4. — what happened in Miami. #3
Without a word, Larkin picked up the folder and handed it over. Sal opened the file. It took two-point-five seconds of scanning for him to slam it shut.
“Holy shit.”
“Yep,” Larkin muttered.
Salvatore opened the file again, flipping through to the second page where a few screen caps of a live stream that had been shown for a short while, according to the information included, were pasted. He could not blink enough times to let his mind process the images on the paper.
“He drugged, restrained, and then live streamed the President’s nephew admitting to drugging and date raping freshman on campus during frat parties?”
“It’s wild,” Larkin returned, a bit of pride in his tone. “Can you imagine the balls? The nerve.”
“The President’s nephew?”
“I guess Secret Service showed up to your boss’s mansion lickety -split because they monitor the family’s social media feeds or something. Anyway, they picked up on it quickly enough to keep it out of the press. Somehow.”
“Oh, someone made phone calls for that. You can bet on it.”
“Probably.”
“Now I get why Giorgio was so worked up and didn’t even want to look at the kid.
That asshole wouldn’t want to touch any of this with a ten-foot pole, but he already had me across the country on something else so he had to do what he had to do as fast as he could do it,” Salvatore said, closing the file and handing it back to Larkin. “Destroy that, would you?”
“Sure. So, are you going to bring it up to him?”
“Who—Giorgio or Nico?”
“Nico,” Larkin clarified.
“No, he made a choice and apparently, I’m the consequence. He’s lucky they didn’t bring him up on charges for something, but really, then they would need to explain what the President of the United States’ nephew had also been doing.”
“Seriously, you’re not even gonna ask him how he knew the guy was raping girls?”
Salvatore shook his head. “It makes no difference. What do you want me to do, clap him on the back and tell him good job that he made a rapist admit to being a rapist on camera? I’d be more interested in knowing if he regrets doing it, considering what came after.”
Larkin laughed loudly, and it earned them a glance over his shoulder from Nico. He stood, coming their way.
“I can tell you right now,” Larkin replied, also standing to leave, “he doesn’t regret a damn thing.”
Nico came to stand beside Salvatore, asking, “Should I head after Larkin to go back home, or...?”
“Nope.”
“All right. I’ll probably go have a smoke before we head out, then.”
“That’s fine. Are these familiar?” Salvatore lifted the fob, keys, and keychains that he’d kept hidden momentarily.
Nico’s face brightened. He reached for the dangling mess, but Salvatore yanked it out of his reach.
“Ah, not yet. First, we go over ground rules when you’re back at the estate.
Second, you’re only getting the Ducati today. I thought you’d like to drive it.”
Nico sighed, clearly relieved. “Yeah, the Ducati is great.”
“Which key is that?”
Nico pointed to the one without a fob, just a straight key with a black knob. Attached dangled a charm in the shape of the state they currently called home. Salvatore made quick work of removing the key and chain, hanging it over to Nico.
“I expect you’ll—”
“Drive straight to your place, no stopping.”
Salvatore smirked. “Perfect.”
···
Before long, Salvatore had his Mercedes coup headed in the direction of home.
With the smell of In-and-Out filling the vehicle, and Frankie in the passenger seat with a mouthful of hot fudge sundae, he figured now they could chat.
What better time than when she couldn’t argue with a mouth full of food?
“Could we talk about a couple things?” he asked.
Frankie’s attention drifted from the cotton candy colored sunset to her father behind the wheel. Around a plastic spoon, she mumbled, “About what?”
“For one, I’m proud of you. You’ve been doing really—”
“Oh, my God, are you leaving already?” she interrupted having swallowed her bite.
“No,” he assured just as fast, glancing her way and then back at the road. “No, I’m not going anywhere.”
Her brow furrowed as she stared into the ice cream. “I can’t remember the last time you were home for more than a month straight.”
“Your sweet sixteen.”
He remembered.
Very well.
“Oh,” Frankie said, looking up again. “Are you going to miss the tourney or something?”
“Barring nothing comes up that isn’t an emergency or whatever, then no. I will be there come hell or high water.”
“Okay.”
Salvatore cleared his throat and checked the rearview mirror, seeing nothing on the stretch of road.
Twenty more minutes, and they’d be home.
“Now, the rest. I know you didn’t want a party for your eighteenth or graduation, but we don’t really have a choice.
People, important people, expect that there’ll be one. They’re waiting for invitations.”
She pulled a face. “For real?”
“Listen, I’m making this as painless as possible for the both of us. One party for both things closer to graduation, and Carina is handling all of it. Do you know what that means?”
Frankie’s lip curled. “That she’ll be bothering me constantly for things I don’t care about?”
“That’ll be hard to do while she’s in the city for the next month getting things ready.”
“What?” Her head swung his way, making him laugh hard. “You’re serious?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’ll be back at the estate occasionally for a few things, but even she would rather stay at our suite in The Plaza. And she likes the planning stuff, so can we just let her do it?”
Frankie dismissively hummed under her breath. “She likes showing off, but sure, I don’t care.”
“The other thing...”
“Yeah?”
“You turn eighteen in a month. You still have a month to go after that for graduation. It would be hard, but doable, for you to stay at the new penthouse after your birthday if you want to get a start on freedom earlier than you planned.”
“No, I’ll stay with you until graduation. That’s our deal, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the deal, Sunshine. You know I’m going to show up there every chance I get, right? Point out what’s clean and what’s not.”
“Maybe I should take Sissy with me, then you won’t have anything to complain about.”
“Maybe you should learn to clean a fucking toilet because I pay her salary,” Salvatore joked.
“I can clean things.”
“When? How? At what point ever in your life have you done such a thing?”
Before his daughter could reply, a movement in the rearview mirror caught Salvatore’s eye.
He barely caught a proper view of the large vehicle coming right up on his bumper, so close that he could make out the shadowy shape behind lightly tinted glass, but he recognized that lifted, blacked-out Jeep.
He knew it well enough to already be trying to order through Bluetooth for his car’s system to call Giorgio and deal with his biggest problem.
The vehicle roared behind them and gained Frankie’s notice at the same time the driver swerved around them. It just happened to be that a car was coming in the opposite direction while the Jeep came alongside them, close enough to swap paint.
“What the fuck?” Salvatore hissed.
He hit the brakes but the Jeep’s passenger side on the rear clipped the front of the Mercedes. It took Salvatore too long to realize he couldn’t correct the spin, and he only understood their vehicle had hit the curb and started rolling when Francesca’s screams echoed all around him.
He had two thoughts while glass shattered, metal crunched, and just before he blacked out.
Why had Frankie stopped screaming?
And why the hell did Marco Russo just drive them off the fucking road?