Olivia
I'm hunched over my desk, squinting at the Vitale file for the hundredth time, hoping to find something, anything, I've missed.
My coffee sits cold beside me, forgotten during the three hours I've been reviewing evidence that seems to lead nowhere.
Blackwood's been prowling the halls more than usual today. Twice he's walked past my desk, peering over my shoulder.
I've made sure to look thoroughly engrossed in the Vitale case whenever he passes, though my mind keeps drifting to Rocco's kidnapping and the Ferraza murder.
I rub my temples, fighting the headache forming behind my eyes. The weight of my badge feels heavier lately, especially since Dom started occupying my bed.
"Agent Ricci?"
I look up to see Timothy from records standing in front of my desk, manila folder in hand.
"That file you requested about informants, I still can’t find it, but I’ve found this which might help.”
"I'll take a look. Thanks."
After he leaves, I carefully open the file. Inside are reports I've never seen before.
Surveillance logs, payment records, and handler notes for an informant named Ernie Abruzzo.
The name makes me stop cold. Isn’t that the man Dom mentioned as being an informant connected to Mrs. Ferraza's murder.
The date on the last handler note is one day before she was killed.
I stare at the file, as pieces of this puzzle start falling into place to make a picture I don’t want to see.
Ernie Abruzzo. Informant. Handler: Special Agent Victor Blackwood.
"Oh God." I scan the notes with growing dread.
October 12: Subject reports Mrs. F concerned about daughter's future. Potential leverage point established.
October 19: Subject instructed to offer assistance to Mrs. F regarding daughter's situation. Will use to gain intel on council meetings.
October 27: Subject reports Mrs. F willing to share council information in exchange for daughter's extraction from family. Moving to phase two.
The pattern continues through dozens of entries, each more damning than the last. Blackwood wasn't just running Ernie as an informant, he was actively manipulating Mrs. Ferraza through him, using her daughter, Isabella, as bait.
That’s not illegal, but it feels horribly unethical. Women in the mafia world seem to have so little agency. Using them, putting them in danger, doesn’t sit well with me.
It’s why I handed over Mrs. Ferraza’s notebook to Isabella when she called me out for using her grief and her mother’s death to gain information about La Corona.
I reach the final entry, dated the day before Mrs. Ferraza's murder: Subject becoming liability. Mrs. F expressing doubts about arrangement. Informant says she’s going to expose the operation. Containment measures may be necessary.
Containment measures. The FBI's euphemism for shutting down an operation. But then I think about Mrs. Ferraza’s murder and wonder if in this case, it meant something else entirely.
No. Blackwood can be overly focused and push the envelope, but he wouldn’t resort to murder to achieve his goal of putting La Corona behind bars.
I stare at the phrase "containment measures" until the words blur together. My training tells me this could mean anything from terminating the informant relationship to witness protection. But the worry in my gut tells me this could be something darker.
The official report on Mrs. Ferraza's death sits in another folder on my desk. I glance to Blackwood’s office, verifying he’s in there and not watching me.
I flip open the file, scanning the details I've read a dozen times before.
Victim of a drive-by shooting outside a boutique. Not the intended target, just wrong place, wrong time. The investigation concluded it was likely gang-related violence aimed at someone else on the street.
But Dom's words echo in my head: “Are you aware that two of your informants killed Don Ferraza’s wife?”
Two?
I spread both files side by side, comparing timestamps and locations. The day after Blackwood's "containment measures" note, Mrs. Ferraza was shopping at exactly the time and location mentioned in Ernie's previous handler notes as her "regular Tuesday routine."
My heart pounds as the implication, something a moment ago I dismissed, is growing. This wasn't random. This was a setup. But was it Ernie on his own trying to salvage his relationship with Blackwood? And who is the other informant?
I pull up Ernie's file on my computer.
Known associate of the Calabresi family through his brother Sal, but never officially inducted.
Small-time criminal record.
Found dead not long after Mrs. Ferraza's murder from a drug overdose.
The file suggests Don Ferraza arranged the death as many around him have died from ODs. For that to be true, Don Ferraza would have to believe Ernie killed his wife.
Another question I have is about Sal. Did he know his brother was an informant? Was the second informant?
And was Ernie’s OD an accident, inflicted by Don Ferraza, or could Blackwood have used Ernie to kill Mrs. Ferraza when she became a problem, then eliminated Ernie when he was no longer useful or became a liability?
Am I really considering this?
My fingers fly across the keyboard as I search our database for "Salvatore Abruzzo." The screen fills with his profile, a mug shot, criminal history, known associates. His scowling face stares back at me, dark eyes challenging even through a photograph.
"Captain with the Calabresi family," I murmur, scrolling through his file. "Multiple arrests, no convictions..."
I stop when I reach the status update: Missing - Presumed Deceased (3 years ago)
The report is frustratingly thin. It’s unclear exactly when he went missing. The last sighting was around mid-December three years ago at the Winter Festival.
There is no official report of his being missing, which isn’t usual. Members of the mafia rarely look to law enforcement when a crime is committed against them. Ernie was already dead a year so there was no family I can see to report Sal missing.
I lean back in my chair, connecting invisible threads between these events. Ernie informs for Blackwood. Mrs. Ferraza dies. Ernie dies.
Isabella becomes an informant when she seeks information about her mother’s murder. But then Isabella marries into La Corona and Sal disappears.
Is Sal’s situation related to his brother and Mrs. Ferraza or something else entirely?
The web of connections grows more tangled each time I sort through possibilities. I decide to review my notes as I can’t investigate Dom without considering his membership in La Corona.
I see my note from when Blackwood asked me to make contact with Isabella Ferraza. He said she’d been forced to marry Marco Calabresi’s enforcer, Roman Ginetti, who must have taken her phone.
I’d found Isabella shopping in a fabric store with her new husband. He’d stepped aside to take a call, and acting like a shopper, I’d approached her and handed her a new phone.
I remember how she begged me to arrange her extraction.
She’d been so afraid.
I frown, scanning my notes further. If Blackwood had promised Mrs. Ferraza he'd help Isabella escape the family in exchange for information, why hadn't he fulfilled that promise?
Instead, he'd used the mother's death to manipulate the daughter into becoming an informant.
I skim to later when I met with her regarding the journal. I’d tried to bargain for information about Dom knowing Isabella was friends with Elena Vitale.
On that encounter, Isabella didn’t seem afraid. She was pissed.
I can remember the conversation clearly without my notes because she’d shamed me.
"Your mother would be disappointed," I’d said to her. "She risked everything to protect you from this life."
"How dare you," Isabella hissed at me. "You sit here and dangle my dead mother's memories like bait? You think I'm that desperate?"
Her words slapped at me, making me disappointed in myself.
"My mother would be disappointed?" Isabella continued.
"You didn't know her. You have no right to speak for her.
I've spent a year trying to find out what happened to her, and all that time the FBI has been holding her notebook?
And now you want to trade it for information that could get people killed? "
She shook her head in disgust. "I won't be your pawn. I won't be Blackwood's pawn. And I certainly won't betray the only person who's shown me genuine kindness since I got caught up in your scheme.”
I tried again because it seemed odd she’d have found solace in a man she’d been forced to marry. “Mrs. Ginetti—”
"You people claim to be better than the mafia," she’d said. "But at least they're honest about who they are. You hide behind badges while using the same tactics. My mother's death isn't a bargaining chip. I shouldn’t have to risk my life doing your job to get justice for my mother."
My stomach knots at the memory surfaces. I'd felt about two inches tall that day.
Despite Blackwood's instructions to maintain leverage, I'd handed over the journal without conditions.
It was the right thing to do, even if it earned me a reprimand later.
The journal. Maybe there's something in there, something Mrs. Ferraza wrote about her arrangement with Ernie or Blackwood.
Something that could connect the dots between her death, Ernie's, and possibly even Rocco's kidnapping.
I don’t have it, but copies were made. Except, as I hunt for them in the files, I don’t see them.
Not even notes about them.
Something else that was either not recorded or has disappeared, making that dread in my gut about someone dirty in the FBI grow.
I wonder if Isabella would be willing to let me look at the journal again. I have to try.
If her mother's journal contained anything about her arrangements with the FBI, Isabella deserves to know the truth about her mother's death and I need to know if someone in the FBI…maybe even my own boss, is behind it all.
I feel sick to my stomach.
I've spent years believing La Corona commits crimes with no care or remorse.
Dom's words echo in my head: "Family is everything."
I've seen how fiercely protective the Vitales are of their own.
How Elena fought like a lioness when Rocco was taken.
How Dom speaks of his cousin with genuine affection.
Mrs. Ferraza’s murder was listed as a drive-by, but I saw from the notes that Blackwood was hinting that Marco Calabresi was behind the murder because he found out, maybe from Sal, that she was talking to Federal agents.
But if La Corona truly murdered Mrs. Ferraza, why not eliminate Isabella too?
She was an FBI informant.
Instead, they arranged her marriage to Roman Ginetti, Calabresi’s enforcer.
Maybe it was to control her, but if that’s the case, why not control Mrs. Ferraza?
I pull up Roman's file. His reputation is terrifying, efficient, loyal, lethal. Yet he's also a father.
For a time he was a single father after his wife died.
The surveillance photos show a man who walks his little girl to school, attends her dance recitals.
Would this man marry Isabella if he believed her family killed his boss's mother? Would Marco Calabresi allow it? Or again, was this a move to keep watch on her and control her?
The more I examine this puzzle, the less the official narrative makes sense.
If Blackwood orchestrated Mrs. Ferraza's death and pinned it on the Calabresis, then manipulated Isabella into becoming an informant by convincing her they were responsible...
My boss is all over the place in this case, but that’s unusual. He is the supervisor. And he’s dedicated. But has he overstepped and why would he do that?
Yes, we want justice, but it’s our job.
Becoming a criminal to bring down other criminals doesn’t make sense, unless it’s personal.
The idea of investigating my boss makes me nauseous. Instead, I decide to talk to Isabella. See if she’ll let me see the journal or at least tell me what is in it.
I wish I had someone I could discuss this with. To see if I’m seeing real connections or just shadows.
But I need more evidence before I can even think about voicing my suspicions. And I need to be careful who I talk to.
Because if I'm right, I could become a target of someone who’s been entrusted to uphold the law, but is willing to break it, even commit murder, to bring down La Corona.