Ricardo
Chapter Twenty Eight
The moment the car with Julia and Dante pulls away, I shift gears. Duty calls, and the sooner I perform it, the sooner I can get back to her.
The gala continues in the ballroom as I sneak back into the hotel, unnoticed.
Tomasso waits at the mouth of the service corridor with his phone in one hand and his tuxedo jacket still buttoned, looking for all the world like a bored young man just stepping out for a second. Anyone passing would see nothing. No urgency. No alarm. No reason to look twice.
That is the first rule: Never give anyone a reason to remember anything unusual.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“Near the civic development tables,” Tomasso says. “Still circulating. Edoardo has the east exit covered. Alessio is at the staff corridor. Matteo has the lower level and garage.”
“Hotel security?”
“Ours has the better feed now.”
I glance at him.
His mouth curves slightly. “Copied and redirected. The hotel still sees what it expects to see.”
Good.
Men like Evan Rusk survive because they understand appearances. A hand placed on his arm becomes story. A guest escorted through a crowded room becomes rumor. A raised voice attracts witnesses.
So there will be none of that.
There will be a call placed to his phone from a number he recognizes. There will be a message delivered that men like him understand. There will be a reason for him to leave the room by his own choice, smiling politely, perhaps even apologizing to the person nearest him for stepping away.
Then there will be the hallway, the elevator, the car.
Then me.
“Send it,” I say.
Tomasso taps his screen.
Across the ballroom, beyond the partly open service door, I can see only a slice of the room: gold light, black tuxedos, one end of the sponsor wall, a server moving with champagne. I cannot see Rusk from this angle, but I do not need to. Tomasso watches the feed.
His eyes lower to his phone.
“Message delivered.”
We wait.
Waiting is often the part younger men handle badly. They want action because action makes them feel like they’re doing something. It takes longer to learn that most things happen when seemingly nothing is happening at all.
Tomasso’s thumb moves over the screen.
“He’s reading.”
Another pause.
“He’s looking toward the exit.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
Rusk appears in the corridor two minutes later.
He comes through the ballroom doors without haste, phone in hand, expression casual. He does not look frightened. He does not look guilty. He looks like a man interrupted by business, which is exactly what we wanted the room to see if anyone happened to watch him leave.
He sees me only after the doors close behind him.
His step slows.
He knows, then, that the message was not what it seemed. Or perhaps he only suspects it. Either is fine. Suspicion makes careful men cooperative because they want to understand the threat before deciding how to react to it.
“Mr. Conti,” he says, slipping his phone into his jacket pocket. “I was told there was an issue with my substitution.”
“There is.”
His smile is mild. “I hope it hasn’t caused any inconvenience. Jerry Bradshaw was unable to attend at the last minute. The office assured me the change had been cleared.”
“Then this will be simple.”
“I would be happy to clarify anything from here.”
“No.”
The smile remains, but it becomes tighter.
Tomasso steps away from the wall behind him, and Lorenzo appears from the far end of the corridor as if he has been there all evening. Rusk sees both of them and understands now exactly the kind of threat he is facing.
Still, he is polished.
I will give him that.
“I am an attorney,” he says, arrogantly.
“Yes.”
“And a guest.”
“No,” I say. “You are a substitution.”
His eyes sharpen.
The word does what I intend it to do. It strips away the charity gala, the tuxedo, the borrowed invitation, the civic language. It leaves him with the truth of his position here. He entered in someone else’s place. Someone else’s permission. Someone else’s name.
A man who begins as a substitution should not presume he has the rights of a guest.
Lorenzo smiles faintly. “This way.”
Rusk does not move.
I do not touch him.
Neither does Lorenzo.
Tomasso does not block the ballroom doors, not obviously, but he stands close enough to make it clear there is no choice.
Rusk’s gaze moves from me to Lorenzo, then toward the service corridor.
“I don’t appreciate being handled.”
“You haven't been handled. Yet,” I say.
For a moment, I think pride may make him stupid.
Then he starts walking.
The service corridor behind the ballroom smells faintly of coffee, food, dish water, and floor cleaner.
Staff pass at the far end, but none come near us.
A catering cart rolls through one doorway at precisely the right time, blocking the view from the kitchen hall for the few seconds it takes us to move beyond the camera’s ordinary angle.
Tomasso has done this well.
“I'm sure if you call my office and speak to them, they can clear this up quickly.”
No one responds.
The elevator arrives.
I step in first, then Rusk, followed by Lorenzo. Tomasso remains outside. The doors slide closed, and the sounds of the gala vanish completely.
For three floors, no one speaks.
Rusk watches our reflections in the polished metal doors. His pulse beats too fast at the side of his throat, though his face remains pleasant. A man can train his mouth. The body is less loyal.
When the doors open on the lower level, the hotel becomes concrete, pipes, utility carts, marked doors, freight access. Edoardo waits near the garage entrance, his phone to his ear, one shoulder against the wall. He ends the call when he sees us.
“Car is ready,” he says.
Rusk stops.
“That won’t be necessary.”
Again, no one acknowledges him.
“I’m not leaving with you.”
I step closer then, not enough to touch him, but enough that he has to lift his chin to keep my eyes.
“You are. Willingly or otherwise.”
His nostrils flare once. He gets into the car.
The sedan has no plates that can be traced back to us.
Matteo sits in the front passenger seat.
Edoardo drives. Lorenzo and I sit with Rusk in the back, not pressing against him, not crowding him, only sitting on either side of him while the car leaves through the service garage and enters the night without turning toward the hotel’s main drive.
Rusk looks out the window.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere quieter.”
“This is unnecessary.”
Again, we answer with silence.
The city slides by, bright near the hotel and darker as we move west. Rusk says nothing while we pass restaurants, office towers, valet stands, then warehouses and service roads where the pavement worsens and the lights become practical rather than decorative.
Rusk starts getting jittery and words spill out of his mouth.
“Jerry Bradshaw’s assistant contacted me,” he says nervously. “He was unable to attend. The substitution was approved through the ordinary process. If your people failed to communicate internally, that’s hardly my responsibility.”
I look out the window.
Lorenzo says nothing.
Beside me, Rusk waits for an answer and receives only the low sound of tires over uneven pavement.
It is always interesting, the way men respond to silence. Some become even more disciplined. Some become angry. Most rush to fill it.
Rusk is the third kind.
He adjusts one cuff, then the other. “I attend civic events constantly. This was hardly unusual.”
The car takes a turn.
His shoulder shifts slightly with the motion, and his gaze cuts to Edoardo in the rearview mirror, then to Matteo’s still profile in the front seat.
“I have relationships across half the city,” he says. “If your concern is reputational, removing me like this creates the risk of exposure.”
Lorenzo’s mouth curves faintly. He still says nothing.
Rusk sees it.
That unsettles him more than anything else might have.
He clears his throat. “I understand the Conti family is protective of its events. Especially after recent tensions. But I think we can all agree there are better ways to handle a guest-list issue.”
I continue looking out the window, but I see sweat beading on his brow in the reflection.
His composure thins by the second.
“I assumed everyone understood the landscape,” he says, and the words come quicker now, his mind trying to find the safest route out of here.
“The gala was significant. You had hospital executives, city development people, senior donors, legal figures, half the civic infrastructure in one place. When a name is left off a room like that, people notice.”
Fucking bingo.
For the first time, I speak. “You think your name is significant enough to warrant notice?”
His head whips around toward me. He realizes his mistake just then.
“Uh, I just meant—” He gulps and tries to recover. “I meant influence. That's all. A guest list can make or break an event.”
Lorenzo leans back against the seat. “Influence is quite a large word for a substitution.”
Rusk’s mouth tightens. “I wasn’t speaking about myself.”
“No,” Lorenzo says, bored. “That would have been far too ambitious.”
A faint flush rises beneath Rusk’s collar. Humiliation.
Good. Let his pride work against him.
“I’m not some random associate who wandered in because a chair opened, you know,” he says.
I keep my eyes on the window. “It would seem that's exactly what you are.”
“Jerry Bradshaw’s substitute,” Lorenzo says, rubbing salt in the wound.
“I'm not some errand boy,” he snaps.
“Seems like you're Jerry Bradshaw's errand boy,” Matteo says mildly from the front seat.
“I work for people that Jerry Bradshaw couldn't get in a room with on his best day,” he says, puffing himself up.
"Oh?" I say. "Like who?"
He catches himself and clamps his mouth shut. But it’s too late.
I look over at Lorenzo, amused.
“Must not be that powerful if this rat is sitting here with us.”
Rusk’s face pinches.
“Careful,” he says.
Lorenzo’s amusement deepens. “Ah.”
That one syllable does more damage than a threat.
Rusk hears it and straightens. “I am telling you, there are people in this city you do not want as enemies.”
“Like Bradshaw's assistant,” I muse.
Edoardo laughs.
Rusk’s eyes flash toward the front seat. “You think this is funny?”
“I think you’re very upset for a man speaking out of his ass,” Edoardo says.
Rusk turns red.
“I am trying to keep this from becoming a much larger problem for you.”
“How generous of you,” I say sarcastically.
“You have no idea what a man like Calhoun—” He stops abruptly.
The car goes quiet.
I turn my head slowly. “Now, would that be Frank Calhoun?”
Rusk says nothing.
Lorenzo exhales through his nose, amused. “That was almost too easy.”
A short while later, the circling car stops, letting Lorenzo and me out.
Rusk leans toward the open door, his dignity gone with the rest of his composure.
“Ricardo,” he says quickly. “Listen to me. I gave you what you wanted. You don’t need to do this.”
I look back at him.
His face is damp with sweat now, his tie loosened, his careful hair disturbed from running his hands through it too many times after Calhoun’s name split him open.
I simply shut the door, and the locks automatically engage.
Rusk’s mouth keeps moving behind the glass, but the car pulls away before I bother reading any of it. Edoardo drives. Matteo sits still in the front passenger seat. Neither of them looks back.
They know where to take him.
Beside me, Lorenzo has his phone to his ear, his voice low as he speaks to Mario. A second car glides to the curb a moment later, black paint, tinted windows, engine quiet. Alessio sits behind the wheel and gives me a nod through the windshield
I reach into my jacket and pull out my phone.
I tap Julia's name and press the phone to my ear.
It rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then her voice comes through, soft and recorded, telling me to leave a message.
A bit of panic goes through me, but I tell myself to remain calm. Maybe she fell asleep.
I end the call and immediately dial again.
Lorenzo ends his call as we sit in the car.
“Mario says he will stay until the last donor leaves,” he says. “Then he wants the full report.”
I nod, phone still pressed in my ear.
When it goes to voicemail, I lower the phone slowly.
Lorenzo sees my face. “What?”
“She didn’t answer.”
His expression changes at once. “Call Dante.”
“I am.”
I press my son’s name with more force than necessary and lift the phone back to my ear.