“The import company in Columbus.”
I take a slow drink.
“And the person answering the telephone believed the best course of action was to send this stranger directly to you?”
“No. They transferred him to someone else, who transferred him to someone else, who eventually contacted me.”
“So my morning is being disrupted by a game of telephone that began with some unidentified man in Ohio?”
“Pretty much.”
“Wonderful.”
I finish my whisky and immediately pour another.
The vacation is no longer merely a pleasant idea but a medical necessity.
“When we received the call, I contacted Luca,” Spike explains. “He asked me not to reach out to the man until we’d spoken with you first. You were busy yesterday, and none of us wanted to interrupt the time you were spending with your new family. So, here we are.”
My new family.
Those words settle somewhere deep inside my chest.
Amelia and Olivia may not officially carry my name yet, but the men in this room already recognize them as mine. They know I consider both of them family, and they respect that enough to give me an uninterrupted day with them.
“I see.” I place my untouched second glass of whisky on the desk. “Have you looked into the man, Foster?”
“He’s clean,” Foster answers. “Chris Olsen. Forty-seven. Widowed. Father of one. Works as a truck driver for a major shipping company.”
“In Ohio?” I ask, suddenly much more interested than I was a moment ago.
“Um...” Foster pulls out his phone and looks through the information he gathered. “Yes. The company’s main warehouse is in Ohio, but he travels throughout the eastern United States.”
“Interesting.”
I lean back in my chair and steeple my fingers beneath my chin as several pieces begin sliding into place.
A truck driver.
A major shipping company.
Ohio.
A man who somehow knows something important enough to seek out the head of the Moretti family.
That combination could be a coincidence.
I stopped believing in coincidences a very long time ago.
“Luca, would you please ask my brother to join us?”
Nodding, my second leaves the room.
“What’s going on, brother?” Spike asks.
“Did your research tell you the name of the shipping company Mr. Olsen works for?” I ask instead of answering.
“I didn’t dig that far into it,” Foster admits. “I only grabbed the basic information. Give me a second and I’ll find out.”
