The Woman in the Trunk - Jessica Gadziala Page 0,1

for me?" I asked, already mentally ticking through my overly booked schedule. I could hardly fit a morning workout in these days, let alone another job.

"He doesn't want me to do it. He wants my eyes on the new puppy," Emilio said, referencing a new soldier my father had added to the crew, a sniveling little asshole who only got in because he was such a kiss-ass. During one of our many arguments, I had told my father as much. The yelling match that followed was why I hadn't been in my father's presence in several months. But, clearly, he took my concerns seriously enough to have eyes on the little bastard.

"That puppy would be better off put down," I grumbled, shaking my head. "Who did he suggest for it, then?" I asked, thankful that Emilio had unofficially started to defer all my father's orders to me. It was borderline treasonous, but if we wanted our family to stay at the top of the Five Families, we needed to make sure he wasn't being a fucking idiot about shit.

"He floated the idea of putting Brio on it."

Brio was a capo who had started as a ruthless enforcer when he was all of fifteen. Emilio and I had grown up with him, knew the depravity he was capable of enacting if he was commanded to. I'd never seen someone as capable of turning off their humanity as Brio was.

"What is the job then?" I asked, figuring it was something along the lines of intimidation, debt collection, or simply a plot of revenge.

At that, Emilio reached up, rubbing the back of his neck. Uncomfortable. Emilio had grown up like me. Hard. Exposed to the ugly of the world. Not much got to him.

"He's got to pick someone up."

"As in to take them for a drive?" I asked, meaning to some undisclosed location to put a bullet between his eyes. We'd gotten careful about how we phrased things when in enclosed spaces. The feds got good in the nineties and early two-thousands with their tech. We didn't take chances.

"As in bring them over for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner..."

So holding someone for some reason. We didn't exactly take hostages often. It was ugly business. There were a lot of ways for it to go wrong. But it had certainly happened a handful of times since I was sworn in. I was sure it was a practice that would continue when a situation called for it.

"Someone we haven't seen in a while," I assumed, meaning someone who owed us money, but had been avoiding us.

"An old friend's daughter," Emilio told me, making my spine stiffen, my heartbeat tripping into overdrive.

There weren't a lot of hard and fast rules around the mafia. Sure, back in the day, in the golden ages, there were. No drugs. No women or children. That flew out the door around the time all the old capos were catching RICO charges, leaving young and hungry and unscrupulous men in charge that had no business being at the top.

That was when my father came into power.

He didn't have a fuck of a lot going for him in terms of merit, but he'd never kidnapped someone's daughter before. Or sent fucking Brio to do it.

"And he's sending Brio?"

Now, granted, Brio wasn't a danger to society as a whole. He wasn't some out of control rage machine, some sick fucking woman-beater or rapist. But still. Sending Brio for a job that sounded like it required kid gloves, not boxing ones, seemed like overkill.

"I know," Emilio agreed, nodding. "That's why I'm here."

"Was he calling Brio about it?"

"He had a meeting with D'Onofrio," Emilio said, meaning one of the other bosses in one of the other Five Families. "But he said he would deal with it after that."

"Shit," I sighed, checking my watch—white gold, costing more than some people's new cars. I had a full day, week, and month planned. But I wasn't going to send off our rabid dog to handle some unsuspecting woman.

"Yeah."

"Alright. I will clear my schedule. I'll handle it."

"You're gonna have a house guest?" Emilio asked, brow arching up.

I didn't have time to babysit a kidnapped woman. I didn't want to have time to do that shit. That said, I knew I had to.

"Better me than anyone else," I said, shrugging.

When it came to level heads, my father wasn't known for one. Clearly, I got mine from my mother's side of the family. Not that I would know. She'd been missing for