One Way Out

“The likeness is amazing,” Tomas agreed.

Joey studied his brother. Tomas’s eyes were bloodshot, which meant his back pain was giving him hell again, which meant he’d been drinking to compensate. He hated to see his brother drinking so much. He’d survived a serious beating a few months earlier. Hospitalized, he’d lost a kidney in his fight to survive. He had been cheating death since he was fourteen, a streak that had earned Tomas the nickname Nine-Lives-Lucky. Eventually it had been shortened to just Lucky.

Joey glanced back at Niccolo. “I never realized how small a two-year-old is. He looked bigger in the picture.”

Lucky grinned. “He’s going to take some work. You up for that, or do you want to take him back, fratello? Have you changed your mind?”

Joey admitted he didn’t know the first thing about raising his son, but the boy was his. That’s all he’d been thinking about for three days. And all he’d had on his mind when they had slipped into Santa Palazzo under the cover of darkness.

His brother had told him in the plane that he would back him in whatever decision he made concerning Niccolo. He’d said, “I’ll be behind you or in front of you. Walking in the front door, or going in through a window. Two of the guards on the estate are mine. I put them in place before I flew back here. We should be able to enter the grounds without any trouble. Then again, if you want to make trouble, I brought along the lupara. Capiche?”

They hadn’t used the sawed-off Italian shotgun. They’d gone in quietly through an open window off a balcony on the second floor. They were going in after his son, not to start a war. He hadn’t wanted to frighten Niccolo or endanger him by flying bullets.

It had only taken a few minutes to locate his son’s bedroom. Rhea’s room, too, though he hadn’t found her inside. His window of opportunity had been tight. They had ten minutes max to get in and back out. That’s why he had left behind the cross on Rhea’s pillow. If she cared at all about their son, he knew the cross would bring her back to Chicago.

“I need to hire a live-in nanny. Can you help me arrange some interviews tomorrow?”

“I’ll get on it first thing. If we leave him alone, you think he’ll be all right? We need to talk.”

Joey looked down at his son. “He’s finally sleeping, but he keeps asking for his bear.”

“There’s a kids’ store in the lobby, I’ll see what I can find. Are you ready to listen to what I have to say?”

“I was ready three days ago. You’re the one who wanted to wait until after Niccolo was here.”

“I didn’t want what I had to tell you to interfere with what was most important.”

“Meaning my decision to claim my son?”

“He’s yours.” Lucky hung his scarred hand on his jeans-clad hip. “If I had a son, I would want him with me.”

“I’m ready for whatever comes at me,” Joey told him. “I’ll fight the devil, or anyone else who tries to come between me and what is mine.”

“He’s a good-looking boy, fratello. Worth fighting for. Come, let’s talk and make some plans.”

Joey’s gaze went to his son. “I’ll leave the door open and the hall light on. If he wakes up in the dark and starts crying, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“Guess you’ll get your chance to play daddy. Rub his back and tell him a story.”

Joey glanced at Lucky, then scowled when he saw his brother wearing an amused grin. “I don’t know any stories.”

“Sure you do. Remember the one Vina used to tell us? The one about the purple badass dragon who turned out to be a nice guy?”

Lavina Ward was their best friend’s mother. As young boys they’d spent countless hours with Jackson and Lavina Ward. They had adopted Vina as the mother they never had, and Jackson as the once-in-a-lifetime friend who hadn’t cared one bit what their name was, or what their father did for a living.

Twenty-eight years later, nothing had changed. Lavina was still baking her boys apple pies and buying them birthday presents. And Jackson, recently promoted as head of the CPD Special Investigations Unit, was still their best friend.

Joey tucked the blanket under his son’s chin, then followed his brother to the living room. When Lucky made a detour and slipped behind the bar, Joey said, “I thought you were going to give up the booze. Or, at least, back off a little.”

“I’ve rethought that. The way I see it, what’s the difference if I get addicted to painkillers or scotch? You might need a stiff one yourself once you hear what I have to tell you.”

Joey eased himself down on the red damask sofa that snaked around a massive Italian-marble coffee table.

Forty-nine stories up, Joey’s penthouse covered the entire top floor of Masado Towers. The ceilings were eighteen-feet high, and the furniture was plush and oversize in shades of Italian bloodred and gold. The long bar was imported cherry wood. A collection of large mirrors surrounding it and throughout the apartment opened up the already extravagant space, as did the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Grant Park and Lake Michigan.

Like the living area, the kitchen was a sprawling wonder filled with the latest conveniences and a number of skylights. A breakfast nook to the left of the kitchen offered a view of the city at sunrise, and the elegant dining room that jutted outward like a glass egg to the right, allowed for a breathtaking sunset view and a spectacular skylight panorama after dark.

When Lucky joined his brother, he brought Joey a glass of scotch and placed it on the coffee table. As he made himself comfortable on a gold tapestry chair, he said, “Trust me, you’re going to need that.”

“So, tell me what you know. Santa Palazzo was swarming with guards tonight. Whose place is it, and why so many guards?”

“The estate is never without guards. I’ve learned they’re a permanent, round-the-clock fixture. No less then eight at all times.”

“The electronic gates were high-tech. Some of the guards had dogs.”

“Four dogs. Dobermans with an attitude.” Lucky rubbed his thigh, indicating he’d had a conversation with one of them. “Before I tell you more about Santa Palazzo, I’ll explain how I found the place. It all started with the packages.”

“The packages?”

“For several years I’ve been mailing a package to a post office box in Key West every month. A job assigned to me eleven years ago when I was twenty. Since the packages were from various dress shops, I assumed they were gifts for one of Frank’s lady friends. From time to time I would joke with him about his dedication to one woman, and when I did, Frank would smile and get this strange look on his face. Anyway, when Sunni Blais opened Silks here at Masado Towers, Frank started ordering the packages from her shop. Last month, when I went to Silks to pick up the monthly package, I took a minute to talk to Sunni. She and I had never exchanged more than a few words since she’d opened her shop. But this time was different.”

“Because Jacky was in town.”

Lucky nodded. “He was living in her apartment. Acting as her bodyguard. But like you, I knew there was more between them.”

“So you were checking her out to see if she was right for Jacky.”

“We both know that women who look as good as Sunni does are usually bitches. But as it turned out, she was the exception to the rule. She’s for real in every way.”

“We’re in agreement on that. Tell me more about the packages,” Joey pressed.

“During the conversation, Sunni said something I thought was odd. She said the two gifts inside the package were exactly what Frank had ordered this time. One in each size.”

“One in each size?”

“That’s right. Two gifts. One in each size. For eleven years I thought I was picking up one gift for Frank’s mistress. A mistress he obviously cared a lot about because he never missed a month. But suddenly I learned there were two gifts inside one package. And they were in different sizes.” Lucky took a swallow of scotch. “I thought that was worth checking out, so I decided to fly down to Florida and stake out the post office box.”

“And that led you to Santa Palazzo.”

Lucky nodded. “For two days the same man showed up at the post office to retrieve the mail from the box. On the second day, I followed him. When he entered Santa Palazzo, and it was guarded like a fortress, my curiosity doubled. I decided to buy a camera and hang around for a few days to take some pictures. I wanted to see who came and went. That’s when I discovered Rhea.”

Lucky reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a handful of pictures and tossed them on the coffee table. “I figure you know where this is going. Those are the people who went in and out, the four days I watched the house. There’s only one in there that you’ll recognize other than Rhea.”

Joey reached for the pictures and shuffled through them, looking for confirmation of what he already knew. When he spied the picture, he said, “Frank was there. He’s known where Rhea’s been hiding the entire time.”

“It looks that way. But there’s something else you need to know, fratello. Santa Palazzo belongs to our father. In Key West he goes by the name Frank Palazzo.”

The news was such a shock that for a full minute Joey didn’t speak. Finally, he asked, “You’re absolutely sure? There’s no mistake?”