Page 75 of Forbidden Property
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on tonight,” I confess to him. “She’s at Devil’s Hole.”
“Fuck. Near Niagara?”
“Yes.”
“How the fuck did she end up there?”
“I didn’t ask. She’s with the park staff, but I doubt she wants to hang around the park office with a bunch of pothead park rangers all night.”
Gino pauses for longer than a few seconds and I make the mistake of expecting him to say something insightful.
“It doesn’t sound that bad honestly.”
“We need to make a detour,” I command my brother. “Now.”
For us to do that, I need Luigi’s approval. Gino refuses to change our course until I call Luigi up and plead with him for permission to rescue Geralynn. Truthfully, I’m lucky he gave us permission, because I would have been willing to shoot my brother and drive the car towards Devil’s Hole myself.
Gino changes course and the rest of our drive is fraught with silent tension. Neither of us want to speculate on what we witnessed tonight. Yet. I have to stop myself from jumping out of the moving car once we get to the Devil’s Hole State Park office.
The park ranger seems pleasantly surprised when an Escalade parks outside their office and he holds onto my handshake for a long time when I greet him and thank him for keeping myfiancéesafe.
I don’t know why I call her that. The word just slips out naturally as Geralynn leaves the park ranger’s side and moves closer to me, reaching her arms out with quiet yearning for physical contact – proof that the ordeal is over.
Gino waits in the car while I thank the park ranger and assure him that we don’t need to call the police. He looks over my shoulder at the car and nods. He might not assume that I’min themafiabut he assumes that I have enough money to make my problems go away without the police. A fair assumption.
I open the backseat and help Geralynn inside.
“Hungry?”
“Yes,” she says with a shaky voice that fills me with barely contained rage. Whoever held her captive couldn’t even feed her. I can tell from the blank yet exhausted expression on her face that whatever she must have seen has utterly transformed her.Gino looks at her in the rearview mirror, his face immediately coloring with concern.
“We’re close to McDonald’s, Ger. Don’t worry. A big mac and a diet coke can cure just about anything.”
“Yeah,” Geralynn mutters aimlessly. “And French fries.”
I take my seat again across from Gino, who hasn’t said much since we picked up Geralynn, but has obviously noticed the same details that I have. The faraway look in her eyes. The way her voice sounds like she’s been screaming. He doesn’t want to ask, but we both have the same concerns.
Did someone touch her? How badly did they hurt her?
We won’t find out until we get her fed tonight. But even then, I’m just happy that when I look behind me, she’s there.
“Roman is okay?” Geralynn asks before the car starts. “I know you wouldn’t be this calm if Roman were hurt.”
“He’s fine,” I mutter. “You’re both fine now.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Geralynn
Roman’s 3 Month Celebration
Ihold Roman on my lap as I sit in the parlor with Renzo’s mother, Barbara, who has a much milder temperament than you would expect for someone with a crazy ass son. She seems tired and older than I expected, but she’s polite and her Italian accent is heavy enough that it sounds like a song in another language.
The Pittsburgh Incident brought us all together in an unexpected way, and I feel like part of the family in a way that I never did when I was just Nicki’s best friend. Everyone here seems somewhat accepting of what happened in Pittsburgh – at least on the outside.
Nicoletta Taviani has officially married Franco Doukas Corsini, a mobster in his forties with a connection to the Amalfi Coast Doukas mafia family according to Renzo. In exchange for my freedom, she completely accepted her fate. Renzo told me that he got word from their dad that Nicoletta and herhusband just bought a modern 6 bedroom house just outside of Pittsburgh.
She’s awifenow and soon to be a mother. I have this weird feeling that Nicki’s strangely careless nature was always based in this fear that the connection to her family would eventually lead to this.
