AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I can help with that,Signor,” Vito said, addressing my father as he placed a file folder down in front of him. “After the attack onSignorinaLuciano yesterday, we finished tearing apart Bianchi’s finances and his company. Essentially, he’s broke. He and his vice president, Owen Thompson, have been cooking the books, but there’s no money and a lot of debt. It looks like he may have needed those properties to close a development deal that would have gone some way in paying off what he owes.”
My father looked over the files, nodding to himself every once in a while.
“This,” Vito said, holding out another folder like he wasn’t quite sure where to put it, “is that information you asked me to get,” he said to me. “It’s all we could find on the girl. We’ll do more digging…”
I grabbed the folder and opened it up. There was plenty here. Work records, college records. High school. Social services and foster care documents. Police reports and news clippings. All the way back for seventeen years. And then nothing.
No birth certificate, no passport. No medical records. No school records. Absolutely nothing.
I perused the police reports and news clippings as an uncomfortable sensation settled in my stomach. According to these, her parents had been murdered when she was nine years old, right in front of her. She’d lost her hearing that same night—both eardrums blown out when the assholes had fired their guns right beside her ears.
When she’d recovered, they’d tossed her into foster care. She’d had no family that she knew of, and not a single identifying document in the family’s home to point social services in the right direction. It was like she and her parents had appeared out of thin air.
I put the folder down, and Greta picked it up.
“She’s not from here,” I said, like that somehow filled in the giant black void of missing information prior to the night of her parents’ murders. “And she really hates criminals,” I mused aloud to myself aloud. “I suppose I can’t blame her.” Not that we were well-liked in general, but a childhood experience like that could justify a lot of hate.
After some time, Greta dropped the folder back down on the desk, shaking her head.
“All right, so, smoking hot British girl drops out of the sky just in time for a really shitty childhood. She busts her ass through school despite being tossed from foster home to foster home, completes her residency in emergency medicine… and then gets herself involved with a tanking corporate CEO who’s dumb enough to go up against the Lucianos?” Greta kept shaking her head. “In what universe does this make sense?”
Vito laughed while my father looked over at her, eyebrow cocked at her colorful summary, but there was a flicker of humor in his eyes. Which was not something that flickered in my father’s eyes often.
“Are you suggesting she’s innocent,cara mia?”he asked.
Greta pursed her lips, tapping her lime green fingernails on the desk. “That would be too simple, wouldn’t it?”
I nodded in agreement. “Bianchi’s been tracking her, and he had men coming after her the minute I absconded with her.”
“‘’Absconded’?” Greta said, cocking an eyebrow while her lips twitched. “That’s the word we’re going with?”
“I thought you’d like it better than the alternative.” Abducted, kidnapped; those weren’t some of Greta’s favorite words. “But my point is,” I continued, “he’s seriously invested in her. She says she knows nothing…”
“But you’re not buying it?” Greta speculated.
I shook my head. “I don’t know if she’s outright working with him or if she just knows something, but she’s definitely lying.”
“She’s a woman, right?” Greta asked. “Has a heartbeat and a pair of eyes?”
“Si.”
“And you haven’t thought about maybe putting all ofthatto good use?” she said, with a flick of her fingers that indicated my whole body.
I scoffed.
“Are you telling me she’s immune?” Greta dropped her jaw in mock astonishment, but recovered quickly. ”I can try talking to her,” she offered with a shrug.
Usually, I’d say Greta was a force to be reckoned with, and she was. But in this case? “I think I might have met your match,amica.”
She looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to elaborate.
How exactly could I describe her? “Heidi’s…”
“Uncooperative?” Vito filled in for me.
That was one way to put it.
Greta waved a hand dismissively. “Well, she did see you shoot a guy in her boyfriend’s apartment, followed up by drugging and kidnapping her… Hm, I can’t imagine why she’s not feeling very ‘cooperative’.”
