Page 5 of Kidnapped By the Boss
He sighed. “That was pretty much all Mario said. He still doesn’t know much about The Wreckers yet. None of us do.”
“That’s why I’d like to be the one who looks into it instead,” I told him. “I know a little bit more than the rest from speaking with Mitzy and Chloe about it, and I’m obviously stealthier than Mario. The last thing we want is, like you said, to raise any unnecessary attention, especially when we’re about to leave for Barbados. I want to deal with this issue right away tomorrow so we can enjoy our honeymoon without issue. Three days is enough time to sort it out.”
Vincent nodded, but also gave me a worried look. He’d trusted me a lot as one of his capos, and had given me a ton of leeway to act in that capacity, but it was always difficult when the lines between professional life and personal life were blurred the way ours were. It always made him a little leery when letting me take the reins on something.
“Okay, but you have to promise me that you’ll be extra careful,” he said. “This is such a huge unknown in our lives and you have a husband and a son that need you.”
I let the distance between us dissipate, stepping up to him and pulling my body against his. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’m a Costello—it’s in the genes.”
He smiled down at me. “A Costello you are.”
Smoothing his hands behind my back, he brought our lips together, and when he started to push me back towards the bed, I didn’t stop him. I’d gotten enough information for the night, and now all I wanted to do was focus on cementing our new relationship as husband and wife…
Due to the fact that Vincent and I knew we’d be gone for a long ten days in Barbados, we intentionally planned three days between the wedding and the honeymoon to make sure all of our ducks were in a row. I’d also learned from working with my late father that your enemies tended to wait for when they expected you to be gone or off your guard to strike, so we didn’t want to leave right away, and when we did leave, we wanted to do so quietly. We made sure to project an atmosphere of ‘back to business as usual’ following the wedding so that anyone with their eyes on us would know we weren’t letting our guard down, and this was a perfect opportunity for me to look into The Wreckers, and hopefully put that new threat to rest.
“I’m surprised you even emerged from your bedroom the day after your wedding,” Annie joked when I met up with her for the trip out to Long Island. “Although you don’t look like you got the most sleep.”
I half-laughed, half-yawned. “We might havecelebratedfor most of the night, but that’s neither here nor there. Allowing ourselves the luxury of taking an extended vacation was a difficult decision, so we both agreed it needed to happen with some strict parameters, including working leading up to our departure. We’re going to get our ducks in a row, make sure no one thinks we’re easing up on our security… You know, we just want to make sure everyone is safe while we’re gone.”
“You’re bringing Sascha with you, right?” Annie asked. “How is that even going to work? You’re going to parent on your honeymoon?”
We were walking into the parking garage where all of the estate’s cars were kept. I picked out one of the more subtle ones, a silver Audi, and Annie and I climbed in. “Hopefully not. We’re bringing his nanny and my mother as well, and they’re staying at a hotel about thirty minutes from us. We just talked about it and neither of us were comfortable with leaving him behind. He’s still so young and given our line of work, it just didn’t seem safe. My mom and Michelle will alternate shifts with him, and they’ll be set up like royalty while we’re there. Hopefully they won’t need anything from us, and knowing he isn’t that far away should allow Vincent and me to focus on relaxing and honeymooning properly.”
Annie nodded. “I get it. That’s not a bad plan. I’m sure it would have distracted you both to be worried about him being back here. Even if you guys know we’d never let anything happen to your kid.”
“Of course we know that,” I said. “Chalk it up to new parent paranoia.”
We collected a couple cups of coffee from a shop nearby and then made the drive out to Long Island. This was where The Wreckers had been most active. According to Mitzy and Chloe, this was the closest applicable thing to a territory that they had. Annie and I weren’t going to do anything other than observe. Our faces were the least known of the Costello family, and it was my hope that we could quietly follow some stories, get some witness accounts, and try and find out a little bit more about this new, bizarre group without raising too much suspicion that it was the Costellos looking into things.
“Chloe told me that she and Mitzy followed a lead at a family dry cleaners out here,” I told Annie as we parked. I pointed across the street to where it was situated, right in the middle of a row of shops. “And it just so happens…”
“Ahhh,” Annie said, looking back over her shoulder into the back seat. “Sothat’swhy you brought your wedding dress. Clever.”
I grinned at her. “Thanks. Shall we go?”
She nodded. “Let’s.”
We climbed out of the car and after snagging my bagged wedding dress from the back seat, we made our way across to Cullen and Cues Dry Cleaners. It was a relatively nice place, given it was located in the heart of Long Island, but it did have a part of the window boarded, and there was someone spackling the outside—I could just barely see some cracks and maybe even a bullet hole or two on the outside. We ignored those things and walked in anyway, still being greeted by someone with a bright smile as we entered.
“Hello!” an older woman with gray hair said. “How can I help you today?”
I walked up to the counter and laid my wedding dress on top. “I’ve got a wedding dress here that I’d like dry cleaned, please.”
“Okay, I can do that for you.” She grabbed a ticket tablet from under the counter and then set it on top. “Let me get some information from you. Name?”
“Monica Seffrey,” I replied quickly.
“Can I see your ID please?”
“Of course.” I pulled out my wallet and snagged out the fake ID that I had matching this particular pseudonym of mine. “Here you go.”
“Thank you very much. Is all of the information on here your current and accurate information?”
“It is.”
As she was transferring the information from the ID to the ticket, Annie thumbed over her shoulder. “What happened to your window out here?”
Immediately, the woman started to look a little nervous. “Oh… We sustained a robbery not too long ago.”