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"Be careful," I say.
I don't know if he hears me before he cuts the call. Something bad is happening and I've got to find my brother-in-law and get us both out of Detroit.
I get Leo to the cabin and we settle in. My texts to Tino go unanswered, but I don't contact anyone else. That is the protocol.
Protocol doesn't stop me from checking the online news outlets for information. I am horrified by what I find.
Two, possibly three, gangs are waging war in Detroit. The initial violence erupted in one of our clubs.
Reading between the lines from who is quoted as saying what, I realize the Irish mob and Russian bratva have teamed up to take over Cosa Nostra territory in Detroit. And everything is being played off as a war between rival gangs.
It's warfare all right, but the main players aren't street gangs. They are organized crime syndicates vying for territory.
Rumors of bystanders shot dead abound, but by the next day, twenty deaths are confirmed. The vise around my heart tells me that one of those people is Tino.
He still hasn't answered my texts. The one call I made to him in the middle of the night, breaking protocol, went straight to voicemail.
Hoping against hope, I read the news obsessively over the next two days, sleeping very little and only eating when Leo gets hungry. I gasp as I read the headline to a breaking story. My home has been fire bombed. Leonardo and Lucia Revello are presumed dead, burned to ash with our home in the chemically enhanced fire.
My stomach cramps.
Reading about the tragedy of ourentirefamily being killed on the same night sends me running to the bathroom before I vomit bile all over the cabin floor.
Tino is dead. Agustino Sr. is dead. Leo and I are presumed dead.
Tino and Agustino are considered collateral damage to the gang warfare. The death toll has risen to nearly forty people. Authorities are baffled as to why our home was bombed. Right now, the two incidents are being treated as unrelated.
They aren't. I am Tino's legal heir. The Irish and the Russians don't want me around to be able to fight their possession of the nightclubs on a legal front.
Not that I would be the one doing the fighting, but my standing as owner to the properties would give my don legal leverage in this war.
The same don who allowed the mounting tension between the bratva and our mafia to continue. Don Russo took the path of least resistance too many times and now my husband, father-in-law and more than two dozen other Cosa Nostra men are dead.
From the names listed of the victims, it seems only nine are Russian or Irish. No names are given for the supposed gang members engaged in the conflict.
Returning to the city would be signing my own death warrant. Leo's too.
Just as important is the promise I made to Tino when we got back from our honeymoon. He and Agustino Sr. told me that I would be responsible for Leo's care. Tino made me promise him that if anything ever happened to him and his dad, I would take care of Leo as if he was my own brother.
I look over to where Leo is playing a video game on the cabin's big screen television.
Tino would expect me to take Leo back to Detroit, to his grandfather, the Revello patriarch. But my promise was to take care of Leo as if he were Rocco. If Leo were Rocco, I would make sure he got the medical treatment denied to him since his accident.
Family takes care of family.
Well, me taking care of Leo means doing what is best for him, not what is best forla famiglia.
When I discover that the papers Tino wanted me to get show me how to gain access to several accounts in both our names in the Cayman Islands, I know I can do that. It means letting my family continue to believe I am dead.
My heart hurts at the thought of never seeing my parents or brother again, but if I go back to Detroit, chances are both Leo and I end up dead for real. And maybe my family with us. Our enemies bombed one house. What's to stop them from bombing another?
It is better for everyone if me and Leo stay dead as far as the Detroit Cosa Nostra and their enemies are concerned.
Chapter 1
Present Day
ATLAS
