Chapter 18
RAFFAELE
She’s in the other room.
I can hear her packing her bag through the wall. She’s been at it for ten minutes. I’m letting her. The motion is good for her right now. Hands. A task. Anywhere that’s not the bathroom.
I haven’t gone back into the bathroom either.
I check my phone.
Need you. Now. And the address. Sent at 9:17 PM.
It’s now 10:11, and Lorenzo hasn’t replied, which means he’s already on his way and not bothering to type.
I know him well enough to read the difference between a Lorenzo who’s blowing me off and a Lorenzo who’s two blocks out and driving with one hand.
The latter is a man who doesn’t waste a thumb on a confirmation.
I move through Bea’s apartment.
It’s the size of my walk-in. A galley kitchen with one good pan.
A radiator that ticks. A couch with a throw on it that’s been washed too many times and is starting to pill.
There’s one framed photograph on the wall—a small woman in a hospital gown holding a younger version of Bea against her cheek. The grandmother, I’d guess.
She’s not staying here another night. Not in this building. Whoever sent the man in her bathroom knows exactly which window is hers, which fire escape services it.
A knock at the door. Three short raps. Two longer.
I’m at the door with my hand on the Glock before I’ve finished thinking about it. The peephole gives me a fisheye view of the hallway: Lorenzo, grinning like he’s been invited to a party, and behind him, head tipped forward and arms pinned, a second man being dragged in tow.
I open the door.
Lorenzo doesn’t wait. He marches the man across the threshold and shoves him forward with a flat hand between the shoulder blades. The man stumbles two steps into the living room and goes down on his knees, wrists zip-tied behind him. His cheekbone is already bleeding.
“Found this one in a sedan around back.” Lorenzo closes the door with his foot. “Engine running. Eyes on the third floor. Real subtle guy. I almost didn’t see him at all.”
The man on the rug immediately starts babbling.
“This is a mistake. Total mistake. I was on my smoke break. I work at the bodega across the—this guy comes out of fucking nowhere, and he just fucking— “
Lorenzo kicks him in the ribs without looking. He wheezes and folds.
“Hey. Hey. Language.”
I crouch in front of him.
His face holds the wrong kind of softness for the work he’s been sent to do. Twenties. Pale. He’s already crying. He’s the wheelman. Always the wheelman. The one they send because he’s a cousin or just a kid who couldn’t say no.
“You were waiting for your friend,” I say.
“I—I don’t know what you’re—”
“The one in the bathroom.”
His eyes flick to the hallway behind me. They flick back.
“I—I don’t—”
“The one I just put a bullet in.”
His face goes the color of the tile in there.
“Who sent you.”
“I—”
I glance up at Lorenzo.
Lorenzo is leaning against the kitchen counter, arms folded. He uncrosses them.
“Want me to ask?” Lorenzo says. “I’ve been told I’ve got a gentle touch.”
He crouches down on the man’s other side. Almost friendly about it.
“Buddy.” He puts a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Take a look around. Take a real look. You’re on the floor of an apartment in zip ties with two absolute demons.
One of us just shot your partner in a bathtub.
The other guy is me. Whoever you’re scared of, whoever’s gonna kill you for talking—they’re not in this room. We are. Math’s not hard.”
The man is shaking.
“Please. Please.”
“Who sent you.”
“They’ll—they’ll kill—”
Lorenzo sighs. He stands. He looks down at the wheelman the way you look at a dog that won’t sit, then glances at me.
“Out of curiosity, boss. Who’s the lucky guy in there?”
He tips his chin toward the hallway.
I take a moment with it.
“Not anybody you’d know.”
“Hm.”
“Not the kind they send when they want something explained. Different bracket.”
“So, specialty work.”
“He called himself an investigator on the way in.” I don’t look at the wheelman. “Whoever signed off on him knew what they were signing off on.”
“Which means?”
“Which means whoever sent him doesn’t get to keep breathing about it.”
“Music to my ears.” Lorenzo crouches down again. “You hear that, buddy? Your boss is a dead man. So, you might as well help us out here.”
The man chokes on a sob.
“Last chance,” I warn.
I glare at him while he tries to speak.
The list of suspects runs through my mind before I want it to.
Victor Moreno. He had her address—knew it the night of the gala, when he handed her his card and put her in his car.
I almost forgot that he had it. Her location is probably not a secret to Nico either; Nico’s people have already been to the office once.
If it’s Victor, the whole shape of this changes.
The Moreno family is not an enemy I get to settle in one night, with one body, on one rug.
If it’s Nico, that’s a different kind of impossible. He’s still the heir.
Or maybe it could be—
“Antonio.” He gasps it. “Antonio Martinez. Antonio sent us. H-he wanted dirt on you. Said the girl was close to you. Said she’d know—said if we leaned on her she’d give him something he could use, or she’d disappear and you’d come asking, and either way he got—”
Antonio.
A few hours ago he was in my office. Forty minutes after, I split his lip. He drove home from that meeting and made a call that sent two men to Bea’s apartment to either turn her or kill her, or both.
A small, clean click. The shape of a decision finishing itself.
I straighten up.
Lorenzo glances at me. Then at the man. Then back at me. He sees what’s already settled.
“—I’m just a driver, I’m just a driver. Antonio said I just had to wait, I didn’t even—”
I raise the Glock.
“Wait—wait, please, please—”
The shot goes through the bridge of his nose and into Bea’s wall. He drops onto his side mid-sentence. The room goes very quiet again, except for the radiator, which keeps ticking like nothing has changed.
Lorenzo whistles low through his teeth.
“Two now.” He looks toward the bathroom, then back at the body on the rug. “Two corpses in one apartment in one night. You’re really treating yourself, boss.”
“Call the crew.”
“Already on it.” He’s pulling out his phone. “Van here in fifteen. Place stripped to the studs by sunrise. New paint, new tile, new everything. It’ll smell like a model home in the morning.”
“She’s not coming back here.”
“Even better. Then I won’t bother color-matching.”
I look at the body.
“Lorenzo.”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Antonio.”
Lorenzo stops scrolling. He looks up. The grin spreads slowly across his face—that trademark Lorenzo grin, where part of him is amused and part of him is twisting with a deep, dark energy.
“Antonio,” he repeats. Tasting it.
“Yes.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
His expression sobers. “I gotta ask, boss. I gotta. Antonio Martinez is Conti’s biggest earner. Nico’s golden boy. You touch him and you’re not just touching a man; you’re touching a revenue stream the family has plans for. Vincenzo’s plans. Nico’s plans.”
“I know.”
“And you’re doing it over a woman.”
“Yes.”
He takes a long second with it. Then the grin returns.
“Alright then. War it is.” He pockets the phone. “Honestly, I was getting bored. The arraignments are putting me to sleep.”
“Get the crew.”
“On it.” He steps over the body to the kitchen and starts dialing.
I turn.
Bea is in the bedroom doorway.
She has a small bag in one hand. The strap is wound twice around her knuckles, tight enough that her fingers are pale. Her eyes aren’t on me. They’re on the body. Then the wall behind it. Then they finally slide to me.
She didn’t see this one. She heard it. She knew exactly what it was.
She doesn’t ask.
That’s the part that lands in me.
“I—uh, you…” She fumbles over her words.
I cross to her. Press my index finger against her lips. Take the bag out of her hand. I have to ease her fingers off the strap one at a time.
“Not a word. I’ll take care of everything. Come with me.”
“Wh-where?”
“I’m taking you somewhere safe.”
She doesn’t resist as I walk her past Lorenzo, who has the phone to his ear and lifts two fingers in a small salute as we pass. I open the apartment door for her.
She steps out into the hallway without looking back.
In the car she’s quiet. Seatbelt across her chest, hands flat on her thighs, watching the city slide by through the window.
I let the silence hold. I take the bridge.
The river is black, and the bridge lights come up over us in long sweeps, and her face, in profile, is the one thing in the car I keep checking.
She doesn’t look at me.
I drive toward the penthouse.
Antonio Martinez had a meeting with his lawyer this morning. Had his witnesses moved. Had his Thursday arraignment confirmed by a judge who owes me. Had his lip split in my office. Spent his evening, presumably, on his couch with a warm glass in his hand and a cold pack on his mouth.
He won’t have a Thursday.