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I opened my eyes to the sound of sirens, and I knew Lucio had gotten us here faster than anything with a flashing light. I was out of the car in a second with Lucio’s snarl echoing in my ears. The gunmen could easily still be here, and I was throwing myself in front of them. But I got to the entrance unharmed.
“Dario,” Gia’s voice punched at me, and I wasn’t ashamed to say my knees wobbled.
“Marcello was shot, but not critically. He’s upstairs.” I nodded and Lucio took over damage control. When the cops arrived, there would be no casualties. The witnesses all surmised they had panicked at the sound of far-off gunfire and the cops would be compensated for believing them.
When I walked into Marcello’s suite, he was stripped down to his pants. A bandage on his bicep was tinged with red. He spoke furiously into the phone, then everything in him seemed to still.
“Are you sure, Dimitri?”
Dimitri Capella, his bodyguard, my brain supplied.
He didn’t say anything else, just ended the call and then looked up. I walked to the minibar. Despite what I’d had at Elisabetta’s, I needed something. I acted as barman for a couple of minutes, but then Lucio’s phone rang a second time. He listened, then looked at me. “Dimitri is requesting access with a guest.” He said the word carefully, giving me the impression that the “guest” wasn’t here voluntarily.
I nodded and turned to Marcello and Marcello winced. “He has a girl that might have been bribed.”
I frowned. “One of mine?” They wouldn’t dare.
“A plant,” Marcello clipped out before we heard the elevator and the door opened.
A plant from whom?
The man who dragged the girl in reminded me so much of Lucio it was almost funny. Marcello clipped out an order despite him being in my territory and on my property, but Marcello had impressed me from the start, and I needed allies.
Dimitri pushed the sobbing girl to her knees, and I felt Gia shift behind me, and knew he wouldn’t like it. Fortunately, he still had that option, and was not lying still on a steel table somewhere.
I watched as Dimitri flicked us both a look, but turned to Marcello. I admired his fuck-you attitude and his loyalty to his boss.
“So, Cynthia,” Marcello drawled. “I understand you have been pressured to ask about my whereabouts?”
I nearly laughed. “Pressured” sounded like the girl had no choice. If she was loyal, she would have come forward right away. But I wouldn’t interfere when I was sure Marcello was getting the information we both needed.
“I had no choice,” she whispered brokenly. She’d probably been pretty once upon a time, until the life she led took that away from her.
“You work in my territory?” I asked.
She nodded. “I have a baby sister. We ran…”
“From?”
Her face twisted. “The cops. The IRS. The foster parents that wanted her to wed their forty-year-old son.”
“How old is your sister?” I asked like it was nothing.
“Thirteen,” she said, her voice practically screaming at me despite her whispered words.
I stepped forward. “Thirteen-year-olds should be in school,” I agreed. “You have one chance and one chance only to make that happen.”
She only knew one rung up the ladder, which wasn’t surprising. What she did know, what she’d seen, told me anothercapo I thought loyal clearly wasn’t. It was better to know now, though.
She didn’t know anything else, and I didn’t expect her to, frustrating as it may be. I noticed Marcello on the phone but waited to question him until the girl had left. She and her younger sister were now under my protection.
Marcello had been the target.
He knocked back a Bakta “Ghandi.” At $450 a bottle, it was barely worth mentioning, except he’d drunk it like he wanted it, not how much it cost. And my like-meter nudged a little more in his favor.
“While Gianni was calling you,” he bit out. “I also got a call.”
My eyebrow shot up. This had to be significant. “My uncle missed a meeting today.” He eyed me. “The meeting wasn’t vital, but if I take the other two reports into account, it means he missed the meeting because he isn’t in Chicago.”
