14. Chapter Fourteen #2
Then she shakes her head. “I swear I don’t.”
He moves closer.
Rachel backs into the side of the sedan.
“Drop the act,” he says coldly.
Something in his tone strips the fragility from her face for just a moment.
Her eyes sharpen before she forces them wide again.
“No, you’re wrong,” she says, shaking her head.
“You lured Alessio out of the club,” Lorenzo says. “You took him to the hotel. You had sex with him. You waited until he left. Then you helped put your dead sister in that room and built a murder case around my son.”
Rachel is frozen as Lorenzo leans close.
“Tell me which part I have wrong.”
For a moment, there’s calculation on her face, then the tears begin again.
“I was forced.”
The answer comes so quickly I almost laugh.
Lorenzo does not blink.
“I didn’t want to do any of it,” she says. “They made me. They said they would kill me if I refused.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Her voice cracks.
She looks at me, desperate now.
“I can help. I know things. But I need protection.”
I watch her face.
A moment ago, she denied knowing who we were or why we were looking for her.
“Tell us what you know, and we’ll consider it. Who set this up?” I ask.
She swallows.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ll have to give us something if you want us to believe you,” I say.
“Protect me, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know,” she says.
“You won’t tell us anything,” Lorenzo says.
Rachel turns back to him, tearfully. She reaches out, as if to touch him. He grabs her wrist before she can make contact.
He does not yank her or squeeze.
He simply prevents her performance from continuing.
Rachel looks down at his hand.
Then up at him.
For the first time since she stepped from the car, she loses control of her face completely.
Hatred flashes across it.
“There you are,” he says quietly.
Her mouth tightens.
He releases her.
Rachel straightens without a trace of weakness.
The tears remain on her cheeks, but the woman behind them has changed.
“You think you can scare me into saying whatever you want?” she asks.
Her voice is cold and firm now, no trace of the trembling and stuttering from before.
Lorenzo studies her. “I have no interest in making you say anything.”
“Then what do you want?”
“What I want is irrelevant,” he says. “What’s going to happen is we’re going to march you into the police station so they can drop every charge against my son.”
Rachel’s eyes narrow.
“That’s it?” she says. “You’re going to turn me in to the police? The great and scary Contis?”
Lorenzo’s expression does not change. “You mistake restraint for weakness. I have priorities.”
Rachel gives a short, humorless laugh. “They’ll never be able to pin anything real on me. I’ll be out before you know it.”
Lorenzo smiles then. Even from all the way here, I can feel terror slide through my bones, and it’s not even aimed at me.
I see Rachel recoil slightly.
“You’re mistaken,” he says softly. Then louder: “Search her car.”
His people moved toward the car immediately, wearing gloves.
Her gaze flicks back to me wildly. “You're just going to stand there while he does this? Searches my car and threatens me?”
“I haven't heard any threats,” I say innocently.
Lorenzo glances toward one of his people. “Keep her there.”
A man steps beside Rachel, close enough to stop her if she moves.
She looks at Lorenzo. “You can’t hold me here.”
He does not answer.
He comes back to stand beside me while two of his people open the doors and trunk.
Neither of us speaks.
They search methodically, removing bags, checking beneath the seats, opening compartments, and running their hands along the lining.
Rachel keeps watching them, but every few seconds, her eyes cut toward us.
Lorenzo gives her nothing.
I don’t either.
One of the men searching her car opens the trunk.
Rachel’s attention jerks toward him too fast.
The man looking in the trunk straightens with a bag in his hand.
Lorenzo gestures and the man brings it over.
“You can't do this,” Rachel says.
She tries the tears again, but they do not come as easily this time.
“Wait,” I say and pull out gloves again.
We put them on, and Lorenzo takes the bag and sets it on the hood of his car.
Lorenzo opens the bag.
The first thing I see is a second cell phone.
It is tucked into an inside pocket. Lorenzo hands it to me, and I slip it into an evidence bag without trying to turn it on.
Beneath it is a thick envelope.
I pull it free and look inside.
The adoption papers are on top.
The same records Elaine showed us. The same pages I photographed at her house.
Under them is the letter from Rachel’s birth mother. Then the birth certificate.
I spread the documents across the hood, keeping the corners pinned beneath my gloved fingers when the wind catches them.
Two girls born on the same date, at the same hospital.
Rachel watches us from beside the sedan. The tears are gone again.
Lorenzo lifts another stack from the bag.
Photographs.
Genevieve outside her apartment. Genevieve walking into work. Genevieve carrying groceries.
Genevieve sitting alone at a café, unaware that someone is watching her from across the street.
There are more beneath those.
Alessio leaving the club. Alessio outside Conti Enterprises. Alessio getting out of his car near the house he shares with his cousins.
Some of the photographs have dates written on the back. Others have brief notes about times and locations.
Nothing that specifically points to a murder.
Nothing that says how Genevieve died or who killed her.
But definitely evidence that Rachel watched both of them.
Alessio for weeks, and Genevieve for over a year.
I look toward her.
She is no longer pretending to be frightened. Her face has gone flat and expressionless.
Lorenzo turns another photograph over, then looks at me with one eyebrow raised.
“It isn’t enough to pin Genevieve’s murder on her,” I say.
His expression hardens slightly.
“But it proves she knew about Genevieve. It proves she was watching her and Alessio long before the murder.”
“And the second phone?”
“Will probably give us a lot more.”
He looks down at the photographs again, at a picture of his son.
“It should be enough to take suspicion off Alessio,” I continue. “Especially once the police see Rachel in person and realize the woman in the footage is alive and not the woman they found in the hotel room.”
Rachel gives a quiet laugh from across the lot.
“You think they’ll believe you?”
I look at the birth certificate, the photographs, and the adoption records spread across the hood.
“They won’t have to take my word for it.”
Her mouth tightens.
Lorenzo gathers the papers carefully and returns them to the envelope.
“We go now,” he says.
“Yes.”
He closes the bag.
“Julian should meet us there,” I add.
Lorenzo looks toward Rachel.
She stands beside her car with one of his people close enough to stop her from trying anything.
Lorenzo lifts the bag from the hood.
“Put her in the car.”
Rachel’s head snaps toward him.
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He does not bother answering.
His people move.
I take out my phone as Lorenzo starts toward his car.
“Call Julian,” he says.
I nod with the phone pressed to my ear.
He opens the passenger door for me.
Behind us, Rachel begins protesting again, her voice rising as his people escort her toward one of the waiting vehicles.
I let Mocha in, and he crosses into the back seat. I slide in after, just as Julian answers.
The evidence bag containing the second phone rests in my lap.
Lorenzo slides behind the wheel and starts the engine.
This time, when we head toward Chicago, Rachel is coming with us.