Chapter 31
Vito Calvino sat at the impressive desk in his office, the curtains drawn tight against the morning light. His phone screen glowed in his hand, and he glared at the frozen image until his coffee went cold.
The picture had been taken outside on Evangeline’s stone driveway this morning, his daughter, his stupid, disobedient excuse of a daughter, standing far too close to a man he didn’t immediately recognize. Not just close. The man had his arm around her, holding her like she belonged to him.
Vito clenched his jaw until his teeth ached.
He zoomed in on the face. Tall and muscular guy, light beard, shoulders wide enough to fill a doorway. Something about him was familiar, nagging at the back of his mind. He couldn’t place the guy.
“Lorenzo,” Vito barked.
One of his guards stepped forward immediately, the other two hovering near the doorway like silent shadows. “Yeah boss?” the guy asked, fingering the hem of his loose shirt nervously.
“You know this man?” Vito shoved the phone toward him.
Lorenzo squinted, then shrugged. “Think he used to run messages and errands for Bianchi.” A moment later, he shook his head as he laughed slightly. “The guy was dumb as bricks. Could barely follow an order.”
The other two guards leaned in, eager to prove their usefulness.
“Yeah, boss,” one said quickly. “I’ve seen him too. Always hanging around, never important. Looked kinda, you know, slow to me.”
“Right,” the other agreed. “We used to call him Lurch behind his back. Big and dumb. A nobody.”
Vito leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. He let their words hang in the air while he studied the photo again. His daughter’s head was tipped back slightly, her eyes soft. And the man…
No. That wasn’t a stupid errand boy.
His predecessor, Enrico Bianchi, had been blind to nuance. He saw tools and pawns, nothing else. But Vito trusted his gut, and his gut knew the man in the photo wasn’t stupid. Not with those sharp eyes. Not with the way he carried himself.
Something was wrong.
Without a word, Vito forwarded the image to a contact buried deep in the police force, a man whose loyalty Vito had purchased with both cash and a few well-timed photographs. He despised honest cops, he thought. Thankfully, his source replied faster than expected.
You don’t want to touch him. FBI.
Vito’s blood ran cold.
He read the message again. And a third time. His fingers tightened around the phone until the plastic case creaked in protest.
An FBI agent. The man holding his daughter was a member of the FBI!
The guards were still watching him, waiting for his response, smirks tugging at their mouths as if they were mentally patting themselves on the back after identifying a nobody. Idiots. All of them.
“Get out,” Vito snarled.
They scrambled, nearly tripping over each other in their haste to obey.
Alone again, Vito frowned at the picture one last time, then set the phone face down on the table.
His daughter wasn’t just disobedient. She was dangerous.
And if the FBI was circling his family, circling him, then the game had just shifted.
But maybe there was a way to play this. Maybe…!