Gianni: Azzarra Crime Family Book One Read online

  Gianni

  Azzarra Crime Family Book One

  Kiara Woodson

  Tobann Publications

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  1

  Gianni

  I looked around the house and surveyed the damage. I shook my head, knowing that this was a bad job. A very bad job.

  While I hated ordering this job, this was a bastard who really had what was coming to him. I had no love for hits, even though they were a necessary evil. As the new head of the Azzarra crime family, I was getting my feet wet with this killing - it was actually my first as a new boss, as my father recently died in a mysterious car accident. I knew that the car accident wasn’t all that mysterious, and I knew who was behind it. Benito Fattore was going to eventually pay for killing my father, of course, but hitting the head of the biggest rival crime family to the Azzarras was beyond my pay grade at the moment. I had to start somewhere, and that somewhere was Piero Ferraro.

  Growing up in this family exposed me to the inner-workings of what was necessary to protect the Azzarra’s assets, and I knew that sometimes you had to do what you had to do to take out a rat. And Piero was certainly a rat, by any definition. He was a soldier in the Azzarra organization, and was working with the Fattores as well. I knew about Piero’s betrayal for quite some time, and couldn’t believe that my father, Giorgio, let Piero get away with as much as he did. When my father died in that violent wreck, I knew that Piero was going to be first on my ghost list, because I knew that Piero was actually behind his hit.

  I shook my head, wondering how Piero could be so fucking stupid as to ice the one person who refused to see his disloyalty to the family. I don’t think that my father ever would have touched Piero, so when Piero decided to work with the Fattores to take out my father, he was effectively removing the one person who was determined to protect him.

  I moved through the house, surveying what my men had done. Piero’s house was a modest home in Brooklyn - a typical shirt-waist house with three stories, if you include the attic, a large front porch (complete with porch-swing), and hardwood floors throughout. The house was built around the turn of the 20th Century, when this particular style of architecture gained popularity throughout America.

  Piero’s house was over 100 years old, and smelled that way. The scent of mold and mildew hit my nose the second I opened the door, which almost made me gag. The floors of the house appeared to be the original ones, for the wood was worn and faded, and my footsteps made creaking noises that seemed to echo in my ears. Not that I was necessarily concerned that Piero’s neighbors would give a shit that I was in there, walking around – I doubted that anybody in the neighborhood even knew that there was something amiss. My men used a silencer to take Piero out, and the body was dumped clandestinely in the middle of last night. That was one thing that my men did right.

  What they didn’t do right, on the other hand, was check the house to make sure that there wasn’t anybody else living there. I shook my head when I found that one out. If I were a different kind of boss, I probably would’ve taken out one of the soldiers who carried out this job, just to teach everyone a lesson. But I was determined not to follow in my ruthless father’s footsteps – hits were going to be carried out only when the person absolutely deserved it, and not to teach a lesson. My father, if he were alive, probably would have whacked Salvatore Perrino, who was one of the soldiers who carried out Piero’s hit, and done it in front of the other men who were involved. Sending a message was my father’s way of doing business, and I wasn’t going to do that. Not at first, at least.

  Leave no witnesses. That was always the Azzarra credo, and for good reason. In order to not leave witnesses, it was always imperative that there weren’t witnesses around. Of course. Otherwise, if there were witnesses, things got complicated. Innocent people would get killed, and that was never a good thing. I hated when that happened, when my father had to have people killed who were guilty of nothing other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was why my father was so adamant that hits were done in private, where it was certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, that there wasn’t anybody around to testify against him. My father had no love for hits, either, especially on innocent people.

  I drew my gun as I moved throughout the house. I looked in every room, under every bed and in every closet. So far, so good. Nobody seemed to be in the house. That didn’t necessarily mean that there wasn’t somebody in the house at the time of the hit, of course. But it was a good sign that nobody seemed to be living there, except for Piero himself.

  I shook my head when I got to Piero’s bedroom and discovered Piero’s porn collection. I didn’t like porn, but to each his own. However, in looking at Piero’s collection, my stomach was turned. Piero didn’t like normal porn, judging by his collection, but, rather, appeared to only like child porn. I filed through the DVDs, my anger boiling inside of me with every DVD cover that had two small children on it. Thank god I hit that bastard. If I would have known what Piero’s inclinations were, I would have hit the asshole for that reason alone. It wouldn’t be the first time that an Azzarra would have hit an associate for perversion. My father had to whack an associate just last year, once it was discovered that the associate was a child molester. Judging from Piero’s collection, chances were good that this jerk was also a kiddy diddler, and that was something that I simply wouldn’t put up with. Under any circumstances.

  Shaking with anger, I went down to the tiny kitchen to retrieve a trash bag. I would get that porn collection and burn it. I didn’t want there to be any chance that somebody would find these sick recordings and claim them as their own. The cops were probably going to swarming this house as soon as Piero was reported missing by his family, and I didn’t trust that a cop wouldn’t “confiscate” these sick DVDs and use them to beat off to later.

  When I got to the kitchen, which was quite small, with old-school appliances, including a stove that looked like it was from the 1940s, and a refrigerator that looked at least that old, I heard it. A plaintive voice. A female voice.

  Mother fucker. I hadn’t yet swept this part of the house, but it was next. I put both my hands on my gun, pointing it to the ground. I sighed, not wanting to do what was necessary in this case, and cursing my men once more. I should have sent a soldier to do this job, and I would’ve, if I thought for one second that they wouldn’t fuck things up further. Now I was going to have to carry out a hit myself, which is something that, as a boss, I had never done and hoped never to do. I’ve done plenty of hits when I was a soldie
r, none of which I was happy about. As a boss, hits were carried out by others, and that was how I preferred it.

  “Piero,”the tiny voice cried out. “Please come down here. I’m so hungry. I haven’t eaten or drank in three days. Please, Piero. I feel like I’m going to die.”

  I shook my head, not liking the sound of this voice. It was pathetic, tiny, distinctly female. I was a gentleman, and I had always made a vow never to kill a woman. The only thing that I could hope for was that the woman didn’t know what happened to Piero. Not that that would save her life, necessarily. I would have to decide once I met the woman and see what she knew.

  I walked to the open door, which led to the basement, and crept down the stairs, my gun drawn. There was a small overhead light that illuminated the basement. I looked around, and was stunned at what I saw.

  A young woman, probably not older than 25 years old, was lying on a filthy mattress on the floor. I narrowed my eyes, seeing that the woman was chained to this mattress by a handcuff that secured her wrist to a post.

  Holy fuck. She looked at me, saw the gun, and her eyes got wide.

  Things just got complicated. To say the least.

  2

  Grace

  I wondered where Piero was. I had been in that basement for several days without food. I was happy that he wasn’t around, because I hated what he did to me. What he made me do to him. Yet, I depended upon him for food and water. I depended upon him to stay alive.

  Had it really only been a year since I was abducted off the street? I was a graduate student at NYU, studying Comparative Literature, with the goal of getting my PhD and hopefully a teaching position at a private Eastern College. I had been living the life of a typical graduate student – living on campus with my boyfriend, going to class, and studying as much as I could in my spare time. I was determined not to meet the same fate as my mother, who lived in Queens and always was reliant upon one jerk or another for money and security. My mother wasn’t self-reliant in the least, and, as near as I could tell, my mother would not have had the means to support herself if she didn’t marry one idiot after another who treated her like crap. I wanted no part of that life, so I made sure that I got the best education I could. I had to rely on scholarships, loans and grants to finance my education, right from the beginning, as my mother was perpetually between husbands, therefore didn’t have the money to send me to school. No matter, I did what I had to do.

  Then came that night. I was walking home from campus when I felt somebody put a rag over my face. I came to later on that night and found that I was chained to this filthy mattress. I had no idea why, and I immediately panicked, thinking that maybe I was in the dungeon of a serial killer. I had seen enough episodes of Criminal Minds to know that abductions usually didn’t end well.

  When Piero came down the stairs with my food that night, I soon wished that he would kill me. He fed me, but he also brutalized and repeatedly raped me. Nine months after I was abducted, I gave birth to a little girl, who I named Trina. Piero took that little girl away when she was born, and I never found out what had come of her. She was beautiful and perfect, which came as a surprise to me. After all, I wasn’t eating right. I wasn’t taking prenatal vitamins. I wasn’t seeing a doctor. I was barely gaining weight. If it weren’t for the fact that I stopped getting my period, I probably wouldn't have even suspected that I was pregnant. That’s how little weight I gained with her.

  I had given birth to her right there in the basement, with the help of a woman who I didn’t know and had never seen before. She spoke no English, only Italian, and, after I gave birth to Trina, I never saw her again.

  When she took the baby away, I screamed bloody murder. Worse than I had ever screamed before. I was crazed, desperate. I wanted my baby, I needed her. Even though I had barely gained weight, I felt her inside of me, moving around and kicking, and it was a great comfort to me. Not that I wanted her to live there in that dirty basement with me, and I knew that having her with me would be a horrible fate for her, but all I could think about was that I loved her and that she belonged with me.

  That was the worst part of my predicament. My heart hurt for my little girl. My arms ached for her. My thoughts were constantly with her. I couldn’t believe the cruelty of this man, couldn’t believe that there were monsters in the world like him. He was a disgusting creature, the most vile form of life that there was.

  Yet I depended upon him for food and water, so, when I didn’t see him for several days, I couldn’t help but freak out. I was suffering from the effects of dehydration, although I was lucky that it was winter-time, and the basement where I was imprisoned was cool. If it was summer-time, then I wouldn’t be so lucky – I probably would be dead. Dehydration can kill within a matter of days.

  When I finally heard the footsteps, who I assumed belonged to Piero, I was near death. I was extremely weak, and my brain was foggy. I hadn’t urinated in days. I probably would have died if not for the fact that the basement had a leak, and water had pooled next to my mattress, as it always did. I was able to lap up this water, just enough to keep me alive, but I didn’t know how much longer I could last. I could do nothing but lay on that mattress, waiting to die. When I heard the footsteps at the top of the stairs, I felt a sense of relief that I never thought that I would feel in Piero’s presence.

  My eyes settled on the man, who didn’t quite look like Piero, yet it had to be him. Who else would be in that basement? Piero was always so careful not to let anybody in that basement as long as I was tethered to that mattress. There were other times, however, that he would allow people into the basement, and he would lock me in a room down there. I would hear people on the other side of the wall, and I was even able to see, through a tiny peephole in the door, some of the people who were around him.

  Other times, I would hear Piero above, hosting parties and dinners with his extended family, and nobody could ever hear my scream. Piero kept the door to the basement locked tight, and, when the door was shut, the basement was apparently sound-proof. At least it seemed that way to me, even though I heard the men and women up above. Regardless, I had never actually met anybody who was associated with him, even if I did see them on occasion.

  I had no reason to believe that the man who stood in front of me was not Piero. My mind was delirious, so there wasn’t any way that I would have been able to distinguish this man from Piero.

  “Thank god,” I said to the man. “Thank god. I was so scared that something had happened to you, and I just would be down here, left to die.”

  Piero cleared his throat. “Why did you think that something happened to Piero?” he asked.

  If it was weird that Piero suddenly referred to himself in the third person, my brain didn’t process it. “I heard those men upstairs, and then I didn’t hear you anymore. I thought that maybe something happened and you were killed. You can’t believe how happy I am to see you right now.”

  Piero narrowed his eyes. “Why did you think that Piero was killed?”

  “Those men were after you. Don’t you remember that?” Was my brain creating things that weren’t real? I had no idea, no clue.

  “What men?” Piero asked.

  “Those men. You told me about how you thought that Gianni Azzarra was wanting to kill you, and I was afraid that had happened.”

  Piero shook his head. “Come with me,” he said. “I won’t hurt you, I promise.”

  I simply nodded my head. I was too weak to do anything else. “Thank you.”

  3

  Gianni

  Oh god. I knew what I had to do with this girl, but, after seeing her, and the predicament that she was in, I just couldn’t bring myself to. She was pitiful, but also hauntingly beautiful. With her dark hair and piercing blue eyes, set off against proud cheekbones and butterfly lips, I could see what she was like before she was brought down here into this hellhole. And I could see that she probably went through Hell and back. The last thing that I wanted to do was kill her, even though she
apparently knew that Piero was on the wrong side of the Azzarra family and had knowledge that he was on my hit list.

  I drew my gun, and pointed it at her head. Then she looked up at me, and the look on her face was so filled with fear and defeat that I just couldn’t pull the trigger. There was something in those eyes that drew me in, and made me want to protect her. I knew that I was objectively doing the wrong thing in letting her live, but perhaps she could be useful. She seemed to know about Piero’s life - maybe Piero had loose lips with her all along, and she could perhaps tell me about who else was in on the hit on my father.

  She gave me her hand, after I used my gun to shoot the chain on the handcuffs. The girl winced when I did it, but her reaction was otherwise subdued. When she looked at me, and I saw the tell-tale signs of severe dehydration, I knew why she was so subdued. It was the same reason why the poor girl thought that I was Piero – she was in the latter stages of dehydration, where she was delusional and confused. I couldn’t take her to the hospital – she knew too much, and when she came to, she probably would end up telling the police all that she learned from Piero. I couldn’t risk that, of course.

  I was going to have to take her to my house. I could get Niccolo to bring me an IV, and the girl could be re-hydrated. When she recovered enough, I would give her solid food and hopefully she could recover fully. After that….I shook my head.

  I told myself that I was going to keep this girl at my house because I hoped that she could give me information, but I knew that I was fooling myself. Seeing her eyes – so hurt, so defeated, so haunted – stirred something in me that I didn’t know still existed. They stirred my humanity, but it was so much more than that.

  Those eyes stirred my heart.

  4