The Prosecutor Steven Rein, is actually…to give him his full name, Leoluca Cardinale. He was the product of an affair your father had in Calamonaci, Sicily while your mother was nursing you in New York.”
Joey blinked. “This makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense. Leoluca was a secret, he was raised a secret. Your father paid for his education, and when the time was right, a new identity. He was brought to the U.S. and sent to the best schools—the best law schools—and he was kept entirely separate from the family. But, and this is the important thing, still close to your father. What better resource to have for one of the five families than a Prosecutor who would work for your best interests? He rose through the ranks, gained a reputation for taking down Mafia soldiers. If you look at his records, the majority of them were from rival families of the Diamantis. Of course your father would throw Rein a succession of low level goons to keep up appearances, but nothing that would affect the upward mobility of the Diamantis.”
The rush from the courtroom to the limo was making all of this hard to take in. Joey’s whole life had been a parallel to Leoluca’s—where he had been schooled in the ways of the Mafia, its rituals, and workings, his half-brother had been guided through the legitimate world to an unparalleled position of influence.
The shock running through him was riding a wave of anger at his father’s betrayal of his mother, as well as skimming across the relief of the court case collapsing in the most dramatic fashion imaginable. Joey was a stew of conflicting emotions, bubbling in every direction.
Te Amo must have seen the complex look of disbelief on his face, because she took that moment to reach across the back seat and kiss him full on the mouth.
Immediately he could taste the tingle of cocaine on her lips, dusted into her lipstick. There was a thin crust of it on her tongue too that was mingling with his spit and the residue of champagne. The burst of it in his mouth lit up his head, and he kissed and pawed at her with all the hunger he could muster. She was grappling with the front of his trousers as their lips were crushed. Breath coming in snorts and grunts.
They were animals, bucking and crashing against each other on the white leather. As Te Amo unleashed Joey’s dick, she hiked up her dress and straddled him without taking her lips from his.
He slid deep into her easily. She was ready, open, warm, and wet around him. She began her rise and fall, biting on his tongue and running her fingers through his hair—yanking on it, tearing her lips away, and forcing his face into her cleavage. He could smell Chanel and fresh perspiration, her hair falling about his ears, her hands pushing his head harder into her body.
Te Amo was back in his arms. Could this day have gotten any more bizarre? He hadn’t seen her for years and thought that part of his life had been over for good after she’d found him with Sophia. But time heals as they say, and she felt good on his dick. Like she had been made for him.
He was lost in her now. All sense and sensibilities were gone in the moment. He could deal with his half-brother later. He could deal with his father later. He could deal with the fallout from the court case later.
Right now, all he wanted to do was deal with this.
“Te Amo,” he said to her warm flesh and caressing hands, “I’m so glad you’re back in my life, and I’m back in you.”
Te Amo giggled, pushed down hard on his lap, and ground her hips from side to side.
Joey was close to the finish now. The sense that a cliff edge was approaching, one that he would willingly leap from and fill her pussy with his seed. He raked at her back with his fingernails, not caring if the material was ripped. He would buy her a dozen more, a thousand more.
It didn’t matter. All that he cared about in that moment was the feeling of her around him, the weight of her body on his thighs and the taste of her body through the coke and the champagne.
It was a moment like no other he had every experienced. It was triumph incarnate. It was winning. It was…
Cold air rushed in the limo with a stink of garbage and a throaty growl of someone bodily exerting himself. A fist came out of nowhere and clattered into the side of Joey’s skull, sending him crashing into the door pillar on the other side of the limo.
Rough hands gripped Joey and yanked him out from under Te Amo.
“Hey!” was all he could manage to say before he was dragged from the vehicle and thrown onto the damp concrete. The place was cold, and in the hot August of New York, a shock to Joey’s body. It wasn’t the welcome chill of air conditioning; it was dank and rancid, like they were underground in a place vagrants might use as a toilet. The concrete beneath him reeked of dirt and piss. There was a sheen across the surface of the thin coating of mud that could have been oil. Whatever it was, it was going to ruin his suit, but Joey had more pressing things to worry about as a boot flashed out of nowhere and caught him in the guts.
The pain was a starburst of agony that rolled him into a ball, expecting another blow that didn’t come. Joey breathed shallowly, holding his arms across his stomach, not daring to look up.
How could he have been so lax?
He couldn’t even remember who had propelled him towards the limo down the steps of the courthouse. His thoughts were so jumbled and incoherent after Te Amo’s revelations and the eruption in the court.
He hadn’t taken in who was driving the limo, his eyes were completely locked on Te Amo on the back seat. And when she’d filled his mouth with cocaine and champagne, he’d lost all sense of where the limo was headed.
With Te Amo across his thighs—pulling his head into her breasts, forcing his eyes against her skin—he didn’t have any sense of the limo coming here, to a place that out of the heat of the day, must have been an underground garage. The echoes of footsteps around him, told him the place was large, but almost entirely empty.
“Open your eyes, you pig.”
It was Te Amo.
Joey opened his eyes, looking up at the woman who just moments before he’d been fucking like a bitch in heat. She’d pulled her dress down, and was pulling her hair back to tie with a band as she looked down on him with utter contempt.
“For a bright boy you can be so stupid sometimes,” she said, letting her hands fall from her hair to fold over her breasts.
Te Amo was so close, Joey could have reached out and touched her, but he dare not. Standing next to her like a wall that had grown legs and stretched a suit across its bricks was Joao. Joao was the bodyguard who had come thumping down the stairs in the yacht when he’d heard the commotion of Te Amo screaming at the sight of Sophia’s ass being pummeled by Joey.
Joao wasn’t armed, but his jacket was off, the sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, and the top two neck buttons were undone. His fists were bunched and ready.
“Make one move to get up and I will put you down again,” Joao spat, muscles in his forearms working and pulsing as he bunched his fists.
Joey was in no position to move. His guts were on fire, his head was swimming from where he hit the limo’s door pillar.
“I’ve waited a long time to see you groveling in the dirt.”
A different voice. A woman, her voice smoky and rich. Dripping with hate.
Sophia Reyes.
Te Amo’s mother walked around from behind Joey, all red heels, red dress, and wild hair. Unlike Joao she was armed. A gold-plated Desert Eagle hung in her right hand, her finger in the trigger guard.
“It took us three months to find his body! Three months!”
There have been so many bodies, it took Joey a few moments to flick though his mind’s rolodex to settle on who Sophia must have been talking about. It was obvious once he’d settled on the name.
Enrico.
Joey, Gail, and two soldiers had taken Enrico and Lonnie’s bodies from the condo and buried them in a densely wooded area in A.D. Barnes Park—a sixty-five acre tropical city park in central Miami. They didn’t have time for anything else. Joey needed to be elsewhere fast.
Either Gail or the soldiers had spilled the location of the body. Perhaps through torture, perhaps through traitors. Joey wished he’d put a bullet in all their heads as insurance, but it was too late to worry about that now.
A thick gob of spit hit Joey full in the face from out of the darkness. O’Ryan stepped forward into the pool of light cast by the ceiling fluorescents in the underground garage.
O’Ryan had happily testified to the Prosecutor, and Joey could smell the stink of a grudge about him. Perhaps carelessness on Joey’s part had cost the cop his job and his honor. Perhaps not. But he was here now, and his opening gambit had been to spit in Joey’s eye.
“Turning into a regular get together,” Joey said, looking at the people who hated him.
Joao kicked him in the guts again.
Joey rolled in the dirt. Gritting his teeth.
“One thing I don’t get,” he said as he caught his breath and blinked the tears of agony from his eyes, “How did you find out about Leoluca? The Prosecutor? If his real identity and position was such a tight secret…who knew to blab?”
Joey knew he had to play for time. If he was going to get out of this alive—and it was looking increasingly like he wouldn’t—then he had to delay whatever they had planned for him long enough to at least get enough strength to make a fight of it.
There was only one gun—that he could see—and Sophia was holding that. If she came close enough to kick it out of her hand…maybe…maybe there was…
“Frocio!”
Another voice from behind him. A voice he’d known his whole life.
Vincenzo. His father.
Vincenzo Diamanti, dressed in the chauffeur uniform he’d worn to drive Joey and Te Amo into this concrete kill zone, stepped around Joey’s frozen form.
“Not only are you a fuckin’ Frocio but you sold out your family to Sal fuckin’ Romano. I curse the day my wife spat you out of her cunt. You have soiled my name, my reputation, and my family.”
Joey couldn’t find words. His throat was stilled with shock now.
“Leoluca couldn’t be more different than you Joey, except in one important respect: he’s as greedy as you,” Vincenzo explained. Pulling a small Beretta from a hip holster, he checked it, snapping the mag out and back in, and flicking off the safety with his thumb. “He went to Sal Romano and offered him the same deal for their family, as he had with his own. Like you he’d gotten too big for his boots, Joey. Must run in my genes, eh? I’m sure he’ll survive six maybe seven months in jail. We’ll just give him the idea that he’s not gonna be whacked and then…kaboom.”
Vincenzo winced as he knelt down beside Joey, his steely eyes still those of a young buck full of spunk and raw power. The craggy face around those eyes may have given away his true age, but Joey could see in his father the thrill of the approaching kill. His lips were parted so his quickening breath could move freely, a pulse throbbed in his neck showing how his heart rate was up.
Joey knew these feelings all too well. He was his father’s son.
“And so, like you, Leoluca had to be dealt with. Sure it’s going to put the heat on the Diamanti name for a while, but I’ve spent the last five years making contingencies for today, Joey. You won’t see the day out, but the family you’ve dragged through the dirt will. The Reyes too. They’re here for retribution and revenge as well. Sophia’s daughter, disrespected in the most appalling fashion, and Enrico—who was like a son to Sophia—killed by your own hand. You’ve stacked up more enemies than a man could reasonably expect to outrun, son. And today is the day we’ve decided to catch up with you.”
Vincenzo lifted the Beretta and placed it against Joey’s forehead.
“Pop…please.”
Vincenzo shook his head. “Don’t beg, Joey, be a man. Do something right for me. Just one thing. Be a man. It’s your very last chance.”
Joey looked into his father’s eyes. The eyes of the man who was about to end his life. It was like looking into the face of God.
And so he began to pray.