Page 200 of Diego

Emilia nods as though the matter is settled and heads back toward the kitchen.

I look at Blair one last time.

She has already turned back to her laptop, but she catches me watching and sighs with exaggerated patience. “I have my phone. Emilia is here. I am staying on the sofa. Go to your meeting.”

I lean down and kiss her, my hand settling briefly against the side of her face. It's the first time I've kissed her on the lips since our night together. I don't know what compelled me to do it now, but I've wanted to for weeks and held myself back. She responds without hesitation, and when I pull back, she is looking at me with enough warmth in her eyes to make leaving even less appealing.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“I know.”

I brush my thumb once over her cheek before standing.

This time I actually make it to the entryway.

My jacket is hanging near the door. I pull it on, check that I have my phone and keys, then glance back toward the living room through the open space between us.

Blair has already disappeared into the property files again.

It helps that she's not sitting there frightened or uncomfortable or waiting for me to return. She is working, or at least doing the closest thing she can manage while recovering, and she looks content.

I have no reason to stay.

I still have to make myself open the door.

The moment I step outside, the instinct to turn around and check on her one more time is immediate and ridiculous.

I make it to the car before pulling out my phone and checking that the volume is all the way up.

Then I finally leave for the office.

Mario is already behind his desk when I walk into his office, with Ricardo sitting in one of the chairs across from him and Lorenzo standing near the windows with his phone in his hand. Nobody looks particularly relaxed, which tells me Mario’s message was not an excuse to drag us all downtown for something that could have been handled over the phone.

I close the door behind me and take the empty chair beside Ricardo. “What happened?”

Mario waits until I am settled before answering. “Giovanni Conti contacted me this afternoon.”

That gets my attention immediately.

Giovanni is Luca Conti’s younger brother, second oldest in the family. He's the one who took over as don when Luca was in prison all those years.

Our relationship with the Atlantic City Contis has remained amicable, but nobody would mistake it for close or casual. There is too much history and too many years of distance between the two branches of the family for that.

We are related, technically more closely than any of us understood until our father told Mario the truth: that Luca is actually his son, which makes him our brother instead of our cousin, but blood does not erase decades spent building separate families in separate cities.

Ricardo leans back slightly. “What does Giovanni want?”

“One of his people came into Chicago a few days ago,” Mario says. “He was following information connected to a real-estate fraud operation they’ve been looking into in Atlantic City. Giovanni heard from him before he entered the city. There has been nothing since.”

Lorenzo lowers his phone. “For days?”

“It would seem so.”

A man missing for a few hours can be explained. A man sent somewhere deliberately who then disappears without another word is something else entirely, especially when the person waiting to hear from him is Giovanni Conti.

“Do they know where he was going?” I ask.

“They have a few leads,” Mario says. “Properties, names, some corporate records. Giovanni did not give me all of it over the phone. He wants to come here himself and follow up.”