OWN HER: A Dark Mafia Romance(40)

But this time, he had a specific goal: To find evidence that Mario had been seeing other women during his first two years as boss.



Gio drained the rest of the scotch in his glass, set it down, and went to the cabinet. He knelt down in front of it, feeling around at the base for the panel that slid away and revealed the secret compartment beneath it. He reached in and pulled out several stacks of Mario's journals, searching for the one from when he was four years old and his father had taken over the Mancinis as the capo de tutti capi.



He found the right diary and flipped through the pages. There were entries in blue ink to signify legit business meetings, and ones in green that were tied to his illegal pursuits. Purple entries were personal errands like family weddings, nights with Gio's mother, or Gio's birthdays. The red entries were code for women Mario met for sex. Gio bristled as he saw that there were multiple red-inked appointments in the diary during the dates in question.



Son of a bitch, Gio thought bitterly. So it's fine for you to get your rocks off any way you feel like it, but when I do it, then suddenly it's...



His thought process abruptly derailed when he saw a name reappear several times in purple ink throughout the journal, especially toward the end. The name was “Salvatore,” and even though Gio didn't remember any extended family members who'd had that name, it still brought up strange memories for him.



His mother and father had fought about someone named Salvatore when he was a child, and even though Gio couldn't remember anything specific that was said during these altercations, he recalled at least one time when Mario had retreated to his study and Gio had heard him sobbing to himself quietly when he thought no one was listening.



Gio flipped through the pages. Another meeting with Salvatore, and another, and another.



And finally, in one of the diary's last pages, an entry with Salvatore's name in black—which was Mario's code for a murder he'd carried out personally.



Gio frowned, looking over the entries again. If this Salvatore was someone his father had known personally instead of professionally, why had he been killed? And why had Mario carried out the hit himself?



He closed the diary and put it back with the others under the liquor cabinet, shutting the hidden panel again. Finding these mysterious entries had given him an uneasy feeling, but he didn't know why.



Still, he'd proved what he set out to: That Mario was holding him to a stupid and unreasonable double-standard. One that deserved to be ignored, if not downright flouted.



So the old man wants to bitch at me for my “costumes?” Gio thought. Okay. I'll show him a fucking costume, all right.



He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed Carla's number, smiling.





Chapter 19




Carla



“...and don't forget to wear a mask.”



Those were the last words Gio had said to Carla before ending the call. Her phone had rung a couple of hours ago, and when she picked up, Gio commanded her to meet him at a specific address at eight o'clock on the West Side, just a couple blocks off Belmont Avenue.



For a moment, these words had given Carla an icy wave of panic as she imagined being summoned to some remote abandoned building so Gio could shoot her through the head. Maybe he'd decided he was done with her, and he was going to silence her before anyone else found out about their arrangement. Maybe he'd told her to wear a mask just in case there were any witnesses, so no one would be able to identify who they'd seen killed before the body was carried off and disposed of.



So Carla did a brief online search, using her FBI credentials to access secured law enforcement databases. She wanted to see if any murders or other illegal activities had been reported at the address in question over the years, and whether the location was owned—either directly or indirectly—by any mob figures.



When her search was over, she breathed a shaky sigh of relief. The address was a nameless countercultural gallery that was often rented for gothic art shows, “cult classic” movie viewings, and fetish parties. There was no official webpage for tonight's event, but based on the comment threads of several local websites for people in the kink scene, Carla could see that it was their monthly S&M masquerade ball.



So the good news is that I'm not on my way to be executed, Carla thought ruefully. The bad news is that I'm about to walk into another of Gio's unpredictable “play” sessions, and this time it's in public.



Now she was wearing the cocktail dress she'd had on when Gio took her to Skizm and browsing a costume shop in Lincoln Park, a short drive from the gallery. Many of the masks on display were scary or absurd, and she stifled a giggle as she briefly considered showing up in a rubber mask depicting a blood-drooling zombie or a snarling werewolf.