I hid my face in my hands at the sheer depressing absurdity of the situation and cried quietly until I felt like I had a headache from dehydration. When I next looked up, we were just heading into the town of Foxdell and I realized I couldn’t face my family yet either.
“Hey, can I change my destination, please?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I’ll still need to get cash out here, but then there’s a cabin about fifteen minutes north-west of town. I’ll go there instead.”
My family had stayed at the cabin, owned by a family friend, for vacations a few times. My sisters had sweet summer romances with boys camping in the area, boys who had probably never ended up killing anybody.
At this time of year the cabin and surrounding area would be pretty secluded. The very core of my being reached out for that vague concept of peace and quiet to try to wrap my head around this chaos.
“Sure thing. Having a pretty rough day, huh?” asked the driver.
“Yup.”
“Don’t do anything crazy, OK? I don’t wanna see your picture on the news.”
I nodded but, no matter what I chose to do, I wasn’t sure how I was going to keep my word on that one.
Chapter 27
Jace
The elevator doors closed between Kendall and me, sending her towards the ground floor. All I wanted to do was chase after her and try to explain everything, tell her who I really was. And why.
Would any of it make any difference? Probably not but, especially now, it was the only hope I had to hold on to the first really good thing to come into my life since I was six years old.
The only thing that held me back was the sound of gunfire and explosions coming from the phone that Jonny was holding towards me. With one last glance at the numbers going down on the readout above the elevator, I cursed and snatched it from him.
“It’s Lou at the Sicaria plant,” said Jonny.
“What’s happening, Lou?” I yelled over the cacophony.
“The fuckin’ Picollis, sir! They firebombed us and started pickin’ everybody off like flies when we came out! A few of the guys got some cover and we’re returning fire, but it’s bad, real bad. I don’t know how…”
“Lou? Lou?”
“The fuck? They’re pulling out… I don’t… ah shit, I can hear the cops. Sir… there’s bodies everywhere, a pallet of money and some drugs inside too, if it doesn’t burn first. They came before the truck arrived for today. What the fuck do I do?”
“Did the Picollis leave anybody behind?”
“Uh… yeah, looks like we got a few of ‘em.”
“Get somebody you trust and see if any of them are still alive, if they are, then drag their asses out of there, I’ll want to talk to them. Tell everybody else to get the hell out of dodge, I’ll sort this out.”
“Yes sir. Sorry, sir, they came outta-”
“No time for that, Lou, go do it,” I said.
“Yes sir.”
Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. I handed the phone back to Jonny. The Sicaria plant was more than a mild-mannered commercial dry cleaning plant and illegal drug distribution depot on the south side. If the Picollis knew how much cash and drugs were in a vault under that building, they would have come with everything they had. Lucky that Lorenzo hadn’t known either, I guessed.
This was going to take some serious bribery to sweep under the carpet. I had to make sure that when the fire department sent in their specialists to determine if the site was safe after the fire was put out, they were all paid well enough to not see a damn thing. Same went for the police department when they went in to do their thing.
I owned the police already, but the fire department wasn’t something I’d invested heavily in. If this stunt was big enough for the Feds to start taking a renewed interest in what was going on, that would be a whole other level of shit to deal with.
“Call Stefano,” I said to Jonny. “Tell him Kendall’s on her way down, everybody get the fuck out of her way. Make sure one of our taxis is ready for her in front of the building. Tell the driver to do what she says and not fucking complain.”
Jonny started dialing straight away, and I turned to Marzio as I pulled out my own phone. Damage control had to start straight away.
“Get a clean-up crew into my penthouse. Lorenzo was working for the Picollis, so he’s dead. Anybody got a fuckin’ problem with that?”
The four of them hurriedly shook their heads and murmured their “no, sir’s.” I held my phone to my ear and listened to it ring. The Police Commissioner had to know some of what his men were walking into today, and I needed to get some contacts in the Fire Department pretty fucking fast.