Chapter 58: Chapter Fifty-Eight

It turned out there was no need to rush to the club. Halfway there they received a call from Mr. Accardi himself saying he’d already heard of what happened and to return to the apartment. Genevieve ushered the women out while Gloria did everything in her power not to beat Conor Galante to a pulp. Instead she settled on glaring at him with every ounce of hatred in her body hoping her thoughts would be enough to set karma into action.

Mr. Accardi arrived at the apartment like a one-man hurricane. The door slammed against the wall. Several men flanked him, their faces stern and ready to get to work. The imposing Don was worked up enough that he only spoke in hurried Italian. His dark eyes immediately locked on his wife across the room. He continued to bark orders as he made his way to her while his men fanned out to find a spot to set up their equipment.

The Don clasped his wife’s face in his hands and spoke low to her so that no one else could hear what he asked. Genevieve’s eyes closed and she shook her head. Accardi’s hand dropped to touch her stomach and Gen nodded. The way they were standing allowed Gloria to read Gen’s lips. She noticed her face lose every ounce of anxiousness to be replaced with the stern expression of a woman in charge.

Find him, Matteo. Find him now, Gen said to her husband. He nodded and sealed the promise with a kiss.

“I want Don and Thomas here within half an hour. Raphael, I want to hear that you’ve hacked into Sergei’s server by then,” Accardi announced, patting the shoulder of a well-dressed, dirty blond who had already begun setting up an intricate computer system. “Leo, is his tracker active?”

Leo looked up from his phone. “No, he must be in the air.”

“In the air?” Gloria asked.

All eyes in the room turned to her as though she were an intruder in a private espionage operation.

“Trackers don’t work if the subject is on a plane,” Leo explained shortly, getting back to whatever he was doing on his phone.

“Sergei’s taking him to Chicago,” Accardi said, walking out of the room in the direction of his office.

Three hours later, the only people left in the apartment were Accardi, Genevieve, Leo, Raphael and, of course, Gloria. While Leo spoke with someone on the phone in the kitchen and Raphael continued to work on something with diligent intent in the living room, Gen, Accardi and Gloria sat in Accardi’s office. No one had spoken in a long time. Accardi had already deployed several men to Chicago. A few others were tracking the Phelans in New York, more specifically the blonde bitch who had supposedly been fucking the backstabber. The backstabber in question, Lesser, had already been apprehended and was on his way to a place Accardi called, ‘the box.’

Accardi hung up the phone and let out a deep sigh.

“Everything okay?” Gen asked.

“Yeah,” he answered, back to typing on his computer. “It was just Alessio. He’s gotten Bennett and has arranged for his flight to Italy.”

“Aww, I didn’t get to say goodbye,” Gen said, though a smile of satisfaction creased her face.

Accardi smiled. “We can visit him whenever we want, Weakness.”

“Who’s Bennett?” Gloria asked.

Gen looked at her and for a moment, a spark of hatred flashed across the Donna’s face. “Someone who hurt one of my best friends.”

“And you’re sending him on vacation?” Gloria asked.

Gen laughed. “No, he’s being sent somewhere in which he won't be able to remember what it's like to not be in pain.”

“It’s late, Gen, maybe you should get some rest,” Accardi suggested, sitting back in his chair.

“I’m okay,” Gen assured him.

“Weakness, you can barely keep your eyes open. I’ll come and get you if we learn anything new.”

Gen sighed and stood up, grasping her stomach as if something had caused her pain. Accardi shot up from his seat and rushed to her.

“I’m okay,” she reassured him. “Just the ligament pain.”

“You’re under too much stress. Starting the new branch of the accounting firm, dealing with this situation, you need…”

“Matteo,” she said, stopping his long rant by cupping his cheek. “It’s alright. I’m alright. I’ll go and lay down.”

Accardi let out a long breath and nodded. Gen kissed him on the cheek. She whispered something in his ear that made him roll his eyes and look over at Gloria. Gen pulled at his earlobe until he rolled his eyes again and gave a reluctant nod. Gen started for the door but as she passed the armchair Gloria was curled up in, she stooped down and whispered in her ear, “He won’t wake me up. I’m counting on you to do it.”

Gloria’s gaze flicked to the mob boss who was watching the exchange with shrewd eyes as he sat behind his desk once again. Gloria nodded and Gen squeezed her shoulder as she sashayed out of the room.

An awkward silence filled the space. Gloria readjusted herself in her chair while Accardi busied himself with his computer. The silence felt suffocating. She’d never been alone with the notorious boss before. His presence was imposing, uncomfortable. On top of that, she felt useless. All she had was the smartphone Frankie had given her. She’d run out of things to look up in order to try to find some trace of him or Sergei. She’d nearly lost her voice asking for some way to help until Gen had pulled her aside and hugged her, assuring her the men would do everything they could to find Frankie. She was tired of men.

Speaking of which. Accardi awkwardly cleared his throat, drawing Gloria’s eyes to his desk. He interlaced his fingers and fidgeted uncomfortably in his chair. She raised a brow at his odd behavior. Accardi scratched his throat and knocked his fist decisively against his desk.

“I want to apologize,” Accardi said, cracking his neck.

“Excuse me?” Gloria asked, knowing for certain she must have misheard.

Accardi shifted in his seat again and took a deep breath. His gaze caught and held her’s. “I’m sorry, for what happened to you and what part I played in your years of suffering,” he finally spat out.

“Oh…” Gloria wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She did know now what Gen had told him before she’d left the room. “Thanks. It doesn’t help but I appreciate the effort.”

Gloria started to pick at her nails, unable to look him in the eyes anymore.

“Frankie is…” Accardi began. She glanced back to find him looking upward for the right words. “Frankie is a piece of shit,” Accardi finally decided and Gloria couldn’t help but choke out a laugh. Accardi held his hand up, telling her to wait for him to finish. “Frankie is a piece of shit but he’s the closest thing to a brother besides my actual brother. He’s been with me through everything. When I met Gen, his one concern was my own welfare and I feel the need to extend the same courtesy to you.”

“Did Frankie threaten Genevieve?” Gloria asked as the meaning behind his words were obvious.

He tilted his head from side to side, considering. “In a way.”

“And what did you do?”

He smiled, reliving the memory. “I put a knife in his shoulder.”

“I see. Do you have a knife I can borrow?” she asked.

Accardi chuckled. He opened up his laptop, his sign that he felt the conversation had run its natural course. “No.”

Again, she was left to do nothing more than twiddle with her fingers. She fought to ignore the years of submission that had been beaten into her. A woman was not meant to confront a Don and make a demand. A woman was meant to sit there until deemed useful. But there were two problems with that. He wasn’t her Don and he’d just given her the sorriest excuse for an apology she’d ever heard.

Gloria pulled her big girl pants on, placed her feet square on the ground and glared across the room. Seeming to sense the change in the air, Accardi glanced up at her from over his laptop.

“Is there a problem?” he asked.

“I want to know who the Phelans are and what they want with Frankie,” Gloria demanded.

Matteo laughed through his nose and his eyes dipped back down. “They don’t want Frankie.”

Gloria dug her nails into the leather arm of the chair. “What do they want then?”

“Conor Galante’s head mounted on the wall beside his father’s,” Accardi said.

“I’ll help them pick out a plaque. What does that coward have to do with Frankie?” Gloria asked.

Again Accardi looked up at her and back down. “Conor is part of the three strongest Italian families in the world. One of two in the US. He’s not only under my protection but the protection of the Palladinos.”

Gloria recognized the name. They ran much of Italy, if not all of it. The family was ancient, believed to go back to the knights of the Crusades. They were notorious for sex trafficking, drug smuggling, arms dealing and the downfall of more than one empire.

“In order to get to Conor,” Accardi continued. “They need the backing of another powerful family. With your family tied to Vasiliev’s, they think they stand a chance. They handed Frankie over because Vasiliev has a forty million dollar reward out for him. They’ll give Frankie over for free in exchange for a favor.”

“Why weren’t you there?” Gloria asked, her anger seeping through her words as she imagined what Sergei had in store for Frankie. Probably thinking she wasn’t ready for the answer, Accardi continued to type. Finally having enough of his distraction, she got up from her chair, took five long strides and snapped the laptop shut. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. But I love him and if you don’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll get it my own way whether that includes you bleeding out or not.”

Accardi sat back in his chair with a cocky smirk. He folded his arms. “I wasn’t there for the same reason you weren’t, Miss Rubanov. He knew if he were to let on to his plans, we would both do everything in our power to stop him. But I think you already knew that.”

“Why take Frankie to Chicago? Why not kill him here?”

“Sergei has no intention of killing him. Frankie knew it. That’s why he let himself get taken. The little fucking piece of shit. Vasiliev is a man after Frankie’s own heart. After my own. Each of us has our own preferred location to let out our… frustrations: a place we feel safe, comfortable, in control. I have the box. Frankie has his chamber. Vasiliev has a secret location somewhere in the abandoned freight tunnels under Chicago. That’s where he’ll keep Frankie until he… tires himself out.”

“Then why are we still sitting here?” she asked.

“Because I’ve been wrong in the past and I refuse to get on a plane, taking myself off the chess board for three hours, until I know for certain. I have men on the streets as we speak. The second we have a blip of his tracker, we’ll confirm his location and move in.”

Gloria let out a breath of disbelief. “Do you really think Sergei won’t check for a tracker?”

A spark of mischief lit the Don’s otherwise dark eyes. “Maybe the first one.”

“First one?”

Accardi let his hand drop to the desk and made circles with his fingertip as if debating whether or not to let her in on something classified. Once his decision was made, he met her eyes again. “Frankie has two trackers implanted under his skin. One is obvious, in the flesh of his arm, easily found and detected. He also has a second one located in a… more concealed spot on his body.”

“Where?” she asked, her curiosity winning out over her anger.

Accardi’s eyes snapped to the door. Gloria turned to see what he was looking at. It was Raphael, leaning against the door and watching the exchange with eyes that missed nothing. She didn’t like him. The way his eyes analyzed every micro gesture made her uneasy. Beside him stood Leo, his phone held out.

“His tracker just alerted. We found him,” Leo said.