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“What’s going on? Tell me,” I urged and wrapped my hand around hers. Her skin was cold.
“Miguel. You know Miguel, right?” she started nervously.
She knew I didn’t approve of her new boyfriend. He had trouble written all over him. I’d been hoping that it was just a passing thing, and the intrigue of dating someone so volatile and dangerous would fade. It seemed that hadn't happened yet.
I nodded. “I know him.”
“Well, he had the idea that we could make some money on the side, you know, doing odd jobs and stuff.”
“And an odd job brought you here? This doesn’t look like the kind of place people order take out to.”
Lucy’s eyes slid from mine. She was lying. I could always tell. But now wasn't the time to pester her for the truth.
“We just had to come in here and get something, something he could show his new boss, and then we’d get a full-time gig.”
“I’m not following,” I confessed. There was too much she was trying to hide, and her story was quickly falling apart. “Where is ‘here’, for starters?”
We were whispering so quietly, the murmur of the men talking in the other part of the room was easy to make out. I kept one ear on that noise, a guarantee that we hadn’t been discovered.
Lucy swallowed, her face pale. “A De Sanctis drop point.”
I took a moment to process this information. “De Sanctis. As in the criminal enterprise, Italian royalty of Atlantic City…that De Sanctis?” I managed in a controlled tone, even though I was sweating bullets.
Lucy nodded.
“And by drop point you mean…” I trailed off, unwilling to finish the obvious sentence. It would make it too real.
“This is one of the places where they drop their products and have dealers pick them up for distribution.”
Well, at least she knew exactly what she was getting herself into. There was a cold comfort in the fact that she hadn’t been misled in the slightest.
“Products, dealers, De Sanctis,” I muttered, shocked. Maybe it made me naïve, but I’d clearly underestimated the level of criminal activity my sister had become comfortable with. “Who are you right now?” I huffed angrily.
I was angry at her for dragging her life to new lows every day.
I was angry at myself for not watching closely enough and allowing her to fall.
I was mad at my Da for going and leaving us when we’d needed him.
I was even mad at Social Worker Sue and her brittle positivity.Yeah, Sue, we’re really lucky. Totally unscathed by our terrible childhoods.
I didn’t need to point out the danger we were in. Lucy knew; her tearstained cheeks gave that away. She was in over her head, and I was the only one who could get her out of this mess.
Lucy had gone big when she'd broken into this warehouse and tried to steal from a vicious mob syndicate. She’d skipped right over the low-hanging fruit of gangs and the smaller cartels that sprang up and disappeared frequently. She’d gone right to the top of the food chain. The apex predator of the state.
New Jersey was riddled with crime. During my clinical rotations in big Atlantic City hospitals, I’d seen firsthand the damage that the criminal syndicates wreaked as they sank their claws into the city. If it wasn’t gunshot wounds from rival families fighting for turf, it was drug overdoses caused by their products. It didn’t matter which family it was – Irish, Italian, Russian – the aftermath was bloody and lethal.
New Jersey and mafia were as intertwined as the Fourth of July and apple pie. And Lucy had gone straight for the De Sanctis family. Theirs was no fly-by-night organization. The De Sanctis family ran a serious operation. They called thecapoof the family the King of AC, because he ruled the casino scene with an iron fist and crushed opposition with ease. Renato De Sanctis was notorious, and no one in their right mind would cross him.
I stared at my sister, seeing her in a different light for a moment, before the murmur of approaching voices jolted me out of my thoughts.
We were no longer alone.
Sharp shouts and protests bounced off the warehouse walls. Lucy tried to get up beside me, but I quickly pulled her down, fear coating my mouth. It tasted like metal. I fumbled for my necklace. A small, simple gold pendant that my Da had given me. It bore the image of St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things and people. I’d always been a lost person; even Da had seen it.
“I’ll look,” I told her in a nearly inaudible whisper.
I rose on my knees, the cold cement floor digging through my cheap, polyester trousers. Two men entered the room from a side door. One seemed to be dragging a smaller man by the hair. I gripped Lucy’s hand hard, preventing her from kneeling up and looking. I’d gag her, if I had to.
