Epilogue
Dante
The city is always busy during lunch time. Cabs honk at every red light and I just know someone is arguing with a hot dog vendor somewhere on one of these corners.
I practically have to yell into my Apple Watch to call Leigh. But as usual, she answers on the second ring.
“Leigh.”
“You’re calling early,” she replies.
I can hear traffic on her end too through the ear piece.
“Miracles happen,” I say smugly. “Or maybe I just didn’t feel like getting stabbed before dinner.”
She laughs softly. “That would complicate my plans for tonight.”
“I’d hate to disappoint the Bianchi’s.”
Sarcasm is my first language.
She chuckles under her breath, “You’ve not disappointed me yet. That’s what I like about you so much.”
I step around a couple tourists frozen in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at buildings like they’re trying to count the floors. “Like’s a strong word.”
“And yet I utter it out loud.”
I pass a storefront window and catch my reflection.
Blacked out trench coat and matching suit. Hair freshly cut and styled. My chest still hurts like a bitch from being shot a few weeks ago, but you couldn’t tell that from the way I carry myself today.
“We still on for eight?” I ask, “Same place.”
“Of course,” she replies. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world. You’re quite hilarious with your facial expressions as you pretend to enjoy that family.”
“Pretend?” I scoff. “I tolerate them very genuinely. For exactly three minutes.”
“That’s generous,” she states firmly.
“I’ve been working on myself. Well, my patience, to say the least.”
She pauses a moment before speaking again. “They’re bringing their eldest son tonight.”
I slow down and stop by a crosswalk pole. “That’s new. I thought he was busy over in L.A.”
“He wants to see who he’s dealing with,” she says. “Up close and personal.”
I grimace. “How personal are we talking?”
“Behave,” she adds, but I can practically hear her smiling.
“I always do.”
She clears her throat. “Are you walking or brooding?”
“Multitasking,” I mutter as I continue walking down the sidewalk.
“I knew it,” she murmurs. “Just don’t get distracted. We need them open to the idea of me taking over for my father. I can’t have them questioning things.”
“I’m excellent at convincing people of things,” I reply. “You are too, obviously. But you also tend to make people nervous.”
“Only the ones who should be,” she chimes in.
I reach the next corner and stop at the light. “What are you planning on wearing tonight?” I ask, almost too casually.
“Something slightly inappropriate,” she says. “You’ll approve.”
“We’ll see,” I say as the light changes. I then step off the curb to walk across the street to continue on to my destination. “I’ll meet you there later, Leigh.”
“Don’t be late,” she says and hangs up first.
I slip the ear piece off of my lobe and slide it into my coat pocket.
I finally get to where I’m going thirty minutes later.
I move down the hall in the building, shoes slightly squeaking against the polished concrete with each step I take, until I reach the room at the end of the corridor.
Faris is seated at the metal table in the middle of the room, sleeves rolled up and coffee untouched thus far.
He doesn’t look up when I step inside.
“You’re late,” he says. “And you ignored my calls.”
I take the chair across from him and ease into it carefully.
I grimace as the pain over my chest stings.
“I was occupied,” I reply through gritted teeth.
He still doesn’t glance up and just hums as he opens up the folder in front of him. The first few photos stop me in my tracks immediately.
Leigh.
One photo is taken from across the street, likely through another business’s window. She is stepping out of a black car with her sunglasses on and her chin lifted.
“What exactly am I looking at?”
He shifts in his seat, leaving the folder open in front of me. “Our next assignment.”
I snort quietly. “No. Her father was the assignment and then some kid with a hero complex decided to end that story early.”
He smiles at that, but not because he’s happy. “Rivera, you don’t get to pretend you didn’t see this coming. You’ve been circling that family for years. You know better than anyone that she’s not as naive as she wants people to believe.”
“You’re really aiming for that Christmas bonus, aren’t you, Faris?”
“Come on, man. She gained power with her father out of the picture,” he counters. “That buys her motive.”
I lean back, placing my hands in my lap. “You’re reaching.”
He reaches into his jacket and pulls out a voice recorder, placing it between us like it’s the final chess piece. He then presses a button, starting the recording.
It plays static at first before shifting into a laugh.
Finnic’s.
“What?” Finnic’s voice says. “Was your real father too emotionally abusive? You couldn’t just pack your shit and leave like a fucking adult?”
There’s a pause.
Then her.
“If you must know,” Leigh replies, “You don’t just walk out on my father. My mother proved that to me years ago when I found her hanging from a ceiling fan.”
He taps the recorder as the sound warps.
“We lose them for a minute here,” he says. “Signal interference. Picks back up right about now.”
The static clears and Finnic’s voice fades back in.
“I thought this started as revenge,” he continues.
“It did,” Leigh replies. “Marco took something from you. You took him from us. That debt was never going to stay unsettled.”
“And your father?”
She seems to pause for a moment before responding, “That part is my business.”
The recording suddenly clicks off.
He watches me closely now as he raises a brow. “Did that sound like an uninvolved bystander to you?”
I exhale slowly. “Victims return to their perpetrators all the time for answers. That doesn’t make them collaborators.”
He leans forward, resting his forearms on the table. “We have this,” he raises the recorder in the air before putting it back in his pocket, “and actual video footage of her meeting with the man who killed her father, with absolutely zero visible fear on her face.”
“You don’t think you’re overthinking this?”
His jaw tightens. “No, actually. If anything, I think you’re too close to her to see her for what she truly is.”
“Or you’re too eager to get a big payday.”
His jaw tightens. I can tell I piss him off. Though I couldn’t give two flying fucks.
“Listen,” he says finally. “You’ve been chasing Genovese’s shadow since before you had those few grey hairs. We were building something that could take down the entire crime syndicate in New York City. But then Gabriel Genovese dies and everything that we worked for dies with him.”
“I get what you’re saying,” I reply, “but pinning this on a girl who hasn’t been proven guilty just because she might know something doesn’t exactly make us look like heroes.”
“Maybe not,” he agrees. “But she’s standing right in the center of a distribution web we can’t crack without her.”
I glance down at the second photo.
Her brown waves cascade down her back over the black coat she wears everywhere. Her usual red-bottomed expensive shoes are vivid in the picture since one of her feet is lifted as she takes a step up the concrete steps into some type of business.
“You’re asking me to believe she orchestrated this,” I say. “That she let her father die just to take his place.”
I know that. I helped her accomplish it.
“I’m telling you, she’s up to something,” he says. “And now she’s moving product with people who used to answer to him. The same exact routes and the same drop points. It’s not a fucking coincidence, Rivera.”
My chest tightens again, and this time it isn’t the wound.
“And Lawson?” I ask.
His mouth curves slightly. “Collateral. Or a liability. I’m not sure what she’s up to with him.”
I stand, pushing the chair back with a scrape that makes me cringe internally.
“You’re wrong about her,” I say.
“Am I?”
I don’t answer and turn for the door.
He speaks up once more before I walk out, “This has been the plan from the beginning. If we still want Genovese’s empire to fall, we follow the daughter. Not the ghost.”
After walking the hallway, I step back into the crowded waiting room of the police station. The loud noise of conversations around me rushes back in all at once.
If he’s able to read her this fast, it won’t take long before he starts sensing where my true loyalties lie.
And once Faris starts asking the right questions in the wrong places, everything falls apart.
Everyone becomes a liability.
Me.
Finnic.
Viktor.
Chloe.
Leigh.
No.
They don’t get her.
Not alive. Not breathing. Not ever.
They’ll have to carve her from my dead body.