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I brought the phone to my ear. “Gia?”
“Got anything?”
“That someone called Kitty-Cat is helping Rocco run and finance a sex-trafficking industry under my fucking nose, but she has no idea who that is, and neither did Rocco.”
There was silence. “Do you believe her?”
“Yes,” I said shortly. I glanced at my phone. It was after five a.m. “I’m going to speak to Alessandro. Find out what the fuck is going on. It might mean I need to have a meeting with the Irish.”
Gia hissed in a breath. “Understood. Let me know.”
“Did you finish investigating the capos?”
“Yes, it was exactly as you suspected.”
Which meant I knew who had betrayed me and had been in with Rocco. “Call a meeting of the Capos for this evening,” I decreed. “I need to make it clear what I expect.”
“Are you going to see Elisabetta?”
I closed my eyes. “Of course, she doesn’t know yet, does she?”
“No, but she won’t have been expecting to hear from him until La Caterina docked. That gives you some time.” He paused. “It might also give you an option to see if you can find out exactly what she does know.”
“Yes. Capos first, though.” This business with Alessandro had taken me away from my job for far too long, and it ended now. I couldn’t start a war with either the Irish or anyone else if I wasn’t secure in my own backyard first.
Lucio left Maxine on ice so that George could help him get rid of her tomorrow, and we drove home.
I was silent for a while. The facts—or lack of them—were whirling on repeat in my tired brain.
“I think the Russian angle is a fantasy.”
Lucio nodded. “I agree. If there was any truth in it, Hugo would have been the last person to be told.”
“Which leaves us with what the Irish are up to and the connection with Amato, and possibly Alessandro.” Gia rang again. “Yes?”
“I just spoke to Lixin Chen. He followed a money trail and can confirm Rocco was definitely responsible for the hit at the underground garage.”
Christ, I’d almost forgotten about that, but it only confirmed what we suspected. “I’ve got him working on the accounts for La Caterina and Maxine. See if we can find the main one.”
I thanked him and ended the call. Because if Rocco was really making a lot of cash, he had to be keeping it somewhere. Maybe one of my biggest mistakes had been underestimating him. I thought he was incompetent and lazy, but either there was another player in the mix, or he wasn’t the man I thought he was.
Could I have gotten it so badly wrong?
Forty-five minutes later, we pulled up at home, and I climbed out of the car. This shit with Alessandro had to stop now. I turned to Lucio just as the rapid sound of gunfire from the beach had me drawing my gun and racing through the house. Lucio went around the side. Alvize charged down the stairs, gun drawn, as I passed them. I didn’t know where the fuck Terry was, but as I hit the sand, all my men stopped firing, and I soon saw why.
I could see the figure swimming to the small dinghy, then recognized Alessandro as two men leaned down and hauled him in. The engine roared and the little dinghy sped towards thebigger boat. “Make the call,” I yelled at Lucio. “I want to know who owns that boat and where it’s headed.”
I could barely make it out as the dinghy stopped and a man carrying Alessandro stepped onto the small ladder. In another minute they were all aboard and the larger boat picked up speed, becoming a dot on the horizon very quickly. I turned to Lucio. “I don’t care who. I don’t care what it costs. I want that boat.”
But I’d seen him. We’d all seen him. That hadn’t been a kidnap. He’d been swimming for them as if his life depended on it.
I just hoped he realized that it did.
25
Alessandro
Istared at Elisabetta and knew I’d been wrong. She’d never been a trophy wife, or maybe she had once upon a time until Rocco destroyed that, and I wondered if he knew what he’d wasted.
