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I would work just as hard to keep Angelo out of jail as I had Lucien. We might have been able to avoid charges if another detective were assigned to the case, but Joe had it in for me. He would stand his ground no matter what we threatened him with, which meant I only had a few options. I could destroy the evidence against us. I could talk Joe into dropping the charges. Or Joe would have to die. If I was going to find the strength to kill him, I would’ve done it months ago. I didn’t want the man dead. I wanted…
That didn’t matter. It wasn’t going to happen, but I was determined to find a way out of this that kept all of us alive and free.
If I could use our family contacts in the department, I could get one of them to take the ring if Joe had returned it, but if I talked to them, Lucien would likely find out. He’d be the one they’d contact if they ran into trouble, and some of them would only take orders from him.
I sat watching Joe’s house for hours. I considered hitting a few bars, but I needed to be sober for this. I could have stayed home until it was late enough for Joe to be asleep, but it was too hard to be around my family while I was holding on to all these secrets.
I couldn’t sit with them and talk about how we had to stay out of trouble while Lucien scowled at me and Angelo and Cameron flashed heart-eyes at each other. Instead, I sat and watched the shadows as the man I wanted moved around behind his blinds.
Finally, the lights went out in the front of the house. A little while later, he cut the light in his bedroom. I waited, observing as some of his neighbors came home and watching neighborhood cats prowl around. Lucien thought I was incapable of being patient. If only he could see me now. When my life or the lives of my family depended on it, I could do anything.
I waited as long as I could stand it. At this point, all I could do was pray Joe was asleep. At least all the time spent watching the house had given me a very clear picture of the path to his back door, and I was able to negotiate it without a flashlight. Thankfully, Joe hadn’t taken my suggestion and improved his home security. Letting myself in was so easy a five-year-old could do it, at least if that five-year-old was a Marchesi.
I eased the back door open, slipped inside, and waited. I didn’t hear a sound as I shut the door. I waited several seconds before moving again. Still nothing.
If Joe had the ring, I bet he’d left it in his office. If I were lucky, it would be lying on his desk the way his casework had been when I’d been here before.
The office was across the hall from his bedroom. My heart pounded as I made my way, one step at a time, toward the office door. Either Joe was sound asleep or I was quiet enough he hadn’t noticed anything. The office door was open, and I stepped cautiously inside.
I took slow steps as I crossed the room to Joe’s desk. Like before, his desk was littered with case notes. I scanned them, seeing ones related to several of the attacks on our businesses, including Santino’s. Had he put together that they were related? I found a few scribbled notes about the fire at Sergio’s house but no corresponding file. Where was it, and where was the ring? Had he left them at the precinct?
His desk was more a table, so there weren’t any drawers. He had a small file cabinet next to it. I opened the top drawer and saw it was jam packed with files. It would take me a while to go through all of them, but a cursory glance told me they were older and contained notes from cases he’d worked on months or years ago. I opened the bottom drawer, but I didn’t see what I was looking for there either. I turned and surveyed the room. Was there somewhere else Joe would put something he wanted to hide?
The room was sparsely furnished like the rest of his house. There was only the desk, a simple chair that went with it, and an armchair in the corner that had seen better days. There was nothing on the walls and no bookshelves, only a small collection of books in a stack on the desk. There was a closet, though. The door creaked as I pulled it open, and I paused, holding my breath. I was rarely scared when I went poking around in someone’s house. I was always ready for a fight, always armed and confident I would come out on top. But I wasn’t used to fighting enemies I liked.
