The Woman in the Trunk Read online

  Contents

  Title

  Rights

  Dedication

  Title

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Also by Jessica Gadziala

  About the Author

  Playlist

  Stalk Her!

  The Woman in the Trunk

  a mafia romance

  —

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2020 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover Designer: Jessica Gadziala

  Cover image credit: Getty Images - thawornnurack

  / Public Commons

  DEDICATION

  This one goes out to my ARC team who never complain, no matter how many questions I throw at them.

  You girls are the best.

  I wouldn't be where I am without all of you <3.

  The Woman in the Trunk

  Prologue

  Lorenzo

  I had a hundred years in the trunk.

  Kidnapping was kidnapping.

  Throw in some extortion to make shit worse.

  Then when you took them across state lines, you were fucked.

  When they had a bump or bruise anywhere, you nabbed yourself an aggravated federal kidnapping charge. Even if she banged her own fucking head.

  Add on the gun in my jacket, the mysterious package I needed to pick up—that looked suspiciously like several bricks of cocaine—and the fact that I was a known member of the New York City Cosa Nostra, and I was looking at life in prison if I got caught.

  That was why I had a soccer-mom hold on the steering wheel and a granny tap on the accelerator.

  And once I got back to the city, shit would only going to get worse.

  False imprisonment.

  Sprinkle in some possible torture.

  Maybe a murder.

  But yeah, I'm getting ahead of myself.

  Let's go back to see how the fuck I got myself in that situation...

  Chapter One

  Lorenzo

  "Not now." The words growled out of me as I cocked my arm backward before swinging, my fist connecting with a jaw with a satisfying cracking noise.

  I shouldn't have enjoyed it. Nor should I have felt a stirring of pleasure at the groaning and whimpering that accompanied a broken jaw. There was no denying that I did, though.

  What can I say? When you grew up as the son of a mafia Capo dei Capi—boss of all bosses—you developed some fucked up interests. Like inflicting pain.

  "You know I wouldn't interrupt if it wasn't important," Emilio, my cousin, said, closing the door behind him.

  Turning toward him, I found him leaning against the door, likely wrinkling my gray suit jacket that was hanging there.

  Emilio was a bucker of convention. Which meant that today, he had on slacks but no suit jacket, just a simple black shirt, tucked in. I was convinced the only reason he bothered to tuck was to show off his belt buckle collection. Today, it was a more understated silver scorpion.

  Emilio didn't inherit the dark hair and eyes of my father's side of the family, taking instead after his mother which had his hair a light brown, and his eyes a dark blue.

  "What is it?" I asked, reaching up to wipe sweat off my brow, only to notice the red staining my fingers and palm, then use my rolled-up sleeve to complete the task instead.

  Emilio's gaze went to the man currently cuffed to a folding chair a few feet behind me, the left side of his face swelling quickly from the jaw break. His right eye was swollen shut, his nose still trickling lazily.

  "You almost done here?"

  Not nearly.

  "Hold on," I said, turning back, cocking my arm, and landing an uppercut under his jaw. He was out before the chair teetered on two legs for a second before falling backward, colliding with the floor. "That should shut him up for a while," I said, making my way toward my cousin, letting him open the door so I didn't spread blood everywhere.

  We were in the basement of a butcher shop that had been in the family since my great-great-grandfather came over from Italy about a hundred years before. I stopped to wash my hands in the utility sink in the short hall between the back room I was using to earn compliance from someone who decided it would be okay not to pay us for a couple months and the main storage area.

  "Alright. What is so important?" I asked as we moved into the storage space, metal racks bending under the weight of decades-worth of crap that no one bothered to pack up and get rid of. The room was always dusty and musty, wetness seeping in through the walls. My father couldn't even come here without getting a wicked allergy attack from the mold tucked in hidden corners. Not that he ever got his hands dirty anymore.

  "Just got back from seeing your father," Emilio said, sighing heavily. No one enjoyed a meeting with my father. Better him than me, though, at this point. I generally kept myself busy enough that he didn't bother to request my company. It was an arrangement that seemed to be working for us thus far.

  "What is he up to now?" What I really wanted to ask was What the fuck is he screwing up now? But you had to be careful how you spoke to or about my father. Someone with an ego as fragile as his was, didn't take kindly to any sort of criticism.

  "He's got a job."

  "For you or 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, rubb
ing 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 longer than I cared to think about. And everyone knew that people didn't just go missing when they were connected to the mob.

  "How about I finish this," Emilio said, waving a hand toward the closed door to the other room where the chair was thumping against the cement floor as the man attached likely tried to inch his way toward the door. As if he had any chance of escaping before we were done with him.

  "I'd appreciate that."

  "And send me your list of shit for the next few days. I will handle that."

  "You?" I asked, smirking. It was no secret that Emilio was not what anyone would call a workaholic. He did his job. He didn't volunteer to do more. Which was fine. That was why there were soldiers, and there were capos, and there were underbosses like me. Though, if I ever got into my father's shoes as Capo dei Capi, I would force Emilio to buck the fuck up and accept an underboss position.

  "I know. It will seriously cut into my social calendar, but I will have to endure," he said, smirking.

  "I appreciate it," I said, nodding, mentally trying to figure out which jobs could simply be put on hold, and which ones I would need Emilio to handle. I could cut it down, so I could handle some of it when I got back.

  "Go get to your old man before he gets to Brio."

  "Yep," I agreed, clamping a hand on his shoulder before going back into the room and grabbing my jacket off the hook on the door. "It's your lucky day, asshole," I told the man who let out a pathetic whimper. "I have to tap someone else in who is likely going to go easier on you. But it's still gonna fucking hurt. And if you don't have the money by next Friday, you're going to see me again. And we are going to play dentist. One by fucking one," I said, tapping my front tooth with my finger before turning and walking out.

  He'd have the money.

  They always did.

  If they had to commit armed robbery for it. I didn't give a fuck so long as we got what was ours. Plus the interest he'd agreed to when he'd borrowed the money to begin with. No one got shit for free in this world. And no one got away with stiffing the Costa family.

  I made my way up the stairs and out the back door of the butcher shop, which put me on the side street where my car was parked. At first glance, it didn't look like a money car. A simple black sedan. No bells and whistles. Nothing that would stand out in traffic. But it cost me a mortgage down payment for an affluent suburb regardless. Some of the families had learned from the mistakes of generations that had gone before them. Like how being too flashy was a surefire way to ensure a tax audit.And if you didn't have enough on the books to justify that three-hundred-grand car, shit was going to get real. And quick.

  Plus, whichever fed was taxed with following your ass around on any given day was going to spot a flashy yellow Ferrari faster than my black sedan. I could shake a tail. That was more important to me than having others see how rich I was.

  My father lived in a brownstone that my grandfather had bought before my father was even born. It was old and ate more money than anyone should have to put into a house, but it was part of the family legacy, and just flashy enough that my father liked the looks he got when someone saw him heading outside. New York was a city of a lot of wealth, but it was still always a bit shocking to see someone stepping out of an eight-million-dollar brownstone to grab coffee and a paper at the bodega around the corner.

  I parked out front when I got there, seeing Vin D'Onofrio making his way down the street toward his waiting car, his guard a few feet behind him. He looked irritated, as anyone would after speaking to my father.

  Taking a deep breath, I climbed out of my car, nodded to my father's guard on the stoop, and letting myself in the house.

  The inside was what you'd expect, with a center staircase leading up, a parlor to the left, and a dining room to the right. I moved forward, knowing I would find my father in his office, across from the kitchen.

  For all the money he'd put into the place, it was surprisingly dated. The wood was stained too light, too out of fashion. The floors were worn, desperate for refinishing. The cabinets and backsplash clashed, and the countertops were dull from age.

  It needed someone to bring it back to its glory. That man would not be my father.

  "I need another cup of—oh," my father, Arturo Costa, cut off, head jerking back at seeing me towering in the doorway instead of one of his men.

  Like my level head, I got my appearance from my mother's side of the family. Where my father was the short side of average with a barrel stomach and a receding hairline, I was well over six feet, lean and fit, with a full head of dark hair.

  The study, like the rest of the house, was in need of renovation. The dark wood was oppressive, the leather sofa creased with age, the carpet faded. Hell, I could smell the age of all the books on the shelves. Books I knew for a fact he never picked up to read, let alone dust.

  "Father," I greeted, moving in slightly, but only enough to lean against the wall, just inside the doorway, not wanting to be closer to him than I needed to be.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, jerking his chin up as he sucked in his stomach. It was a ridiculous move, a testament to the fact that he felt insecure around me. It had to piss him the fuck off that panties drop
ped wherever I went, and he hadn't been able to get laid without paying for it for years.

  "I ran into Emilio when I was finishing up a job. We'll have that money," I added, even though I was sure my father didn't keep up-to-date with the day-to-day debt collecting like I did. "But he said there was a new job. I wanted to volunteer for it."

  "You?" he asked, brow lowering. "I thought you were too busy for anything."

  "I recently had an opening." Thanks to Emilio. "I'd be happy to handle it. That way you can have Brio, if you need his... particular skill set. We all know how long and tedious house guests can be."

  "True," he agreed, torn. On the one hand, he knew I was right. On the other, he didn't like knowing that. "And I already agreed to handle that shit with New Jersey," I told him, meaning a meeting I had subtly stolen out from underneath him with the boss of the New Jersey mafia, the one who ran the import docks. My father was trying to broker a deal to get the Russians to be able to bring in guns. But the New Jersey family was resisting, as they had a treaty with the local arms-dealing MC. It was delicate business. And my father was a bull in a China shop. "I can do this on the way there or back," I said, shrugging. "Why make anyone else go out of their way when I am already all over the place?"

  "Alright. Yeah. I think that will work. I am going to need Brio. I just remembered." Bullshit. That was bullshit. But I had learned a long time ago to let him have his pride. He was ugly if he had that bruised.

  "Where am I picking up my new guest?" I asked.

  "She is usually kicking around the city," he told me, waving a hand. "But there is a vacation house down in Cape May. That's where my intel says she will be for the weekend," he said, scribbling an address on a piece of paper, holding it out.

  Pushing off the wall, I walked over and took it, checking it out, tucking it into my pocket to shred when I left.