False Leverage #2
The cash came from my emergency reserve, sewn into the hem of a coat my father insisted I bring because “alliances are only warm until they aren’t.”
The ride to the village is quiet. Luca takes the expected route, either from carelessness or proof that the route itself no longer matters. I watch the road, anyway.
The chapel is small, old, and determined to look humble despite the money clearly spent keeping it beautiful. The stones are damp from morning mist. The bell tower leans slightly, as if listening for gossip.
Luca stops near the entrance. “I’ll wait outside.”
“How trusting.”
I enter. Inside, the air smells of wax, incense, and generations of women asking God for things men had already decided. Three old women pray near the front. A priest moves somewhere behind a screen. Candles flicker in red glass cups, small supervised fires for sanctioned desperation.
I light one for my father. That had been part of the lie, but it becomes true in my hand. The flame catches.
For one second, my throat tightens. I breathe through it, then step back.
There’s a side door near the sacristy. It opens into a narrow alley. I noticed it the first time we arrived because I notice doors before altars. Old habit. Useful habit. Blasphemous habit, depending on who is counting.
The old women pray. The priest disappears. Luca waits at the front.
I move.
I drift along the side aisle, pause near a statue of a saint holding something sharp and improbable, then slip through the side door. The alley is empty.
Good. Or allowed.
No. Don’t think that. Thinking every door has been opened for me gives Alessandro too much power.
I move through the alley, turn left at the baker’s, turn right at the square, and reach the back street where a small motorbike waits exactly where money convinced a boy to leave it.
The boy isn’t there. That’s sensible of him. Children with instincts survive longer.
I ride badly. I’ve driven cars through the Dublin rain and once reversed a van into a fishmonger’s stall during a disagreement involving my cousin and a crate of stolen electronics, but motorbikes are spiteful machines.
They require balance and faith. I possess one of those inconsistently, and the other not at all.
Still, I make it out of the village. The gas station sits twelve minutes away by road, longer by the ridiculous route I take to avoid obvious pursuit. By the time I reach it, my hands ache from gripping the bars and my stomach has made several formal complaints.
The station is ugly. That comforts me. Ugly places are honest about their function. Two pumps. A small shop. A cracked sign. A garage bay attached to one side. Cigarettes in the window. Good coffee advertised with undeserved confidence.
A man behind the counter looks up when I enter. Mid-thirties. Thin. Dark hair. Nervous eyes. “Can I help?”
“Yes,” I say in Italian.
His attention sharpens at my accent.
I place a folded note on the counter. “I’m looking for someone who worked here that night.”
He looks at the paper. Then at me. Then at the door.
Fear has a smell.
“I don’t know anything,” he says.
“That was fast,” I remark.
“You should leave.”
“Roberto Greco,” I say.
His face changes. “He’s not here.”
“But he was.”
“No.”
“Careful.”
His jaw tightens. “Who are you?”
I take off one glove. The ring on my right hand is Brennan, not Vitale. My father gave it to me when I turned twenty-one. Gold. Old. Heavy. The crest worn nearly smooth from generations of men touching it before making decisions.
The clerk looks at it. Recognition lands with fear.
Better.
“My father died that night,” I say.
“I don’t want trouble.”
“That’s rarely up to us.”
“I have a family.”
“So did he.” I place cash on the counter. “I need Roberto.”
“He won’t talk.”
“People say that before deciding what silence costs.”
“He saw nothing.”
I smirk. “Then he can tell me that himself.”
The clerk swallows. “He isn’t here.”
“Where?”
“No.”
I add more money. “He has debts.”
The clerk looks up sharply. A guess, but a useful one. Men don’t disappear from gas stations because their lives have improved.
“I can pay them,” I continue. “Or someone else can collect them. Which would he prefer?”
“You don’t know who you’re asking about.”
“I know he saw Dante Vitale near this station at 21:14 on the night Seane Brennan died.”
The name “Dante” hits harder than money. The clerk goes pale. My heart becomes a clean, bright instrument inside my chest.
Finally.
“He didn’t see anything,” the clerk whispers.
“Did Roberto say that, or was he told to?” I ask.
“You need to go.”
“Where is he?”
“I can’t.”
I lean closer. “Listen to me carefully. I’m not asking because I’m curious.
I’m asking because the man who frightened your cousin is more vulnerable than he was two weeks ago.
Dante Vitale is absent. His father is under pressure.
The Irish are not asleep. If Roberto saw him, his silence has value.
I’m willing to pay for it before someone else pays to bury it. ”
That’s not entirely true.
“Back room,” he finally says.
My pulse stops. “He’s here?”
“No. Phone.”
He lifts a hand beneath the counter and brings out an old mobile and a license showing Roberto’s photo. He dials. Waits. Speaks quickly in a dialect I catch only pieces of.
Woman. Brennan. Money. No police. No Vitale.
A pause. Then he hands me the phone. I take it.
Silence breathes on the other end.
“Roberto Greco?” I ask.
“Who are you?”
“Evie Brennan.”
A longer silence. “I didn’t see your father die.”
“No,” I say. “You saw Dante before it happened.”
His breath changes. “Who told you that?”
“You did.”
“I said nothing.”
“You said the wrong nothing.”
He curses softly. “I’m not giving a statement.”
“I didn’t ask for one.”
“You will.”
“Eventually.”
“No.”
“Eventually,” I repeat, “you may decide that being paid by me is better than being found by someone else.”
“I already got paid.”
My fingers tighten around the phone. “By whom?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“No, it doesn’t. Money’s gone. I’m gone. I saw nothing.”
“You saw Dante.” Silence. “Roberto.”
“He was angry,” the man says, voice low. “That’s all.”
The room around me sharpens. The clerk behind the counter looks away, as if not hearing might protect him.
“Where?” I ask.
“At the pumps. He came in fast. Car scraped the curb. He paid cash first, then changed his mind, used the card, shouted at me when the receipt jammed. He was drunk, or close to it. There was blood on his cuff.”
My body goes very still. “Whose blood?”
“How would I know?”
“What time?”
“The receipt tells you.”
“You kept a copy?”
A laugh, humorless and afraid. “I keep copies of everything when men like that come through.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
A lie.
“Roberto.”
“No,” he says sharply. “I’m alive because I know when paper stops being useful.”
“Paper is useful now.”
“Not to me.”
“I can protect you.”
Another laugh. “Can you?”
I can pay him. I can hide him for a day, perhaps two, if I involve Rory. I can move information. I can threaten him badly enough to sound larger than I am.
But protection belongs to people with men, roads, guns, doctors, judges, priests.
Protection belongs to Alessandro.
“I can make it worth the risk,” I say.
“Money?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
I name a number. The clerk looks at me as if I have suddenly become more interesting. Roberto lets in a short breath.
“I talk once,” he says. “Not to police. Not to council. To your people. Recorded. Then I disappear.”
“My people?”
“Irish. Not Vitale.”
Smart man. “Where?”
“Tomorrow. Noon. I’ll call this phone.”
“Bring the receipt copy.”
“No.”
“Bring it, or there is no money.”
“You think you can dictate terms?”
“Yes.”
He exhales hard. “Fine.”
The line dies.
* * *
The return to the chapel takes longer because the motorbike remains a hateful device and because my mind has already moved ahead.
I need Rory. A message through old channels, not Vitale-monitored lines.
There is a woman in the village who sells imported cigarettes and still owes my father a favor from 2019, though she believes I don’t know that.
She can send word to an Irish number. The Irish number can reach Rory.
Rory can position men for tomorrow without exposing me.
Roberto talks. Rory records. I deliver copy and witness location to Alessandro with enough structure that destroying it becomes costly.
If Alessandro protects Dante again, I’ll know.
I reach the chapel through the side door and slip back inside. The old women are gone. The candles still burn.
Luca stands near the front now. Inside.
My stomach drops. He turns before I can decide whether to retreat. His expression doesn’t change. That’s the worst thing about him. A man with a face like Luca’s doesn’t need accusation. His stillness does all the work.
“Miss Brennan.”
“Mr. Romano.”
“Your prayers took you far.”
“God is everywhere, I’m told.”
“Not on a motorbike.”
“Perhaps you lack imagination.”
His gaze moves over me. Shoes damp. Hem stained. Gloves clean. Breath controlled, but coming too fast.
He knows I left. Of course he knows I left.
“Are we returning?” he asks.
Not: where were you? Not: what did you do?
“Yes,” I say.
Luca opens the chapel door for me. Outside, the car waits exactly where he left it. He doesn’t ask where I went; he doesn’t need to. Men like Luca don’t report questions. They report answers.
By the time we reach the estate, Alessandro will know I found Roberto Greco.
The only thing I don’t know is whether I found him first.