Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 199143 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 996(@200wpm)___ 797(@250wpm)___ 664(@300wpm)
*
“Tired?” the Capo asked.
Gio nodded and fell onto the couch with a comic in his hands. Skip had picked it up for him to read as they drove around the streets of Little Italy. The Capo would disappear into businesses and come back out with envelopes and nothing else to say. It was a long night.
“Club is just closing, so I’ll take you over to your father’s office soon.”
“Okay,” Gio mumbled.
“Did you learn anything today?” Skip asked.
“How to be patient,” Gio replied tiredly.
Skip chuckled. “Yeah, this life is all about being patient, kid.”
Gio also learned a little more about the woman Skip called Red. She’d been Skip’s girl one time, apparently. She got mixed up in bad people who were mixed up in bad stuff. Skip said it just like that—stuff.
How much worse could someone be than a mobster like Skip, Gio asked.
Snorting shit up your nose bad, Skip had said.
Gio stopped asking about Red.
Gio felt his eyes turn even drowsier and he was nearly asleep when the first bang woke him up. He jumped at the volume of the noise, eyes wide and the comic falling to the floor. Instantly, he found Skip’s panicked stare from across the room.
Without a word, the Capo was up from the desk and moving across to Gio. He said nothing as he grabbed the boy, yanked him off the couch and then dragged him across the room.
“What—”
“Shut up,” Skip ordered. Then, he stuffed Gio into a small coat closet. “Get down, be quiet, and stay there.”
Gio dropped down to his knees, his shaking hands finding the cold floor. “But—”
“Gio, do what I say.” Skip dug in his pocket and tossed a flip phone down into Gio’s lap. “Call someone—your father, call him and don’t talk. Just call.”
What was happening?
“Call, Gio.”
“O-okay, Skip.”
The door closed, shrouding Gio in darkness.
Gio fumbled with the phone, unable to see much as the light from the tiny flip screen didn’t offer much. The first shout outside the closet made him freeze, the second caused him to drop the phone to the cold floor.
“Hey, hey, Skipper,” came a slurred, dark tone.
“Friends of Red?” Gio heard Skip ask.
“You know it.”
“I don’t have—”
“Shut up, we know you do, Italian. You even smell like dirty money, fucker.”
Gio swallowed hard and heard someone shuffle against the door, like they were covering it or something. Strangely, Gio didn’t feel nervous by that fact. He figured it was probably Skip.
“Got something to hide behind there?” someone else asked.
“Nah, go look in the drawer of the desk,” Skip said. “Top right hand side.”
Gio heard footsteps and then more shouts followed.
And bangs.
Loud, harsh bangs.
Pops, actually.
Gio was so stunned by the noise and the sound of a body thumping into the door that he fell backwards, his hands flying upward to grab something—anything—for stability. Coats fell down on him. Gio froze as more shuffling and mumbles followed.
Light filtered in through the coats.
Gio didn’t move a fucking muscle.
“Nothing in here,” someone grunted before the door was slammed shut again.
“Get out of here then?” the first voice asked.
“Red’s a fucking cunt. I’mma cut her for lying, the bitch.”
“Take his ring—it looks real.”
“The club’s closed and the guy we saw earlier is cut, too. Let’s get out of here.”
Gio squeezed his eyes shut and tried to keep his heart from finding his throat. His fingernails cut into his palms as he clenched his hands into tight, balled fists.
Skip.
Skip.
Skip.
When Gio heard the office door, he grappled for the cell phone. With shaking hands, he managed to dial his father’s phone number. Antony picked up on the fourth ring.
“Giovanni, you were supposed to bring my son home a half hour ago.”
“D-dad,” Gio stuttered.
Antony sucked in a hard breath, likely hearing the panic and fear in Gio’s voice. “Son?”
“Something happened ... something happened.”
“Tell me where.”
Gio could hear the sounds of doors slamming and his father yelling in the background of the call. Yelling for people—Paulie, Dante, Lucian, another man Gio knew to be a Capo. Where was his father? Wasn’t he supposed to be at the office? How long had Gio been sleeping on the couch before he woke up again?
“Gio, where?” his father demanded again.
“The club,” Gio whispered.
“Where are you inside?”
“Skip’s office.”
In a closet, he forgot to add.
“Don’t move, Gio ... don’t you fucking move.”
“Okay.”
Gio dropped the phone.
*
Don’t look, Gio remembered his father telling him when he pulled him from the closet.
Don’t look, Giovanni.
Don’t look.
Don’t. Look.
Gio looked.
He saw the bloodied, blown apart head of a man he spent nearly five days a week with. He saw the blood that had covered the closet, the one Giovanni couldn’t move from because he’d hidden someone important behind.
Gio saw it all.
When Antony demanded Gio talk, he wouldn’t. When Antony asked how his son felt, Gio wouldn’t tell the truth.
He wouldn’t talk about how it took them thirty minutes to get to the club and how in that time, Gio heard Skip struggle for his last breath and felt blood seep under the door and soak Gio’s shaking hands and his jeans. He didn’t talk about how he could still see a man’s death face when he slept or the cold whiteness of someone’s dead skin when he looked at his own.