Chapter 43
GIANNI
"She stopped moving." Kylie's voice from the back seat is flat and focused.
"Where?" Spackman asks from behind the wheel.
"Westchester. The Whitmore Inn, just off the Saw Mill Parkway. She checked in twelve minutes ago under the name Sarah Collins."
"Creative," I say.
"It took me nine seconds to crack. She used her real credit card for the deposit and a fake name for the reservation."
“Her real credit card?” Spackman asks. “Doesn’t seem like the brightest move.”
“It’s not. Either she thinks the fake name is going to do all of the work, or she’s actually hoping to get caught.” Kylie closes one screen, opens another. "Room 214. Second floor, east wing, overlooking the parking lot."
Spackman takes the next exit. “Twenty minutes out.”
I sit in the passenger seat, my eyes on the blur of the highway as I think about what I’m going to say, what I’m going to do when I walk into that room.
"Kylie," I say. "Call Ferrara. Tell him to stand by. And keep the line to Harwell open. I'll need the FBI before this is over."
"You're bringing the Feds?"
"I'm bringing everyone."
The Whitmore Inn is exactly the kind of place Theresa would run to, a converted colonial estate with manicured hedges and a gorgeous facade.
It’s the kind of hotel that serves afternoon tea and offers complimentary monogrammed robes to its guests.
Even running for her life, she can’t stoop to a sixty-dollar-a-night sort of affair.
Spackman handles the front desk. He doesn’t have a badge to flash, but he has the sort of bearing and authority that serves just as well. People take one look at him and simply assume he’s in law enforcement.
Within three minutes he’s given a keycard by the manager and we’re soon in the elevator heading up. The doors open just as a text comes in from Kylie, still in the car, still looking for Violet in any way she can.
We approach room 214. Spackman slides the keycard. The lock clicks green and he opens the door.
Theresa is sitting on the edge of the bed.
She hasn’t even unpacked yet, her suitcase on the floor still zipped.
She’s wearing the same dark coat I recognize from the alley footage, her hair pulled back in the same way.
Her mascara has tracked black lines down her cheek, and her hands are clasped in her lap.
She stares straight ahead as I open the door, and I have the distinct sense that she’s been seated like this since she arrived.
She looks up and sees me, and the expression on her face isn't surprise, it's resignation.
The face of a woman who's been waiting for the inevitable and is almost relieved it's arrived.
I don't speak.
Spackman closes the door and locks it, then positions himself between Theresa and the exit, sending the message to her that she’s not going anywhere without his say so. She takes one look at him and understands she shouldn’t even bother standing.
I move to the center of the room. I look at Theresa, and I let the silence build.
Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
She breaks first. They always do.
"Gianni, I—"
"Don't."
She stops.
"You're going to tell me everything," I say. "Not the version you've been rehearsing since you got in your car. Not the version where you're the victim. The real version. And you're going to tell it quickly, because every second you waste is a second that Violet is alone with him."
Her lower lip trembles. "I didn't know he was going to—"
"When did Lance contact you directly?"The question cuts right through whatever bullshit she was preparing to spin. Theresa stares at me, and I watch the recalculation happen in real time. She’s understanding, right now in this very moment, that I’m not here to listen to her lies or excuses or both.
I’m here to extract information, and it’s only a matter of what I have to do to get it.
"Two weeks after I went to Marino," she says quietly. "He called me on my personal phone. I don't know how he got the number."
"Marino gave it to him."
"I—yes. Probably. He said he wanted to talk. About you. About the investigation. He said he could help me."
"Help you do what?"
She closes her eyes. "Get you back."
The words hang in the air.
"He told me Violet was the problem," Theresa continues. "That if she was out of the picture, out of your life, out of the company, you'd come back to me. That you and I had something real, and she was just a—" She swallows. "A distraction. A phase."
"And you believed him."
"I wanted to believe him." Her eyes open. "I know how that sounds. I know it's pathetic. But you humiliated me, Gianni. In front of everyone. At the gala, in the office, every time you looked at her like she was—" Her voice cracks. "Like she was everything I wasn't."
"She is everything you aren't. That's not an insult, Theresa. It's a fact. And it's the fact that Lance used to turn you into a weapon against me."
My tone is even. I don’t bother to raise my voice. I don’t need to. "Tell me what you gave him."
"Violet's routine. Her schedule at the office.
Which exits she uses." She's crying now, the words spilling out between sobs.
"Her relationship with the neighbor, the babysitter, the pre-school schedule.
He wanted to know everything about her patterns.
Where she felt safe. Where she let her guard down. "
"And the raid. You confirmed the timing."
"He called me this morning. Six a.m. He said the warrant was signed and the raid would happen at ten-thirty.
He needed to know that Violet would be in the building.
" She presses her hands over her face. "I told him she would be.
I told him I'd make sure she used the fire escape. I'd be waiting on the landing."
"You led her to him," I say.
"I didn't think he would—"
“You delivered this woman to a man you knew was dangerous, one she’d given up nearly everything to escape.
” I take one step closer so that I’m looming over her and she needs to crane her head up to look at me.
"You knew what he was, Theresa. Violet told you herself, in that office, the day the FBI first showed up.
You watched her shake at her desk. You saw the fear, and you still opened the door and let him in. "
"I didn't think he would hurt her."
“You didn’t care whether he hurt her. There’s a very important difference. You wanted what you wanted, and you didn’t give a goddamn who got hurt in the process.”
She’s sobbing now, her shoulders heaving, her hands covering her face. This is not a performance like at the hospital. No—these are the tears of a woman who’s just realizes she’s in over her head, that there’s no getting out of what she’s done without paying a price.
"Theresa."
She looks up.
"Violet is pregnant."
The crying stops instantly, as if someone pressed a button. Her mouth opens, then closes. She shakes her head and asks, "What?"
"Seven weeks. She's carrying my child. And the man you delivered her to, the man who beat her unconscious in a kitchen in Chicago while their three-year-old son slept in the next room, has her right now. In a building I haven't found yet."
Theresa's face collapses. This is the moment the full weight of what she's done arrives and lands on her chest and crushes the air out of her lungs.
"Oh God," she whispers. "Oh God, I didn't—I didn't know—"
"You didn't ask. You didn't care. You cared about getting me back, and you were willing to sacrifice anyone who stood in your way, including a pregnant woman and a four-year-old boy."
"Gianni, please—"
"Where did he take her?"
"I don't—I don't have an address—"
"Think."
“He mentioned a cabin upstate. Something about how it belonged to someone in Marino’s crew.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Near a reservoir, off some gravel county road an hour north of the city. That’s all I know, I swear. That’s everything."
"Kylie," I say.
Her voice comes through the phone in my hand—she's been listening the entire time. "Already looking. Marino's property holdings, associates' names, anything linked to parcels in Westchester or Putnam County near a reservoir." I hear the rapid-fire click of computer keys. "Give me two minutes."
Theresa is crumpled on the bed, her face swollen, her mascara destroyed, her hands gripping the comforter like she’s trying to hold on to something solid.
"What happens to me?" Her voice is small and broken, bordering on pathetic.
"You don't leave this room. You don't make calls. You don't text. I’m sending someone here to watch you until this is over."
"And after?"
I hold her gaze. I could tell her what I have in mind.
I could describe, in precise and clinical detail, what kinds of consequences should await a woman like her.
After all, she’s conspired with a federal agent and a crime syndicate boss to kidnap the mother of my child.
The legal repercussions—obstruction, conspiracy, accessory to kidnapping—would end her carer and likely her freedom.
And that’s assuming I allow her to turn herself in. My repercussions would be a hell of a lot worse, bad enough that she’d beg for the Feds to take her.
"Gianni," she whispers. "I'm sorry."
"I know you are," I say. "That doesn't help Violet."
"Got it," Kylie's voice cuts in. "Property registered to a Carlo Bertoni—he's a capo in Marino's Jersey operation.
Hunting cabin on Croton Lake Road in Putnam County, off Route 301.
Satellite imagery shows a single structure, gravel access road, heavily wooded.
The property's been dark on utility records for three years. "
"How far?"
"Fifty-seven minutes from your current location."
I'm already moving. Spackman tosses me the car keys.
In the hallway, I dial Harwell. “Agent Harwell, this is Gianni Russo. Your Agent Dawson is holding a pregnant civilian hostage at a hunting cabin on Croton Lake Road in Putnam County. I’m on route now. You can meet me there.”
I hang up before he can respond.
The elevator doors open. I step in, Spackman beside me.
"You know he might kill her before we get there," he says quietly.
"He won't."
"How do you know?"
Because Lance Dawson doesn't want Violet dead.
He wants her destroyed. And destruction takes time—time to savor, time to monologue, time to make sure the victim understands exactly who's doing this to them and why.
It's the one predictable thing about narcissists: they can't resist an audience, even when the audience is their victim.
His ego will keep her alive long enough for me to get there.
And when I do, his ego is the first thing I take apart before I obliterate the rest of him.