“But the cleaner’s dead, so won’t the bad guys assume their secrets died with him?”
“That’s what we’re hoping. But if anyone found out about the list and that Carter and his men now have it . . .”
“They’ll be targeted.” I finished his trailed-off thought.
“They can handle that. They’re okay with being bait, drawing the fuckers to them and right into a trap. It’s what they do. And no one knows we have a copy or that my brothers and I were ever there,” he reminded me, trying to keep me sane. “Our identities are safe.”
“Do you need to help them?”
“They have plenty of additional reinforcements now. They don’t need us. So we’re focusing on Bianca’s killer, and we’ll hopefully have that name any minute.”
“Why do I feel like there’s something else? Something you haven’t told me?”
“I just have a bad fucking feeling in my gut.” His shoulders dropped as he shared with a slight tremble in his tone, “I’m worried that I missed something and I’ll lose the only woman I’ve ever been in love with because I was distracted.” He closed his eyes. “What if my love for you is what gets you killed?”
Love? I tensed, swallowing as my stomach flipped and my brain turned to mush. I was pretty much out of order at his words. “Enzo,” was the best I could get to exit my lips before a call came through for him.
“It’s Jesse. He must’ve decrypted the list faster than us, and he’s letting us know.” He brought the phone to his ear. “What do you know?” His gaze cut to the floor, and he let go of a heavy exhale. “No,” he said a moment later, “I have no fucking clue why they’d want her dead. I need to talk to my family. Watch your back. Stay safe.”
“What’d he say?” I asked after he ended the call.
“Remember when I told you there are five main families in the Italian American mafia?” I nodded at the memory from our plane ride to New York. “Well, one of those families, the Brambillas, who happen to have the most power now, hired the cleaner. The files directly tie them to her case.”
“So the Italian mafia was responsible for her death, just not the Sicilian branch of the mafia?” I searched for clarification.
“Looks like it, but I don’t understand why. We don’t have any contact with them. As far as I know, my father never threatened them. Unlike Giovanni, the Brambillas are much more powerful, and it’d be a death wish if . . .” His words trailed off at that, and shivers darted up my spine. “I thought my sister may have been murdered because of someone she may have loved, and like Izzy, she didn’t want me to know about him, knowing I wouldn’t approve.”
“But she wouldn’t fall in love with someone in the mafia, would she?”
“No, like hell would my sister—” He dropped his words and his head. “No, it can’t be.”
“What?” I reached for his arm, urging him to look at me.
“The story she wrote just before she died, well, she told me it was based on a true story. But she said no one would ever know that.”
I thought back to the story published in the magazine, trying to remember the details. “And you think it might be based on her own life, and she just wrote the ending she hoped she’d get?”
Love. A happily-ever-after. Who’d want anything less?
“I don’t know what to think, because if that’s not the case, that means only one thing.”
“And that is?”
“That my father more than likely pissed someone off in the Brambilla crime family, and he’s responsible for her death.” He opened the door and shot a quick look back at me, and I could read his thoughts.
No mercy.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Maria
“You’re asking me that again. In front of everyone here?” Enzo’s father slid his hand down the column of his throat, his back to the bay window. The water was calm today. The sky clear. And yet, the storm was in the room.
“Well?” Constantine stood from behind the desk, his arms locking across his chest. Despite being in battle last night, he was in a three-piece suit.
Enzo reached for my hand and threaded our fingers together, sensing my unease, and maybe I shouldn’t have been in the room, but I refused to leave his side when I knew he needed me.
“I told you last night I had nothing to do with her death, and I’m telling you the same now,” Mr. Costa seethed, clearly upset at his sons for pressing him. “But now that we know someone in the Brambilla family hired the cleaner, I’ll do everything in my power to find out who and why. And I’ll kill them myself.”