The Woman in the Trunk

I moved on frustratingly unsteady feet into the bathroom, took a two-minute shower in the minuscule enclosure, brushed my teeth, and shrugged into the suit.

Most of the other injuries from my beating had healed over in the week since I had received them. But the freshly shaved line down the side of my head and the bright red wound there were going to take a while to get used to seeing in the mirror.

It was a small problem, though.

And from the sound of things, I had big issues to deal with.

"Alright. Talk," I demanded as soon as we were half a block down from the hospital.

We should have gotten somewhere more private, but the walking wasn't feeling so great, so I was taking the opportunity to lean back against the wall, take it easy on myself.

"Your father is dead."

"What?" I hissed, feeling like someone kicked me in the chest, all my air was gone. "How?"

"Anaphylactic shock," he told me, shrugging. "His men found him when he was late for a meeting. He'd started his shower, but was on the floor dead beside it."

My father's death meant fucking chaos for the families.

Especially since I wasn't around.

"Who is trying to rise up?" I asked, following him as he led me over toward his car on the side street.

"Espositios and Lombardis are making noise. The D'Onofrios and the Morellis are being patient, waiting to hear about your condition. Like I said, though, it wasn't looking good. So the Morellis, last I heard, were ready to step in. If for no other reason, than to keep the others in place."

"Get me to the brownstone," I demanded as he pulled off into traffic. "Did you already inform everyone I woke up?"

"I got the word around to the D'Onofrios and Morellis, but I was holding off on the others."

Good.

They might have heard that, and come to pick me off on my way out of the hospital.

"My father's men?"

"Anxious, at best. I figure there are more skeletons in the closet than we realized, and everyone is shitting themselves that you will do to them what you did to Paulie."

"How the fuck did that get out?" I snapped, glaring at him.

"Don't look at me. Your father managed to spread that around before he died."

My head was spinning with all this information, with all the possible repercussions to this shift in power, to all the things I needed to do to ensure my position, to keep peace among the Five Families.

But still, it circled back to one thing.

One person.

"I need to know what happened to Giana," I told Emilio as he turned down the street toward my father's—now my—brownstone.

"I don't know," he admitted, shaking his head. "The guards panicked, called the cops. I don't know if she was let go, or if she escaped in the chaos. I talked to your father's guards. I talked to Chris. No one knows what happened. She was just gone."

"Was there blood?"

"No. No," he insisted, voice firmer. "I looked. No crime scene was cleaned up. She just wasn't there. I think she just slipped away in the chaos."

"I need to find her."

"I will get someone on it. If we can spare them."

"We will spare them," I told him, not caring if it meant I would be less protected as I made my move to take the position of power, as I plotted to become the Capo dei Capi.

"Okay. I will get someone on that. I think Chris will volunteer. Sounds like they bonded over the days when he was on guard. Your old man kicked him out. That was when all this shit went down. He has been beating himself up about it since."

"Alright. Yeah, in that case, put him on it. And Anthony. We need to open the books, get him in. I need more men I know I can count on around here. Old alliances need to be evened out. And I want Terry taken care of," I told him, thinking of my father's consigliere, a man I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw him.

"Taken down a notch, or taken care of?" Emilio asked, parking, glancing over at me.

"Fucking taken care of," I told him, opening my door, climbing out.

"Boss," Christopher greeted me, rushing forward, blocking my body at the right as Emilio moved in at my left.

I didn't love the idea of having the men I trusted most in the world literally shielding me from possible bullets, but I also had to accept that this was my life now.

I was no longer an underboss.

And being the boss meant you had bodyguards at all times, like it or not.

We rushed up the steps and into the house, most of the family gathered around.

I saw several looks around the room.

Some showed relief.

Others fear.

And still others, uncertainty.

The ones with relief were on my short list for positions closest to me.