The Venetian and the Rum Runner - L.A. Witt Page 0,108

back up the steps. Carmine followed, torn between wanting to comfort his grieving sister and needing to get answers out of the injured boy and the three captives.

He couldn’t help Giulia now. She had Mama, and he had half a dozen Irishmen who were—if they were still alive—counting on him to get them to safety as soon as possible. As much as he hated to leave her side, Danny and his crew didn’t have time for grief.

Inside, someone was tending to the injured boy. Carmine urgently needed answers, but he could spare the young man a moment. While he did that, he stole a moment to himself to escape the thickening crowd in his foyer, catch his breath, and collect his thoughts.

He slipped into the bathroom. Alone, he leaned against the door and cradled his head in his hands.

The crew of rum runners was his responsibility. He was the one who’d sent them out there, knowing this work would be dangerous. All along he’d been impressed by how successful they were. He’d expected them to be caught and detained at some point, but they’d kept on giving the slip to cops and Coasties alike. They were good at what they did, and everyone had been making money.

And now this. One dead on his doorstep. One beaten and dropped like a ragdoll beside his friend. The other six, missing and unaccounted for. He didn’t even have time to be angry with Giulia for joining the crew or the crew for taking her out. There wasn’t time for that now.

The younger of the two boys might survive. He was no doubt in pain and he would be for a while, but he was more or less conscious and he hadn’t been shot.

The rest of the crew? The six who remained unaccounted for, including Danny? Carmine had no way of knowing if they were even alive. Right at this moment, they could be dead. Or wishing they were.

Truth was, it was entirely possible that it was too late and there wasn’t a damned thing Carmine could do for Danny and his boys.

But he couldn’t assume that, and he again refused to consider it. He had to focus on figuring out where they were, who’d taken them, and how to get them back. Starting with the men who’d brought the two battered rum runners to his doorstep.

He took a deep breath and stepped out of the bathroom, but before he could go squeeze answers out of the three men, Fiore appeared in the hallway and gestured over his shoulder. “Hey boss? Kid’s coming around. He’s asking for you.”

Carmine’s heart sped up. He nodded and followed Fiore into the parlor, where the young man was reclining on the couch, sitting upright just enough to drink from the glass in his shaky, uninjured hand. Whiskey, not water, but Carmine supposed that was what he’d have wanted if he were in this state.

Someone had wiped away some of the blood on the kid’s face, though there was plenty still crusted in his hair and on his clothes. The bruises stood out more, angry against skin that was pale even for a fair-skinned Irishman.

He looked up at Carmine, and he seemed to recoil slightly. “Mr. Battaglia?”

“Yeah.” Carmine took a seat on the opposite armrest. “I understand you were asking for me.”

The kid nodded. “The men who…” He gestured weakly at himself. “They said to give you a message.”

A thousand awful scenarios ran through Carmine’s head, but he kept his expression stoic and his voice even. “What’s the message?”

The lad started to speak, but coughed, spitting blood. He winced, then shakily brought the whiskey up for a sip, his hand so unsteady he nearly dropped the glass. With a grimace, he swallowed; it was hard to say if his throat hurt, or if it was from the whiskey. Either way, hopefully the whiskey would soothe the rest of his pain.

Lowering the glass, he said, “You’ve got forty-eight hours to pay for all the liquor we stole from them, or they’ll start killing the rest…” His voice caught, and he met Carmine’s gaze with desperate eyes. “They’ll start killing the rest of the crew.”

“The crew is still alive, then?”

“They were when I was taken away. But they beat up Tommy, and…” He trailed off, eyes turning distant much the way Giulia’s had when she’d recounted her end of the ordeal.

“Who wants me to pay them?” Carmine asked.

That pulled the boy’s focus back, and he looked right in Carmine’s eyes. “They