Mafia Legacy

Chapter Eighteen-Luca/Charlotte

Luca

When the cell door slammed behind me, I was overcome with emotion. I had fully expected to leave the courthouse today with Charlotte, and instead, I had had to watch as the light drained from her eyes as the fear and panic set in. We hadn't had much of an opportunity to talk, and I knew she probably had a million questions. There was so much that needed to be done in my absence. The kids needed answers. There was money to move and accounts to close and men to inform and all kinds of other things. And I had left Charlotte to deal with it all. Marco would help her, but I knew Charlotte, and she was never all that accepting of help.

The judge denying us bail made absolutely no sense, unless she was in on the conspiracy herself. It seemed Angelo and I were being framed from deep inside the New York police department, and this was going to be a difficult battle. I knew Angelo was being held here, too, but they made sure to keep us far apart.

I had seen him briefly at the courthouse, but they hadn't even transported us together, intentionally keeping us separate so we couldn't plan anything. I was in solitary confinement for now, which meant that I was only let out of my cell for an hour a day. I rarely saw another inmate, which was probably for the best. I had rubbed elbows with many of these guys on the outside in one way or another and wasn't exactly friendly with any of them. A lot of the lower level gang members hated mafias and the way we monopolized the city at a level they could never infiltrate and I was sure any number of them would take their shot at me if they could.

The protection part of solitary was nice, but the rest of it was miserable. All I could do was sit here and think about how much I had fucked up and all the ways my family was suffering because of my mistakes. It reminded me so much of when I had been at Niko's. That situation had ended up okay, but I wasn't so sure this time. The corruption went so deep here that I didn't know if there was any way at all for the truth to come out.

I hadn't been surprised to see Layla's cop friend in the courtroom. Everything about their relationship was fishy to me, and I should have been more persistent about it from the beginning. She would be completely crushed when she found out the truth, knowing she'd been used all along. It was a terrible feeling and the very last thing I wanted was for her to blame herself for this. There was much more to it than some low-level call boy like Hunter. He certainly hadn't helped things, but he wasn't the cause of all of this.

I wasn't exactly sure who was.

Axel was always shady, but I didn't think he'd sink so low to help the cops put me away. It could be Whittaker. He was Charlotte's boss, after all. But that didn't make much sense either. He didn't have anything to gain by putting me away. He was retiring next year, so he wasn't even going for reelection. I wasn't sure who was behind it yet, but soon I'd find out, and when I did, that person didn't stand a chance.

I was only back in the cell for a little while when the door opened and a guard appeared.

"Catalano, let's go." He barked, motioning for me to stand up.

"Where are we going?" I asked. Were they moving me to general population?

"You'll find out soon enough." He slapped a pair of cuffs on my wrists and led me down the hallway and then down a set of stairs to the basement. I had no clue what was happening, but I had a terrible feeling about it. Something about this wasn't right.

When we finally got to the bottom, I realized we were in an empty storage room—one of the few places in the jail that there wouldn't be cameras.

There were three other inmates I recognized from a local street gang that had a heavy presence in Rikers. We didn't interact with them much, but that was because we had mostly eradicated them from the larger area in the city. They only operated out a smaller section of New York that bordered New Jersey.