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“Shiny DeAngelo?” Jack repeats blankly. Sandro is still chuckling. “Care to share the joke?”
“One of Julian’s first assignments,” Sandro says. He’s smiling, but his eyes are hard. “He was sent to take out Shiny DeAngelo, a Bernardi soldier making problems on our territorial borders. Aldo had hand-waved it; Shiny was more trouble than he was worth. But Julian killed the wrong man: Ricky Santoro. The fucking Capo.”
My chest tightens as Sandro recounts my mistake. I’d been so sure that I could do it, so confident in my abilities to identify my target. I had studied Shiny DeAngelo’s face for hours on end, memorizing every detail until I thought I knew it.
“It was an unfortunate error,” I say lightly. “Ciro wasn’t very happy about it.”
“He was not,” Sandro agrees, and his eyes soften a little. “He locked you up...downstairs, didn’t he?” he says.
I give a stilted nod. “That was the first time I thought to myself, you know, I should have a backup system for when this happens again. And so I made sure I had a way out of those cells.”
“‘When’ it happened again,” Sandro repeats. “Not ‘if’?”
“You know what Ciro was like,” I tell him. “You of all people.”
Ciro could put on a good front, but he wasn’t a good father. Having his favor, as I did much of my life, was not necessarily a benefit to me.
“I do,” Sandro concedes. “And it’s really true?” he asks. “You really have this…” He waves his hand around.
“Prosopagnosia,” I repeat. “Yes. It’s true. But Ciro never knew. No one ever knew, except…” I shift in the chair. “Except my mother. She knew. She taught me how to hide it, gave me all sorts of work-arounds. I think she probably had it herself—too many neat tricks that suggested personal experience. She said I was never to let anyone know. That it would be dangerous for me if anyone ever found out.”
“She had a point,” Jack says grimly. He shakes his head in wonder. “I’ll say this for you, Julian: you cover it well.”
It’s not Jack’s approval that I need, though. I look to Sandro, who has his chin in his hand, eyes down as he thinks. “Well?” I ask.
He glances up. “Well, what?”
“Do you think I’m useless, now that you know?”
Sandro shakes his head. “I would be a fool to think you useless. You are very good at what you do, Julian. And we all have weaknesses. You seem to have found your way around yours. I know of no other mistakes during your—shall we say career?”
“Would’ve been useful to know this earlier,” is all Jack says. “Alright. So we call off the red alert with the crews, for now. Figure out why these jackasses attacked Julian. Any ideas why they might’ve done it?”
“Several,” Sandro says.
“Was that a joke, brother dear?” I ask with an appreciative smile. “You really have softened up now that you have a teddy bear to cuddle all night.”
“Enough,” he says, but mildly. “Jack’s right. We need to find out what these men were doing. Who sent them. And why.”
“And then there’s the Roxy thing,” Jack says. “We need to move on that fast. If Leo Bernardi gets there before we do—“
“You know, I don’t think he will?” I break in. “We had a very interesting conversation last night all about Roxanne Rochford. That’s what I was doing in the area, by the way. Talking to Leo at The Cellar.”
“Talking?” Jack raises an eyebrow.
“He wasn’t in the mood for more, for some reason.”
“Skip the back and forth, you two,” Sandro says, sitting back down behind his desk. “Just tell me what the Lion said.”
CHAPTER31
LEO
I stiflea yawn as I replay, yet again, my conversation with Julian at The Cellar the other night. I’ve tried to find out where that fucker has been the last few days, but he’s been a ghost since he walked Rachel to her car, which she only told me about after a lot of hemming and hawing. And given that two Castellanis turned up dead a few streets away from The Cellar that night, I can’t blame Rachel for being cautious.
But right now, sitting in a car—I borrowed it from an old crew mate, and I don’t like the lack of performance compared to my bike—outside Gino and Roxy’s bungalow, I’m only getting pissed again when I think about Julian.
If that asshole thinks I’m just gonna let him destroy my brother’s life, he’s in for a big fucking shock.
