Page 42 of Captive Bride: Armani
And this is why he’s our leader.
Marco lets out a breath. “Most of the workers were loading up inside warehouse 113, so they didn’t take the brunt of it, but we’ve got four men in the hospital with injuries, smoke inhalation, that kind of thing. As for the loss in dollar amounts…who knows? Half the dock is gone, the barge was damaged, and what bottles weren’t damaged by fire got destroyed by high-pressure hoses putting it out.”
“Fuck,” is all I can manage in response.
“We don’t have status yet on the stock in the warehouses,” Marco goes on, “so I don’t know how much was already loaded into the containers. Frederica will have to get on that.”
“And how’s she doing?” I ask.
Frederica Linski is our shipping manager. She’s an older woman, but tough as nails, and has worked for the family since my father was a young man. She’s held the operation together many times when things have gone south, but they’ve never gone south to this extent.
“She’s pissed as hell we were targeted, but other than that, she’s okay.”
“Good,” I say.
Dante is already on his phone, speaking tersely to someone, so for the rest of the drive I make some of my own calls to our associates, but they go to voicemail. Listening in on my brother’s conversations, I don’t glean much more information than what Marco told us.
We had a large shipment going out early this morning. The one that was loading when I had Candi at the warehouses with me yesterday. Fuck. I’m thehead of security. This is on me.
I don’t realize that I cursed out loud until Dante looks back at me with a raised brow.
“It’s nothing,” I snap. But my mind has already gone there and I’m going to have to tell my brothers what I know—or at least, what I suspect I know—eventually.
Our shipping operations are secret. There’s a reason our warehouse isn’t clearly identified. Due to the expensive nature of the product we ship from that dock, it’s in our best interest to keep it under wraps. The people who work for us know what’s going on, of course, but they’ve all signed NDAs as part of their employment agreements, and though I don’t make a habit of threatening my employees, working for a well-established mob family is all the incentive they need to stay quiet. Candi is the only weak link in the chain in this scenario.
My little mole.
The docks should be a flurry of flashing police lights and bustling bodies, uniforms and civilians alike, but Port Authority and the local cops know how to downplay an incident like this. Beyond the yellow crime scene tape, only a few rubberneckers mill around, trying to see what’s going on.
Marco goes to park the car, letting Dante and me out first. We get to the plainclothes officers guarding the scene and my insides flip. There’s no downplaying once we’re up on it. The thick, cloying smell of smoke and burnt shit is everywhere, and so is the ash and debris from the shipping containers that flowed out when the hoses unleashed—shards of glass and paper and wood, blackened metal shrapnel, shreds of paper pulp and Styrofoam and corrugated cardboard from the wine packaging. Jesus. What a fucking mess.
After Dante has a word with the cops, we slip under the yellow tape. No one stops us as we hurry down the dock, picking our way past literal pieces of our livelihood. The full extent of the damage hits hard as we approach our warehouses dockside. Half of 114 is gone. The structure has a massive, char-blackened hole where the fire raged, blowing out windows and melting electrical wires and leaving behind piles of stinking rubble and ash.
“Holy Christ. It’s a certifiable miracle this didn’t hit the news.”
“We owe someone a Christmas bonus this year,” I agree.
Dante wears his inscrutable stone face as he surveys the damage, but it’s obvious that this is bad. Really bad. Our workers part for us as we get closer. I survey familiar, soot-streaked faces, spying abrasions, bandaged heads and hands and arms, minor injuries but injuries no less. My rage simmers. Not only did someone ruin hundreds of thousands in inventory; they hurt our people. And we already know who “they” are. Their stain is all over what’s left of the dock.
“Mr. Bellanti?”
A low growl of frustration works from my throat as I turn toward the voice. An officer from Port Authority comes at me with a clipboard.
“Which Bellanti are you?” he asks.
“Armani.”
“Good. You have a minute? I’d like to get your statement on what happened here today.”
My brothers sidle up to me out of nowhere. A Bellanti never faces the law alone.
“Someone set fire to our warehouse and sabotaged a shipment of very expensive wines,” Dante says. “That’s what happened.”
“We weren’t here, so we can’t give an eyewitness account,” Marco adds pointedly.
The cop just nods, jotting on his clipboard. “Any idea who might have done this?”
“No.” My voice is cold.
