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The next player’s residence was larger than the others, with a pool house and a garage, and the inside had all the charm of a suburban mall furniture store. The colors were bland, muted, the pieces boring, and even the walls were washed out. Photographs of a couple were everywhere—wedding, trips, selfies. Nico would never understand this generation’s obsession with staring at themselves so much.

“This guy,” Filippo said as they tossed the drawers of the walk-in closet. “Who needs so many watches? There must be half a million dollars’ worth in here.” He examined one, then slipped it in his pocket.

“A stupid waste of money. And look for false bottoms in the drawers. He’s not hiding GHB in with his TAG Tourbillon.”

“Don Marzano,” Dante said, sticking his head into the large closet. “We found a safe.”

“Ah,” Nico said, closing the drawer he’d been inspecting. “Allora, this sounds promising. Show me.”

Nico and Filippo followed Dante to an office, where a small safe sat tucked under a giant walnut desk. None of them were safecrackers, unfortunately, so this would need to come with them. “Let’s get it to the car. We’ll drop it off with Leo on the way home from the airport.” A cousin on Nico’s mother’s side, Leo was their best lock-picker and safecracker.

Antonio found a hand truck and they were able to get the safe to the car with minimal effort. After another hour of searching, they gave up inside the house and drove out to the Toronto International Airport. Filippo had already called one of their contacts and learned which private corporate terminal the team used, so they drove straight there.

It was after two o’clock, so the terminal was dark and quiet. Sergei’s team had already disabled the cameras pointed at the parking lot, so Nico and the boys located the five black Mercedes SUVs. Then Dante used a special relay tool designed to mimic the car’s fob and was able to open them one after the other.

Nico nearly gagged when he got inside the first car. The lingering smell of sweat and damp in the interior was terrible. “Cazzo, what died in here?”

“Cristo santo,” Filippo wheezed on the other side. “Do these men ever bathe?”

One of the players definitely did, but Nico wasn’t about to reveal how he knew something so personal. Instead, he picked through the receipts, papers, and wrappers in the driver’s side door, then moved on to the other compartments. Filippo grunted as he searched under the seats. “Rolls of athletic tape and packs of nicotine gum. That’s all I see.”

“Nothing here either. Look in the trunk and I’ll go to the next car.”

The second SUV smelled worse. Nico kept the door propped open and breathed through his mouth as he searched. More trash and receipts littered this car—fast food, coffee, parking, clothing—so it took more time to go through. “What are you finding back there?” he asked Filippo.

“Shirts, vape pen, a toothbrush . . . a bottle of cologne.”

Madonna mia, whoever owned this car was more raccoon than man. “How do people stand driving around like this?”

“Condoms, socks,” Filippo continued. “Does this player live in his car?”

Nico hoped Dante and Antonio were having better luck in one of the other cars.

Ten minutes later, Dante arrived, out of breath. “Don Marzano, we found this in one of the cars.” He held up a syringe.

Nico held perfectly still as he stared at the syringe. Sofia’s GHB had been ingested, not injected, but this could be a way for the drug to be transferred into small containers. “Any vials with it?”

“Not that we saw.”

“Show me.”

Dante led him to the SUV parked the farthest away from the terminal. Antonio was searching the trunk as they approached. “That was in the glove box,” he said, jerking his chin toward the front.

Nico sat in the front passenger seat and began looking around. “Just the one?”

“Yes,” Dante said. “And I didn’t find anything else.”

“Could be steroids,” Filippo said, now standing by Nico’s door.

There was a chance, yes. Some professional athletes used performance-enhancing drugs. Nico knew this because Toronto’s supply was handled by the Marzano family through a lab in Kitchener. But the syringe also might contain a sedative of some kind, like the one used to incapacitate their cousin. “I want that syringe tested. Tell the lab it’s a rush. If it has traces of GHB, we’re grabbing this guy as soon as the team disembarks.”

“Okay,” Filippo said. “I’ll make the call.”

Ten minutes later, they finished at the airport, empty-handed except for the syringe, which they drove out to the testing lab. Nico was exhausted. It shouldn’t be this hard to find a man who got off on drugging women and driving them somewhere, likely to rape them.

If the syringe and safe yielded more dead ends, Nico would need to get creative.

CHAPTER 13