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Gut punched. I stared at Miceli. The whirl in my mind of how to get out of there and where to go so I could hide came to an abrupt stop. Confusion clouded my ability to plan my escape. He’d done this on purpose to stall me, right? “What?”
“I am here to help solve who killed your parents,” Agent Di Angelo repeated. “I am also here to finally close Rosalina Daidone’s unsolved murder case.”
The starch bled from my body, and I sagged into Miceli’s embrace. “You’re not going to kill Kyle or me?”
He shook his head. “No, I’m here to hopefully help you come out of hiding.”
“We can’t,” Kyle said. “You don’t know how close we’ve come to dying over the last year.”
“You can with us,” Agent Di Angelo said. “I will help you, but I need you to trust all of us.” He cut his gaze to Miceli before proceeding. “We’re going to lay a trap.”
“I told you!” Kyle barked. “It’s a fucking lie. They used you, Miceli. I said, the shit about my father isn’t the truth. They are exploiting your guilt to finish the job of eliminating us!” Kyle ran his fingers through his hair and tugged. “Fucking spooks. Fucking table. Fucking Syndicate of Families. I’ll never go back to being on the run. I’d rather kill all of you before dying.”
I believed my brother. He’d die trying to save us. Of that, I had no doubts. “Kyle, we should hear them out.”
“No. I told you. They’d used our parent’s death as a pretense for killing us. Didn’t I?” I didn’t disagree with him, but... “See, this is to make sure the last remaining family members are fully off the playing field. They knew we weren’t dead, Stephanie. Now, they can finish the job.”
“Hold on there, kid,” Agent Di Angelo said. “I’m not here to kill you or put you back in the spotlight. We just wanted to tell them you’re alive so we can get access to your house. You’re going to stay right here with Miceli and his men.”
Kyle sat down heavy on the corner of Miceli’s desk, knocking over little trinkets and a picture frame as he did. “What?”
“Their instincts are good,” Agent Di Angelo said. “Please call me Rocco. All my friends do, anyway.” He gave a small, affable smile as he straightened in the chair.
“What the fuck is going on here?” My brother sounded like a frightened child, not the man he was becoming. I hated his small voice. The scared version of him. The same way he sounded when he woke up following his surgery, after the shitty repair to his shoulder.
“Shall we start from the beginning?” Miceli said, guiding me to his chair so I could sit curled in his lap. “First, I’d never put either of you in harm’s way.” The way his voice vibrated through me pushed away the chilled shell surrounding me. “Second, Soren wouldn’t have brought Rocco to my house if he thought Rocco was a danger to any of us.”
I suspected that wasn’t the full truth, but I left my anxiety to simmer while I listened. I had to trust Miceli now more than ever. If Rocco was how I got my life back and Kyle, then I’d do whatever was asked. Later, I’d do my own investigation into Agent Di Angelo. “Okay.”
“Stephanie,” Rocco began. “I didn’t think you’d remember me to start. You were a little girl, a baby. First, I need to tell you, your father has been with the families for a long time, longer than I have. Second, you should know, like your father, I too was recruited for the FBI through our involvement in the families.”
“What?” I sat there dumbfounded by Rocco’s admission. He was part of the Syndicate.Well, duh. The tattoo says it all. “I don’t really understand any of this.”
“It’s why we wouldn’t have known,” Kyle murmured. “Because nothing changed.”
“Bingo,” Soren stated. “Now you’re seeing it. I’m sorry, kid. I wish I was quicker on the uptake. Had I been, we could have saved both of you from getting into trouble again.”
Kyle shook his head. “Nah, we knew better, too. We got antsy.”
“Kyle and I had money for the first time in almost a year,” I snorted. “We... I—I got a little... No, what am I saying? Kyle’s right, we—I got antsy. This is all my fault.” Nibbling on my bottom lip, I frowned. We’d been here too long. Things were bound to happen. Maybe I’d predicted the coming storm with the stuff that happened with Brooke? So, I wanted to get a head start this time? “We were going to run. I should’ve always told the truth to Miceli, instead I made our situation worse, manipulated it.”
I made his life worse.
“Never,” Miceli whispered. “You made mine—mine and Rocca’s life better.” He pressed his lips to my temple, earning a few throat clearings from the others. “Do you want to help the agent with this case?”
My head bobbed in a bashful nod. “Yes. If it means having our lives back. If it means finally putting our parents to rest, then I’ll do it.”
“Perfect,” Rocco said. “Let’s get to work. What do either of you know about your father’s business?”
I looked at Kyle, who wore the same expression as I did. We were kept from daddy’s office at all times, because what he did was important. “Nothing. Mother kept us from bothering him. I remember a couple of times sneaking in while he had a client, and them laughing about me being there.” I shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you what the conversations were, though.”
“By the time I was old enough to know what he was doing, our parents sent me to private school, which meant I was away more than home,” Kyle added. “There were times I arrived home to people leaving, but I saw no faces.”
“Any arguments?” Rocco prodded. “Either between your parents or your father and a client?”
There’d been one. It was bad. Mother and daddy never got angry at each other, but something happened. I could hear their shouts through the door to daddy’s office. Mother threatened to leave him. She was done with the lifestyle. Done with his choices. “Yeah, once. I think our mother wanted daddy to leave the Syndicate.”
Rocco’s gaze snapped to Miceli, who shook his head. “When was that? Do you remember?”
