Vendetta (20 page)

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     It couldn’t have been more than an hour when Mark heard the back door bang against the outer brick wall. He hated it when people swung it too hard. “Don’t they realize that it can‘t possibly be good on the door?” he had always wondered. That could be Lucy, he assumed. She treated everything like it was expendable.

    
The scraping sound of high heels scuffed the concrete floor. This, followed by a series of beeps, told Mark that the alarm was disabled and it was indeed Lucy. She was apparently leaving the back door unlocked. Mark pressed the remote button and carefully set it down next to the flashlight on the bag.

    
“Go wait out in the car! As soon as my brother gets here, pay the cab driver and show him in!” Lucy snapped.

    
“Yes, Ms. Angelo,” said a young males voice.

    
“That must be her driver,” Mark thought. He heard him close the door behind him.

    
“Come on, come on!” Lucy shouted. She nervously paced around the kitchen. “You should have landed by now,” she said anxiously.

    
Mark remained still as possible, as he listened to every sound she made. He visualized her every move. He was also anxiously awaiting Leo’s arrival. He didn’t know how he would react, but he would remain as still as possible until the perfect time.

     
The shrill sound of Lucy’s cell phone ringing filled the restaurant and echoed throughout the empty kitchen.

    
“Hello, brother?” Lucy’s tone was overly excited.

    
“Oh, thank God! ….  You have the address with you or do you need it? Your almost here then! ….. I can’t wait to see you, too! Okay, have the cab driver bring you around back. My driver will pay him and he’ll escort you in …. Great! Bye, bye!” Lucy squealed.

    
Lucy began skipping around like a school girl. She hummed to herself and sang something cheerful. Mark heard a refrigerator door open and the clinking of glasses.

    
“Was she celebrating?” The thought made him cringe. Mark was shaking with anger.

    
This was going to be harder than he thought. It was going to take a lot of patience to sit still and keep quiet. He knew he needed to keep his cool, now more than ever, and remain composed so he didn’t blow this opportunity. Mark took slow, deep breaths, to calm down. After all, Leo wasn’t even there yet. This was only the beginning.

    
The sound of Lucy’s high heels, clicked throughout the dining hall. Mark thought she was probably looking out the windows. With a huff of excitement, she abruptly clomped back into the kitchen. The moment Mark heard the back door open; he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He slowly rotated his shoulders one at a time and rolled his head from side to side to ease the rising of uncomfortable tension. It was an unmistakable warning. Leo was here.

    
“Tina, baby! My Lord, you look stunning!” Leo said. His voice didn’t sound at all familiar to Mark. That was odd. Mark was almost disappointed that he didn’t recognize it.

    
There was a long silence, and he heard Lucy begin to weep.

    
“I’m so glad you made it, Leo! I’ve waited for so long, for this very moment… where I could hold my baby brother in my arms again,” Lucy cried.

    
Mark fumed with rage. He was unsure of how much of this he could take. Mark would NEVER be able to see his sister or his daughter alive again, let alone hug them! Heat rose up in him… burning his ears and flushing his cheeks. His resentment towards them alone, boiled the blood that his darkened heart now sent coursing through his veins.

    
He fantasized about putting his hands around their necks and squeezing the miserable life out of each of them.

    
Clenching his fists, he forced himself to remain still and silent. He remembered his training from the Gulf War. “Shut off all emotion, and keep your mind on the physical task at hand, then do it. Get it done.” He silently chanted this in his mind, over and over, like a mantra.

    
He closed his eyes in the dark and refocused his mind. The time was coming…. It just wasn’t right now. He would wait for his intuition to prep him for the right moment, the infamous click.

    
“It’s so good to see you too, sissy, outside the prison even! I’m not sure what to call you. Do I call you Lucy or can I call you Tina?” Leo asked lightheartedly.

    
“I love it when you call me, sissy! You can call me Tina, you can call me whatever you’d like,” she laughed.

    
“I know it seems a bit silly to have changed my name, but it was all necessary, and I would do it again if I had to,” she said proudly.

    
“You will be so proud of me, Leo, once you hear of all I’ve done for you. I have dedicated the last ten years of my life to bringing our family closer to justice for what that little imbecile did to you, TO US!” Lucy quickly turned nasty.

    
“I AM proud of you Sissy. I am so lucky to have a sister like you to love me and care so much about the family,” Leo sounded emotional.

    
“The hardest part, I thought… has turned out to be the easiest,” Lucy continued bragging about her accomplishments.

    
“Controlling Nick, was much simpler than I had originally thought,” she said.

    
It sounded, to Mark, like they were moving the metal folding chairs over to the steel prepping table in the middle of the kitchen.

    
“This Nick character… how is that situation playing out?” Leo inquired.

    
“Like a dream,” Lucy said confidently.

    
“He’s so screwed up on drugs; he tried to blow his brains out last night. Can you believe it?” Lucy asked coolly.

    
“His dim-wit of a wife supposedly “caught” us yesterday and left him. I decided it was time to let him go anyway. It worked out best for us. I don‘t need to be involved in there drama. I figured I’d let him hang himself… I just didn‘t think he would literally try it,” she laughed wickedly.

    
“You’ve got to tell me, sissy. I’m dying to know. How on earth did you manage to get him to kill Allie?” Leo asked, sounding amused.

    
“How do you think? Look at me, it was a piece of cake! I could get him to do anything I wanted,” Lucy laughed, cynically.

    
“I gave him what all immature little boys want,” Lucy grinned devilishly, “a little attention and some CANDY on the side. The man is a crack head. I got him hooked up with my housekeeper and her contacts. I paid for it, and bribed him with it. It worked to my advantage that he already hated Mark with a passion… and was always SO jealous of him, that it wasn’t hard to turn him against the girl too. He was even jealous of the brat for spending time with Julie,” Lucy continued to explain.

    
“I black mailed him with the drugs and our affair, if he started to talk crazy, like, he didn’t want to do it, or he wasn’t sure anymore…. I might have threatened him with our family reputation, once or twice,” Lucy smiled slyly.

    
“I convinced him that it was Mark, who would be poisoned that night. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with the girl’s death. I said I would handle it, and I did. So, with that “crystal violet” compound I had told you about, I had it mixed into the frosting that was put on the girl’s cake, like I told you. But he had no clue, that what he was really doing was poisoning Allie instead of Mark. He couldn’t wait to give Mark his just desserts! He was a nervous wreck that night. He couldn’t handle the pressure or the excitement,” she light heartedly continued.

    
“The motive won’t be hard for the pigs to prove. Plus, he’s already confessed to poisoning the girl. Anything else he says, I’ll deny and call him a lunatic. What difference does it make who I sleep with anyway, that doesn‘t make me a murderer,” Lucy grabbed the wine bottle and poured them a glass.

    
“Nick’s reputation is already tarnished and he’ll be labeled as nothing but a low life, druggy, murderer. You know how they get treated in the system,” Lucy paused. She glanced up at Leo to gauge his response. She feared she may have overstepped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that you-”

    
“I understand. I know all too well, actually,” Leo said solemnly.

     Lucy
continued.

    
“That night, I covered my tracks well. I deliberately hired triple the normal amount of people to help out with the silly, over the top, birthday party. I thought it would confuse the cops when they started to investigate. Maybe send them off with a few false leads.”

    
She mocked the scenario in a baby voice.

    
“But when “Princess Allie” fell… after eating the poisoned apple… the commotion from the guests was like nothing I could have ever expected,” Lucy said. “Nick apologized profusely for his mistake. I told him that it would work out better for us this way.”

    
She put her hand to her heart and smiled sweetly at Leo, “I promised him that he would have money to support us and we could run away together, as soon as he got rid of Julie and that I wanted you to have Mark all to yourself, anyway.” She mocked. “I can’t wait to hear what you have planned for him, by the way” she squealed.

    
Mark was clenching his jaw so tight… he tasted blood. He channeled his anger into his hands, as they remained bawled into fists. “SOON,” he thought.

    
He continued to listen, until the perfect moment would come when he would walk into that kitchen….

    
“Oh, you’ll see,” Leo said cheerfully.

    
“If only you could have been here that night! This place was a zoo. I thought it was never going to end!” Lucy boasted. “There were people crying and running around frantically,” she said animatedly.

    
“What did you end up doing that night? Surely you didn‘t go to the hospital with them, did you?” Leo asked, interested.

    
“I went with Dom and stood by his side, of course. I put on a sad, yet supportive face and got out of there as soon as I could,” She said.

    
“He played his part exceptionally well. Just like I knew he would. Dom was absolutely mortified and was SOOO concerned for Mark!” Lucy laughed again. “Thank God he was there to handle everything and control the situation. That’s true to Dom’s fashion,” Lucy said dramatically.

    
Mark was absolutely certain that Dom was a part of this conspiracy now. He obviously knew it was a possibility, but never fully accepted it. It hurt a little more to hear it than he anticipated.

    
“How did you ever find Vinny, in the first place? Or, excuse me... Mark Anderson,” Leo smiled.

    
“I already told you all that, don’t you remember?” Lucy was confused. Maybe she hadn’t, she thought.

    
“Yeah, you mentioned it, but I don’t think I understood it right. Did you say you married a cop in the Witness Protection Agency?” Leo asked.

    
“I sure did, brother. That kind of information is hard to get when you have no money… I just had to get creative with the right person. I rode that out a little bit, and once I got what I wanted, I said, ‘Honey… I’m going for a walk, don’t wait up,’” Lucy laughed.

    
“Mazzo was his name. He was a dirty cop and not a very good husband either. It was easy to move on to Dom, with his successful restaurant and everything. It was much more exciting. It’s been a wonderful working environment ever since,” she joked. “It kind of reminded me of the good ole days with Pop in the family restaurant… ya know, before Joey was killed,” she said sadly.

    
“I think about those days too,” Leo said sadly. “So what’s next, Sissy? What’s left in your bag of tricks?” he mused.

    
Lucy delighted in the fact that her brother was teasing her the way he used to when they were younger, when things were simpler.

    
“Well, Dom is gone. He left right after speaking to the lawyer this morning. He’s been taking care of his sister, Anita. So there’s really no need to bother him with anything right now,” Lucy said as she stood from the table.

    
“After you kill Mark, I think it’s time we take a trip to the bank and retrieve the contents of my safe deposit box,” Lucy chimed. “And then it’s first class baby, wherever we want to go!” Lucy smiled in a childlike manner and stretched her arms out like an airplane.

    
“So, what about Mark, how are you going to do it?” Lucy inquired.

    
Leo paused. He didn’t quite know what to say.

    
Lucy’s arms plopped back to her sides. She tilted her head and looked down at her brother, decisively.

    
“I think Mark needs to continue living his life… knowing that he has lost everything, just as we have,” Leo said, sounding unsure.