The Day of the Dead Read online

  By

  William Speir

  Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Text Copyright © 2022 William Speir

  All rights reserved.

  Published 2022 by Progressive Rising Phoenix Press, LLC

  www.progressiverisingphoenix.com

  ISBN: 978-1-950560-99-8

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  Front Cover Photo: “Outdoor portrait of young woman in tough light with urban shadow wearing trendy black jacket with incredible makeup.” ID: 1713450121 by Alex Kerniakevych. Image used under license from Shutterstock.com.

  Cover design by William Speir

  Visit: http://www.williamspeir.com

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Visit: http://www.polgarusstudio.com

  To Lee Anne.

  I wouldn’t want to be me if I didn’t have you.

  Acknowledgments:

  Deepest gratitude goes to my wife Lee Anne for believing in me even when I doubt myself. For almost 24 years, she has been my rock and my inspiration. She is simply the best!

  Thanks to Amanda Thrasher at Progressive Rising Phoenix Press for believing in me and my books.

  Special thanks go to my editorial team (Ray Flynt, Lacy Honshul, Christena Mills, and Jim Newman) for their patience and their valuable contributions, suggestions, and corrections.

  And to my fans, who keep coming back for more. Thank you all.

  Table of Contents

  Festa Dei Morti

  The Birth of Tessa Oglasa

  Caribbean Getaway

  Exile in Paradise

  Revelations

  The Sign of the Skull

  Rivalries Uncontained

  The Plutarch Club

  The Sins of the Fathers

  Partnerships Betrayed

  Unexpected Developments

  Damaging Evidence

  Showdown

  Contessa of Montecristo

  About The Author

  Festa Dei Morti

  Anna Barrichello woke up when the morning sun shining through her bedroom curtains hit her directly on her face. She was slightly hungover and hungry, and the way she felt and the gentle snoring she heard from the other side of the bed told her all she needed to know about what had happened the night before. I must’ve partied hard last night—harder than I’d planned.

  She looked over at the man still sleeping soundly next to her. I can’t believe I got drunk enough to bring someone back to MY place. What was I thinking?

  Then she looked at the clock on her night table. It took a minute for the time to register in her mind. Then it hit her. Holy shit, I’m late!

  She leapt out of bed, ignoring the fact that she was naked. I was supposed to be dressed and on the road by now. Shit! Grandfather’s going to be disappointed, and Dad’s going to be pissed as hell. I promised them I wouldn’t be late today.

  She scurried around her bedroom, throwing her clothes from the night before into the hamper and pulling out clean underwear from her dresser drawer. She grabbed her phone off the night table to check the Manhattan weather. Good—no rain today. It’s 45° now, with a high of 53°. She checked the weather at her grandfather’s place in Kinderhook. It’s 41° now with a high of 50°. The outfit she had already picked out would work perfectly. She went to her closet and reached for the red floral-print dress and the deep blue wool coat she had placed on the inside door hook yesterday morning. Leave it to grandfather to have an outdoor party every year on November 2nd.

  Anna looked at herself in the mirror on the inside of her closet door. Her long, curly, coppery-brown hair was a mess. Her olive tanned skin was smooth, showing off her physique—made possible by her personal trainer and five trips to the gym each week. Her youthful face made her look five years younger than her actual age, and her piercing eyes and full lips made her irresistible to most men she met… although her icy demeanor instilled in her by her bodyguards and family members kept most of them at bay. As she left the closet, she wondered why she hadn’t shot down the advances of the man now invading her personal space. I can’t believe I was that horny last night.

  She tossed the dress and coat onto the bed and saw her companion still asleep. Shit, I need to get rid of him. She went back to her closet, threw on a robe, and went to his side of the bed. She shook her companion’s shoulder. “Hey, wake up. You need to leave.”

  “W-w-what?” he asked groggily.

  “Get up. You have to go.”

  “What about breakfast?”

  “Out!”

  He threw back the covers and sat up. He rubbed his face and looked in her eyes. “I was hoping for a repeat of last night.”

  “I’m late.” Anna was exasperated by now. “Get dressed, and get your ass out of here before I make you bleed.”

  He looked shocked. “Geez! What happened to the hottie I slept with last night?”

  “She woke up and realized what time it was,” Anna responded, just about ready to pull out the pistol she kept in her night table drawer.

  He stood up and started getting dressed. She watched him, and once his clothes were on, she walked him to the door.

  He grabbed her wrist before she opened the door. “I didn’t even get your name last night.”

  Anna unlocked the door and turned the knob. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  “Don’t you want to know my name?” he asked.

  “Not particularly.” Anna opened the door. “Goodbye.”

  He shrugged and exited her apartment. He turned to say, “It’s Michael, by the way,” but she slammed the door in his face, locked it, and ran to take a quick shower.

  She bathed, put on her makeup, clipped the traditional silk flowers to her hair, and got dressed in record time. She threw on her coat, grabbed her phone and purse, stopped in the kitchen to find a food bar to tide her over until she reached her grandfather’s house, and headed for the door. On the table next to the door was her skull mask that would cover the right half of her face. She took it and left the apartment. On the elevator ride down to the parking garage—beneath her Kent Avenue apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—she checked her watch. It’s three hours from here to Grandfather’s place in light traffic, and I’m supposed to be there in two-and-a-half hours. Why the hell didn’t I stay at Dad’s house in Katonah last night? I could leave now and still get there in plenty of time. She looked up and watched the floor numbers count down to the garage.

  She tapped her foot impatiently. As the floor numbers approached the garage, she grabbed her keys and held them tightly in her hand. She wasn’t worried about someone attacking her in the garage on a Saturday morning, but she never took chances with her safety—apart from the huge chance she had taken the night before by bringing home someone she didn’t know. From an early age, her father had drilled into her the importance of staying safe. And given what the family business had been up until a few years earlier, safety was a concern that all of her relatives and their associates took seriously.

  She walked quickly to her car, unlocked the door, and checked the backseat before getting inside. The car roared to life when she started it. She put it in gear and raced to the garage exit. As the car reached the street level, she put on her sunglasses and headed east to pick up I-678 to the Sprain Brook Parkway and the Taconic State Parkway to Kinderhook.

  Michael Sandri watched Anna pull out of the garage from his car parked along Kent Avenue. He dialed a number on his phone. When the other person answered, he said, “It’s Michael. I just left her place. She’s on her way.”

  “She’s running late. Do you think she’ll make it in time?”

  “The way she drives, I’d say she’ll be there before the real party starts.”

  “Okay, but if she misses that party, Spallone and Old Man Giordano will have you skinned.”

  “Understood,” Michael said. “She won’t miss a thing.”

  “It’s your funeral.” The call ended, and Michael put his phone in his jacket pocket. He started his car and headed in the opposite direction from the one Anna had taken.

  Anna’s burgundy Mercedes-Benz E400 Cabriolet convertible, with its 3.0 litre twin-turbine V6, raced out of the city. Her family referred to her car as the “Red Rocket” because of the way she drove. She knew she could get to her grandfather’s only a few minutes late if she didn’t have to stop for gas… or a speeding ticket.

  She glanced at the dashboard. “Shit!” She didn’t have enough gas to make it all the way to Kinderhook. She did the math in her head. I can make it to Elmsford and get gas there. It shouldn’t put me more than ten minutes behind schedule.

  She wanted to open the top and let the wind blow her hair, but it was still too chilly outside for that, and she didn’t want to risk losing any of the silk flowers. She looked around for any police cars and, seeing none, pushed down on the accelerator. Her speed shot past 80 mph as she headed north toward upstate New York.

  It was Saturday, November 2nd. The Day of the Dead—Festa dei Morti or the Festival of the Dead in Italy—a day that her family celebrated every year with a huge party at her grandfather’s home.

/>   Anna’s grandfather, Tommaso “Big Tommy” Barrichello, or Don Tommaso as he used to be called when he was the head of the Marchesi organized crime family, was the aging patriarch of the family. For years, he had ruled one of the largest and most successful criminal organizations in the northeast, but he secretly wished that he and his family were out of that life. Anna’s father, Francesco “Little Frank” Barrichello, who was the CEO of Barrichello Industries, had shed the family of all its illegal activities five years earlier—a move that had sent shockwaves through the Italian underground and the family’s former customers and business partners. That’s when Big Tommy had purchased the Kinney Road estate in Kinderhook, leaving the main family estate on Holly Branch Road in Katonah, Westchester County, to Little Frank.

  Anna split her time between Katonah and Brooklyn. She didn’t work; her grandfather didn’t think that women in the family should have jobs. He didn’t think women were smart enough to compete in the business world against men, and he clearly carried on the male-dominated traditions of his ancestors. Anna knew that he was wrong, but she loved him anyway.

  Anna’s father, having been raised by her grandfather, enforced the same rules. Anna’s brother attended college and was working on his MBA, but Anna had been discouraged from following that path. As a result, she lived the life of a socialite in one of the trendier parts of New York City. She wasn’t unintelligent or a fool—far from it. She could easily get into any college she wanted and graduate at or near the top of her class, and she could hold any number of respectable jobs. In fact, her brother knew that she was smarter than he was. But no woman in the Barrichello family had ever gone to college or held a job outside the home, and Anna’s father wasn’t going to let her be the first while Big Tommy was still alive. And it didn’t help that Anna looked more like she was sixteen, rather than twenty-one, making it hard for the Barrichello men to take her seriously.

  So, Anna played the part of the spoiled little Mafia Princess, since that’s what was expected of her. She found it easier to live down to everyone’s expectations, rather than attempt to fight generations of family tradition. While it irritated her that her family underestimated her intelligence, it bothered her more that the only expectations her family did have was for her to marry a man chosen for her by her father—probably the son of one of the family lieutenants who came with her father into the legit world. Anna’s father wanted her married by 23… 25 at the latest. She hadn’t yet resigned herself to this fate, but she knew her father was going to begin pressuring her, now that she had turned 21.

  As she approached Elmsford, Anna tried to call her father’s cell phone to let him know that she was on her way. The call went straight to voicemail. She tried three more times, but the calls all went to voicemail.

  She tried to call her mother, Lucia, but that call went straight to voicemail. She tried to call her brother, Lorenzo, with the same result. In desperation, she called her grandfather’s cell phone, but it, too, went to voicemail. And when she called her grandfather’s landline, she got a recording saying that the phone was out of service.

  As she pulled into the gas station in Elmsford, she thought, What the hell’s wrong with everyone’s phones today? Even if the cell towers are down, the Wi-Fi should still be working at Grandfather’s house.

  She filled her car with gas and was back on the road in less than ten minutes. As she raced up the Taconic State Parkway toward Kinderhook, she unsuccessfully tried to reach her family several more times.

  Fausto Giordano—heir to the Amante Crime Family—peered out the narrow window of the catering van. He counted the number of people at the party, excluding the people posing as the caterers, and he came up with the same number every time.

  He looked at his men with him in the back of the van, who were all wearing military-style tactical clothing. He nodded to them, and then he spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Jimmy, everyone seems to have arrived. Are you and your men ready?”

  Giacomo “Jimmy” Marchetti—heir to the Baldocchi Crime Family—was with his men in another one of the catering vans. “We’re ready here,” he replied. “Let me know when Big Tommy and his wife come out of the house.”

  “Will do,” Fausto confirmed.

  Fausto looked down at the device next to him. It was both a cellular and a Wi-Fi signal scrambler that ensured no calls could come in or go out of the estate. The control panel showed that it was at full strength. His men had already taken care of the junction box just outside the estate’s main gates, knocking out the landlines tied to the house and other buildings on the property. The entire estate was cut off from the outside world. Only old-fashioned walkie-talkies still worked.

  He continued looking out the van’s window, waiting for Big Tommy and his wife to make their appearance.

  Frank Barrichello, Anna’s father, glared at his phone through his skull mask and groaned.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Lucia asked as she adjusted the flowers clipped to her hair to withstand the chilly autumn breeze. “Can’t you reach her?”

  Frank shook his head. “I’ve got no service. I can’t reach anyone.”

  Lucia nodded. She reached out and took her husband’s hand in hers. Frank looked at her and smiled. He loved his wife and had from the moment they met at a party his father had hosted. It was love at first sight. She was the daughter of one of the family’s business partners from Sicily who had moved his family to New York twenty-five years earlier to escape a vendetta by a rival family who wanted to move in on the Barrichello’s operations in Europe.

  Frank looked at his son, Lorenzo, who looked so much like Frank had at that age. Anna, on the other hand, was the image of her mother, but she had a mind as intelligent, sharp, and clever as her father. Frank sighed with regret that she hadn’t been born a son, so she could take her rightful place in family affairs, but she was a daughter, and tradition wouldn’t let her be anything other than the future wife of a man inside or close to the family business.

  Lorenzo took out his phone and dialed Anna’s number. “I don’t have any service either. That’s weird.”

  “Why is that weird?” Gina Agosti asked. Her mask only covered the upper half of her face, making it easier for her to talk. Gina was Lorenzo’s girlfriend and the woman he planned to marry. She was also the only person at the gathering who wasn’t related to Big Tommy by blood or marriage. “We’re pretty far out in the country.”

  “The estate has its own Wi-Fi,” Lorenzo answered. “There should always be service as long as there’s power.”

  “That sister of yours is driving me crazy,” Frank fumed. “I swear she’s gonna be late to her own funeral one day.”

  Eleonora Barrichello, Big Tommy’s wife and Anna’s grandmother, checked herself in the downstairs hall mirror one more time. She wore an elaborate headdress of silk flowers, and her beautifully painted mask covered her entire face. She smiled, and walked across the living room to peer through the glass doors at the party set up in her backyard.

  The guests—all members of her husband’s family—were sitting at the tables set up on the lawn, directly behind the back patio. The women all wore flowered dresses and flowers in their hair, and the men wore wide-brimmed hats with colored bands around the crown. Each table had a large, brightly painted porcelain skull surrounded by white wax candles in the shape of smaller skulls. Across the front of the buffet serving tables were miniature full-body skeletons wearing either fedoras or flowered headscarves, and each carried a musical instrument or some sort of weapon. The decorations and the autumn colors surrounding the lawn complimented each other perfectly, and made for a beautiful setting for this annual family event.