Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Virus was being charming. Fucking charming. Aleksei wouldn’t have believed it if he wasn’t seeing it. Virus was joking with Rose as his fingers disassembled and reassembled the laptop with a dexterity that shouldn’t seem possible from such bulky hands.
“No tracker,” Virus said, beaming as he pushed the computer toward Rosemary. “Nothing to worry about.”
The statement lifted the jungle of anxiety that had rooted in Aleksei’s neck and shoulders the second Rose had mentioned the computer.
At least now he knew they hadn’t been advertising their location the entire time they were traveling.
If they got online, that would be a different story, but Virus had enough equipment and skills to block their location for at least a short while if need be.
They'd cross that bridge when they came to it.
“I’d never forgive myself if something happened to either of you because I didn’t mention this computer,” Rose said, looking down at the closed laptop in front of her.
She looked so unhappy. He’d trade ten years of his life for a do-over of the last half hour.
“It's not your fault. This shithead,” Virus said, pointing his thumb toward him, “should have asked you whether you had any other electronics with you. There's no way you could have known. If it's anybody's fault, it's his.”
Yep. Rose had made a friend for life, and now he was the one in the doghouse.
“Well, this shithead thinks that we should fire this thing up and see what's in here,” he said.
Rose’s head snapped up, her blue eyes flashing. “You want to start the computer? After you yelled at me for bringing it with me? I thought you said they could find our location if I logged in.”
“They can only track the IP address if we get online. Pannetone’s office was targeted, and you said that you’d found something concerning in one of the client files before you left. Was it about Moresco?”
Rose bit her lip and pressed her hands into her temples.
Virus shifted in his seat, a glare on his face, but he didn't speak. Aleksei knew he wouldn’t.
Virus might not like seeing Rose upset, but he understood the need for answers.
Aleksei had brought Virus up to speed during their morning walk.
Virus knew how dangerous Salvatore Moresco was.
Knew the choices Aleksei had made and why. He disapproved, but he understood.
The timing of Rose’s discovery and the explosion were too close to be coincidental. Moresco wanted Pannetone, his people, and his entire business gone, so the first step in figuring out what was going on was getting the details around whatever Rose had discovered.
“I feel like I’m breaching Armando’s trust,” she said.
“Think about it as trying to pin down Armando’s killer,” he offered.
He didn’t add that they couldn’t even be sure Armando was dead. One man had survived the explosion.
Virus grasped Rose’s right forearm, gently pulling it away from her head and toward the table.
“Aleksei’s correct. Right now, your computer is the only potential lead we have.
I know you’re angry with Aleksei, and you have every right to be, but it doesn't make him wrong about this. We need to get to the bottom of this shitshow before someone else gets hurt. You need to tell him what was going on at work.”
She opened her eyes and smiled at Virus, a sweet, grateful smile. “Thank you. This entire experience has been very unsettling. I appreciate how kind you’re being to me.”
He wished Virus hadn’t reminded Rose that she had good reason to be pissed at him. He wished that warm smile was for him.
She might never smile like that at me again.
The thought was like stitches without anesthesia, but there was no time for self-pity or regrets. They had work to do.
“What did you find?” he prompted.
“I found a couple of invoices on Moresco projects for work that was never done,” she said.
“They were for elevators in single-story warehouses. I told Armando about them right before I left for vacation. We started reviewing files on other Moresco projects to see if we could find more suspicious invoices, but there are hundreds of files, so we didn’t make a lot of progress.
Armando wanted to get his arms around the issue before discussing it with Sal. ”
Of course he did. Stealing from the mob was a life-ending choice.
If Armando was the one generating the fake invoices, he would have wanted to divert suspicion away from himself.
On the other hand, if Armando was cooking the books for Moresco and missed someone else stealing, he'd be shitting bricks as well.
“Log on,” he encouraged, waving his hand toward the computer.
Rose’s fingers trembled slightly as she opened the laptop and entered her login and password. “I don’t think this will be of any use without connecting to the server. All the Moresco files were on a local server in the basement. I assume it was destroyed in the explosion.”
“It wasn’t cloud-based?” Virus asked.
She shook her head, fluorescent light glinting off long blonde strands.
“No. Dante, the IT guy, is actually Sal’s nephew.
He said that his grandfather is a stickler about cybersecurity.
Apparently, for a long time, he refused to allow electronic records, but that wasn’t practical.
Dante said all the Moresco files were on the server in the basement and locked down so they couldn’t be copied or emailed outside the firm.
If the server was destroyed in the explosion, there’s nothing left. ”
Shit.
“That explains the localized explosions,” Aleksei said.
Both Virus and Rose looked at him expectantly.
“Kemper told me that there were two explosions. One on the second floor and one in the basement, but there was no damage to the structure of the building or to the gelato store on the first floor. Kemper said Moresco owns the building. If someone wanted to make sure that everyone who worked on Moresco projects and all their records were destroyed, but still protect the building, localized explosions would do it.”
Sal would definitely want to protect his investment. He was notorious for squeezing every last dollar he could from every enterprise, regardless of who got hurt.
Aleksei didn’t like mafioso, but he understood them and, on a certain level, even respected them.
In some ways, the mafia was like the military.
It was a community with an established hierarchy that worked together for a common goal and adhered to a specific code of ethics.
Just like a military unit, mafioso stuck together.
They protected each other. Loyalty was rewarded.
But Salvatore Moresco was different. Aleksei had studied Sal when he was undercover. Moresco wielded power without respect. He put himself before the family.
Rose stood from the table and crossed the room, stopping near the couch, with her head down and her arms crossed over her chest. She was a strong, athletic woman, but her oversized sweatshirt and baggy pajama bottoms combined with her hunched posture made her look delicate and fragile, like the old cards and letters his mother kept in a box in her closet.
Every time he touched them, he felt like they would crumble in his hands.
He would not let Rose crumble.
She was angry with him. He knew she might never forgive him, but he had to try. He’d hurt her.
And it wasn’t just Rose he’d hurt. In trying to protect himself, he’d screwed over lots of people he cared about.
He envisioned Samuel’s face at the bar, a mix of pleasure and disappointment.
They could have grieved together. He could hear the disappointment in Zina’s tone when he’d told her time and again that he couldn’t come for dinner or to the boys’ games—and compared that to the rush of hugs he’d received when he walked in the door this past weekend.
There were all the unreturned calls and texts from the guys in his unit.
His mother begging him to let her come visit. Virus, out here alone in the woods.
Rose, standing in the cabin kitchen, brave and nervous, her scalp shining white, baring herself to him.
He’d been too afraid to accept the gift she’d offered.
It was as if Phillipe was here, whispering in his ear, quoting Gandhi.
The enemy is fear.
Aleksei’s body moved toward her of its own volition, like the instinct of a cat finding its way back home.
Her shoulders were shaking. She’d angled her body away from the table, as if she were trying to hide her anguish.
He stepped in front of her and wrapped her soft, quivering body in his arms. Her back stiffened, but she didn’t push him away.
He squeezed tighter, trying to still the sobs racking her body. Tears wet his neck.
He’d do anything to fix this. Anything. But for now, all he could do was hold her and whisper assurances that everything would be OK. And it would. She’d put her faith in him, and he was damn well going to make sure nothing bad happened to her. Not on his watch.
He wasn’t going to fail again.
* * *
She shouldn't let Aleksei comfort her. His arms shouldn't be the grounding force holding her together. She didn’t want him to see her this vulnerable, but if he let go, she might shatter.
“How can you do it? How can you talk about death and destruction as if it were normal? My coworkers are dead. My apartment was ransacked. Yours exploded. You smashed our phones and shot out streetlights. We’re holed up in a compound, worried that people are tracking our location.
You discussed Moresco destroying the office and killing the people I worked with every day, as if it were logical.
This is not normal, but I’m the only one freaking out. ”
His arms squeezed even tighter. Her ribs barely had room to expand as she breathed, but it felt too good to ask him to loosen his grip.