Vince quickly leads us to the kitchen, where seven women in lavish clothing all sit, lean, and stand around the kitchen island, picking at spreads of deli meat and cheese as they gossip. When they see Aria and I, they all turn, opening arms wide to come forward and air-kiss us on both cheeks and declare that we’re beautiful.
“Doll, Jimmy and I need to go, okay?” whispers Vince in my ear as the wives all argue over which celebrity Aria looks most like.
“...Uma Thurman. I’m seriooous,” drawls a woman with a thick New York accent. “The one from that kung fu movie.”
I give Vince a tight lipped smile and nod. I don’t like it, of course. I know he’s planning something dangerous, but I also know I can’t stop him. The best thing for me to do is support him. If he’s going into danger one way or another, there’s no reason for me to add the stress of knowing I don’t like it to his troubles. “Just be careful, okay?”
“Yeah.” He turns to leave, but I grab his arm, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.
“If you come back to me in one piece, I’ll let you do that thing you wanted to do.” My cheeks burn as I say it. I’m not much of a dirty talker, but it’s the truth. The thought scares me, but behind the fear is a tantalizing thrill. It already feels like it has been so long since I’ve had him inside me, and I want it, no matter how it happens. Just thinking about it makes my core heat.
Vince gives me a feline grin and then bites his lip before leaning in to kiss me hard on the lips. “I’ll come back.”
I nod and watch him leave.
Once Vince and Jimmy are gone, the wives descend on me as a pack for a few minutes before they finally start to disperse and let Aria and I breathe some. I spend close to an hour on the couch practically getting interviewed. How did we meet? How did I manage to keep him around for so long? Vince never sticks with one girl, what’s my secret? Am I pregnant? By the time they are done, I don’t even feel guilty abandoning Aria to their interrogations when I see my chance. I slip upstairs and find a bedroom with a computer on the desk.
A half-formed idea begins bouncing around in my head, so I sit down to the computer before I even know exactly what I’m planning. All I know for certain is that Vince can’t single-handedly gun down an entire mafia crime family. The only way he’s going to get through this alive is if I think of some way to even the odds for him. I start by googling local mafia families and digging. It doesn’t take long to find the Anastasios. They are an old family with ties directly back to Italy. A man named Andre is the head of the family, even though he’s only in his fifties. There were cases against them in 2004, 2007, 2012, and 2015 for illegal sports betting. I frown, digging through the information that was public until I have a vague understanding of what they probably did.
Most of the charges were related to baseball, but they also were involved in college football betting and some NFL bets. They ultimately escaped being convicted each time, but each case was followed by rumors of jury tampering and even bribes given to the judge. It doesn’t take long for me to start seeing the connection. All those times I tried to look deeper into the game fixing, Henry Krawbeck, SportsCast’s senior editor, was always shutting me down, steering me in another direction. Did the scandal reach that far? If a senior editor for SportsCast was involved, there was no telling how far the corruption reached.
I think of all the times Herbert Blume tried to talk me into writing for Global Sports, a competitor of SportsCast that never was able to offer me enough money to take the job. It would be a gamble, but if they ran with the story, it could be enough to immediately get Anastasios out of the picture. I also guiltily feel a bubble of excitement at the idea of breaking such a huge story. I just need to make sure I don’t imply Vince or his family’s guilt in any way when I write it. If Vince knew what I’m planning though, he’d never let me go through with it. I decide to write the story and get everything in the works and then check with him at the last minute, when he doesn’t have enough time to stop me.
I open a word document and think for a second before typing: The Mafia Fix: Corruption in Professional and Collegiate Sports.
27
Vince
“Shit!” I say as Jimmy and I jump back in the car. We doubled back and took the Mercedes from the gunmen back at the factory so it wouldn’t be traced to us. I slide my gun in my jacket pocket. The barrel is still hot, but the burning sensation keeps me alert so I don’t move it. Vivid images flash back through my mind of muzzle flashes, blood, and bodies. We just caught an Anastasio Capo and three of his soldiers as they were leaving a restaurant in broad daylight. Jimmy and I got out of the car, raised our guns, and started firing. Only one of them even had time to reach for his gun before he went down.