Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“I… yeah.”
“It’s understandable if you’re not,” he said. “Just making it clear, no one here is blaming you for Matt’s actions. Unless you were the one to write the documents.”
“I can barely read it,” she admitted.
The door opened, and my brothers moved into the house.
“Blair, my favorite coffee syrup creator,” Zeno greeted her.
He’d done his laundry. He had on black jeans and a matching tee.
“Is this your dog? He’s cute as fuck. What’s his name?”
“Goya,” Blair supplied, shoulders loosening at Zen’s trademark ease.
The door was revolving then, bringing in Salvatore, Cosimo, Silvano, Anthony, and Miko. And, finally, Primo Esposito and Renzo Lombardi. Because, despite being members of other families, they were married to women who were in the papers sitting on the table.
Emilio had been steadily pulling apart the stacks, then set them in front of each capo.
“As you can see, we had—for all intents and purposes—a mole. One who’d been close to this Family for decades,” Lorenzo said as everyone started to flip through their papers, everyone getting tenser and tenser.
“Why the fuck is Lore in here?” Renzo erupted as he read his much shorter pile.
“Same reason Isabella and my kids are,” Primo supplied, dark gaze cutting to the fellow boss. “They’re Costas.”
“Not anymore,” Renzo shot back.
“Maybe not. But they can be used against the Costas,” Primo said, sighing. “So when are we killing this motherfucker?” he added.
Blair flinched at that, making Goya whine and me reach out to squeeze her thigh under the table.
“Well, someone else already beat us to it,” Lorenzo supplied. “Matt Ferraro was gunned down a few months back on the street not far from Nico’s place. Nico has been working on it with his brothers, but so far, there hasn’t been any progress.”
“How long has he had this?” Salvatore asked.
“Blair?” Lorenzo piped in, looking over at her.
“I… I don’t know exactly. It was in the storage cage in the basement of my old apartment. I never used the cage. But, I guess, Matthew did.”
“Do you have any idea the last time you saw your storage cage?” I asked, keeping my tone light because she was almost vibrating with tension. Who could blame her? She knew all these men were part of the mob. And they were mad enough to want Matt’s head on a platter. It wasn’t a leap for her to think she could be a target. She didn’t know us well enough to know that we didn’t kill innocent women.
“Um, I guess… six or eight months before he died. The old occupants had left tools in the cage. And I needed to fix the sink—”
“So on top of being a fucking traitor,” Renzo said, “he was a piece of shit husband too.”
Blair’s color drained a bit, but she pushed on.
“The cage was empty except for two boxes of random junk Matthew must have put there.”
“No safe?” I clarified.
“No safe.”
“That doesn’t mean much, though,” Cosimo said, drawing Blair’s attention. I could see the recognition hit, could see her remembering all the news coverage of his trial. The murder. “Six or eight months is plenty of time to digitize this and put it up in parts or as a whole online somewhere.”
“You’ll get on that?” Lorenzo asked, looking at Zeno.
“Yep. Won’t sleep until I’m sure these files aren’t available to download or up for sale.”
I was worried he meant that literally.
I would have to make sure Leo kept an eye on him.
“Did Matt have a computer? Laptop?”
“Yes. But…”
She turned to look at me.
And I knew what had the lines forming between her brows.
“But the Ferraro family took all of Matt’s shit. Electronics included.”
“Fuck,” someone down the table hissed.
“Get it back,” Lorenzo said, looking at me.
“I will go over there as soon as possible. Then I can have Zen go through it all.”
“The cops have his phone, right?” Lorenzo asked.
“I assume so. It wasn’t on the street. And I was there not long after the shooting.”
“We can see if our contacts can slip it out,” Emilio offered.
“Yeah, you get on that. Alright, Blair. Is there anything else you can think of that was weird about Matt, especially about Nico or his family?”
“Honestly, he didn’t talk about Nico much. Aside from saying he was going to see him or something like that. His family were the ones to gush about Nico.”
“Any chance the family is in on this?” Lorenzo asked, looking at me.
“That’s hard to say. They were all close. But it turns out Matt was really good at keeping secrets.”
“If you could do some careful digging…”
“I’ll give it a go. But they are a close family. If they think I’m implying something, they will close ranks and shut me out.”
“I could get answers out of ‘em,” Brio offered.
“Let’s put a pin in that,” Lorenzo said. But we all knew that, if we couldn’t get anywhere, nothing was off the table when it came to protecting our Family.