THE IMPOSTER (The Gafanelli Mob #3)

1. You Sent Me Flying

You Sent Me Flying

Eleven years later…

GIOVANNI

Damn. I wanted that drink.

I wasn’t the biggest fan of champagne, per se, but even I knew that when you were served a bottle of Salon Blanc de Blancs 1997, you didn’t waste that s**t… and you certainly didn’t throw it at people’s heads…

Especially mine.

Which is exactly what one of the groomsmen had just done.

I never liked weddings. Engagement parties were just as bad. But I’d never been to an engagement party as crazy as this.

Then again, I’d never had a “bride-to-be” blowing me in the dance hall’s fancy f*****g bathroom. And I damned sure never had the groom-to-be try to kill me while she was doing it, no less, in the middle of his own f*****g party.

I ducked… just as another one of his drunken fists came hurtling in my direction, just missing me and smashing squarely into the picture frame hanging beside me.

I saw my reflection—the crazy scene around me, the beaten bridegroom and his groomsmen laid out before me—in that picture frame, and I almost lost it.

But before I could, somebody chucked a piece of white china right past my earlobe. Flying shards exploded overhead just as the best man—now recovered, tackled me like a wrestling dummy, his head slamming into my abdomen, propelling my body backwards, sending me sailing into the hallway wall with a shuddering thud.

My head hit with a crushing blow.

Ears ringing, my skin still stinging, the rest of my body bounced off the dry wall, knocking the Picasso knock-offs to the floor as the groom’s best friend and I came tumbling down—cradle and all, on the Buena Vista Country Club’s extravagant cream-colored carpet. I held onto my head full of fake red hair as we hit the floor. An array of stars danced before my eyes and as I scrambled to my feet, one dangling colored contact threatening to fall from my lashes.

My elaborate façade was falling apart piece by piece, barely hanging on.

As was my c**k, still smeared with bright red lipstick, as the engagement party guests ogled me, gasping and gaping from their elegantly decorated corners.

I closed my eyes, regrouping, taking a deep breath before slamming a hard elbow onto the last groomsman’s burly back, knocking him down for good. I rolled away from him, staggering to my feet with my d**k dangling lower than my loosely hanging cummerbund.

Below it, actually. Much lower…

And hell, I wasn’t ashamed. I smiled, despite the blood smeared across the top of my teeth. I licked them clean. Taking a bow at the waist.

“Thank you all for the hospitality. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll see myself…” I looked down. “And my mini-me out the door.” I lingered near the floor before rising again. “Thank you, and good night.”

With that, the rest of the battered groomsmen chased me out the door, rushing like a football team’s defensive line, threatening to finish a job they couldn’t even start in the first place.

Half-drunk, my d**k still swinging out of my pants, I dragged my ass out of Buena Vista beneath the pixie lights strung below the darkening sky. Thunder rolled in the distance, and the evening skies opened up, pouring a bucket of rain over my body as I tumbled headfirst, rolling with an exhausted sigh into the sleek Jaguar waiting for me.

The door behind me closed. My driver looked back at me as he climbed into his seat, his expression grim, his dark eyes deeper than the stormy night sky. He returned those eyes to the road with a deepening sigh.

“You did it again, didn’t you?” He shook his greying head. “f**k me…”

I stared out the window at the suddenly falling rain, adjusting my wig. “Actually, I preferred f*****g the soon-to-be Mrs. Townsend, Grimm… but thanks for the offer.”

He blew out a breath. “You’re a sick man, sir…”

“The sickest. But that doctor from the other day really did a good job, fixing everything that was wrong with my head.”

He met my eyes in the rearview. “She was a therapist, boss. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to fix that head.”

I run a thumb across my mustache. “She was also just another job for me, Grimm. As was this.”

Grimm squinted. “Job… or b*****b, sir?”

I looked back at him in the mirror, narrowing my eyes. “Both. And isn’t one head just as important as the other…?”

“Maybe…” he exhaled. He pulled off onto a side street. “But ya gotta admit… that’s a hell of a high-price for a ‘head examination.”

My reply was a grin. “I see where you’re going with this, old man. Technically, I paid for her to f**k with my head. The actual f*****g was on the house.”

Well, more so on her reclining leather seat… but I wasn’t going to share any of that with grumpy old Grimm. And just as we pulled out of the country club parking lot, my disposable little black cell phone rang. Just as I expected.

I picked it up on the second ring.

“Is it done?” The tone of the voice on the other line told me it was expecting nothing less.

“Yes, Mr. Townsend,” I shot back. Just as gruff. “It’s done. The wedding is officially blown.” And technically, so was I.

The smile of the groom’s father was practically audible over the phone. I could hear the cash registers of his family’s fortune ringing in his smirk, and whatever twinge I felt, a nagging sensation that felt strangely like guilt, was beat away by the quickening winds outside my Jaguar window.

A grey rain started to beat down in sheets now, probably washing away the remnants of a groomsman’s nosebleed or two. In the middle of an early March downpour, I shed the memory of my afternoon along with the entire identity of Sheldon Grady, the wedding invitee whom no one ever met… and whom no one would ever meet again.

I was back to Giovanni.

Six months before that, I was Andrew Gibson, and two months before that, I was some name I wished I didn’t f*****g remember, infiltrating the inner workings of the notorious New York Gafanelli mob and almost getting myself killed in the f*****g process.

Four months before that, I was Jeff DeSantos, getting paid for a job that would put me in front of a five-foot, four fireball—a seemingly innocent, but sultry secretary known as Sienna Santiago.

She was the reason I’d pulled the job I had today—a trade for a trade.

I could admit—the little typist was something special. Though it shouldn’t have been “hard” to tell… considering how hard she once made me just with the sound of her voice.

And her hips. Those eyes.

Sienna Santiago had the body of a sinner and the face of an angel—pure Hell-fire in a skirt. The first time we met, she’d tried to claw all seventy-three inches of me down to the bone. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

We’d never consummated the relationship, no… but it didn’t mean I hadn’t wanted to. I didn’t account for wanting to f**k her when I pretended to be Jeff DeSantos.

Meeting a future prospect for a job turned out to be a lucky mistake, one that professional imposters like me didn’t often get, and even now, in the back seat of my Jag, with another woman’s perfume still clinging to my clothes, I knew I still wanted her.

The worst part?

So did every powerful organization within three hundred miles. I just had to make sure I got to her before anybody else did.

In the back seat of our speeding Jag, I finally removed my wig and the colored contacts with the full knowledge that I now had sured up Townsend senior’s favor in my back pocket.

And that was more valuable than my red wig’s weight in gold.

I leaned in closer to my phone, holding back a hiss.

“Well, now that that’s taken care of…” I felt excitement tugging at my tongue. “Do you have my package?”

The elder Townsend stammered. For the first time since I’d ever spoken to him… his booming voice lost a bit of that boom. He started speaking fast.

“W-well, I… we’re handling it.”

“Handling it?”

“Yes.”

“‘Handling it’ meaning you have it, yes?”

A little less boom. “Not exactly…”

I thought I might crush the phone. “Not exactly? You mean to tell me…”

“We know where it is. We just haven’t…. retrieved it yet. You have to understand…”

I cut the floundering fucker off. Townsend or not, my clients always made good on their promises.

Or all bets were off.

“Oh, I understand completely. I understand that I should have never sent an amateur to do a pro’s job. Expect another call. Soon. And Townsend?” I paused, thinking. “You f*****g owe me.”

“I know. I just…”

I cut his call off by tossing the phone out the window. Didn’t matter. I had a million others just like it. I leaned in behind Grimm. He spoke before I could get any words out.

“My turn, boss?” His voice held little excitement.

“Your turn, Grimm.” I knew he was more hyped than he portrayed. This was his forte, his personal house specialty. Grimm would deliver. Even if it killed him…

“I’ll get the package for you…” he muttered.

I reclined in my seat, letting what little liquor was left in my system soothe me. I nodded, turning on my real phone. There was a new message on it… and I knew exactly who the text was coming from. I smiled.

“I know you will.”