Chapter 22 Contentious Cousins
Chapter twenty-two
Contentious Cousins
Santino knew it was a longshot, but as they neared his aunt’s residence, he fired off a quick text anyway. He would take any chance he could get to walk into that scene with hard proof and avoid just one portion of the inevitable blowup.
Don’t suppose that video’s been restored yet? Or you’ve found traceable evidence linking to someone named Segreti?
Reiko’s abductor had shot up the security station at the front gate, but it seemed the woman Santino believed to be Adele had tried shooting as she drove because she’d missed the most critical bits.
Fortunately for them. The damage to the overall machine meant extracting the file wasn’t as easy as it should have been, but Mikey had been confident they could clean or restore enough of the relevant footage to make it useful. That was all Santino cared about.
He needed something more to hang his hat on when he accused his cousin than the fact that she was female, spoke Italian, and someone Danilo would allow to yell at him and walk away. Although in Santino’s mind that latter part said everything.
Mikey’s response popped up before Santino’s phone could go dark.
You still have access to the email we have for you?
Santino frowned.
Of course.
I’ll send you a link to collect the repaired footage as well as the trail we’ve found. You can’t see more than a partial silhouette of the woman, but I got the plate. It’s a rental car under a shit fake name, but she picked it up herself. I’ll load that footage, too.
Is it Adele?
Yes.
Santino cursed and dropped the phone to his lap. He wasn’t surprised, yet he was, somehow. He’d wanted to be wrong.
Adele had always been soft-spoken, nice in a sea of rabid dogs and vipers.
So much so that she’d become damn near invisible most of the time.
She was closer to his mother’s age than his own, despite that their mothers were sisters.
Half-sisters, technically. Nonno had never shown Zia Lorenza less love for being the result of his reckless teenage years than he’d shown to Santino’s own mother—not in Santino’s lifetime, anyway.
But the difference in the sisters’ ages meant Lorenza’s eldest was almost awkwardly set apart from the rest.
Adele really hadn’t had any peers within the family. Her closest would have been her own younger brother, Danilo. And Danilo was the only person Santino had ever heard her raise her voice at, though even then, rarely so loud as to match what Reiko had described.
Something else Reiko had said earlier replayed through Santino’s mind. “Sounds to me more like she’s been walked over and felt brow-beaten into surrendering her life in favor of other people’s comfort. And someone like that is bound to snap eventually.”
He drew a deep breath, his phone buzzing with a new message in his lap.
He’d already known. Whether he’d wanted to or not, the mounting evidence had pointed straight to Adele.
It was sad how clearly Reiko had seen the explanation from a single conversation, and even as Santino lifted his phone to open the email Mikey had sent, he vowed never to allow such a situation to develop again.
Not while the family remained under his influence.
“Boss, we’re approaching Mrs. Segreti’s estate,” Armando called from the front seat.
“Drive around the block and loop back,” Santino said. “Keep your eyes open for anything off. Tell the guys behind us to do the same.” He tapped the link, input his information as he was prompted, and downloaded what he needed. Then, with a sinking twist in his gut, he sifted through the proof.
He watched, anger renewing in his blood, as high-beams briefly blinded the nighttime feed.
An outline of a figure moved off-center of the camera’s angle, providing definition, and a sedan rolled by.
An arm stuck out the driver’s window, obscuring part of the view of the driver even as it assured a partial view—light-skinned, female, holding a gun—and the muzzle flashed.
Two flashes in quick succession before the video blinked.
The angle was different, lower, and the timestamp several minutes later.
A sedan, most likely the same sedan, was fleeing Santino’s property undeterred at a high rate of speed.
Dark-colored, the vehicle’s branding reflecting near the top of the vantage point, and for several critical frames the full license was in clear view.
When that video ended, Santino found the next one and played it, too.
This footage was in color and not from his own property, but rather of a somewhat lower quality and depicting a place of business.
The rental car agency, then. It was a split-screen video showcasing two angles in simultaneous time, and after only a couple of seconds, Santino realized he was watching Adele—poorly hidden behind large, dark sunglasses that didn’t suit her face—talk and exchange paper with someone at the desk.
She signed something, passed over cash, and accepted keys.
The photocopied receipts Mikey had also included showed logs from the rental agency with matching timestamps, including a still-frame shot from directly behind the front desk that was likely manually triggered.
The still-frame captured her facing the desk, keys in-hand, familiar tight smile stretching the birthmark beneath the right side of her mouth.
The receipts matched the vehicle caught coming and going on his own security feeds that same night, only hours later.
The only thing the visual evidence did not prove was which Segreti had been the true mastermind.
There was no contesting that Adele was just as involved as her brother.
No one had stood behind her with a gun. No one had been breathing down her neck.
She’d had ample time to slip out a phone and shoot off a text if she were feeling threatened.
She, more than nearly anyone, knew full well that any threat aimed at Zia Lorenza would be taken seriously if she only reported it.
Reiko laid her hand on his arm. “Is it what you need?”
Santino forced himself to lower the phone. Glaring at the proof of his cousin’s treachery wouldn’t make anything better. “Yeah.”
She slid her hand down until she could curl her fingers around his forearm. “I’m sorry.”
The car came to a stop and Santino pulled himself together as Dario powered down the window to greet the guard. He waited about two seconds before speaking over them, feeling twitchy. “Let us in. The car behind us, too.”
The guard leaned forward enough to glance behind Dario and his eyes blew wide. “M-Mr. Guerra! I’m so sorry, sir, I didn’t recognize your vehicle!” He disappeared from sight and a muted buzz preceded the inward swinging of the gate.
“Think he’s new?” Armando muttered as Dario proceeded forward.
Santino only grunted. It wasn’t impossible.
He allowed both Nonno and Lorenza to maintain partially independent, full-time staff.
They were still to be educated on certain things, and the man had obviously recognized Santino’s face and status, so it wasn’t impossible.
But given the situation, he would have to tackle that system, too. Later.
In the meantime, chest tight, he pulled Reiko’s hand to his lips for a brief kiss. “I wish I could leave you out of this, beautiful. But right now, I’m short on men I trust.”
She offered him a smile. “I’m more comfortable next to you, anyway.”
Santino returned her smile as the car rolled to a stop.
Their small entourage pulled up on either side of Nonno’s favorite car, in front of the three-car garage.
It felt a bit surreal, leading even a small crew of armed men up to Zia Lorenza’s steps.
But Santino recognized that he couldn’t afford to leave his backup hanging around on the other side of the gate.
Reiko tightened her grip of his hand as they crossed the threshold. The tension in the air was thick enough to choke on, and he hated it. He hated that he couldn’t shield her from the reality that this would not be a cozy introduction.
They were going to make a scene. It was all but unavoidable. And no matter how it happened, the family would be ripped apart in the end. He could only hope was that those who remained understood he’d done what was best for all of them.
A few staff members gave them wide-eyed, startled looks and scampered out of the way as they progressed down the hall.
Santino locked eyes with one long enough to raise his free hand to his lips in a wordless signal for silence, but never broke stride.
It seemed Nonno and Mamma weren’t visiting in the interior sitting room, but rather a room that faced the backyard.
That forced them to trudge through damn near half the house.
His mother’s voice was the first to greet them as they drew near. “It’s a nice change, Lo,” she said, a forced smile in her tone. She was trying to inject optimism into a room that had become too heavy for her again. “The view is lovely.”
The next thing Santino heard was the low, consistent beeping of a heart monitor.
Sunlight poured into the hall from the room Mamma’s voice had drifted out of, and Santino knew with certainty where they were headed.
Years ago, it had been a playroom. Then Zia Lorenza had converted it into a painting studio to take advantage of the hours of sunlight and garden view.
Santino hadn’t had occasion to poke his head so far inside the Segreti Estate in long enough that he couldn’t say if it had remained a painting studio or not.
He knew it had a long wall full of floor-to-ceiling windows, a sunlight designed to perfectly catch the late afternoon rays, and only one actual door to the outside.
Meaning two ways in or out, discounting destruction of property.