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Pellico’s enemies, or hell, maybe even Pellico’s friends. I didn’t know.
I had no idea where Pietro was, or what he was doing, or why.
Mom thought he must have joined the mafia, but we didn’t know for sure he’d actually gone to Pellico, he could have gone to another family to beg for protection or he could be using his blood relation to spy on Pellico for a rival group. What we didn’t know was why he had left.
Maybe to protect us? I didn’t know. I had no idea.
The only thing I knew was that mom said I had to go about my life as usual, for Pietro’s sake.
She was just being paranoid, right? Because of what she went through? I couldn’t blame her, not in the slightest, but would anyoneactuallybe watching us? It seemed like such a long shot.
I was just a 24-year-old wannabe-designer, living in a studio apartment and dreaming of having a steady income.
Maybe they’d watch me for a few days,maybe,but it would be so obvious so fast that I couldn’t lead them anywhere, that they’d move on by the end of the week. Besides, how could they learn something from me when I was more clueless than they were?
So, I sat there, lit only by the eerie blue glow of the television screen and tried to figure out what to do.
I had never been a very assertive person; I’d spent so much of my childhood being a doormat for other people, relying on Pietro to stand up for me, that even when I finally grew a bit of a spine I still avoided conflict.
Scratch that, I avoideddecisions.
I couldn’t pick wrong if I didn’t pick, right?
The only decisions I’d ever felt confident making were the ones about my career. It had never been a question to me that I was going to go to fashion school, so it wasn’t even really a decision I had to make.
But which school I would go to, where I would work afterwards, and how I would use my passion—I’d had to look to other people to help guide me in those decisions.
Somehow, I was sure everything was going to work out for the best.
I knew that was naïve, and stupid, and childish. I knew it was shortsighted and optimistic. But it was how I felt and how I lived my life, and it had always worked out for me.
Somehow, if I had enough faith that the right thing would come, it did. But not this time, and that thought lit a fire under my ass.
I knew that, this time, the universe would need a helping hand.
I learned what I could and paced in my dark kitchen and planned. I knew I couldn’t sit back this time, I couldn’t accept a life without my brother in it. He had always been there for me, and now I was going to be there for him.
Pietro was in trouble, I didn’t know what kind, but I knew I was going to help him. We’d get through this together, the same way we’d gotten through everything else, from putting down our dog to burying dad.
So, in spite of my anxiety, I tried to learn everything I could about Nicola Pellico.
Something in me justknewthat Nicola was going to lead me to Pietro, somehow.
At 5:30 am, a police chief spoke from the screen. “We still have very few leads,” he said, “but our forensics department is working overtime to collect evidence. In the meanwhile, we’ve been looking into the decedent’s recent history and have found what we believe is a lead.”
A picture popped into the corner of the screen and I peered at it. It was a little grainy and dimly lit, but it had obviously been taken inside of a club or something. I could see a booth-style table with five men seated around it, the middle one obviously being Nicola.
My heart caught in my throat when I realized Pietro was right beside him.
He looked so serious. Almost calculating, really—I’d never seen him make that kind of face before.
I knew he could hold grudges with the best of them, but that was the extent of it.
The Pietro I saw in that picture was not my prankster brother.
“We are treating all four surviving men as suspects in this investigation.”
My stomach twisted on itself.
