Chapter 4 - Blood and Ball Bearings
By the third week of December, the salt trucks had turned the streets of Delray into a white, corrosive wasteland. The Detroit River froze twenty yards out from the riprap along the terminal banks, the gray ice grinding against the wooden pilings with a sound like teeth chewing gravel.
Moretti Auto had never been busier, and Frankie had never been closer to collapse.
She had logged eighty-two hours of Vanguard fleet maintenance in fourteen days. Her fingers were permanently split around the cuticles from cold diesel fuel; her back felt like someone had driven a dry pine wedge beneath her shoulder blades. But the numbers on her yellow pad were climbing down.
$118,500.
She had cut more than thirty thousand dollars off the balance in less than a month.
It was four in the afternoon on a Tuesday when the black Lincoln Town Car pulled up to the curb. It wasn't one of Gabriel’s trucks. It had Ohio plates, a cracked rear tail light, and three men inside who didn't look like freight dispatchers.
Frankie was under the hood of an old Dodge Ram belonging to Mr. Henderson, the retired mailman who lived three blocks over, replacing a serpentine belt. She didn't drop the wrench when the driver's door opened, but she stepped out from behind the fender so her back wasn't to the open bay.
The man who walked in was short, wide across the middle, wearing an expensive camel-hair coat that had grease on the lower hem. His nose had been broken at least twice, flattened across his face like a lump of bread dough.
"Francesca Moretti?" he asked. His voice had the flat, nasal twang of Cleveland.
"Who's asking?" she said, her left hand resting on the heavy steel handle of the floor jack.
"Name's Vinnie. Vinnie 'The Hook' Renzetti. I do collections for the Buckeye Sports Exchange." He stopped five feet from the Dodge, looking around the shop with the casual, evaluative eyes of a vulture picking over an animal that hadn't quite finished dying. "Nice place you got here. High ceilings. Lots of scrap potential."
Frankie’s stomach plummeted. "Leo."
"Give the lady a prize," Vinnie said, smiling with teeth that were too white and too straight for a face that had taken so many punches. "Your brother’s got an expensive hobby, sweetheart. Seems he thought his luck would change if he crossed the state line. He’s into my people for forty-five grand from the Thanksgiving weekend games in Toledo."
Frankie let out a long, slow breath through her nose. The air smelled of cold copper and old grease.
"Leo doesn't live here," she said, her voice dropping into a dangerous, level monotone. "And I don't pay his debts."
"See, that's where you're confused," Vinnie said, taking another step forward. The two men from the Lincoln had stepped out onto the concrete apron now, both of them wearing heavy leather jackets with their hands tucked deep into their pockets. "Leo told us his sister ran the shop. Said the shop was good for it. Said Gabriel Costa was backing the paper."
"Costa doesn't back Leo," Frankie said. "Costa is collecting from him. And if you have business with Leo, you find him at his apartment on Clark Street. Get out of my bay."
Vinnie’s smile faded. The friendly collector act dropped away, replaced by the ugly, routine brutality of a mid-level enforcer who wasn't used to hearing a woman tell him to move.
"You got a mouth on you, girl," Vinnie said, reaching out to grab the front grille of the customer's truck. "Maybe we take a couple of these lifts out of commission until Leo finds his checkbook. Maybe we smash that pretty red toolbox your daddy left you."
"Touch that box," a voice said from the shadows of the side office, "and you'll leave this shop in three separate plastic bags, Vinnie."
Vinnie froze.
The two men on the apron reached for their coats, but before their fingers could clear the leather, the sharp, metallic clack-clack of two twelve-gauge pump shotguns sounded from the alley outside the bay door.
Sal and Dante stepped through the side entrance, their shotguns leveled at the midsections of the two Ohio boys.
Gabriel Costa walked out of Frankie’s small office. He was wearing his charcoal three-piece suit, no coat, holding a small porcelain cup of espresso that Frankie’s grandmother had brought from Palermo fifty years ago. He took a slow, delicate sip, his eyes fixed on the man in the camel-hair coat.
"Gabriel," Vinnie stammered, the color draining from his ears so fast he looked like he was about to vomit on the clean slab. "We... we didn't know Vanguard was on this property. The word in Toledo was—"
"The word in Toledo," Gabriel said, his voice softer than the falling snow, "is whatever I allow to cross the state line on I-75. And you’re currently standing on a Vanguard logistics priority service depot, Renzetti."
"Leo said—"
"Leo is a degenerate liar," Gabriel said, walking forward until he was standing three inches from Vinnie’s face. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't reach for a weapon. He was half a foot taller than the Ohio collector, his broad frame blocking the light from the bay door. "And you are an idiot who crossed into my city without checking in with my office on the docks."
Vinnie swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed violently against his wool collar. "We’ll leave, Gabriel. We’ll go back to Toledo. No disrespect intended."
"Disrespect was already delivered," Gabriel murmured. He reached out with his left hand, caught the lapel of Vinnie’s camel-hair coat, and pulled him forward on his toes. "This woman is under my personal protection. Moretti Auto is Vanguard property until her contract is fulfilled. If I see your car, your men, or anyone from the Buckeye Exchange north of the Ohio turnpike again, I won't call your boss. I'll send Dante down to your house in Parma to explain the boundaries to your wife."
He shoved Vinnie backward with a casual, dismissive flick of his wrist.
"Get out."
The three men didn't run, but they moved with the desperate, hurried scramble of dogs that had just smelled a wolf in the yard. The Lincoln’s doors slammed, the tires spun on the icy asphalt, and the car sped down Dragoon Street toward the interstate, its exhaust sputtering in the freezing dusk.
Frankie stood by the Dodge Ram, her wrench still in her hand. Her knuckles were white.
"I didn't ask for your help, Costa," she said, her voice shaking with an anger that was half-fury and half-adrenaline.
Gabriel turned around. He looked at Dante and Sal, nodding toward the street. "Check the perimeter. Make sure they didn't leave anyone on the corner."
The two guards nodded and disappeared into the snow, pulling the bay door down behind them until only three feet of clearance remained at the bottom.
Gabriel walked over to the workbench, set the tiny espresso cup beside a set of metric deep-well sockets, and looked at Frankie.
"You didn't ask," he said. "And you were about to hit that gorilla with a twelve-inch crescent wrench."
"I was going to use the breaker bar," she corrected sharply. "It has better reach."
Gabriel’s lips twitched, but the humor didn't reach his eyes this time. His face was dark, set in hard, cold angles that made him look fifteen years older than thirty-five.
"Leo is going to get you killed, Francesca."
"Leo is my brother."
"Leo is a cancer," Gabriel said, stepping closer. "He used my name in Toledo. He told Renzetti’s people that I had forgiven his debt because you were my mistress."
The air left Frankie’s lungs in a sharp, burning gasp. "He what?"
"He’s running around the backrooms in Greektown telling every small-time loan shark that Vanguard is backing his play because his sister is keeping the boss warm at night," Gabriel said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, gravelly register. "He thinks it gives him status. He thinks it keeps the wolves off his back."
Frankie turned away, leaning her forehead against the cold steel of the truck’s radiator support. Her eyes burned, but she refused to let the tears fall.
"I’ll kill him," she whispered. "I swear to God, I’ll take a crowbar to his head myself."
"No, you won't," Gabriel said, his voice suddenly behind her, closer than she expected. His hand came down on her shoulder—heavy, warm, his fingers gripping through the denim of her shirt. "You’ll clean his mess, because that’s what your father trained you to do. You’ve been holding this garage, this house, this whole broken family together on your back since you were nineteen years old."
Frankie swung around, her shoulder pulling free from his grip.
"And what are you doing, Costa?" she yelled, the anger finally breaking through the dam. "You’re doing the exact same thing! You cut the debt in half so you could keep me on a leash! You come in here with your bespoke suits and your bodyguards, playing the savior, when all you really want is the dirt under my boots for your damn trains!"
Gabriel didn't back up. He stepped into her space, his chest almost touching hers, his hazel eyes wide and ferocious in the dim light of the trouble lamp.
"If I only wanted the dirt, Francesca," he whispered, each word hard as an anvil strike, "I would have bulldozed this bay four weeks ago and left your brother’s corpse in the river for the coast guard to fish out in April."
"Then why?" she demanded, her fists clenching at her sides. "Why are you here?"
Gabriel reached out, his hand catching the side of her neck, his fingers tangling in the dark, messy curls that had escaped her cap. His thumb traced the sharp line of her jaw, pressing firmly against her pulse point, where the blood was racing like an engine running without a governor.
"Because the first time you looked at me," Gabriel murmured, his voice dropping into that ancient, melodic Sicilian dialect that sounded like stones rolling under the Mediterranean surf, "non hai abbasciatu l'occhi."
You didn't lower your eyes.
"I don't bow to mobsters, Costa," she breathed, her heart hammering against her ribs, her mouth inches from his.
"Good," Gabriel said, his face softening by fractions of an inch, his thumb stroking her cheek with a tenderness that terrified her more than Dante’s shotgun. "Because I don't want a woman who bows. I have three hundred men in this city who bow. I wanted to see if the daughter of Aldo Moretti was made of the same iron as her old man."
He let his hand drop slowly, his fingers grazing her collarbone before falling away.
"Get your coat," he said, turning toward the door.
May you like
Frankie blinked, trying to catch her breath. "What?"
"Get your coat," Gabriel repeated, pulling his shearling jacket back over his broad shoulders. "Leo is at a pool hall on Michigan Avenue. And you’re going to watch me explain the new rules of his existence."
