Sucks to Be Me Read online

  Then, just to be sure, she looked behind all of the framed jerseys. No hidden locks. No secret panels. No wall safe.

  That left the bookshelves behind his desk. They were custom-made walnut and went all the way to the ceiling. The bottom half was cabinets. She opened those first.

  The right side was all shelves of stuff. Some office supplies, a couple baseball hats, a poker set, a box of cheap cigars he’d probably gotten as a gift.

  On the left side, the shelves were stacked with nudie magazines. She rolled her eyes. Those were going straight into recycling.

  She shut the doors and fixed her gaze on the shelves above. There was no lock visible anywhere, so if one existed, it had to be hidden.

  Then her eye caught on one of the books. They were all hardbacks, all mostly best sellers. This one started the middle row. The Godfather by Mario Puzo. The top of the spine was a little shinier than the rest of it. Like it had been touched a lot.

  Could it be that easy? She reached up and pulled the book out of its spot.

  Behind it was a lock. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” She tossed the book on the desk. “The Godfather. Honestly, Joe. So unoriginal.”

  She grabbed the keys out of the drawer and tried one. It fit. She turned it and was rewarded with a soft snick.

  The entire bookcase gave way, easing out from the wall about a half inch.

  “Un-freakin’-believable.”

  She grabbed the edge of the bookshelf and pulled. It swung wide easily, just clearing the back of Joe’s desk chair.

  Her jaw went south as lights flickered on, and the space behind it was revealed.

  All these years he’d told her the kitchen pantry wasn’t bigger because all the major ductwork and trunk lines in the house ran behind it. “That lying dog.”

  The room was as big as her walk-in closet. Maybe bigger. The side walls had built-in shelves. On the right side, the top five shelves were filled end to end with wrapped bundles of currency. The bills were hundreds, at first glance. More than she’d ever seen in one place. She couldn’t even estimate how much money there might be.

  A million? Two? More, maybe. If anything was going to give her a hot flash, this was it. She braced for the onslaught of her own personal summer as she investigated further.

  The wall across from that one held some more boxes. One was a box of condoms. Lovely. The rest of the boxes were larger and plain cardboard, but there were also some metal ones she recognized as ammunition boxes. Her father had had a few of those when she was a kid.

  There were maybe a dozen of those and only three of the larger cardboard ones. Another shelf held a bulletproof vest, a couple sets of handcuffs, a riot baton, a Taser, some kind of tool set in a bound leather pouch. The shelf below that held a years’ worth of notebooks, which she guessed were filled with the kind of information Rico Medina would love to get his hands on.

  But the back wall was where her attention was drawn and stayed.

  Guns. Handguns, shotguns, rifles, all kinds. Guns she didn’t know the names of or want to know the names of. Each in its own niche. It wasn’t a collection so much as an arsenal.

  “Mary and Joseph,” Donna breathed out. The discovery had her trembling. A little bit from fear, but mostly with anger. She wasn’t afraid of guns. Most Mafia wives knew better. They learned how to shoot, how to handle a weapon with respect.

  What made her mad was the extent of this secret. How dare he keep this from her? How dare he bring all of this into a house where they’d raised two children? What if the house had been raided? She’d seen it happen. Not to anyone in the Villachi family, but she’d seen it.

  This was the kind of thing that put people away.

  She put her hand to her heart, took a deep breath, and reminded herself that nothing had happened. And Joe was already dead unfortunately, so she couldn’t act on the sudden desire to strangle him.

  The deep breath helped put rational thought back into her head. She could handle this. She’d handled everything else. The money was easy to deal with. She’d donate some to the church. Cammie would like that. Although she wasn’t about to tell Cammie where it had come from or even that she’d donated it.

  There was no doubt in Donna’s mind that this was blood money. Ill-gotten gains. And she wanted nothing to do with the rest of it. Sure, the possibility existed that Joe had earned this money in some completely above-board kind of way.

  But that possibility was so slim it was laughable.

  She took a moment to think about what she should do. She’d like to put a nice bit into the kids’ trust accounts, but she didn’t think they’d be happy about the money’s origins either.

  Right now, it was probably best if she put it all in a safe-deposit box somewhere just to get it out of the house. That felt like the right move. Maybe not all of it, though. She’d probably borrow a little bit, just until the insurance check came.

  Then she’d repay whatever she’d spent and be done with it. Done with all of this.

  The guns…she narrowed her eyes, staring at them. She had no idea what those guns had been used for. If anything. Maybe they were just for show, but she doubted he’d opened this room for anyone. Either way, they ought to go to Rico. He could do the forensics on them. Maybe link them to some cases that would help put the Villachis away. She was good with that.

  Actually, Rico could have all of it. She certainly didn’t need the ammunition. Assuming that’s what was in those canisters. She checked. Yep, ammunition. So that could go to Rico. Just like the bulletproof vest and the rest of it. Maybe she’d keep the Taser for protection.

  Her gaze shifted to the cardboard boxes. More ammunition? She grabbed the closest one and pulled it off the shelf. It was heavy, but not filled-with-bullets heavy. She put it on the floor and opened it up.

  Boxes and boxes of playing cards. Instinct and experience told her they were probably marked. The crew was heavily into illicit gambling. They ran games all over town.

  She took the second box down and opened it.

  A new curse slipped from her lips. The box was filled with bundles of plastic-wrapped white powder. Cocaine, she guessed. The third box held the same thing. Red edged her vision. How. Dare. He. In her house. Where her children had grown up.

  Now she was really mad. The kind of mad that wasn’t going to go away for a while. He’d thought she was an oblivious fool, evidently, to keep such things in this house right under her nose. Probably laughed about it to the rest of the crew.

  But then, she had been oblivious, hadn’t she? The thought was utterly disheartening.

  Did all the families have rooms like this? She might ask Rosie, because Rosie would say if she knew. But then, Rosie still had to live with Bobbie. Maybe not saying anything would be better. Of course, Rosie was a little more streetwise. Maybe she already knew and was happy to look the other way.

  Donna shook her head in disgust. She’d seen enough for now. She closed the secret room, then stomped upstairs. Still seething, she changed out of her leggings and T-shirt and into skinny black jeans, a black silk blouse, and knee-high boots. “What do you think, Lucky?”

  The cat had no comment.

  She wanted to look tough and capable. Not like Joe’s oblivious widow. Not like someone easily taken advantage of. She was no one’s patsy, not anymore.

  Her mood being what it was, she went to the safe in Joe’s closet, opened it, and took out her handgun. It was loaded. She tucked it into the waistband of her jeans at her back. She was done being the fool. Joe had undoubtedly never gone to a meeting without protection, why should she?

  She went downstairs, put her red trench coat on, mostly because it made her feel powerful, grabbed her purse and her keys, and headed for the garage.

  On the way, she picked up the duffel bag. She scowled at it. Putting gloves on probably would have been wise to keep her prints off it, but it was too late for that now. Besides, her patience was nearly gone. She took a breath, reminding herself she just had to keep it t
ogether a little while longer.

  Very soon, she would spill her guts to Rico and watch the Villachis swing while she soaked up the sun on the warm, white sands of Pensacola Beach.

  She threw the bag in the trunk of her Mercedes, then climbed behind the wheel and tapped the button to raise the garage door. It was too early to leave for the drop-off, but she had a stop to make first.

  The cemetery.

  Joe might be dead, but that wasn’t about to stop her from giving him a piece of her mind. And when she was done, he’d be glad he was already deceased.

  Holy Cross Cemetery was twenty minutes out of her way to the industrial park, but the time flew by. She practiced her words in her head, revising and editing as she drove, perfecting each cutting line until it was razor-edged and dagger sharp.

  The clouds that had been muting the twilight glow of the setting sun parted and gave way to the rise of a fat, full moon.

  She slowed and turned into the cemetery. It looked different at night, but she watched for the markers and found Joe’s site. She parked and got out after storing the gun in the glove box. She stayed by the side of the car for a moment.

  It was a little creepy being here alone at night, but she focused on how mad she was. A few weird shadows and a couple bare trees weren’t going to spook her off her mission.

  She locked the car and made the trek to his graveside. His stone wasn’t there yet. It would take a few weeks for that to be completed. In the meantime, there was a flat marker with a number on it. Hard to find in the dark. Even harder to read. She looked closer to be sure she was at the right spot.

  Eleven forty-seven. That was Joe. Temporarily reduced to a number. How low the mighty had fallen.

  She stared at the marker, all the words she’d worked up in the car on the verge of spilling out. “How could you?” she whispered. “I never really thought I hated you, but that room. With all that…contraband in it. Drugs, Joe? In the house with the kids?”

  Her hands clenched into tight fists. “I’m not even going to discuss the condoms, you cheating son of a—”

  A noise off in the distance pulled her attention. It sounded almost like someone laughing. Had to be an animal. A crow, maybe. They could make sounds like that. Right?

  “Do you know how much trouble we could have been in? How much—”

  The noise repeated, farther away this time.

  She looked at the marker again, but she couldn’t quite remember where she’d been. “I’m furious with you, Joseph Barrone. Furious that you thought so little of me and the kids to keep all that garbage in our house. Furious you didn’t love us more. Furious that you’d willingly put us all in danger. Furious at myself for actually being sad you’re gone.”

  She barked out a bitter laugh. “I’m not sad anymore. I want you to know that. I’m fine with you being gone. It’s the best thing you ever did for me, outside of Christina and Joe Jr., you know that?”

  She shook her head. “What would your mother say if she was alive?”

  Donna’s jaw clenched. She forced herself to take a breath. “I’m glad you’re dead, Joe. You’re scum. You and Big Tony and the whole gang. Criminals. You all deserve to go to jail for a long, long time.”

  The sound of odd laughter rang through the cemetery a third time. Closer now. A small trickle of unease went down her back. Maybe she should have brought the gun. The noise was just from an animal, she told herself. But it didn’t sound like an animal at all.

  She stared into the distance, toward where the sound had come from, but even in the moonlight, the landscape was all shapes and shadows.

  The clouds drifted across the moon, deepening the shadows into pure darkness. Shapes disappeared. She tried to will herself to see into the blackness, but nothing was discernable. The wind picked up, whistling softly past.

  She pulled her coat closer and wrapped her arms around herself, unable to take her gaze off the landscape around her.

  Something formed in the darkness. A shape. Moving. Speeding toward her. Laughing. She opened her mouth to scream. The form struck her like a bullet, knocking her down and taking the air from her lungs.

  The thing was on top of her, pinning her to the ground. Pain erupted like fire in her neck. She fought, but blackness closed in. All she heard was laughter.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter Five

  The earth beneath Donna hummed. Insects, she thought in a kind of hazy, foggy, out-of-body way. The realization that she could hear the movement of such small creatures deep in the ground beneath her did nothing to anchor her to whatever was actually going on.

  For the briefest of moments, she wondered hopefully if some of those bugs were feasting on Joe. He deserved it.

  The pain in her neck was gone. Or she’d stopped feeling it. Her sight hadn’t returned. Nor had the feeling in any part of her body. She wasn’t even sure she was in her body.

  Was she floating? Or flying? Or maybe none of those things. She would have said she was numb, but when you went numb, you were still aware of yourself in a physical way.

  That awareness didn’t exist. All that she could identify was the creeping, crawling, tunneling sounds of the insects in the dirt beneath her.

  Was she dead?

  If she was dead, she was going to hunt down Joe’s ghost and beat the boo out of him.

  Then a bitter, metallic taste swirled through her senses, coating her tongue. She gagged as her throat tried to close. That didn’t feel like something that would happen after death.

  Next the shapes and shadows returned with vague, indiscernible lines. Her vision was back, but with the clarity of peering through murky water. At least the laughter was gone. Just the buzzing beneath her. And the whistling breeze.

  The metallic taste filled her mouth. Perfume tickled her nose. The scent was complex and curious and smelled expensive. She swallowed. A shape looming over her took on a female form.

  Donna became aware of flesh pressed to her mouth. That was where the blood was coming from that was spilling down her throat. She tried to pull away, but she didn’t have enough strength to make much of an effort.

  Then she no longer wanted to pull away. She wanted the blood. Craved it. She opened her mouth wider, trying to get more.

  “Ah,” a voice said. “There you are. Back from the brink, I see.”

  Donna blinked, her vision clearing and sharpening as if lights had been turned on. Nothing made sense and she didn’t care. She reached for the wrist pressed to her mouth, and the woman laughed. Not the same sound as before.

  “That will do.” A few of her words had the slightest hint of a French accent. She pulled her arm away, and a second later, the puncture wounds on her wrist closed up. “I am very sorry about my rogue protégé. And I am also sorry that I must leave you now, but I have to catch him before he strikes again. Not to worry. I will find you soon and explain everything. Until then, follow your instincts and you should be fine, but keep your head. Try to remember that, okay? You will probably drift off again and forget all of this, but at some point, it should come back to you. Go easy now. Everything is—”

  The cackling laughter echoed from somewhere behind them.

  The woman’s gaze snapped toward the sound. She frowned and muttered something in French.

  “Who…are…you?” Donna managed.

  The woman looked at her again. “I’m Claudette. Don’t be alarmed if you sleep a lot. Now I must go. Don’t feed until we speak again. Remember that.”

  Then she disappeared so quickly it was almost as if she’d been erased from the air. Donna lay there, staring into the blank space Claudette had just occupied. Don’t feed? What did that mean? The stars in the night sky were brilliant pinpoints of light.

  They mesmerized Donna. She couldn’t look away. Then the sudden weight of lethargy pressed down on her. She closed her eyes, and everything went dark a second time.

  When Donna opened her eyes again, she had no idea why she was on the ground. She felt fine, but a little
foggy. She sat up. What had happened? She’d come to tell Joe off, and something had knocked her down. A dog? She could only remember pieces at first. Yes, maybe a dog. A big one. Her hand went to her throat. It had bitten her. But the skin on her neck felt fine. A little sticky.

  A new thought pushed through all the foggy uncertainty. The drop-off. Oh no. What time was it? She checked her watch. Crap. She was twenty-three minutes away, and she had thirty-two minutes to make it there on time.

  There’d better not be an accident on the interstate.

  She got to her feet. Not wobbly like she expected. The moon had gotten oddly bright too. She looked back at Joe’s marker, which was surprisingly easy to read all of a sudden. It was almost like daylight out here.

  But she didn’t have time to dwell. She needed to be in the car, driving, now.

  Five minutes later, she was on the highway and headed toward the industrial park. So long as she didn’t hit a snag, she’d be there with a few minutes to spare. Being late to this drop-off would not be good. She didn’t need Big Tony thinking she’d backed out. Or was a no-show. Or worse, had taken off with whatever was in the bag.

  But now that she was on track to get there on time, she could take a moment to think about what had happened to her at the cemetery.

  She hadn’t been knocked down by a dog. She knew that now. It had been a man. A young man. And he had bitten her. She was sure of that.

  The sign for her exit was up ahead. Way up ahead. How was it possible that she could read it from here?

  Must be the clear night air. That would also explain how bright the stars had been after Claudette had left.

  Claudette.

  Donna could see the woman’s face as clearly as if she was looking at her now. Claudette was stunningly beautiful. Dark-skinned and bright-eyed with high cheekbones and…fangs.

  Donna let that word sit in her thoughts for a long moment. The word that went with it, the V-word… She wasn’t going there. Because that way led to crazy.

  She took the exit for the industrial park, passing the old Heidelman’s Costume Shop on the way. Her gaze stayed on the sign a second longer than necessary, and she laughed. Wow. Being in the cemetery had really played with her head. Costumes. Of course.