Chapter 13 Claudio #2
"That's not a theory. That's a case."
"It's circumstantial. We need the identification."
She's quiet. Her hand finds my knee. Rests there the way mine rests on hers in the car. A small weight. A small claim.
"The bartender?" she asks. Because of course she heard that part. Charlotte hears everything.
"Missing. Disappeared three days ago. Could be running. Could be dead."
"Could be leverage."
I look at her. "What do you mean?"
"If Salvatore's network extends to civilian businesses, a bartender who overheard the wrong thing is a liability.
But she's more useful alive than dead. Alive, she's insurance.
A witness you can hold, a body you can produce or disappear depending on what you need.
" Her eyes are sharp. The analyst is back.
The woman who spotted fake ledgers and traced shell corporations.
"Salvatore's not sloppy. He survived Renzo getting caught.
He's been running this for years. A man like that doesn't leave witnesses. He collects them."
She's right. The logic is clean and cold and exactly the way I would have framed it if I weren't sitting on a motel bed with a headache and her shoulder against my arm and the smell of her skin making it difficult to think in straight lines.
"You're good at this," I say.
"I'm good at patterns. People are just patterns with better PR."
We make coffee, I shower, and the rest is a waiting game until my brother shows up.
Just as I’m about to call him to grab smokes and a pizza on the way, there’s a knock on the door.
We both freeze. It’s only been three hours since he called.
My hand is on the Glock before I'm standing.
Charlotte slides off the bed, low, below the window line.
Her eyes are wide, but her body is still.
No panic. Not after today. The panic has been burned out of her and replaced with something harder.
"Claudio." Through the door. "Open the fucking door, it's raining."
Emilio.
Four hours my ass. He must have been driving ninety the whole way.
I check the peephole. It's him. Soaked, hair plastered to his forehead, leather jacket dark with rain, holding a takeout bag and a six-pack of beer like he's arriving at a party instead of a safe house.
I open the door. He pushes past me, drops the food on the table, looks around the room, and spots Charlotte standing by the bed in my shirt with wet hair and a Glock she picked up off the nightstand.
He grins. The full Emilio grin. The one that takes up his entire face and makes him look like a man who has never experienced a moment of darkness in his life, which is a lie so enormous it has its own gravitational pull.
"You must be Charlotte," he says. "I'm Emilio. I've heard almost nothing about you, which from my brother means you're the most important person in his life."
"I'm holding a gun," Charlotte says.
"I can see that. Nice grip. Little high on the slide, but we'll work on it."
"Emilio," I say.
"What? I'm being friendly. Is this not friendly? I brought beer."
Charlotte looks at me. One eyebrow raised. The expression says: This is your twin? This man who walks into a safe house like it's a barbecue?
I shrug. Because yes. This is my twin. This is the man who shares my blood and my face and none of my restraint, who showed up early because he drove like a maniac in the rain, who brought beer and takeout to a motel room where his brother is trying to protect a witness and his brother's girlfriend is standing in his shirt with a gun she learned to hold six hours ago.
Girlfriend. The word surfaces without permission.
"Put the gun down," I tell Charlotte. "He's annoying, but he's safe."
She lowers the Glock. Doesn't put it down. Holds it at her side while she looks at Emilio with the same attention she gives everything.
"You drove here in four hours," she says.
"Three and a half. I have a flexible relationship with speed limits."
"You brought beer."
"Beer is a universal peace offering. Also, I figured my brother hasn't eaten because he gets tunnel vision when he's working a problem and forgets he has a body."
She looks at me. "He's right. You haven't eaten."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're doing the jaw thing."
Emilio points at Charlotte. Then at me. Then back at Charlotte. "I like her."
"Sit down," I say. "Both of you."
They sit. Charlotte on the bed, the Glock on the nightstand within reach. Emilio in the vinyl chair, beer open, legs spread, taking up space the way he always does. I stand by the window because standing is where I think best.
Emilio pulls containers from the takeout bag. Burgers. Fries. Something that smells like onion rings. He hands Charlotte a container and a beer without asking if she wants either.
She takes both. Opens the beer. Takes a long drink. Looks at Emilio over the can.
"You have the same face," she says.
"Tragically, yes. Though I wear it better."
"Debatable."
Emilio laughs. Loud, warm, the sound filling the motel room like a space heater. "Oh, she's mean. Claudio, you found a mean one. I'm thrilled."
"Can we focus?" I say.
"We can focus and eat. Multitasking. You should try it.
" Emilio bites into a burger. Chews. Swallows.
His face goes serious in the span of a heartbeat, the grin folding up and disappearing, and the man underneath is the one I know.
The one who's killed as many people as I have and carries it differently but carries it all the same. "Salvatore. Talk to me."
"Tuesday and Friday calls," he says. "Eight PM. Six weeks minimum. That coincides almost identically with what Alex figured out about the shipments.”
"That's what I said."
"And Savannah disappearing right when Charlotte's ready to come back and identify him. That's not a coincidence. He's cleaning house."
"Which means he knows we're getting close."
"Or he's paranoid enough to clean regardless." Emilio looks at Charlotte. "The man you saw at Marchetti. The scar. Walk me through it."
Charlotte describes it again. Same details. Same precision. The older European, the military operator, the scar from thumb to wrist. Emilio listens the way he listens to everything important, with his whole body leaned forward and his eyes locked and his jaw tight.
"That's Salvatore," he says when she finishes. "I've seen that scar a hundred times. He got it from a Castillo enforcer in 2019. He tells the story at dinner parties like it's a badge of honor." His mouth tightens. "Fifteen years. He's been sitting at Aurelio's table for fifteen years."
"We don't know it's been fifteen years that he’s been crossing us," I say. "Could be recent. Could have started with Apex Meridian."
"Could have. But a man doesn't build that kind of access overnight. The calls, the keycards, the political contacts. This is deep, Claudio. This is structural."
He's right. I know he's right. And the weight of it settles on all three of us, pressing the room smaller, making the cheap motel walls feel like they're leaning in.
Charlotte finishes her beer. Sets the can on the nightstand next to the Glock.
"So what's the plan?" she says. "And don't say 'we're working on it.' I've been in this car for eight days. I want an actual plan with actual steps and an actual timeline."
Emilio looks at me. I look at him. Same face, same thought.
I sigh. "Tomorrow. Emilio leads. Separate cars.
He goes in first, confirms Salvatore is on compound for the morning briefing.
Charlotte and I come in through the east garage, same way we left.
Leone has the interrogation room set up with one-way glass.
Charlotte identifies Salvatore. We move immediately. "
"And then?" Charlotte asks.
"Then we have a conversation."
"The kind with a chair and a locked door."
"The kind where he tells us everything about Apex Meridian, the European financier, and whatever phase three means. And if he doesn't tell us voluntarily, Leone and I will find more persuasive methods."
Charlotte nods. No flinch. No hesitation.
The woman who bit me on a staircase and counted ceiling tiles in a locked room is gone.
In her place is someone harder. Someone who watched four men die on a county road and ate onion rings in a dingy room and is now discussing interrogation tactics with two mafia soldiers like it's a Tuesday morning meeting.
Emilio is watching her. The grin is gone. In its place is the look he gives people he respects, which is a short list and heavily guarded.
"Charlotte," he says.
"Yes."
"Welcome to the family."
She looks at him. Then at me. Then back at him.
"That's the most terrifying thing anyone's ever said to me," she says. "And I've had a gun pointed at my face."
Emilio laughs. I don't. I stand by the window with the rain on the glass and my brother in the chair and the woman I love on the bed, and the word surfaces again, uninvited, undeniable.
Love.
I don't say it. Not in a motel room with wet hair and cold burgers and a plan that could get all three of us killed.
But I think it. And thinking it feels like the click of a safety being thumbed off. The point of no return. The moment the weapon goes live.