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“The plans changed. I needed them. Needless to say, they weren’t very happy with me not bringing you to them immediately, but I pleaded my case. Brother worried about his sister . . . I played that card.”
Numb. My entire body was numb as I sat there and listened to my brother. I drew in a shaky breath and waited for him to keep talking.
Pushing his hand through his hair, he closed his eyes then looked back at me. “The FBI had been watching you since your picture went into the paper.”
“What?” The pounding in my head was getting louder. The ache growing stronger. “You’ve had the FBI watching me? And you said nothing!”
I’d never been so angry with my brother in my entire life.
“I know, Gabi. I know you’re angry with me. I needed you to believe that you were safe. That everything was good. If for any reason I would have thought your life was in danger, I’d have gotten you out. But Lucas gained Dante’s trust a few years back and has been his number two guy. Dante just started talking more and more, I needed to make sure everything we got down was done legally. I needed him to confess about his father’s murder and the only way to do that was with him finding you. That picture was actually a good thing. Once Dante saw it, he started spewing out everything about his father’s murder.”
I dropped Nic’s hand. My fingers came up to my temples were I massaged them gently. “So you knew Dante had found me weeks ago, and you said nothing. How could you do that to me?”
“I knew Nic was around and he was a cop. I really felt like you were safe. Plus the FBI has been watching you.”
Standing, I pointed to Antonio. My entire body shook with anger. “You used me as a damn pawn, Antonio! Again! And to make matters worse, you put the lives of people I love in danger.”
His eyes turned sad.
“I did what I thought was right, and in the end it all worked out.”
“How do you figure?” I shouted.
Antonio looked over to Nic. “Does she know about Jim?”
Swinging my head over to Nic, I asked, “Jim? Who is Jim?”
Nic groaned. “Jesus, this is starting to get overwhelming, Antonio.”
“Angelo, sit down.”
“NO! I’m not sitting down. Jim, Lucas, FBI agents. Was I the only one who didn’t know what was going on?” I spun around and looked at Nic. “And when did you find all of this out?”
“About thirty minutes ago.”
My body relaxed. “Oh.”
Nic stood and took my hands in his. “Let’s let Antonio finish and then you and I will talk.”
When my eyes caught Charity’s I smiled weakly. “I’ll take that drink now.”
WE ALL SAT and listened to Antonio explain how once Jim had notified him about figuring out that the girl I had gone to Italy to follow was Gabi, he had used me to help out in their plan to get Dante.
“So you told Jim to call me and pretend like he was giving me this info without you knowing. Why?”
“Because if my hunch about how much you loved my sister was right, I needed you to know the truth. I needed you to go to her. What I was really wasn’t banking on was that you would be smart enough to look for Dante’s men. So when you had your friend call a black and white to the scene, I knew we had to rush in and grab him.”
“You knew he was there?”
“Yes. Lucas was in the car recording everything. Dante knew we had figured out he was on to Gabi. He was waiting for her to leave because he knew I would tell her to go to the next safe house. What he didn’t know was that we knew he knew.”
“My God. I’m so flipping confused,” Charity said with a sigh.
I shook my head. “So wait, you told Gabi to leave because you wanted Dante to try to get her?”
“Yes. We were there as well. Waiting for when it happened. So in a way, you seeing the car kind of fucked up the plan.”
I cringed. “Sorry.”
Antonio laughed. “It’s okay, because with you being there . . . going to Gabi, it pissed Dante off. He sort of lost it in the car and started talking about the night he shot his father. He confessed to everything and we got it all. When we intercepted the call for the black and white, we had to move in a bit earlier. It would have been nice to have attempted kidnapping, but we do have him talking about the plan to do it so hopefully that, along with his murder confession, will be enough to put his ass in jail for the rest of his life.”
