Stella di Mare (Louie Morelli) Read online

  Reader reviews for Stella di Mare

  “Ms. Bellomo, I am now a fan. You should market ‘Stella di Mare’ as a screenplay!”

  Paul Bucci

  Suzanne October says … “It was fantastic. I can’t wait to read the next one!”

  “A good read with a lot of twists that had me wondering what would happen next. I think this would make a great movie.”

  Bonnie Hutton

  “Very enjoyable read. My dad read it too, and liked it. It makes me want to go to South Beach!”

  Marcee Findlay

  “I’m on Chapter 70 and loving every word of this wonderful book!!!!”

  Michelle Boscarino

  “I really enjoyed this book. It had lots of everything … great characters, twists and turns, sex, murder, mystery, love, money, yachts, the mob, Florida sun and nightlife. I can’t wait to read the next one.”

  Diane, Independent Reviewer

  “Very Entertaining Read” by Rocketdog, Amazon Reviewer

  “I am a very avid reader and enjoy many different types of books. This book was very entertaining and a great read. Mobster Louie Morelli is an interesting character with some surprising twists. Loved the book!”

  “Great Read” by Anne, Amazon Reviewer

  “Wonderful book by a new author. Interesting cast of characters. Couldn’t put it down. Left you wanting more!”

  Barnes & Noble Reviewer … “What a fabulously written book. Great characters! I can’t wait to read this author’s next book.”

  Merrie Kassab … “I just finished the book and loved it.”

  “Louie Morelli is the kind of man we all wished we knew.”

  Joanne Recchia.

  “If you’re planning a beach trip, this is the book to take with you.”

  Monica Cavaliere

  “I love it! Next to King, Patricia Bellomo is my favorite author.”

  Andy Keiper

  “Patricia Bellomo’s characters jump off the page and sit right next to you.”

  Anthony McCallum

  Praise for Louie Morelli’s Daughter

  Midwest Book Review: “Louie Morelli’s Daughter is a fast packed action and adventure thriller. Highly recommended.”

  Dad of Divas’ Reviews: “This book is a page turner. I was drawn into the book, and I found it to be one that I simply could not put down.”

  My Book Addiction Reviews: “This story is action-packed with murder, power, sex, money, and the mob. It is a roller coaster of a ride that will have you coming back for more. A must read for any thriller/suspense reader.”

  Writer’s Digest rates “Louie Morelli’s Daughter” a “5” on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being excellent.

  Books by Patricia Bellomo

  In the Louie Morelli series:

  Louie Morelli’s Mistress

  Stella di Mare

  Louie Morelli’s Daughter

  Author online:

  www.patriciabellomo.com

  Patricia Bellomo on Facebook

  Follow on Twitter at Patricia Bellomo@PatriciaBellomo

  Stella di Mare

  A Thriller

  by

  Patricia Bellomo

  Libreria Publications

  Detroit, Michigan

  Stella di Mare

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  New edition: March 2013

  First edition published in June, 2010

  Copyright © 2009 by Patricia Ann Bellomo

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

  Cover by Expert Subjects

  Author photo by Sieloff Studios

  Libreria Publications

  www.libreriapublications.com

  [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978-0-9846305-6-1

  ISBN: 978-0-9846305-7-8 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2013930350

  For my husband, Vince Bellomo, for your patience and support. Living with somebody who sits in front of a computer for ten hours a day and has fictitious people telling her what to do is not always easy.

  To my readers:

  Thank you so much for purchasing Stella di Mare. I’m thrilled you’ve chosen to read it. This is the second book in my non-sequential Louie Morelli series. I call it my sexy, South Beach thriller. I hope you enjoy it.

  To those of you who may have read the original version of Stella di Mare, first published in 2010, I’ve made some editorial improvements that include a restructuring of the novel, while leaving the plot intact. I apologize if you prefer the earlier version.

  I welcome your comments. Contact me via my website: www.patriciabellomo.com

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

 
Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Chapter Sixty-Seven

  Chapter Sixty-Eight

  Chapter One

  Orfeo “Bo” Bommarino watched his daughter, Carmelita, walk into his bedroom. She stepped in timorously, as though reluctant to disturb him, her eyes meeting his and then quickly sliding away. Of course, he knew she’d been crying. Her eyes were puffy, her plump hand clutching remnants of tissue. Even as she looked at him, her double chin began quivering, and she busied herself with rearranging the bottles of painkillers lined up on his dresser.

  Poor Carmelita. She’d broken down earlier, when Padre Paolo performed last rites, granting Bo absolution for his sins. He’d lived like a saint for seventy years, but his first thirty might have damned him, and Bo was glad he’d taken the final sacrament. Confessing his sins, but not his secrets.

  He was in pain—dying, because he’d fallen last week and cracked three vertebrae. Now he was immobile, his lungs filling with fluid. Hospice had supplied the medical bed he was lying on, his own bed having been dismantled, with the mattresses stacked upright against the closet, further cluttering the small space. Bo’s bed faced the window that overlooked the yard where his hibiscus trees flowered in the heat. But now, with the late afternoon sun beating on the house, Carmelita snapped the blinds shut, blocking the glare, although trickles of light penetrated the slats, striping the scuffed wood flooring. Beige walls were decorated with pictures of Bo and his long dead wife, and tacked above his bed was the giant hand-carved rosary they’d brought with them from Havana. The air-conditioner hummed, a faint breeze cooling the air around him.

  Carmelita stepped gingerly to the bed. “Hey, Pops, how you feeling?” she asked, placing a loving hand on his brow.

  Carmelita was his youngest, and favorite. Jilted by her fiancé when she was five months pregnant, she had raised her boy, Manny, in Bo’s house. She’d never married, growing soft and round, utterly devoted to Bo in these last few years. As for Manny, he’d caused her no end of heartache.

  Bo said, “Don’t give me any more pills. They make me sleepy.”

  “You need to rest, Pops—”

  “I need my brain. I’m dying—I don’t want to miss the last of it.”

  Her eyes welled with tears. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “You gotta get used to it sometime, Carmelita.” He angled his bony head toward her, wincing at the pain in his back. “I want to see Manny.”

  Carmelita started weeping and went quickly from the room. Did she think he was going to live forever? Hell, she’s the one who’d brought in Padre Paolo; she should have been prepared. But now Bo worried about leaving her with Manny. His grandson had an attitude a mile long—the kind that would have gotten him killed on the mean streets of Chicago where Bo had spent his youth running errands for Capone’s gang. As a young adult, Bo was a hustler and a thief, but he never stole from his bosses. They trusted him, sending him to Miami to steal the legendary Blue Diamond from Hollywood vamp, Greta Harper.

  Miss Harper was staying on a yacht, and Bo had gone aboard with a crew of white-gloved waiters serving champagne and caviar to stuffed swells, when the blond bombshell handed over her famous necklace. The plan was for Greta to collect on the insurance. Except that she died before National Insurance paid off, and Bo walked off with the diamond. And that’s how his life really began.

  * * *

  Manny Bommarino hated coming home to the bungalow in the working-class neighborhood of his youth. He hated it because it signaled what he was, a failure, just a working stiff in a sweat-stained uniform at the end of a sweltering summer day in Miami.

  For a few swank years he’d lived downtown, but after twenty-two months upstate, Manny had to play by the rules. He’d gone down on a drug charge, narcotics trafficking, making it sound like he was a heavy hitter when all he’d been doing was selling snowballs in South Beach. Now he had to kiss his parole officer’s ass, telling the guy how happy he was to be working for his arrogant prick of a cousin.

  Everyone thought it was great: Edward stepping up to give him a job as a driver and delivery man on his commercial laundry truck. Edward was self-righteous about it—doing his Christian deed, he told Manny’s PO. As far as Manny was concerned, it was slave labor. Just today he’d asked for a raise, and his cousin had said, “You make ten-fifty an hour—”

  “Yeah, well that’s chump change,” Manny told him. “I used to pull in three grand a night.”

  “And look where that got you,” said Edward smugly. “There’s no shame in an honest living, Manny.”

  Manny almost told him to stick it. But he couldn’t quit … not yet. Gainful employment was a condition of his parole, and it wasn’t like there were a lot of jobs for ex-cons these days. Driving the laundry truck was one thing. What if he had to go even lower, shovel shit at some fast food joint?

  Parking his beat-up Tacoma on the driveway, Manny leaned back in the driver’s seat, savoring a final blast of air-conditioning before cutting the ignition. Glancing at the house, he saw his mother’s face peeping between the verticals in the front picture window and felt a flash of annoyance. Thirty-three years old and living with his mother—what kind of life was this? Since leaving the joint in May, he hadn’t even gotten laid.

  Enviously, Manny thought of his buddy, Franco Santia. Franco owned the Walker Hotel on Collins, a classy Art Deco joint set on a long, narrow stretch of beachfront. Admittedly, Franco’s hotel was having financial issues, but what a plum life. Having inherited the property from his old man, Franco never had to hustle. He used to let Manny deal in his bar, taking a small kickback. When Manny started at the laundry, he was pleasantly surprised to find the Walker was one of his stops.

  As he sat in the truck, he recalled a scene from earlier that day. Making his delivery, Manny went into Franco’s office and caught him snorting a line. Looking up from his desk, thumb pressed to his nose, Franco said, “You want a hit?”

  Manny was tempted. Man oh man, was he tempted. What made it even worse was that Franco’s posh office had a picture-window overlooking the pool where a group of British bitches were tanning themselves and sipping Mojitos. Manny knew they were British because he’d walked by them on his way to Franco’s office and caught their accents.

  Manny looked away from the pool scene, studying Franco’s swank office. The Walker’s guest rooms were two decades behind current design trends, but Franco had spared no expense updating his private space. His mahogany desk was set squarely in the middle of the room, with two white visitor’s chairs facing it. Brazilian hardwood flooring offset a red-leather couch, and a sleek LCD was mounted on the wall and positioned for optimal viewing. Above the couch was an expensive piece of abstract art, with bold dabs of paint on a frameless blue canvas.

  Franco was a looker, with rakishly-styled black hair and dark-blue eyes. He was wearing a lavender silk jacket over a black T-shirt. Eying the white powder clumped on his desktop, Manny said, “I can’t, man. I get tested once a week.”

  “Fuck, I forgot,” said Franco, snorting. “This is pretty good shit—better than you used to get. But you used to cut yours.”

  Manny flinched, preparing a smart retort when the door to Franco’s bathroom swung open. Manny hadn’t known anyone was in there, and he looked up, surprised, as Tara Evans stepped in. Tara was Franco’s day manager. She was new, four months on the job, but it had taken Franco less than four days to tag her. Not that Manny could blame him. Tara Evans was a pretty brunette with skin like Irish cream. But it wasn’t Tara’s face Manny was interested in.

  Coming out of Franco’s bathroom, Tara was buttoning her blouse, her fingers deftly closing the gap on the panels of starched cotton. Tara was quick, but not quick enough, and Manny got a shot of plump cleavage spilling over the top of a lacy bra. Manny stared. Tara had a lot to look at. Even after buttoning her blouse, her br
easts strained the fabric, threatening to pull it apart. Manny wondered if Franco had been boffing Tara—hell, why else would she be coming out of his bathroom with her shirt half-unbuttoned? Not that she gave it away, the bitch. She was all prim and proper, giving Manny a dismissive glance from wide-set green eyes.

  Sniffing, Franco said, “Hey, Babe, you know Manny.”

  Tara nodded coolly, her eyes dropping to the coke. Manny could tell she didn’t approve by the way her glossy, pink lips compressed. Last week, Franco had told Manny that Tara quit her job in Michigan because her employer had sexually harassed her. Manny had accused Franco of doing the same, and Franco said, “Tara’s thirty-one, but she hasn’t been around much. I’m only the second guy she’s been with.”

  “Bullshit. A chick with her body—”

  “I believe her, Manny. Tara’s a nice girl. She was engaged to some dork up there—they lived together ten years, and she helped put him through law school. Then he dumped her.”

  “How’d she end up in Miami?”

  “Her old man lives in Islamorada, and she has a tramp of a half-sister in Lake Worth. Tara was down here visiting and saw my ad.” Franco grinned, showing expense white teeth. “She didn’t have any hotel experience, but I took one look at her and hired her on the spot. Tara’s done alright, better than I thought. But now she’s copping an attitude because she found out Kathy and I are estranged and not divorced. Like it’s a big effin deal.”