novelxo Tirone: Chapter 4
Enzio Lanza was touching my bike.
My fingers clawed around my gun in the back of my jeans. Molar and Fort did the same. Disrespecting me in my own home wasn’t something I’d forget or ignore. “You in the market for one? You came to the right place.”
Flanked by a couple of heavily-packing dickhead black suits, the bastard smirked, laying his dirty ass on my baby as he slouched against it. “My brother was the one into bikes, not me,” he said through the clinks and buzzes of metal and repair streaming from the garage. “Did you know that Roar was the one who gave Cosimo his first bike?”
The fucking history the Lanzas had with the San Francisco chapter didn’t interest me. I wasn’t Roar, and working with the Mafia was never on my agenda. They were too fucked up, even for me. “May they rest in peace.” So may Enzio if he doesn’t get off my beauty. “Sure Roar told Cosimo the first rule of owning a pretty girl like this, yeah?”
“Which is?”
“Bikes are like old ladies,” Fort said.
“Ain’t yours, don’t touch,” Molar finished.
“Oh.” Enzio sighed, not fucking moving. “Scusi, like I said, it was my brother who was into this.”
I stepped toward my bike with a fake grin and gestured for Enzio to get back inside the garage so I wouldn’t murder him and start a fucking war. “Step into my office, per favore. Let’s welcome you to our town. Beer?”
Finally, he got his ass off my bike and walked with me, his bodyguards in his tail. “I heard I’m not the only person visiting from my town.”
Shit. Did he mean Jo or Rex or both? I marched past the working prospects and sat behind my desk in the garage office. I nodded for Molar to close the door even when the room was too small to hold six men, three the size of Fort, at once. “You heard right. My boy just arrived right before you. So excuse me if I kept you waiting.”
“Excuse the rush, too,” Molar added while Fort passed beers among us. “We gotta prepare a homecoming party for Rex, and for Prez, who just got home from the Arena. If you’d told us you were coming, we would have set a proper meet at a proper time.”
“Certo. Where are my manners?” Enzio casually took the beer, but his men didn’t. “My sincere apologies for showing up unannounced.”
“No problem. We’d have loved to invite you to stay for the party, but it’s family only. We’ll set you a good one another day, though,” I said. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your precious, unannounced visit, Enzio?”
“Jocasta Kelly,” he said straight to the point, his shitty smile plastered on his face. “AKA Jocasta Larvin.”
After all the trouble we went through to hide who she was, he wouldn’t keep my Jo out of his filthy plans. Fuck. Despite being worked up, I looked him straight in the eye, hiding every emotion behind years of practice and running a business like ours. “May she, too, rest in peace. A lot of talking about the dead today.”
“Don’t sound very festive to me,” Fort snorted.
Enzio rolled his eyes among the three of us. Then he set the beer on my desk and leaned forward, all smirks and grins gone. “Where are you keeping her?”
“Why, do I look like a graveyard to you?”
“We both know she’s not dead.”
“Davvero? Allora, that’s news to me, but good for you. Your coyote found another girl that looked like the Larvin’s kid? Did she check out this time?”
He held my stare for a while, but neither of us was blinking. “Where’s Jo Meneceo, Furore?”
“Uh-oh,” Molar hummed.
Leaning forward, I rested my elbows on the desk. Then I threw a dirty glance up at the mafia goons Enzio thought they could protect him from us and then back at him. “Tell me, Enzio, if a man shows up at your mansion unannounced and yet you accept him, serve him the Lanzas’ famous wine, offer to give him a proper welcome into town, and then he goes and ask you where Bianca Lanza is, what are you gonna do to that man?”
He tried to hide it with his stone face, but I noticed the slight twitch in his eyes when I mentioned his wife’s name.
“Touching a man’s bike without asking is one thing, yapping about his old lady… That shit is dangerous,” Fort said.
Enzio cocked a brow. “Old lady?”
“Yes,” I answered. “And my old lady’s whereabouts are my business only. Do we understand each other?”
He paused for a long moment, scrutinizing my face. Then he nodded with a smirk.
“Now, I’m gonna ask you again. To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit? You ain’t no bike fan, and I don’t reckon you come here asking for another favor. The last time you did, you didn’t trust me enough to finish the job my way and ended up sending one of your men to do it.”
“Why now, you don’t like it when friends pay you a visit, Furore? I thought the South was much friendlier than that.”
“Friends don’t ask other friends for favors by threatening them or their family. They also don’t touch shit that ain’t theirs or sniff around it. You got a welcome to H-town and a beer because you’re in the South. Anywhere else, you know what you’d be getting.”
He leaned back in his seat and uncrossed his legs. “It looks like we got off on the wrong foot. Allow me to change that.” He stood and unbuttoned his suit jacket. “You, your son and your old lady are invited to my son’s birthday party two weeks from now. I’m doing it here in H-town. My wife would love to meet signorina Meneceo.” He stuck his hand out, thorns and skulls wrapping around the wrist. “How about that for renewing our hopefully long friendship?”
Fuck that weasel bastard. He still suspected Jo was Madeline’s daughter, almost convinced she was, and he was tricking me to deliver my own girl to them myself, knowing if I refused to go to the party, I’d be confirming his suspicions for him. Fuck. I gripped at the surface of the desk and slowly got my ass off the chair. Then my glance dropped to his hand. “Sounds fancy. Not my thing, though. But I’ll ask my family if they’re up for it. See, I’d do anything to be with them, make them happy, and most importantly, keep them safe. If they say okay, I’ll be there with them. Either way, we’ll send a present for sure.”
“Generous, but I expect you to be there, Furore, with signorina Meneceo…at least. My wife will be very disappointed if your old lady doesn’t show up, and I hate nothing more than to disappoint my wife. It puts me in a very dark mood, makes me do things that aren’t pleasant. It also makes my mind wander to other dark places, ask questions that I might have been willing to ignore, like,” he flexed his jaw, withdrawing his hand, “why would a guy I put on a job, not only fail to get it done but also obstruct the other guy I send to finish it? Don’t you think that’s suspicious as fuck?”
“You’re talking to me about suspicious? I was supposed to make who you assumed was Jocasta Larvin trust me enough to spill her secrets. I had a plan going and your guy came pissing all over it. When I saw Maverick, I knew the deal was off, and I wouldn’t stand by watching a pathetic piece of shit hit a woman, no matter who she was. That’s not how I do business. So here’s how I see it. You didn’t trust my way, and you didn’t even bother to give me a heads up I was off the job. Then you pull this shit on me. How’s that for suspicious?”
“Ahh, I see. Va bene. It was a misunderstanding apparently. Bygones?”
“Doesn’t look like it to me when you’re here bringing this up again and after I told you she’s off-limits now? Jo Meneceo isn’t the Larvin’s kid. I saw it, your guy saw it, the whole prison saw it. Punto. And now she’s mine and under my protection.”
“Oh, I must have misspoken again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.” He placed a hand on his heart. “I believe you, Furore. I mean, why would you ever lie to me when everybody knows how much I fucking hate liars? We’re supposed to be friends, vero? And I totally respect the boundaries you’re setting for your woman.
“It’s just that if you turn down my invitation, bless your heart, I’ll start thinking you don’t want to be friends, which will make me really sad, or worse, I’ll start having those darn questions again like, do you have something to hide from me? Does your old lady? Is she afraid of something? Or have I been lied to by someone I thought I could trust? I don’t know, my friend.” His voice took a harsh turn. “When those questions find no answers, I can’t sleep until I find them myself. Il Tagliatore way.”
Fuck.
His smirk reappeared on his bony ass face. “I’ll see you, Furore. Hopefully, two weeks from now, or even earlier if you feel like stopping by any time, you know for a chat over a glass of the Lanzas’ famous wine, when you can tell me all about your little vacation you spent in my town, share some juicy hot for teacher, who’s not Jocasta Larvin, secrets, get them off your chest, if you know what I mean. I promise our friendly talks will be very rewarding.”
FUCKKK. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Sure. Just so you know, I’ll understand if you’re busy. It’ll be your loss, though.”
When he took his goons and left, Molar and Fort took the seats across from me, their stares bustling with questions.
“What the fuck just happened, Furore?” VP demanded. “That sounded like an open fucking threat.”
It was. Enzio Lanza didn’t believe Jo was just Jo Meneceo, the innocent English teacher. He was threatening me to come clean about her or it’d be my loss.
“Is there something we should know, Prez?” Fort asked warily.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Molar darted a glance between us. “Are you keeping something from us, bro?”
When I didn’t say anything, he rolled his eyes and cursed. “She is Madeline’s daughter, ain’t she? Jesus Christ.”
And now I had two options according to Enzio Lanza. Go to him and tell him the truth myself to save my ass and the club from whatever revenge his Tagliatore ass had in mind. Or go with Jo to his party, to his own lair, where he’d have invited the Larvins for sure, to lie to him and them in the face and convince them she wasn’t the lost daughter.
If I did either, the woman I loved would be as good as dead. If I didn’t, I’d get us all fucked. How the fuck could I make that choice?