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Chapter One
Sophie
“He’s in trouble, Sophie. I don’t know what to do.” Maria Ricci’s tears stream down her temples and into her dark brown hair as she stares up at the ceiling from the sofa in my office. Her chest shakes with sobs, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.
“You’ve been worried about him before, Maria,” My tone is calm and soothing as I sit up straighter in my black leather, ergonomic chair.
She nods as her tears run faster.
Since Maria became my client, she’s voiced plenty of concerns about her husband’s line of work. Leo Ricci’s criminal activities are of the organized kind, with Dons and Capos and made men. But none of Maria’s prior worries have ever brought her to the brink of a complete meltdown like this.
“What makes it different this time?” I ask, feeling the heavy weight of legal obligation settle in the pit of my stomach. Until now, she’s been open about the details of her husband’s crimes, but I have the distinct feeling we’re not talking about boatloads of AK-12s and Glocks at the moment.
“He’s done something—something he shouldn’t have done. Something he can’t undo. And now… so many people…” she trails off, dissolving into wracking sobs.
Shit.
Maria is about to cross the line. I can feel it. I can practically taste it. Visions of police officers, court rooms, and horse heads in my bed start to dance through my mind. And yet, I have to cross this line with her. It’s why I’m sitting in this chair and why my old life is two thousand miles away. It’s what makes me… me.
“’…so many people,’ what?” I probe gently, forcing myself over the line with a hard and fast mental shove.
She shakes her head vigorously and says in a surprisingly loud voice, “I just wish he told me before he did it!” Her usually soft voice now fills the room and reverberates off the walls.
“Told you what, Maria?” My heart pounds but I press on, partly in curiosity but also because I know that she needs to get it out of her. It’s eating her up. I also know she’s not supposed to say what she’s about to say for both our sakes.
I wonder if I might be getting a new pair of concrete shoes before or after they kill me. Personally, I think I’d prefer after. I have a feeling ‘swimming with the fishes’ isn’t like swimming with the dolphins at Discovery Cove.
“He wants us to disappear—Victoria and me. He says he can’t protect us and that the don will throw us to the dogs. He says that we need to hide.”
Holy shit, it’s worse. This isn’t about her husband doing something that puts his own criminal ass in the line of fire. He’s done something that put his wife and four-year-old daughter in danger.
“Maria, it sounds like you need to go to the police.” Those are words I never thought would come out of my mouth—words that feel hollow even to my own ears. There’s no substance, no conviction in them, but that’s all I’m supposed to offer as her therapist.
“No!” she objects, flying upright. “No, I can never do that. It’ll only make things a hundred times worse for everyone. Surely you know that.”
I press my lips together because that’s the problem. I do know that, unfortunately.
Maria gestures wildly, “The police, the courts… they can only pretend, but they can’t really protect people like us. Victoria and me, we can never be safe that way.”
She’s not wrong. If she goes to the cops, they’ll put her in WITSEC—so long as she agrees to dance like a puppet on strings for them. But WITSEC is just a part of the illusion. The moment it crumbles, Maria and her daughter will be dead, or worse.
“So, what do you plan to do, Maria?” There shouldn’t be any other option than going to the police, but growing up around outlaws lends you the mindset that there is. However hard I try to deny it, whenever I’m faced with a difficult situation, my roots threaten to show up.
Maria takes a steadying breath. “We’ll have to hide out somewhere—a motel, maybe—until we can leave the country. As long as we don’t stay home, everything will be fine… I think.”
I have my doubts about that.
What would my family do? I ask myself, just like I do whenever I’m at a moral crossroads. Then I generally try to do the opposite. This time, though, I pause. Maria and Victoria being caught in the crossfire of what could be a mafia war… calls for more drastic measures.
A plan begins to form in my mind. A terrible plan, really. Maybe the worst one I’ve ever concocted, but it’s got to be better than what I just heard Maria say. If her husband has done something stupid enough to lose the Outfit’s protection, then hiding out in a motel is like trussing themselves up for the enemy.
“Just… stay here for a minute, okay?” I tell her.
Maria nods her head as a few more tears leak from her eyes.
I grab my cell phone from my desk drawer and leave the room, closing the office door behind me. Maria’s my last client for the day, so there’s no one in the waiting room. Even Eva, my receptionist, has gone home.
I swipe my finger across my phone’s screen, punch in a number I’ve dialed countless times, and pace a trench across the pretty, sage-green rug as the phone rings repeatedly.
